The 80th Anniversary of the Liberation of Auschwitz

Podcast Episode 203

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:07

Digital Fortin Media proudly presents the What's the Scuttle Butt Podcast with your hosts, Don Abernathy, Jeff Copsetta, and Dennis Blocker.

SPEAKER_06 0:16

Welcome everybody to another episode of the What's the Scuttlebutt Podcast, your favorite World War II based podcast. We are back, all three of us here once again. Jeff, Dennis, how y'all doing?

SPEAKER_05 0:28

Doing good. Yeah, doing good.

SPEAKER_01 0:30

Great, great to be back with you guys. You know, like I've got the same excuse all the time. Freaking homework and work work. So thank goodness Dennis is here to help kinda pick up my slack.

SPEAKER_06 0:46

As soon as I did the intro, my phone started ringing. I'm like, come on, are you kidding me? That's why I threw my hands up. My brothers call me. I'm like, come on now. No, happy to have you guys back. Um you know, every few days or so we throw out a chat saying, hey, what do we want to talk about on this week's episode? And I think Jeff, you pointed out the fact, or maybe Dennis did. I can't remember. I was joining on the street when it came through. Yeah, Jeff. Well, you know, of course it's the 80th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz, and so um good topic. And uh this morning I was at work and I just so happened to put on YouTube streaming the Auschwitz Memorial Museum, 80th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz live stream. So I turn it on, and if I end up putting the video version of this podcast, you guys will see it. But behind me, I went on Google took a screenshot because it doesn't look this doesn't give it anything of the the clarity, but this is the recreation that's at the museum a few miles down the road, and they had a huge tent set up, and all these just rows and rows of dignitary survivors and people, and then they have guest speakers up there. And I didn't tune in for the beginning, I just I didn't know it was on it on, and they're having different survivors come up and tell their stories, and it they pan the audience, and this shot just kind of brought the realism to me, right? They're panning the audience, and you got these survivors, and they have like the blue and white striped handkerchiefs around the neck, marking the fact that they're survivors of concentration camps. But one of them, I don't know if it's a recreation, I don't I don't think anybody makes them. I don't know if it's from a movie, or somehow he had his original when the survivors had on that striped hat, and it really it was like ooh, it's like oh wow. Seeing this, you know, 92-year-old guy wearing that hat. It's like it was like, oh, yeah, this this is real. And just listening to them survivors talking about their experience, because depending on how old they were, they had one woman up there who was I think 12 on Liberation Day. She's talking about you know how they're exterminating people and rounding up people, and they're getting to send her group next, and then that's when you know the sirens went off, and all the guards just skedaddled, and and uh it was just a really beautiful presentation. I'm sure the whole thing is on YouTube now, it was live streaming. And like I said, I didn't see the beginning, and I don't know if they mentioned or introduced it, but they're showing us one group of people, and I'm like, oh, there's King Charles III. Zelensky, Ukrainian president, was in the audience, and and they keep panning. I'm like, I I don't recognize anybody other than those two. And I'm like, you know, did we send anybody over? Turns out Trump did create uh members of the president presidential delegation, but to be honest with you, there's like nine or ten people in there, and it's not names that I recognized, but we did send about nine people over there for it. Um, but it was very well done. And um, so that's what that shot is behind me. That's just the the internal inside the tent that they had set up, and in the archway, they actually have one of the train cars. So when one of the survivors was talking about being put on the train cars on the way there, you know, they're they're zooming in on it, and it was it was really well done and um a good reminder, you know, because the whole Holocaust memorial, their slogan is, you know, never again. And that was kind of like the theme, and it was it was really well done. But um, yeah, so I just figured we'd take this episode to kind of talk about the details of Auschwitz and in general and and how the whole thing came to be and what it turned into and how the liberation came to come to fruition. I don't know if you guys have anything you want to add in to start this thing off before we get going.

SPEAKER_01 4:55

Well, um, you know, this is definitely a topic that is not uh something uh I'm really uh you know in tune with. It's this is definitely more my wife's interest. Uh I even I gave her an invite fruitlessly to talk about all the books that she's read on the topic and her interest and what draws her to it, right? Like we can't explain why we're drawn into the the things that we are, you know, but we are. We just we don't know why, but for her, it's this topic. Um But I think Auschwitz specifically for me just always kind of rings as just that irony, I guess, of the liberation of Auschwitz being you know, coming from the Russians and knowing the kind of internal terror, I guess, that that was going on over there was is it's I don't know, it's just kind of it's interesting how how history plays out sometimes.

SPEAKER_06 5:58

Well, and the and for those at the audience, Jeff and I aren't smirking or laughing at the topic. We're smirking, as Jeff said, the irony, because we know that Stalin and Russians kind of had their own equivalent of the final solution that they wanted to, you know, initiate on the Jews in Russia. And so as Jeff's saying, it's kind of ironic that they were the first ones to kind of inadvertently lead this charge and proceed to the rescuing and uh the liberation of this camp.

SPEAKER_05 6:28

Yeah, the same here. Uh, you know, it's not something that I you know put a lot of research into or anything like that. However, you know, I I specifically remember when we grew up, when I lived in Iceland, so I was, you know, eight, nine, ten years old there, there was a miniseries uh that came out, and it was one of those limited series, and it was called Holocaust. And it was a um, it wasn't a documentary, and it was very impactful to me uh as a young lad because I had already seen Von Ryan's Express. And so, you know, that's what everybody who knows me would know that that's the movie that got me started into World War II loving the because of the way the the German uniforms really caught my attention because they're so sharp, and the the British and the they're always trying to escape, and the Americans are just cocky and you know, and taking charge and you know getting things done. And um, so I I was kind of like, yeah, this is this is and then the Holocaust. And I was just that, I mean, it's been goodness gracious, it's 30, you know, 40 years since I seen it in Iceland. I still remember that vividly to this day. The depictions there, and uh yeah, it was really something. I was I've been thinking a lot about it today when when Jeff recommended that we do this uh podcast episode today, and it's been on my mind. Interestingly enough, while I was at work, I I heard there was someone says, Hey, you have a guest at the uh the door, and it was a gentleman that I had met who was has a nonprofit in town, and he was he brought in a friend of his who was um kind of a chief executive officer of this nonprofit, and they're wanted to get some of our support, this and that. Brought them in, and uh the the the two gentlemen sit in my in my office, and the guy looks up and he sees my uh uh Eisenhower coffee mug that Conan O'Brien made famous on his late night show that was always sitting on his desk. And uh, so he's like Eisenhower, you know, this other guy, and but he says with this accent, and it sounded French, and uh and then he says, Look at the and he started talking about oh, look at the P40 there and and this and that, of course, you know, so that we're off to the races. And uh uh come to find out, his um he's going to Normandie in two days, and he's from France, and the area of France he was from um his grandfather was in the resistance. And what his grandfather would do is he would uh retrieve parts of V2s and V1s that were shot out of the sky or that had malfunctioned and crashed before making a cross, and he would smuggle these parts to uh make it back to England so the scientists could uh study them. And he's heading over to France because he's gonna research his grandfather's story and get access to these archives. And um, so that started us off on that what we were talking about tonight. And I um it was very interesting because it was like Jeff's was let's talk about Auschwitz, and then boom, this guy shows up at my door on the day we're gonna have the podcast, and his grandfather was in the resistance, and uh sometimes it's a very, very small world, you know.

SPEAKER_06 9:51

It's really something Jeff, you're saying your wife has you know this particular corner of World War II history is the one that kind of jumps out to her. And we've all talked in the past about how we can't explain why things the particular things about World War II affects each one of us or grabs our attention. But when you're talking about your wife's interest in it, the only thing I popped in my mind, and maybe you could ask her, obviously the military at the time was completely different than it is now. And so I think World War II in early military history affects men in a certain way because in our minds, if we were there at that age, we could have possibly been there and it's we're trying to look at it like you know, how you know, how would this affect me, yada yada yada. Whereas with the exception of the home front or maybe live in in a battlefield, battle area or a country that's being invaded, it's kind of harder for a woman or a mom to put themselves in that situation, but to think holy hell, what would it be like as a mom to have you and all five of your kids scooped up and put in this situation? And I think there's probably more mother perspectives in this particular angle of the war overall, collectively, than there are, you know, civilian diaries of you know, air raids and like I think like that. You think that's possible that it's just coming from a woman's view of what it would be like or how it would impact your family, this is probably the most scariest, horrible you know, aspect of what could possibly happen to a family during that time.

SPEAKER_01 11:32

I think it's the most horrifying, scary thing that could happen to anybody in any point in history.

SPEAKER_06 11:38

You know what I mean, though, right? It's it's I think it's probably perhaps more um this particular thing is something more that a you know perhaps a woman could relate to at that time just because of the the entire families are being rounded up, right? You have kids being taken away from their moms and all that stuff. And it's like just I don't know, perhaps when it comes to this part of the war, maybe it's a little bit more associated than you know, reading foxhole frontline stuff.

SPEAKER_01 12:14

Yeah, I I don't I definitely agree with that, and I know uh and we'll talk about them, I'm sure, here at the end. I got I've got a couple books that are her recommendations uh on the subject, and they're all written by female, you know, survivors, and I think that's interesting. I don't know the statistics as far as how many you know guys uh stories were were put into print. I know of a couple, but I'm kind of curious to know those statistics. Um because yeah, even two people go through the same event, um, and it's it's two different it's two different events, right? It's just that's just the human story. But then when you throw in the factor of uh a guy going through this in a work camp and then his wife being shipped off to another camp, you know, with women and children, um for me, and I don't like I said, I don't know how it gets any scarier than than it it already is, but when when you put children into any any story, it it just takes on another level of terror. So uh it's interesting to think about some of those things and and and what really written records would have survived and why they've survived. So it's yeah, it's an interesting thought for sure.

SPEAKER_06 13:34

Well, I was trying to do a curse research, but I couldn't come up with anything because I can't figure out the magic Google wording. But I was as you were saying that I'm wondering, well, what was the population density between men versus women in these camps? Because obviously ages 14 to 30-ish, you could be used in forced labor camps, you could be used on the front line in some some parts, and so you would think the the Germans would utilize young men and early stage men in a different way than they would women. Um, so I wonder once I once again I couldn't find the numbers because I don't know the the word Google wants, but it'd be curious to see what was the population density in these camps. Was there sixty percent women and thirty percent dudes, was it seventy percent guys and forty percent women because they're exterminating the the women population quicker? It'd be interesting to see how those population differences, because back to my previous point, if we were to find out hypothetically that in these camps routinely they had more women because they're utilizing them the men in different ways, then that would kind of go to the hypothesis of that's why you know we reread a lot more post-war publications about women survivors from these camps versus the men. But I couldn't, you know, it'd be interesting if I could track down that statistic because I never really thought about it before.

SPEAKER_01 14:59

Yeah. Yeah, certainly an interesting thought. Uh and it's interesting to think too, like at what point did the intel start rolling in, right? Like at what point did we start understanding the magnitude of what was being found by the Russians, and then of course by American soldiers. Because there's no backstory to it, right? Like you just we we see it in hindsight, which is always a perfect 2020 vision, but it it's interesting to think about, you know, there was probably guys on the ground, boots on the ground, that had no idea of the concept that we know of today. And they were there, right? They just but you don't understand the magnitude, you don't see that full picture. So that's something else to take into effect, too. It's just uh man, it's I was hesitant to suggest this subject, I'll be honest. Uh, we've talked a lot of what we're two over the years. Don and I, we go way back, you know, walking point's now six years old next month. So we go back, man, and and I don't think we've really together we've covered this, and I've shied away from it, you know, just the nature and the sensitivity of it. But I think today is it it is fitting to to help maybe try to educate a few more listeners, hopefully, and and maybe get a few more, you know.

SPEAKER_06 16:27

Um I got some stats and some numbers. I got some stats and some numbers we'll we'll go over to just to kind of paint a broad pick uh a little bit of a broader picture. But before we do, thought I had, you know, at the beginning when Jeff and Dennis are talking about, you know, this isn't really our strong point of study when it comes to World War II. And my mind think, well, why is that? And once again, these are just things that boil up in my mind as as we're doing this live. I think it's just because the subject matter is just so hardcore and horrific. The descriptions, the photos, and stand by uh somebody standing by and say, Well, how war's horrible too? It's like, yeah, war is horrible, combat photos are horrible, but in our minds we can justify them as hey, that's an enemy, or they can look at the photos of our dead, that's an enemy, we're in conflict. But you look over here, it's like these are civilians that are rounded up, tortured, and executed for absolutely no reason other than ideology. And looking at battlefield photos are horrible enough, but looking at concentration camps, it's like this is the evidence of the most horrible shit one human can do to another. And it's you it you can't justify it. There's not like, well, that's the enemy. That's what no, it's unjustifiable, it's unexplainable how a group of people could do that to another group of people. And so seeing those photos and reading those details, these firsthand accounts, and we've talked about this with um the um death marches in the Pacific. Just reading those POW camp stories, hearing about you know the Batan death march, just reading what happened to those guys at that level is hard enough. You know, it's it's always harder to read about people getting tortured from one group versus the other versus you know, combat. This is what happened. And so I think that's for me at least, that's why it's so hard to dig into this particular topic as far as leisure reading goes outside of a podcast and getting to know it's just it's just so much more hard emotionally to invest in this particular topic, at least for me.

SPEAKER_01 18:40

Absolutely.

SPEAKER_05 18:42

So when you have when you have kids, you just you know, I I can't help but I put myself there. And one of the worst feelings you could ever have is just is a helpless feeling. You just have to witness things happen to your loved ones, and you can't do anything about it. And everything within you is just struggling to fight, and you're looking up into the sky hoping that some miracle happens, and because you realize that there is absolutely nothing I can do, and you're watching so there's just nothing about there's no ridge that was taken, there's no liberated town there that that we get to and read about with these other stories or acts of it's just just one horrific day after another, and it's all meted out on these civilians, and it's just uh something I'd like to do. It needs to be told though, it does, it needs to be told because it's a very slippery slope between cancel culture, and and that's just an example. I promise not I'm not a political guy at all. You can look at my Facebook, there is nothing political on there, but since we're talking about this subject, you can see how easy it is. The slippery slope between people getting canceled, people getting thrown in prison, uh, for having a different opinion, and the law being used against them to shut down their businesses and shut down their homes, and people have lost their their livelihoods and their careers have been shattered just simply because they had an opinion. And look at what happened to Jordan Peterson up in Canada. I mean, it's it's very slippery slope, and we say we'll it will never happen again, and events happen all over the world. Yeah, that's one of the things that's all over the world all the time. Still, that's one of the things that that's why I'm so I I I I I was very encouraged with the the the the country spoke and said, let's put pump the brakes on this, and and that morality uh took hold because there it is a very scary, slippery slope. And if you haven't talked, if you haven't spoke to people who were there, I mean I stuck I I have put IVs in people that had these tattoos on their wrists, their arms, their forearms. I spoke with these folks and had the opportunity, and you know, this that's why I'm really glad that we're doing this. I'm really glad that we're doing this.

SPEAKER_06 21:24

You know, my brother is substantially older than me. I think when he was in sixth grade, I was like in first, maybe kindergarten. And so when we were in Kentucky in the 80s, he was probably in fifth or sixth grade. And so he was old enough for the history class, and so they would actually have because they would be in their thirties, forties, and fifties at this point, they would have Holocaust survivors come and talk to the history class and show them the tattoos and give them their first hand account. And so he had the benefit of being old enough and so young enough to have that as part of his fifth, sixth grade uh history curriculum whereas Clearly, I'm kindergarten. You would hear, you know, you hear the older kids talk about it, and you know, it looking back on it now, it's crazy to think. I just want to go over some stats here real quick, just so uh first, let me actually I did this today, and it's we talk about you know seeing battlefields in real life and how it kind of brings a different aspect to it. You want to bring a different aspect to this, go on Google Maps and type in Auschwitz. It's right there overhead. Obviously, a lot of it's gone, but you can see the outlines and a lot of it's a museum now, but like you can see little pinpoints on Google Maps like up the road, and you click on it, and it's like Auschwitz Red House, going by names that the uh you know the people who were there gave them then down on the southwest corner is a little purple pin you click on it, and it says Auschwitz 2 White House. Now it's just a little foundation, the houses are gone, but you can see different areas around the compound. And today, this you zoom out, and today this is dead nuts in the middle of a metropolitan area, and so it kind of brings out realism to us because once again, we're all used to looking at digital stuff, media, YouTube, what have you, to go look at this grounds on Google Maps and just you know, mouse around the town. It just brings it once again to realism. Um Auschwitz was established initially as a concentration camp in 1940, um, near Oschwin, Poland, um, as a Nazi content concentration camp. The order was um sorry, um, the order to establish Auschwitz was issued on by Heimlich Kimmler on uh April 27, 1940. Initially, the uh construction was carried out by Polish prisoners, uh, primarily political detainees who were transported from uh Tarnov prison in June of 1940. Over time, the labor force expanded to include Jewish prisoners, Soviet POWs, and other detainees forced into labor under brutal conditions. You know, I once again I was looking at this on Google Maps, and so I was curious, was this wilderness at the time? Now it's metropolitan area, but was this wilderness at the time? Was it a a prison camp? Where did the land come from? Uh the site was chosen in the outskirts, um, but the land for the camp was confiscated by the Nazis, including the forced evacuation of local uh Polish residents and the destruction of the destruction and or repurposing of existing properties. What was the initial purpose? Because you know, we found out things didn't really ramp up until the whole final solution, but what was the original purpose of the camp? The camp was initially intended to house Polish political prisoners but expanded into a complex network of camps, including Auschwitz II, uh Birkinal, designed as a forced labor camp, extermination and system for systematic genocide. Existing Polish military barracks were adapted for use in the early phases of construction. Um key parts of the compound, you have Auschwitz I, which is the administration center and site of the experiments that we've heard about, you know, the experiments that were conducted as part of the the Nazi insanity in their science and their desire for um oh what do you call that? The um oh anyhow, doesn't matter. I forget the term for the um the science where you're trying to create a specific you know type of person. Um anyhow uh Auschwitz II, Birkenall is the largest section designed for the extermination camps, and then Auschwitz III, Monowitz uh labor camp for IG Farben, I'm sorry, for IG Furbin chemical factories. Forced labor. Prisoners were used as a slave labor in various industries, including systematic uh synthetic rubber and fuel production, medical experiments, as we previously said, human experiments were conducted, notably by Joseph Mangala, on vulnerable populations like twins, pregnant women, and uh the disabled extermination, gas chambers, and cremations were uh conducted at uh Birkenal for uh systematic mass murder, primarily of Jews and also Romani people, Poles, Soviet Poles, and others. In the days leading up to the Nazi decision to evacuate the concentration camp, the situation was dire in Germany. Allied forces were advancing rapidly from both the east and the west, and the collapse of the Third Reich seemed to be inevitable. Uh, the Soviets advanced on Auschwitz in January 1945. As the Red Army was closing in on the complex, by mid-January 1945, Soviet forces were within, I believe, about 50 miles. Uh they say striking distance, but one of the young ladies at the time, but who was given her experience at the uh memorial today, said that they were about 50 miles away. Uh the Nazis were aware the liberation by the Allies would expose the full scale of their atrocities. The Nazis became increasingly chaotic as German uh faced defeat. Orders from Berlin to from Berlin to local commanders emphasized the need to destroy the evidence and prevent prisoners from being liberated. And they uh their main desire was to destroy the evidence before the Russians got there, which led up to the evacuations. The SS guards began burning documents, dismaling gas chambers, and destroying all evidence of mass murder and attempt to cover up the crimes. And so as the Allies were coming in, they basically got any personnel who could walk or be dragged to do a forced march. A, as previously stated, to try to uh cover up the atrocities and to prevent w witness statements. But uh as I learned today too, the Germans looked at these detainees as labor force. And so they wanted to relocate as many of them as they could so they could put send them and send them off to work in factories to um further try to increase their production. And so, yeah, they were trying to maintain slave labor. Um the total death count they're saying approximately 1.1 million people perish at Auschwitz, but as one of the um survivors was saying, because she was giving her speech, and she uh she cited that number. She said, you know, uh the history states that people believe that one million people died there. She said, but I can tell you because I I was there and I've talked to other survivors, there were days when trains pulled up the people were taken directly off the trains, were not going through any registration, they went straight to the chambers. And so she said that she believes and other survivors believe that the true number of people who perish there will never be known because the amount of them that were never stopped and registered. You know, we always hear about the the bookkeeping and uh in-depth registration and maintaining I guess at a certain point they would just get right off the trains and just walk them straight to the gas chambers. No counting numbers. I'm sure maybe somewhere along the line they had numbers, but you know, this one survivor, you know, she believes that it's way more than a million. But according to the factual reports, approximately 1.1 million people perished. Uh majority of these uh were Jews. Um other victims include uh 74,000 Poles, 21,000 Romani, 15,000 Soviet POWs, and others. And um so that's just some of the numbers that came out of this one particular particular compound. And I think as Jeff was saying earlier, um, and as we all know, this was just one of many, many camps throughout um the war that we discovered and that were liberated. And it seemed like later parts of the war, more and more of these camps are being discovered. And as Jeff says, you know, at what point the leaks and rumors kind of come into the paperwork where it was like, oh wow, this is uh wasn't just a one off-site prison camp that had some uh people in charge and went crazy. This was a systematic machine. And I don't know, it's just that has to be mind-boggling, right? And as they said in Band of Brothers, they titled that episode Why We Fight, and that's in the book, the chapter is why we fight, because up until then, uh, you know, a lot of the guys earlier they weren't quite sure, but now they knew. And I was just mind-blowing.

SPEAKER_05 31:19

Eisenhower was a pretty level-headed guy. When he saw that, he ordered all them people to go through their he ordered all the civilians to go through and see all the Germans get in there and clean it up. He was so angry. Yeah, and he he didn't want anybody saying that it didn't happen. And um one of my favorite TV shows growing up was a comedy, and is Hogan's Heroes, and uh I have all the the seasons here. I got this awesome DVD collection. I can't see it because of the screen, but it's the complete series of Hogan's Heroes, and I'm I'm looking at the cover there, and it got me to thinking today about the actors on that. Leon Askin, he played General Burkhalter. Um, he was always the overweight general who would show up, and they would always threaten him with telling Hitler this and that. And um Leon Askin was an Austrian Jew who fled to America in 1940. And um he joined the Army Air Corps. Uh, his parents were killed at Treblinka. And uh Robert Clary, who famously played the French the Frenchman, uh Louis LeBeau, uh Robert Clary, his parents died at Auschwitz and 12 of members of his family, and he survived Buchenwald because he had a talent. He could sing. And he would sing every other weekend to the SS guards in their dorm, accompanied by an accordionist. Um John Banner, who famously played Sergeant Schultz, was an Austrian Jew and who fled to America in around 1938-39. He joined the Army Air Corps U.S. He was a supply sergeant. Almost all of his family perished in concentration camps. Someone sent me.

SPEAKER_06 33:25

Those with a keen eye for military weaponry already know this, but this was pointed out to me. He refused to carry a German weapon in Hogan's heroes because Poland and Austria were overtaken by Germany. So he carried a crag instead, which is a set which is similar and looks like the German Mauser K-98. So he actually carried a uh 1800-era crag because he refused to carry an authentic German rifle. And the other actor you you mentioned, LeBo.

SPEAKER_05 33:54

Robert Clary.

SPEAKER_06 33:56

Adam Kroll was talking, I think, on Friday's podcast, not not anything to do with what we're talking about, but it came up that when he was in fifth grade, he heard Lebau was coming to a school in California. So, ooh, we're gonna learn about Hogan's heroes. He's like, no, he he yelled at us about concentration camps for two hours and then we had to go outside. So he actually got to hear his my brother's equivalent to a uh Holocaust survivor, but because he's in Hollywood, his survivor was Lebeau, and he was giving them the rundown and talking about, you know, granted, this is 40 years later, you know, 40 years later, talking about never again and how we need to look out for these things. And so, yeah, that's where he got his history lesson was from LeBau.

SPEAKER_05 34:44

That's uh Lebeau, he he said that you know, in this episode, he's always flapping his arms like he's cold and he's trying to warm up. Uh, he wanted to portray that because he he uh commented a lot about how cold they always were, and he wanted to portray that in the episode. Um the fellow William Klemper who portrays Colonel Klink amazing. Um his his dad was uh he Colonel Klink or William Klemper was actually born in Cologne, Germany, uh 1920. And they his him and his folks came to America um around 1933 or so. Uh his father was Jewish and his mom was um Catholic, and uh his father was an accomplished um orchestra leader in Germany, and then ran the the LA the Los Angeles Philharmonic, and you know, and Klemper agreed to do the part as Colonel Clink, but he only under the understanding that he would be a buffoon the entire time and um and bungling, and he famously portrays himself as a trying to play the violin, and he always is just terrible at it in the show, but he actually was quite accomplished um on this. But uh he also was in the US Army in World War II and special services unit, which is interesting considering our last topics, and uh toured the Pacific uh with a musical group. Um and then I got this book, um, it's not what you're reading, but uh it's called Escape to Freedom, an autobiography of Cynthia Lynn, and she played uh the secretary. And then um Robert Clary got a book out too, which I read. And you know, it's just wow. We think about he just we we talk about it all the time, um, so most of the time off record, but about all of the World War II guys from Johnny Cash's show, you know. Um who was his high man that that was a Marine uh famously um big tall guy. Don Rickles was always teasing and Don Rickles was their name in World War II. Um always talking about I Philippines 44, I was after your uncle, you know. Oh, you asked me too quickly.

SPEAKER_06 37:01

Um Ed McMahon.

SPEAKER_05 37:04

Huh?

SPEAKER_06 37:04

Ed McMahon was Johnny Sidekick. Yeah, yeah. And then as we talked, um, the host for um match game flew what I say on that episode, 31 uh bomber missions in the Pacific. And so uh famously the the main character in Green Acres, he was one he was the uh the Coxman on one of the landing crafts on uh Eddie Albert Eddie Albert. He was the guy pulling the wounded marines out of the water for hours on end. And so, yeah, it's quite common.

SPEAKER_05 37:40

It's just remarkable when you think about like that show, Hogan's Heroes, all those actors, you know, and and and how they were able to make so many people laugh. And it's remarkable, really, when you think about that kind of I don't know where that comes from. I don't know where that comes from.

SPEAKER_06 37:58

And the kind of the bravery on the behalf of the station for putting that subject matter on the air in a joking format only a short 30 years after the real thing happened. I mean, this isn't 80 years later, this was 30 years, 35 years afterwards.

SPEAKER_05 38:15

Yeah, and your entire cast was impacted. Yeah. Lost people, lost their families.

SPEAKER_06 38:21

So when the Red Army came to Auschwitz on uh today, January 27, 1945, they freed approximately 7,000 remaining prisoners, which sounds like a lot, but if you take into consideration of the population before the last moment evacuation, the force marches, the extermination, 7,000 survivors were all that they pulled out of there, many of them uh gravely ill. Liberators found warehouses filled with belonging to victims, including shoes, glasses, and human hair, providing undeniable proof of the Holocaust. Um I've often said this. I think Schandler's list should be required watching for a senior high school history class.

SPEAKER_05 39:07

Oh, for sure. I think a lot of schools do show it. I don't know, or at least they used to. Um I don't know if they still do, but I'm sure there's some schools out there that would that do. Probably private schools, most likely, but uh yeah, absolutely.

SPEAKER_06 39:27

Anything anybody want to add before we Yeah, I mean uh Go ahead, Dennis.

SPEAKER_05 39:33

Um you can't talk about this subject without also mentioning that this a lot of these murders uh were per perpetuated by uh guys who probably uh four years before never would have imag never would have believed that they would be a participant and an active participant. And they never would have, they would have, they would have probably punched you in the face if you had insinuated that they could possibly do the things that they did. And this book called Ordinary Men, um, if there's any everybody out there that's uh listening or viewing, it's by Christopher R. Browning. And if you've ever listened to Jordan Peterson, he talks a lot about this book, and it's it's uh ordinary men, reserve police battalion 101 and the final solution in Poland. It's the story of ordinary men, men who are plumbers and electricians and policemen back home, and they get called up, and they go from just being just regular guys, ordinary men, to now they're liquidating cities, and it happens slowly, very slowly. And one guy at a time who doesn't want to stand out, doesn't want to be the only guy to be sent home in disgrace by not following orders, and you see that danger, and this book is is I'm telling you, it's gonna stick with you forever. Have you guys ever read it?

SPEAKER_01 41:21

No, I've never even heard of it.

SPEAKER_05 41:24

Yep, it's called Ordinary Men, Reserve Police Battalion 101 and the Final Solution in Poland. Um staggering. I mean, my book is all highlighted, dog eared, uh, arrows, asterisk. It's just yeah. I guess I'm sure Tammy's read it, but um yeah. It's scary. It's a scary book. It's a scary book, it'll shake you to your core because you see that how we are all every single person could be there. And you think, no, I would never do that. But there's a an SS uh unit that shows up at your door saying it's time for you to ship out, and you know they're back home. Yeah, if you don't follow orders, your daughter, your wife, your kids, everything you know is gone. All you have to do is load these people in that truck, and then it starts out from loading them up into the truck to now you're dragging them out into a clearing, and then you're rushed back to the city so you don't but you hear pop, pop, pop in the distance. And then the next thing you know is you're lining up on a firing squad in the in the trees, and you're you're told you don't have to pull the trigger, but who wants to be the one to stand out with an with a gun with still that has rounds left in it when you walk back up and the and the mark major is walking down the line asking for spent shell casings and stuff. Uh and then it you know it just goes downhill.

SPEAKER_06 43:06

And to that end, really something on the other end of the spectrum, you have the Jewish and other concentration camp detainees who were forced to work inside the camps as part of the processing, the running of the chambers, the collection of the clothing, the barrels of the bodies, and you didn't have a choice. You know, you were either do it and survive, or you do it to survive because they maybe give you an extra half a cup of soup, or they don't beat you quite as much because they need you to be strong to you know push that wagon of dead bodies or to shut those heavy doors. And so when you read these stories, you hear about you know those individuals, and you're like, How could you possibly do that? But one survival instinct and two not everybody's good even in horrible situations right and so you know you have the German soldiers who are forced to be there and then you have the the detainees who were forced to kind of work against their people while being there because they're trying to survive and it's just the whole situation is just humanity at its worst.

SPEAKER_05 44:30

The way people get treated these people are still with us.

SPEAKER_06 44:35

That's what really wild they're still around they're still and I once again as Dennis said earlier not to get political but Auschwitz the museum the memorial site that it is today is the perfect example to societies that not all quote unquote monuments not all quote unquote museums are there as a reminder of the good times. It's there some are there to be reminders of the horrible times and why we shouldn't repeat these. And people need to take that in mind whenever they see a monument, a statue, a plaque dictating something that was horrible and your first thing to think this shouldn't be let's tear it down because it was horrible. It's let's make more people see this because it's horrible and we don't want to repeat it. So you know ten years ago we had this thing running through America where we were tearing down stuff that people you know was either a horrible or in their mind horrible and I've often said instead of tearing it down put up another plaque said hey the sky was an a-hole you know what I mean it's just it's a reminder that not every statue or every monument is a celebration of something. It's oftentimes a reminder of something horrible that we do not want to happen again. And so you know and I always use the Auschwitz Museum as that perfect example. You know it's a rema it's a big ass reminder of why we gotta keep up on top of things and not let stuff like this happen. So I just wanted to put that on there. Do you guys want to do a brief what we're reading before we wrap it up?

SPEAKER_05 46:15

Yeah I think Jeff's got us some books there.

SPEAKER_01 46:17

Sure Jeff what you reading fella I do but man I can't hang on hang on a minute I I can't I can't buy my lip on this one. Sure What was a book ordinary ordinary men to throw that book in the trash because here's the problem with it we're not gonna we we have the the liberty to humanize the enemy but I don't think we have um I don't think we should have the guts to do something like that, have the gall to humanize to make it sound like oh any one of us could do this because if they are capable of taking eleven million people off the planet they should have been capable to stop the twenty people in charge of this whole operation.

SPEAKER_06 47:11

That's true too.

SPEAKER_01 47:12

Now I would read a book about a Falcall pilot. I would read a book about uh just another guy digging a foxhole uh at the Atlantic wall but I would not care to hear the sad sob story about them being forced into doing something that lasted for years and we know of a few suicide or a few uh you know murder plots on on Hitler but I don't know of any plots to take out any of the Nazi officials running these camps that was done from within so I don't want to humanize what those people did. They from a historical standpoint that's the enemy uh because we're Americans they're the bad guys and while I understand that there were good people on the bad side yeah still bad guys still fighting for the wrong side and I couldn't imagine somebody who survived Auschwitz reading that book coming away with it like hmm they were just like regular guys. They're just I I feel bad for them that they had to do something like that. I don't see that reaction.

SPEAKER_05 48:22

Nobody said they feel sorry for these guys. And I've heard Auschwitz survivors say that their Germans were regular people too and they were in some circumstances they couldn't believe they were there. And they probably in other circumstances wouldn't have done it. But you can't throw away books like that because and that's putting your head in the sand about these events and how th how you how ordinary people can be led to that those circumstances. It was too many people to have been an accident or to be some weird thing. It was something scary that happened that has happened again and again uh through s through the the years and through people that we know and I won't be burning this book. I won't be throwing it away I enjoy the book as far as what it is as far as teaching us about humanity and what can happen um and the evil that can come from turning your cheek and not standing up and doing the right thing. And there were guys in this book who did stand up and do the right thing and surprisingly they went home and they were sent home and there was no one knows what happened to them but these other guys all feel really bad because they look back in shame and they're like man that's the hero because he went home when there was fifty guys standing there in line and the major said there'll be no ramifications if you don't want to be a part of this you can go home and the one guy says I'm gonna go home I'm out of here that's the brave guy. And everybody else stayed and it just went downhill from there but yeah I understand everybody's you know allowed their opinions on this kind of stuff but no I won't be burning it. It was a good book and uh important book.

SPEAKER_01 50:19

Well I sure I sure hope we don't come across any books that talk about how they were uh there were some individuals that were forced to fly airplanes in our buildings.

SPEAKER_04 50:27

That would be terrible nobody's saying they were forced. Back to the subject in here they were indoctrinated.

SPEAKER_01 50:36

The uh so these recommendations again this is from my wife because I uh like I said this is not a a hot topic uh something that I that I read about but I asked her uh before coming on tonight said hey you know what are some specifically Auschwitz and then what are some you know that are just really really uh a captivating book um about you know the just the Holocaust in general and the first one she mentioned and the I think people may be familiar with this this title I think it was made into a movie the Tattooist of Auschwitz uh I don't know if either one of you are familiar with it and I'll just I'll read two very short sentences so you can get an idea what it's about. It says I tattooed a number on her arm. She tattooed her name on my heart and it's a true story of one of the uh one of these Jews in Auschwitz that was given a job within the prison camp and he was one of the ones that tattooed um you know numbers on their arms and he ends up striking a relationship with one of the women that he tattooed and I don't want to give too much more of the book away but what an unbelievable story to come out of this and this was at um at Auschwitz uh Birkenau the other one and I think she said this was uh this one was her favorite is called Four Perfect Pebbles uh by Leela Pearl who uh again another survivor uh her thought process here was that if she could find four perfect pebbles of almost exactly the same size and shape it meant that her whole family would remain whole so interesting look on a young person a young girl and kind of those maybe coping mechanisms I guess if you will of trying to survive and and trying to find hope uh in something as simple as as a pebble that you could come across.

SPEAKER_06 52:48

Yeah because they say everybody needs a purpose in life right and when you're captured in that horrible situation A it gives you a purpose B it gives you something to to kind of focus on to try to ignore for however short a period of time of the horrors that are going around. I mean you're clearly looking down inspecting pebbles all day or trying to find pebbles to inspect it gives you purpose and hope and a belief right I mean you're in this horrible situation with deaths all around you and you convince yourself hey if I can just find these four perfect pebbles it'll be our chance and so it gives it giv it gave her hope, it gave her something to do, something to believe in and a purpose and in those situations with the exception of food and a place to lay down at the end of the night basically the best you're gonna be able to do.

SPEAKER_01 53:36

Yeah yeah and this last one is also uh from a woman's perspective uh Olga Lengiel I probably butchered the pronunciation there but this is called Five Chimneys the true chronicle of a woman who survived Auschwitz so these were her picks again the tattooist of Auschwitz Four Perfect Pebbles uh and five chimneys those were the uh the book recommendations about our our subject tonight prior to the discussion of our subject tonight what have you been reading I am reading Boys by Dr. Roger Newman um some of our listeners already know that this was mailed out to us and uh Don you made a really good contact here um I am very excited uh to talk to Dr. Newman uh the end of next month um I picked this book up on Saturday and uh you know it's a pretty quick read I'm about 70 pages in chapter 89 definitely not a book that had I like cruised through at Barnes and Noble and and read and like read the back I don't know if I would have bought it. Yeah I'm you know narrow minded in a lot of things.

SPEAKER_06 55:00

Well that if you open it up and you start reading the first chap it don't the the topic of World War II doesn't you know pop up until chapter eight and so the first few chapters it's it's a completely different story. But it's it's character development and it's history building and it's a very it's a it's a good start to a good read. So yeah um I think all three of us are reading that book as well um it's a good read. I tell you what one thing one thing this podcast has done is we've got ourselves on some publishers list and they're coming to us which is great. Uh we used to have to you know send out random messages on Instagram and hope that they just happen to look at their quote unquote other box to find our messages unless we hey can you like me so I can communicate with you things like that or try to find our publisher. No, they're coming to us now and so we're getting access to some really interesting uh books both biography and historical fiction and as uh Dennis and I blocked uh pointed out with the Jeep show reading you know all three of us we love our biographies and we love the subject of World War II but to read a historical fiction in that same era it kind of gives you a a a break if you will from your normal reading curriculum and kind of gives you both worlds your passion for World War II and its history and then let's take our storytelling a little different way and and to expand on the concepts of what we know with World War II and then put some fictional characters into them to explain a a history in a different way that hasn't been explained before. And so it makes for a good read.

SPEAKER_01 56:38

Yeah absolutely and and I totally agree with that and like I said I'm usually pretty pretty closed off to any kind of historical fiction. I think even Dennis we've kind of joked about kind of sometimes with that stuff before we're like yeah the the nonfiction to me is so much more interesting right you know like we just yeah yeah but I gotta say um I'm kind of curious I know it says you know historical fiction on it but the two main characters Pete and Alex uh if you read the very the acknowledgments at the beginning uh the author's father's name is Pete and had a good friend named Alex so I'm curious how much truth he extrapolated from from the real stuff.

SPEAKER_06 57:20

Yeah and and a lot of times um the historical fic the fiction part of the historical fiction part a lot of times that's just them you know filling in the gaps and maybe in their own mind there's so many there's a threshold of how many gaps they fill in when it makes that transition from historical to historical fiction. You never know it's different for everybody. But as we pointed out with the Jeep show the authors know the subject. These aren't just hey I'm a fiction writer I'm gonna dip my toe into this World War II thing because there's these crazy middle aged white guys who love the topic so let's sell some books. No they love they just reading it they know the the topic right and they're adding to it with their their character development and so yeah this is another good read. I'm reading this one I'm kind of I'm doubling down on this one but prior to this prior to the speeding I I was reading the PDF version until the book came but I was switching between that and another fiction book I'm still reading uh 1984 so I'm jumping back between those but now that we have the author on the calendar I'm primarily reading the boys right now but um every once in a while I'll pick up a 1984 and continue that read as well. What are you reading Dennis?

SPEAKER_05 58:34

I'm reading Complex Rehab Technology and San Antonio it's the uh policy manual for my company as we have a huge a uh accreditation coming up just kidding um yeah it's like oh I've been immersed in the last week and a half is going over policies and standards and matching them up and creating binders and uh so no no not much reading going on on this end other than uh yeah no nothing.

SPEAKER_06 59:08

That's the way it rolls man sometimes work takes over everything and you're just uh holding on we want to thank each and every one of you for hanging out with us for another episode of the What's the Scuttlebutt podcast. Um this episode if you're looking at the time may appear to be a little long because I figured due to the uh nature of this topic now following from this point we're gonna roll into a short 30 minute interview I did with at the time the curator of the Holocaust Museum located in Naples Florida so we're gonna cut to that now so enjoy um this recording thank you guys so much and we will talk to you all next week today we are actually live down at the Holocaust Museum and Education Center of Southwest Florida and today I am joined by Cody Rodemaker. Cody how are you doing today? I'm doing great thanks for being here today. Appreciate you having us out today clearly you guys focus on the Holocaust and educating the community and preserving that history but right now you guys are actually focusing on something a little a little outside of the normal scope of what people consider with the Holocaust a lot of people I don't think put a lot of thought into what happened after the war. Clearly once the war war was over things just didn't change overnight. We had a lot of displaced persons who needed a new place to go, need to return home if their homes are available to them. So what are you guys focusing on right now here at the museum?

SPEAKER_03 1:00:43

Well right now our temporary exhibit focuses on displaced persons like you mentioned it's called Resettling and Rebuilding the displaced persons in post-war Europe. And you're right it is very much that post-war era people do see it as a um the war ending and then things sort of going back to normal that's usually the general perception at least that's my experience with it.

SPEAKER_06 1:01:04

And if only it was that easy.

SPEAKER_03 1:01:05

Yes. Unfortunately during this time you had millions upon millions of people trying to either return home or they can't go home or they're afraid to go home for either political persecutions, religious persecutions, things like that. And then you have the Allies trying to just deal with that. So you're in a you're in a war-torn continent with all these civilians not even including uh military personnel that are trying to return home trying to survive you have food rationing you have housing limitations and you end up having organizations trying to get people to go home essentially or find a new home for them.

SPEAKER_06 1:01:45

Yeah because in the cases of a lot of these people their villages not to be counted were literally wiped off of the map not you know obviously a lot of the majority of these people they lost their physical homes but there were a lot of them who lost their whole towns their villages there were there was nothing to go back to.

SPEAKER_03 1:02:02

That is correct especially for the persecuted groups like the Jewish populations of Europe oftentimes their traditional homes or their traditional villages would have been destroyed or taken over as part of um what was referred to as Arianization where ethnic Germans or other groups would actually be encouraged by the Third Reich to buy at like rock bottom prices these homes formerly owned by Jews or other groups they saw as undesirables.

SPEAKER_06 1:02:33

Obviously you have all these people um not only the health and the logistics of feeding them but once again getting them home or finding a house to get them to what was some of the logistical um I guess what was the first step to to try to to return people home?

SPEAKER_03 1:02:51

Well one of the big steps was recognizing that there was a need to return people um after other wars it was far less organized so they recognized very early on that as part of the wartime process they needed to plan this out and this started as early as 1943 with the United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration also known as UNRWA UNRWA was the first attempt at doing relief work by these allies which later changed names for various reasons. This group worked in Asia, Europe and the Middle East trying to provide housing, food, medical supplies, things like that. Now unfortunately this group was plagued with a lot of logistical issues, especially in Europe after the war you had a lot of black market work that was leading to UNRWA materials being stolen or sold illegally by personnel or just disappeared. There's a few instances where fresh from uh ships trucks that were designated for UNRWA just disappeared. And it's like well what happened? Well the black market got them and that led to a lot of dissatisfaction with the uh countries that were funding UNRWA and that led to a sort of a change in administration to what was called the International Refugee Organization. That was in 1947.

SPEAKER_06 1:04:15

Anytime you have shortages and large amounts of people there will be a certain portion of the community who want to take advantage of those people to better their gains and so we can't allow a few people to misuse resources or just make them banish and sell them for their own personal gains. You know you have countries you have groups donating equipment donating goods donating food clothing not just donating them but they're currently in war too they're currently having shortages and so they're going out of their way to donate things that they need in their own countries to help facilitate these displaced persons you can't allow these things just to disappear because they're already in a tremendous shortage and so clearly things had to change and so that's what the whole purpose of this new organization.

SPEAKER_03 1:05:02

Correct it was it came down to a lot of it dissatisfaction with how it was being run, how things sort of got out of hand even after some key administrative changes even was it the New York Mayor Fiorello LaGuardia actually took the helm for a brief period trying to help get people moving and trying to get the organization going again in a positive way. And there was limited success in that so they were like you know what we're going to narrow your scope we're going to make it a focus on getting people home finding a new home if they can't or won't go back to their old home or taking care of those who are either too sick or just that stubborn not to return. Now early on during this process you have all these people where did we house them that is um that's a difficult one because you as you mentioned there was Entire towns destroyed, cities leveled. A classic one that we think of around here in the museum is images of like Cologne Germany, where so much territory is just ruined from artillery shellings, bombings, things like that. What ended up happening a lot of the times was people they would take whatever structures they could. Sure. This includes former military barracks, uh spas of all things, hotels and luxury resort towns and things like that, like the town of Badgastein, that actually had housed both medical and just general living facilities for displaced persons, particularly Jewish displaced persons. Other ones included actually, some folks actually stayed in the concentration camps that they were held in for years at a time in Germany. And that was uh in particular Bergen-Belsen, and the people there actually resisted a name change because they were like, no, you can't change the fact that we are staying where we were held. Sure.

SPEAKER_06 1:06:57

You know, they didn't want to erase the history of that facility. And as you were explaining to me when we did our tour before the interview, um, when you have people, displaced persons living in these camps or in old military bases, these military bases they weren't pristine back when they were military bases. They had infestation, they were, you know, a lot of the Weimar soldiers were, you know, basically taken from other countries, they were treated poorly. And so you had these displaced people living in these facilities that really weren't up to snuff by any means. They simply provided you know a shelter to them. And so while they were there, the Allies came in with these new organizations and they were trying to rebuild them and help improve their living conditions, all while still trying to make a temporary home, if you will. And what was some of the um policies that had taken a place when I'm trying to, you know, once again build a home for for people?

SPEAKER_03 1:07:52

Well, the first thing usually was securing a location. So usually that was done through the military government saying we are taking this for our purposes for dealing with displaced persons or just housing these people temporarily. From there, usually then they would get into the logistics. That was either initially done by civil affairs units with the United States military, especially early on when it was more of a military-occupational government. So you had groups that were connected with the army, dealing with civilians, trying to help them sort of stabilize. Now, as they took other locations, they had to deal with, again, like you mentioned, um infestations and things like that. They had to remove these materials that were like infested with like lice or fleas, trying to stabilize those housing conditions. But they also had to do things like redevelop water systems, sewage systems, sanitary systems in general, and then you also had to provide networks for getting food and supplies, fuel for cooking if they don't have that on site. And then it eventually broke down into also finding work. Oftentimes these camps had uh labor pools that once things stabilized and they wanted some level of self-sufficiency, so oftentimes they ended up taking positions within the camps, um, be it general labor, or they would actually go outside the camps, be able to leave and return for the day after doing labor in the outlying community. And from there, even you start seeing a redevelopment of culture and arts in certain camps, especially in the Jewish uh camps that were set up later out of the necessity to, because of the issues the Jews of Eastern Europe and Europe in general dealt with after the war when it came to anti-Semitism and continued persecution.

SPEAKER_06 1:09:45

Not only were a lot of these displaced persons' homes missing, but a lot of them when they went home, they found out that the anti-Semitism was still running rampant and it was still at their own personal peril to be in these places, and they felt that their safety was, you know, even though the war is over and even though the the laws, quote unquote, had changed, a lot of these small villages they weren't really being well regulated by any sort of local authority, and so it was kind of um risky to be back home, and so they felt they would rather go live in a displaced person's camp rather to subject their family to more harm and danger by being in the villages they used to live in.

SPEAKER_03 1:10:24

Yeah, oftentimes, depending on your political viewpoints, depending on where you were trying to return to, you could be at risk. You see that very much with uh Polish nationals that didn't align necessarily with the Communist Party that was being put in power by the Soviet Union, supported by the Soviet Union. Obviously, if you were a part of like maybe even like a partisan group that fought during the war that wasn't supporting the communist cause, they would see you as a threat. So returning home became dangerous. And this was especially perilous for the Jewish populations trying to return home. Uh, one of the biggest uh anti-Semitic attacks that uh drove people to look at displaced persons camps as a safe alternative was the Kielsa Palgrom in Poland. This attack, as well as a few smaller other ones, made people recognize that we are not safe here still, and it led to an influx of about 150,000 Jewish survivors back into Germany. So they primarily settled in the American zone because the American zone was still taking in displaced persons, to a lesser extent the British and French zones, and almost none stayed in the Soviet zone, which would be later became East Germany. Sure.

SPEAKER_06 1:11:40

One of the other things that you mentioned during our pre-interview walkthrough, and it's really not surprising looking at it in hindsight, but uh when you're thinking about what they've all gone through in and living in this post-war era, they quickly regained and restructured their education system. They knew in order to strive and to try to get back to where they were before you know all these things started happening to their community and to their to the and to their people, they had a tremendous focus on education. And so what did they do to try to get the um the children back into something resembling a structured school environment?

SPEAKER_03 1:12:23

Well, there were multiple groups that worked, especially like in the Jewish displaced persons' camps, they were fortunate enough that outside organizations sought recognized the importance of trying to almost create a sense of normalcy again. And one of the things they saw of this was education either in trades or general academics as well. So one of the biggest groups that helped out was the American Joint Distribution Committee, also known as the Joint. This group, beyond just funding uh support and relief efforts, they also put funds towards education. Another group that uh supported this was called by its Russian abbreviation ORT, which goes by a couple different names depending on nation and things like that, and even ERA. It's abbreviate the meaning for its abbreviations changed over time, but originally it was an Eastern European trade organization. And they focused not only on children but also adults, having them learn trades and skills so they could become functioning members of the society that they were trying to rebuild. And through this, you see about 600 teachers being trained to uh to teach about 9,000 students by 1947, 1948.

SPEAKER_06 1:13:38

That is a tremendous headcount from uh teacher-to-student ratio. Obviously, um by today's standards, I mean now it's 26 students per one teacher, but obviously in that environment, I'm sure that the kids were just more than happy to get back to the appearance of being normal and going back to and a lot of these kids, they probably prior to the the um the war and the displacement, they probably never really had the opportunity to experience any real structured schooling at that time. I mean, you had a lot of kids who were recording their infant level, three, four. A lot of for a lot of them it was probably a whole new experience to them.

SPEAKER_03 1:14:15

Probably for some, uh those oftentimes those uh who were in like the like ghettos or in concentration camps, um many times if children were in those locations, there was an attempt to continue education on some level. Sure. It might not be in the most formal, but the return to formalized education really did grow, especially in like the Jewish displaced persons' camps after the war. Parents saw this as a sense of normalcy. They also saw this as an opportunity to help them move forward and develop redevelop a community that was effectively lost in many senses, because again, we were looking at a population that was cut by two-thirds, from roughly nine million across Europe to three million by 1950. So they were really rebuilding on multiple levels, and that included just basic structures like education, things like that after the war. And that attempt at normalcy and attempt to return to living lives was seen as paramount by a lot of the Jewish community that were formerly in concentration camps and now in displaced persons' camps.

SPEAKER_06 1:15:27

And part of the reason for the focus on the importance of skilled trade and skilled labor, obviously, one, in order to support your family and yourself, you needed a way to do that. But what they were discovering is because so many of the surrounding countries and communities were also impacted by the war, they were a little reluctant to allow immigrants to come in unless they were able to help contribute to their local economy. And so the one way to get out of these displacement camps and to migrate your family to, let's say, a different country or region, is you needed to be able to offer something to that economy. Otherwise, what they had discovered is a lot of these governments weren't interested per se, you know, they they had sympathy, but they also said, hey, we need to protect our count our country and our people. And so in order to come over here, you guys needed to be able to contribute. And so that was one of the primary focuses for the skilled trade.

SPEAKER_03 1:16:26

Yeah, um, oftentimes countries were a little protectionist when it came to immigrants from displaced persons' camps and things like that. They were like, Well, we need people to work in this trade. Uh, can you do that? Or they'd be sort of shunted into doing this as part of the agreement of being able to come over. For one example, Canada wanted a lot of people to work in agriculture after the war. Then you had a lot of these people who were doing either skilled trades or things like that, suddenly out in like Alberta and Saskatchewan, barely knowing what to do in an agricultural environment. You had Eastern European uh young women going to Britain to work essentially as house servants and things like that. They saw it as a chance to gain at least residency, if not work towards full immigration and citizenship. And so you had this interesting mix of people wanting skilled trades or some folks wanting unskilled labor. But more often than not, having a skilled trade was seen as a better opportunity to not only help yourself and your family in your current situation, but then once you found a new home, you could set up and become more self-sufficient and not be seen as a burden of the state, which was a big fear for a lot of the allied countries when they were letting these people in.

SPEAKER_06 1:17:44

And so at this point, we have displaced person camps, we're focusing on education, obviously, we're focusing on the uh health system and um sanitation, we're focusing on skilled labor, but now you have this group of people who start thinking for their own best interest, hey, we need to start organizing ourselves and start to create something of political parties, um, of some sort of government to help protect ourselves in the future. How are these small groups starting to pop up in these different areas? I mean, were they did they all have a universal thought process? Did they have their own thing? Were they infighting? What was the um post-war and during this process, how did the um, for lack of better term, uh hierarchy of communal and government structure start to uh find its way?

SPEAKER_03 1:18:39

Well, this is especially prevalent with Jewish displaced persons. They very much saw themselves needing this, especially after they were given certain special um rights and considerations because they were so persecuted by the by the Nazi government, they saw themselves as having to sort of look out for themselves to some extent. The earliest uh committees for uh liberated Jews, as they referred to themselves initially, was in April of 1945. This is immediately after liberation, effectively, in like the British zone of occupation, which was Northwest Germany as we know it today. They worked to further their own goals. Now, other zones of occupation, like the U.S. zone, which focused more on Southeast Germany as we know it, so sort of the Bavaria region, things like that, as well as the French zone, which was more connected to the border of France, they developed their own committees, and these ended up becoming sort of overarching representatives that would then go to the occupying governments to represent the wants and needs of the displaced persons that uh were in the Jewish camps. These camps themselves had their own sort of self-sufficient hierarchies, um, but they never went really beyond like an interzone government or attempt of government because there was worries that certain zones which had uh like a larger population would um have exert more power. And that was pretty true actually. They saw that, and you see that actually in how the difference in structures are. The U.S. zone of occupation allowed the U.S. Jewish like committee to do a lot of administrative work, research work, and um everyday administration of Jewish displaced persons. You see that in paperwork, even down to the point of having it pretty much on letterhead. Where the British zone was very more, I don't want to say adversarial, but they didn't want to work have them have as much power or exert as much power. So while it was still there, it didn't do as much politically or administratively as like the US zone did. And in these zones you had the development of various political organizations going from left to right in your classic spectrum of politics. But they did have some overarching goals. Uh very few of the US zone's political groups didn't want like a Jewish state. They were very much in support of having a home nation after everything that they had gone through in Europe, they did not feel comfortable there, and even if they did move to another nation that wasn't like a new Jewish state or anything like that at that time, they still very much supported the concept of it because they saw that as one of the few ways that they might be safe from these further massive persecutions that they went through.

SPEAKER_06 1:21:44

How did the um the future of their government and the ability to protect themselves and to manage themselves and to be their own independent people, uh how did that come about?

SPEAKER_03 1:21:55

When it came to searching for a homeland or a new home, many did travel to various territories or states. Uh I say territories because some regions were still part of like colonial systems and things like that. So many did find refuge in other nations. Not necessarily a specific like state for uh the Jewish people uh when it comes to Jewish DPs. Um so you see many going to the Americas, all of the Americas, North and South, Canada, etc. Um, South Africa was a very popular location, Australia was a very popular location, and then what we know today as Israel and Palestine was called the Mandate of Palestine back then. Okay. They attempt many attempted to go there even though there was some severe restrictions on specifically Jewish immigration to the Mandate of Palestine by the British government. They didn't, they saw that as a potential problem when it came to keeping stability in their territory because there's been there were numerous instances of revolts, terrorist attacks from both Arab and Jewish groups, so it was causing a lot of unrest in general. So they put a moratorium on certain types of immigration because they thought this was how they were going to keep some stability. And that led to actually a lot of illegal immigration to what we know now as Israel and Palestine through a group called Bricha. It was a group founded by former uh partisans, and they actually helped move people from uh Eastern Europe, primarily Poland, into the like the U.S. zone of occupation. From there they would smuggle them primarily through Italy and across the Mediterranean. Now you have multiple instances of people being caught, being detained by the British government, and being held on the island of Cyprus. Then there's also many instances of these large influx successfully getting through, which led to shifts in political power, uh, eventually a civil war between uh various ethnic factions in what was the mandate of Palestine. And that intensified as the British uh decided that they were going to cede power to regional governments, the the recently formed United Nations. They were like, we need to get out. This is we cannot sustain this. And upon that, this civil war eventually took on a regional conflict level, which we now know as the Arab-Israeli War. And this also led, and this is around the same time that you were seeing the Israeli Declaration of Independence, when they were claiming that they had this territory, and then we lead to this regional war between Arab and Israel, like Arab neighbors and Israel.

SPEAKER_06 1:24:48

So as we stated earlier, the the handling, the realization, the logistics behind managing the displaced persons started in er as early as 43. How long of a span did it take to try to get a majority of displaced persons to some semblance of a home after the war?

SPEAKER_03 1:25:10

The majority of displaced persons actually return home within around three, four years after the end of World War II. So you had millions of people returning home within about a four-year period. You see a scaling down of certain organizations. Again, this sort of coincides with shifts from UNRWA to the International Refugee Organization. And then you also see holdouts, for lack of better terms. You see people who are very entrenched that they don't want to go to a new country, they don't want to return home out of fear of persecution or just disdain for what happened to them in that country.

SPEAKER_06 1:25:44

Well, I mean, that's a lot of bad memories to go back to.

SPEAKER_03 1:25:47

Oh, yeah. And that led to nightmares. Yeah, and that led to actually the last camp was uh set up specifically for people who refused to leave their families, or those who were too sick to be transported to another country uh closing in 1957. So twelve years after the war ended is when the last displaced persons camp was closed.

SPEAKER_06 1:26:10

That is a tri I mean you're that's almost 1960. I mean, the world had changed quite a bit. I mean, create conflict and Vietnam War at that point.

SPEAKER_03 1:26:20

We were looking at, you know, rocketry, we were looking at aiming for the moon almost. And this is the same era when we had people who were still in uh con in a displaced persons camp from a conflict, you know, from the 40s. It's it's amazing, and that was one of the most shocking things when working on this exhibit was learning how long these people spend in camps, even if it was a small amount. This was still formally considered a displaced persons camp. It was run by the what was now what was then known as West Germany, federal uh federal Germany. And um it just sort of was sort of faded away and was eventually purchased by a private group once the last person there had either moved or passed on. And it shows how easily that slipped out of their mind, at least on the national scale, sure on an international scale. But these people were still dealing with the repercussions of the end of the war.

SPEAKER_06 1:27:23

And as we opened this podcast earlier, you know, I I alluded to the general public or just people in general looking at history, they just think, hey, the war was over, everything went back, but no, uh 1957. That's a tremendous span of time. Um the the war in more ways than one impacted some people so much, but clearly other people more tremendously in ways, and clearly, even after 57, the memories are still there, the stories are still there, the history's there, and even once you were at your new Home, it technically wasn't your home. That's not where your family was from, your your memories, your your legacy. You had to make it your home. If you didn't return to your previous home because of the memories. And I mean, let's be honest, if if things of that nature happened to you, I would imagine there would be a tremendous uh chance of you having resentment towards that community to turn their back on you and to have those things happen to you. So it's just the impact of what happened to these people still continue to this day, even though they're they're great-grandchildren. It's just it continues today, and and I think it's why I felt it was important to come down here to help you guys spread the message of not only your museum, and I want you to go a little more detail here that in a moment, but about the displaced persons. Um, if someone's in the Southwest Florida area or you know, Tampa, Cape Coral, Fort Myers, Naples, if they want to come down here and learn more about the displaced persons, how long are you guys gonna be running this exhibit?

SPEAKER_03 1:29:08

We will be running this exhibit until the end of May.

SPEAKER_06 1:29:12

And this is just a small percentage of what you guys do here. You guys uh you were nice enough to give me a nice tour, and you have some very, very powerful items on display here. Um let's go real quick down a little bit more about what you guys do here, and I understand um you guys have some big news coming in the future. I don't know if you want to talk about that now.

SPEAKER_03 1:29:33

Yes, uh well, we do have some very exciting news. We are in the middle of our campaign for raising funds for a new location. We'll be moving uh north from our current location, still on US 41, just south of uh Wiggins Pass in Collier County. We're excited uh to work towards that. And uh we actually had our official first day of demolition when it was a wonderful event that uh where our board members actually sort of took out part of the first wall, if you will. Um but we're looking forward to that and we're hoping to be moved in before the end of 2018. Um when it comes to if you want to learn more about like our hours, current location, and maybe even a little bit about the current exhibit. We are uh at holocaustmuseum swfl.org. And we hope that you'll be able to come in before the end of the exhibit.

SPEAKER_06 1:30:28

Once again, I'm down here at the Holocaust Museum and Education Center of Southwest Florida with Cody Rodemaker. I appreciate your time, Cody, and you guys are also on Facebook as well. I will share links to that. And as I stated earlier, they have some very powerful um display pieces down here. You guys are lucky in the fact that Naples is kind of a retirement, well, in the past was a large um destination for retirement, and now you have new generations, but with that retirement, you guys are lucky to have people coming from all over the country, and a lot of your residents were kind enough to permanently or temporarily donate artifacts here and to provide you guys with some of the powerful items that you have that have not only survived concentration camps, but also were um thank God they got out of those areas through smuggling and things of that nature. I mean, you guys have some very powerful and very beautiful items here. I highly recommend everybody come down here if you're within the the region and check it out. And thanks so much for what you do. Thank you so much.