Podcasts about jewish german

Hello Interactors,From election lies to climate denial, misinformation isn't just about deception — it's about making truth feel unknowable. Fact-checking can't keep up, and trust in institutions is fading. If reality is up for debate, where does that leave us?I wanted to explore this idea of “post-truth” and ways to move beyond it — not by enforcing truth from the top down, but by engaging in inquiry and open dialogue. I examine how truth doesn't have to be imposed but continually rediscovered — shaped through questioning, testing, and refining what we know. If nothing feels certain, how do we rebuild trust in the process of knowing something is true?THE SLOW SLIDE OF FACTUAL FOUNDATIONSThe term "post-truth" was first popularized in the 1990s but took off in 2016. That's when Oxford Dictionaries named it their Word of the Year. Defined as “circumstances in which objective facts are less influential in shaping public opinion than appeals to emotion and personal belief”, the term reflects a shift in how truth functions in public discourse.Though the concept of truth manipulation is not new, post-truth represents a systemic weakening of shared standards for knowledge-making. Sadly, truth in the eyes of most of the public is no longer determined by factual verification but by ideological alignment and emotional resonance.The erosion of truth infrastructure — once upheld by journalism, education, and government — has destabilized knowledge credibility. Mid-20th-century institutions like The New York Times and the National Science Foundation ensured rigorous verification. But with rising political polarization, digital misinformation, and distrust in authority, these institutions have lost their stabilizing role, leaving truth increasingly contested rather than collectively affirmed.The mid-20th century exposed truth's fragility as propaganda reshaped public perception. Nazi ideology co-opted esoteric myths like the Vril Society, a fictitious occult group inspired by the 1871 novel The Coming Race, which depicted a subterranean master race wielding a powerful life force called "Vril." This myth fed into Nazi racial ideology and SS occult research, prioritizing myth over fact. Later, as German aviation advanced, the Vril myth evolved into UFO conspiracies, claiming secret Nazi technologies stemmed from extraterrestrial contact and Vril energy, fueling rumors of hidden Antarctic bases and breakaway civilizations.Distorted truths have long justified extreme political action, demonstrating how knowledge control sustains authoritarianism. Theodor Adorno and Hannah Arendt, Jewish-German intellectuals who fled the Nazis, later warned that even democracies are vulnerable to propaganda. Adorno (1951) analyzed how mass media manufactures consent, while Arendt (1972) showed how totalitarian regimes rewrite reality to maintain control.Postwar skepticism, civil rights movements, and decolonization fueled academic critiques of traditional, biased historical narratives. By the late 20th century, universities embraced theories questioning the stability of truth, labeled postmodernist, critical, and constructivist.Once considered a pillar of civilization, truth was reframed by French postmodernist philosophers Michel Foucault and Jean Baudrillard as a construct of power. Foucault argued institutions define truth to reinforce authority, while Baudrillard claimed modern society had replaced reality with media-driven illusions. While these ideas exposed existing power dynamics in academic institutions, they also fueled skepticism about objective truth — paving the way for today's post-truth crisis. Australian philosophy professor, Catherine (Cathy) Legg highlights how intellectual and cultural shifts led universities to question their neutrality, reinforcing postmodern critiques that foreground subjectivity, discourse, and power in shaping truth. Over time, this skepticism extended beyond academia, challenging whether any authority could claim objectivity without reinforcing existing power structures.These efforts to deconstruct dominant narratives unintentionally legitimized radical relativism — the idea that all truths hold equal weight, regardless of evidence or logic. This opened the door for "alternative facts", now weaponized by propaganda. What began as a challenge to authoritarian knowledge structures within academia escaped its origins, eroding shared standards of truth. In the post-truth era, misinformation, ideological mythmaking, and conspiracy theories thrive by rejecting objective verification altogether.Historian Naomi Oreskes describes "merchants of doubt" as corporate and political actors who manufacture uncertainty to obstruct policy and sustain truth relativism. By falsely equating expertise with opinion, they create the illusion of debate, delaying action on climate change, public health, and social inequities while eroding trust in science. In this landscape, any opinion can masquerade as fact, undermining those who dedicate their lives to truth-seeking.PIXELS AND MYTHOLOGY SHAPE THE GEOGRAPHYThe erosion of truth infrastructures has accelerated with digital media, which both globalizes misinformation and reinforces localized silos of belief. This was evident during COVID-19, where false claims — such as vaccine microchips — spread widely but took deeper root in communities with preexisting distrust in institutions. While research confirms that misinformation spreads faster than facts, it's still unclear if algorithmic amplification or deeper socio-political distrust are root causes.This ideological shift is strongest in Eastern Europe and parts of the U.S., where institutional distrust and digital subcultures fuel esoteric nationalism. Post-Soviet propaganda, economic instability, and geopolitical tensions have revived alternative knowledge systems in Russia, Poland, and the Balkans, from Slavic paganism to the return of the Vril myth, now fused with the Save Europe movement — a digital blend of racial mysticism, ethnic nostalgia, and reactionary politics.Above ☝️is a compilation of TikTok videos currently being pushed to my 21 year old son. They fuse ordinary, common, and recognizable pop culture imagery with Vril imagery (like UFO's and stealth bombers) and esoteric racist nationalism, religious fundamentalism, and hyper-masculine mythologies. A similar trend appears in post-industrial and rural America, where economic decline, government distrust, and cultural divides sustain conspiratorial thinking, religious fundamentalism, and hyper-masculine mythologies. The alt-right manosphere mirrors Eastern Europe's Vril revival, with figures like Zyzz and Bronze Age Pervert offering visions of lost strength. Both Vril and Save Europe frame empowerment as a return to ethnic or esoteric power (Vril) or militant resistance to diversity (Save Europe), turning myth into a tool of political radicalization.Climate change denial follows these localized patterns, where scientific consensus clashes with economic and cultural narratives. While misinformation spreads globally, belief adoption varies, shaped by economic hardship, institutional trust, and political identity.In coal regions like Appalachia and Poland, skepticism stems from economic survival, with climate policies seen as elitist attacks on jobs. In rural Australia, extreme weather fuels conspiracies about government overreach rather than shifting attitudes toward climate action. Meanwhile, in coastal Louisiana and the Netherlands, where climate impacts are immediate and undeniable, denial is rarer, though myths persist, often deflecting blame from human causes.Just as Vril revivalism, Save Europe, and the MAGA manosphere thrive on post-industrial uncertainty, climate misinformation can also flourish in economically vulnerable regions. Digital platforms fuel a worldview skewed, where scrolling myths and beliefs are spatially glued — a twisted take on 'think globally, act locally,' where fantasy folklore becomes fervent ideology.FINDING TRUTH WITH FRACTURED FACTS…AND FRIENDSThe post-truth era has reshaped how we think about knowledge. The challenge isn't just misinformation but growing distrust in expertise, institutions, and shared reality. In classrooms and research, traditional ways of proving truth often fail when personal belief outweighs evidence. Scholars and educators now seek new ways to communicate knowledge, moving beyond rigid certainty or radical relativism.Professor Legg has turned to the work of 19th-century American philosopher Charles Sanders Peirce, whose ideas about truth feel surprisingly relevant today. Peirce didn't see truth as something fixed or final but as a process — something we work toward through questioning, testing, and refining our understanding over time.His approach, known as pragmatism, emphasizes collaborative inquiry, self-correction, and fallibilism — the idea that no belief is ever beyond revision. In a time when facts are constantly challenged, Peirce's philosophy offers not just a theory of truth, but a process for rebuilding trust in knowledge itself.For those unfamiliar with Peirce and American pragmatism, a process that requires collaborating with truth deniers may seem not only unfun, but counterproductive. But research on deradicalization strategies suggests that confrontational debunking (a failed strategy Democrats continue to adhere to) often backfires. Lecturing skeptics only reinforces belief entrenchment.In the early 1700's Britain was embroiled in the War of Spanish Succession. Political factions spread blatant falsehoods through partisan newspapers. It prompted Jonathan Swift, the author of Gulliver's Travels, to observe in The Art of Political Lying (1710) that"Reasoning will never make a man correct an ill opinion, which by reasoning he never acquired."This is likely where we get the more familiar saying: you can't argue someone out of a belief they didn't reason themselves into. Swift's critique of propaganda and public gullibility foreshadowed modern research on cognitive bias. People rarely abandon deeply held beliefs when confronted with facts.Traditionally, truth is seen as either objectively discoverable (classical empiricism) — like physics — or constructed by discourse and power (postmodernism) — like the Lost Cause myth, which recast the Confederacy as noble rather than pro-slavery. It should be noted that traditional truth also comes about by paying for it. Scientific funding from private sources often dictates which research is legitimized. As Legg observes,“Ironically, such epistemic assurance perhaps rendered educated folk in the modern era overly gullible to the written word as authority, and the resulting ‘fetishisation' of texts in the education sector has arguably led to some of our current problems.”Peirce, however, offered a different path:truth is not a fixed thing, but an eventual process of consensus reached by a community of inquirers.It turns out open-ended dialogue that challenges inconsistencies within a belief system is shown to be a more effective strategy.This process requires time, scrutiny, and open dialogue. None of which are very popular these days! It should be no surprise that in today's fractured knowledge-making landscape of passive acceptance of authority or unchecked personal belief, ideological silos reinforce institutional dogma or blatant misinformation. But Peirce's ‘community of inquiry' model suggests that truth can't be lectured or bought but strengthened through collective reasoning and self-correction.Legg embraces this model because it directly addresses why knowledge crises emerge and how they can be countered. The digital age has resulted in a world where beliefs are reinforced within isolated networks rather than tested against broader inquiry. Trump or Musk can tweet fake news and it spreads to millions around the world instantaneously.During Trump's 2016 campaign, false claims that Pope Francis endorsed him spread faster than legitimate news. Misinformation, revisionist history, and esoteric nationalism thrive in these unchecked spaces.Legg's approach to critical thinking education follows Peirce's philosophy of inquiry. She helps students see knowledge not as fixed truths but as a network of interwoven, evolving understandings — what Peirce called an epistemic cable made up of many small but interconnected fibers. Rather than viewing the flood of online information as overwhelming or deceptive, she encourages students to see it as a resource to be navigated with the right tools and the right intent.To make this practical, she introduces fact-checking strategies used by professionals, teaching students to ask three key questions when evaluating an online source:* Who is behind this information? (Identifying the author's credibility and possible biases)* What is the evidence for their claims? (Assessing whether their argument is supported by verifiable facts)* What do other sources say about these claims? (Cross-referencing to see if the information holds up in a broader context)By practicing these habits, students learn to engage critically with digital content. It strengthens their ability to distinguish reliable knowledge from misinformation rather than simply memorizing facts. It also meets them where they are without judgement of whatever beliefs they may hold at the time of inquiry.If post-truth misinformation reflects a shift in how we construct knowledge, can we ever return to a shared trust in truth — or even a shared reality? As institutional trust erodes, fueled by academic relativism, digital misinformation, and ideological silos, myths like climate denial and Vril revivalism take hold where skepticism runs deep. Digital platforms don't just spread misinformation; they shape belief systems, reinforcing global echo chambers.But is truth lost, or just contested? Peirce saw truth as a process, built through inquiry and self-correction. Legg extends this, arguing that fact-checking alone won't solve post-truth; instead, we need a culture of questioning — where people test their own beliefs rather than being told what's right or wrong.I won't pretend to have the answer. You can tell by my bibliography that I'm a fan of classical empiricism. But I'm also a pragmatic interactionist who believes knowledge is refined through collaborative inquiry. I believe, as Legg does, that to move beyond post-truth isn't about the impossible mission of defeating misinformation — it's about making truth-seeking more compelling than belief. Maybe even fun.What do you think? This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit interplace.io

CLICK HERE! To send us a message! Ask us a Question or just let us know what you think!What if a last-minute change in travel plans sealed the fate of your loved ones on one of history's greatest tragedies? Join us as we welcome Robin Schafer, who shares the awe-inspiring yet heart-wrenching tale of her great-granduncle, Isidor Strauss, and his wife, Ida. As co-owner of Macy's and a titan of his time, Isidore's legacy is far-reaching. Listen as Robin recounts the compelling story of how this power couple ended up on the ill-fated Titanic and the profound love that led Ida to choose to remain by Isidore's side instead of securing a lifeboat.The narrative doesn't stop there. We journey through interconnected family histories, including the Jewish-German connections of the early 20th century, spotlighting Otto Frank and Nathan Strauss. Robin also shares delightful anecdotes about her cousin, Natalie Schafer, famously known for her role on "Gilligan's Island," and reflects on the family's long-standing philanthropic efforts, from supporting Holocaust survivors to sponsoring the New York Philharmonic's free concerts. This episode paints a rich tapestry of personal and historical narratives, demonstrating how past events shape legacies and inspire future generations.Sponsored by Premium Botanicals Premium Botanicals is the maker of Herbal Spectrum a line of full spectrum Hemp based CBD products.

EP. 57 - in conversation with artist and researcher from Ukraine and Germany, Marija Petrovic. In her artistic practice, Marija is interested in situations of fragile contact and interaction, as well as in the multi-layered complexities of memory and representation. In the podcast she talks about her publication 'Silver', which examines the silverware collection looted by the Nazis from Jewish-German communities in Hamburg. Marija also shares the first results of her doctoral research on vulnerability and the past and present of Ukraine from a decolonial perspective. References: Silver by Marija Petrovic and Ofri Lapid https://material-verlag.hfbk-hamburg.de/en/material/440-silver  HFBK Hamburg https://www.hfbk-hamburg.de/en/  Museum fur Kunst & Gewerbe Hamburg https://www.mkg-hamburg.de/en  Timothy Snyder https://timothysnyder.org/ Marija's favourite home food: Ukrainian potato pancakes - Deruny, and Crimean street food - Chebureki ___ SUPPORT: Buy me a coffee Become a Patron Buy Kitchen Conversations Cookbook Follow & leave feedback ___ Thumbnail: Silverware - vitrine view in the Museum of Arts and Crafts Hamburg (MK&G), photo: Ofri Lapid Recording & editing: Patrycja Rozwora Mix & master: Jonas Kröper

Germany is persecuting Jews in the name of combating antisemitism. The world is turned upside down.Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/the-owen-jones-podcast. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Fourth Sunday of Easter - John 10:11-18 Naomi is a trawloolway woman with Jewish German & Irish heritage. She is a proud aunty, sister and daughter along with being a kinship carer. She is a historian and theologian. She works at Australian Catholic University and NAIITS: An Indigenous Learning Community. NAIITS: An Indigenous Learning Community is an international learning community of Indigenous and non-Indigenous Elders, community, and students.  Naomi worked previously for the University of Divinity as Indigenous Theologies Project Officer and more recently she was the inaugural First People's Co-ordinator of the University's newly created School of Indigenous Studies. She holds a Bachelor Arts and Bachelor of Teaching, Graduate Certificate Graduate Diploma in Divinity. She recently graduated with a Master of Theological Studies and will begin her PhD studies shortly exploring the idea of decolonizing theological education. Naomi has a commitment and interest in decolonising the disciplines of theology and history and working with people to transform church and society to better times. 

In this episode we hear from father David Neuhaus a Jewish-background South African Jesuit priest who is also an Israeli citizen. Fr. Nauhaus shared with us his background of growing up as a Jew in apartheid-era South Africa, and his journey moving to Israel and being transformed by his encounters with both Israelis and Palestinians. This is a very insightful and powerful conversation that you don't want to miss!  Fr. David Neuhaus, S.J.,  is a Jesuit priest who teaches Scripture in Israel and Palestine. He has been a long-term member of the Holy Land Catholic Church's Justice and Peace Commission. From 2009 until 2017, he was Patriarchal Vicar for Hebrew-speaking and migrant Catholics in the Latin Patriarchate of Jerusalem. Born in South Africa of Jewish German parents during the apartheid era, he has lived most of his life in Israel and is an Israeli citizen.    Article: As war begins again in Holy Land, Jesuit David Neuhaus hopes Christians can be instruments of peace | America Magazine --- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/acrossthedivide/message

Plunge into the depths of thought with Dr. Jeremy Fogel, an enigmatic philosopher and poet who embodies the spirit of inquiry, in our latest episode, where a casual swim leads to profound insights on art of living through crisis and the poetry of existence. Tune in for an episode that's as incidentally raunchy as it is refreshing, intertwining the past with the present, and personal anecdotes with philosophical discourse – a spirited and profound meditation on the philosophy of life. Join us for a thought-provoking conversation that challenges us to think differently about the world around us and within us. Listen now and let your curiosity be your guide.Recorded on March 6 (Day 152). Dr. Jeremy Fogel teaches at Tel Aviv University's department of Jewish philosophy, as well as at its school of education. He is the academic director of Alma, teaches at the Kibbutzim College of Education, Technology and the Arts, and lectures publicly on philosophy in various forums. Jeremy holds a bachelor's degree in philosophy from the University of Cambridge and a master's degree and doctorate in philosophy from Tel Aviv University. His doctoral research explored the tension between universalism and particularism in modern Jewish philosophy, focusing on the Jewish-German philosophers Moses Mendelssohn and Hermann Cohen, and he continued exploring these issues as a post-doctoral fellow at Hamburg University. Jeremy is involved with several independent artistic and literary ventures. His first book, Tel Aviv is Water and Other Seasidian Thoughts, was published by Hava Lehaba in 2019. He is the co-creator and co-host of the "Think & Drink Different" podcast. His book Jewish Universalisms: Mendelssohn, Cohen, and Humanity's Highest Good was released by Brandeis University Press in December. Thanks for tuning in!

Writer and director Glenn Shea on his unabashed new play ‘MI: WI 3027,' unpacking the unlikely friendship between an Indigenous soldier and a Jewish-German ethnologist and prisoner of war, as they bond over the notions of freedom and country; Curator Rona Green unveils ‘Whereabouts: Printmakers Respond,' a new exhibition at the Art Gallery of Ballarat, delving into the connections between artists and their sense of home; Richard Watts reflects on the importance of mental health in the arts space, with Head of Program from the Arts Wellbeing Collective, Jim Rimmer

“Now I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds.” This was J. Robert Oppenheimer's reaction to the first atomic bomb test in July 1945, marking the beginning of the nuclear age. Oppenheimer, an American theoretical physicist of Jewish-German descent, was in charge of the American nuclear project, leading the Los Alamos laboratory and tasked with developing “the bomb” in 1943, following his involvement in the Manhattan Project. Join Tom and Dominic as they delve into the life of the man behind “the weapon to end all wars”.*The Rest Is History Live Tour 2023*:Tom and Dominic are back on tour this autumn! See them live in London, New Zealand, and Australia!Buy your tickets here: restishistorypod.comTwitter: @TheRestHistory@holland_tom@dcsandbrook Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The Rosenstrasse Protest – which occurred in Berlin in 1943 just weeks before the Warsaw Ghetto uprising, which we remember today – was the only demonstration by thousands of German citizens against the Nazis' treatment of Jews during the Second World War. Eighty years ago this spring, non-Jewish German women stood their ground for a week near the Berlin headquarters of the Gestapo. They won the release of their 2,000 Jewish husbands, who had just been arrested and were slated for deportation. The roundups were part of the Nazis' plan to make Berlin free of its remaining Jews. But nearly all the intermarried Jewish spouses later survived the Holocaust. Now, a role playing game is on sale that highlights the story of this largely unknown Rosenstrasse event. Its Canadian co-creator, Moyra Turkington of Toronto, joins The CJN Daily to showcase the historic but overlooked role which these brave non-Jewish women played in the Holocaust. What we talked about Read more about the Rosenstrasse game and order a copy Watch the national Yom ha-Shoah memorial ceremony from Ottawa Read about other Holocaust-themed games in The CJN Credit_s_ The CJN Daily is written and hosted by Ellin Bessner (@ebessner on Twitter). Zachary Kauffman is the producer. Michael Fraiman is the executive producer. Our theme music is by Dov Beck-Levine. Our title sponsor is Metropia. We're a member of The CJN Podcast Network. To subscribe to this podcast, please watch this video. Donate to The CJN and receive a charitable tax receipt by clicking here.

Eighty years ago this month the Berlin-born Jewish German cabaret singer and actress of silent movies Dora Gerson (1899-1943) was murdered with her family in Auschwitz. This episode is done in her memory and includes two of her most famous songs Vorbei and Die Welt ist Klein Geworden. The story is read by Katharina Albrecht.Sources: Jacques Klöters Facebook post in Dutsch, 16 Nov. 2020 http://www.musiques-regenerees.fr/GhettosCamps/Camps/GersonDora.html

Franklin Adams was an American columnist. He was a poet. He was a veteran of the first world war. He was the son of Jewish-German immigrants. He was witty. He was a radio panelist. He was, suffice to say, many things.His most important work was his column “The Conning Tower”. The Conning Tower it is said, “…was enough to launch a career.” As turned out to be the case for a number of writer's whose work was published therein. Dorothy Parker was one such poet and she dedicated her 1936 collection Not So Deep as a Well, to F.P.A. the acronym by which Franklin was also known.Enjoy!I welcome opinions of every kind so please come and find me on social media at:Instagram: TwoandaMicTwitter: TwoandaMic1

This podcast has been graciously sponsored by JewishPodcasts.fm. There is much overhead to maintain this service so please help us continue our goal of helping Jewish lecturers become podcasters and support us with a donation: https://thechesedfund.com/jewishpodcasts/donate

Few people make contributions that transcend generations and change the landscape of a Community Kurt Simon was one such person. We sit down to talk to Kurt Simon's Biographer, Dr. Gabrielle Robinson, who elegantly writes about A legendary philanthropist who is little known outside of South Bend; Kurt Simon's acts of kindness and instrumental giving helped to make his adopted community of South Bend, Indiana, a better place for everyone. A Jewish German immigrant, Kurt Simon's heart was more significant than even his tremendous work ethic in Business. --- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/injewishhistory/message Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/injewishhistory/support

Have you ever heard of the term brown babies? Brown Babies is a term used for children born to black soldiers and white women during and after the Second World War. In January 1942, after the US had entered the war, a large number of American servicemen (known as GIs) were shipped to Britain. Over the next three years approximately 3 million GIs passed through the country, of which approximately 8% were African-American. As of 1955, African-American soldiers had fathered about 5,000 children in the American Zone of Occupied Germany,[2] making up a significant minority of the 37,000 illegitimate children of US soldiers overall. In Occupied Austria, estimates of children born to Austrian women and Allied soldiers ranged between 8,000 and 30,000, perhaps 500 of them biracial. In the United Kingdom, West Indian members of the British military, as well as African-American soldiers in the US Army, fathered 2,000 children during and after the war.[6][7] A much smaller and unknown number, probably in the low hundreds, was born in the Netherlands. Other names for the term brown babies include "war babies" and "occupation babies." In Germany they were known as Mischlingskinder ("mixed race children"), a derogatory term first used under the Nazi regime for children of mixed Jewish-German parentage. It is estimated that approximately 2,000 ‘brown babies' were born in Britain during the war and nearly all of them were illegitimate. Brown babies' was the term given to these children by the African-American press. Nearly half of these babies were given up to local authorities or children's homes, such were the difficulties and pressures facing the mothers: the stigma of having an illegitimate and ‘coloured' child, and the fact that between a third and a half of the mothers were already married. English and German authorities tried to discourage relationships between white British women and black troops but many romances began at dances Black troops were not allowed to marry their pregnant white girlfriends and many of the children were given up for adoption, according to Prof Lucy Bland, from Anglia Ruskin University, who interviewed 50 of them for a book called Britain's Brown Babies. Speaking on The Localist - Suffolk podcast, Prof Bland says: "Nearly half of these babies were put in children's homes. They were often lied to and told their fathers were dead and that their mothers didn't want them. "They were often called names and didn't understand. Some of them didn't even realise they were a different skin colour; no-one was explaining it to them." Very few of them were adopted. Officials said it would be impossible to place mixed-race children and the government blocked adoptions from the US, worried they would be seen as dumping them there. The children grew up in predominately white areas — the sites where the GIs had been largely based: south and southwest England, South Wales, East Anglia and Lancashire, where they had little or no black or mixed-race role models. Most suffered racism, the stigma of illegitimacy and a confused identity. --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/creative-habits/message Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/creative-habits/support

After an elderly woman was discovered brutally murdered in her upscale Glasgow apartment, police charged a 38 year-old Jewish-German immigrant with her murder. The arrest sparked a century-long battle for justice and was championed by the creator of Sherlock Holmes, Arthur Conan Doyle.Sources:"The Case of Oscar Slater." National Records of Scotland. https://www.nrscotland.gov.uk/research/learning/features/the-case-of-oscar-slater"Correspondence of Oscar Slater, the Jewish Prisoner Championed by Arthur Conan Doyle." Carpe Librum Books. https://www.carpelibrumbooks.com/correspondence-of-oscar-slater-the-jewish-prisoner-championed-by-arthur-conan-doyleDoyle, Arthur Conan.The True Crime Files of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (Berkley Prime Crime: New York, 2001.) https://archive.org/details/truecrimefilesof0000doylThe Case of Oscar Slater (Hodder & Stoughton: New York, 1912.)Fox, Margalit. Conan Doyle for the Defense: How Sherlock Holmes' Creator Turned Real-Life Detective to Free a Man Wrongly Imprisoned for Murder (Random House: New York, 2018.)"Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and the Case of the Wrongfully Imprisoned Man." Medium. 21 June, 2018. https://medium.com/s/story/sir-arthur-conan-doyle-and-the-case-of-the-wrongfully-imprisoned-man-dc5eb26b0331Hunt, Peter. Oscar Slater: The Great Suspect (Carroll & Nicholson: London, 1951.)Kilday, Anne-Marie. "‘Circumstances of Unexplained Savagery': The Gilchrist MurderCase and Its Legacy, 1908–1927." Fair and Unfair Trials in the British Isles, 1800–1940:Microhistories of Justice and Injustice. Ed. David Nash and Anne-Marie Kilday. London:Bloomsbury academic, 2020. 137–175. Bloomsbury Collections. 21 Jan. 2022. .McPherson, Hamish. "The Oscar Slater Frame-Up: How a Murder Trial Changed Scots Law." The National. 10 October, 2017. https://www.thenational.scot/news/15585823.the-oscar-slater-frame-up-how-a-murder-trial-changed-scots-law/Roughead, William. The Trial of Oscar Slater (William Hodge & Company: Glasgow, 1915.)Toughill, Thomas. Oscar Slater: The Mystery Solved (Canongate Books Ltd., 1994). Whittington-Egan, Richard. The Oscar Slater Murder Story: New Light on a Classic Miscarriage of Justice (Neil Wilson Publishing, 2011.)Music: Dellasera by Shane Ivers - https://www.silvermansound.comFor more information, visit www.oldbloodpodcast.com

Artist and director Ulrike Ottinger presents her recollections of living and working in Paris in the 1960s. Paris Calligrammes: that's not exactly a movie title that would pique everyone's curiosity. It's written and directed by an experimental visual artist and filmmaker named Ulrike Ottinger. I can assure you that she doesn't take appealing to a mass audience into consideration. She makes films for herself and others who are interested in art and creativity for their own sake. Ottinger, who turned 80 this year, tells of her experiences in Paris as a young artist, from the time she left her provincial German town in 1962 at age 20, her car breaking down on the way, after which she hitchhiked to the city. She accompanies her narration with a wealth of footage from home movies, newsreels, TV excerpts, still photos, fiction films, and film of life in Paris today. Different sections highlight different aspects of her Paris experience. She starts with her discovery of the Librairie Calligrammes, a store specializing in German books owned by Fritz Picard, a Jewish German exile. The word “Calligrammes” was taken from a poem by Guillame Apollinaire, who defines it as a text that creates an image with its letters. By using this word as part of the film's title, Ottinger is signaling the same artistic purpose of creating an image in the mind through her narration. Anyway, she discovered this German language book store, and the owner, Picard, opened a door for her to a world of intellectual émigrés, including Hans Richter, Paul Celan, and Walter Mehring, that was centered on Dada and Surrealist art and literature. We see an interview with Picard, and hear Mehring recite a masterful poem mourning the deaths of German artists who resisted fascism. This one section is so full of interesting people and stories that I thought this might be the whole movie. But it's a film of many parts, and although it runs only a little over two hours, it's brimming with so much incident and detail that I can only marvel that Ottinger has managed to fit it all in. Other sections cover her friends among the city's avant-garde visual artists, neighborhoods in which she lived, the vital film scene clustered around Henri Langlois' Cinémathèque Française, Ottinger's own progression as an artist influenced by the Dada and Pop Art movements, the left wing politics that pulled Paris intellectuals together in the late ‘60s (and then pushed them apart), and much more. Ottinger was always openly lesbian, and that reality is taken as an assumed basis here, one of the aspects of her life that informs her work. I found myself stopping the film at times (the great advantage we have in our video era!) to make notes about the film's numerous anecdotes, remarks, and insights. Ottinger doesn't try to attain an illusory comprehensiveness, but just by talking about her own experience, her own world, she provides a sense of the excitement and ferment of that time that I've never seen equaled. I would say that this picture is an example of the diary or notebook form within what I call non-fiction film. The word “documentary” is really tired out now, and fails to do justice to the variety we witness in films that are not narrative or dramatic stories. Ottinger uses archival material with an eye towards what you haven't seen before, avoiding the kind of stock photo montage that we encounter in straight “objective” histories. There's a lot to take in, and I felt intellectually and emotionally enriched after watching it.

MARIO GOLDEN+ANDREAS ROBERTZ: Mario was born in Mexico and Andreas in German, but both met in NYC. At age 14, Mexico migrated to South Texas with his family and in the midst of financial hardship, graduated from high school as a valedictorian and gained full scholarship to Stanford University where he earned a B.A. in Psychology and an M.A in International Development Education. After years as an educator, Mario expanded his studies and practice with an emphasis on depth psychology and group facilitation, family and organizational systems, eastern spirituality and the Enneagram, which deals with the human psyche. Simultaneously, he developed as an artist working in Mexico and the U.S. receiving positive reviews for his film appearances such as: “The Mule”, which was picked up for broadcasting by HBO Latin America in 2006, “Capicu” and “Del Otro Lado” (The Other Side) a Spanish language feature film he co-starred, co-wrote and co-produced, which was screened in the U.S and at international festivals in Canada, Europe and Latin America. His first full-length play “One Less Queen'' was published in the anthology-Positive/Negative: Women of Color and HIV, “Turning Point” a series of one-acts that TNC presented, “The Trip” selected for the Samuel French Short Ply Festival and the Strawberry One Act Festival, and more. He is a member of the Village Playwrights, Around The Block, the Hispanic Organization of Latino Actors and Founding Co-director of One Heart Productions, a non-profit theater and film company….. Andreas studied theology, archeology, history of thought, acting and later became a radio journalist. He is an established German theater director with 15 years of experience, directing and producing more that 30 shows in theaters of 40 to 900 seats, receiving numerous regional and national awards and nominations for his outstanding work as a director. In 2002 he served as Artistic Advisor for the City Arts Council and as Residence Director at the Artheater Cologne and while there in Cologne, he produced and directed a number of contemporary American, Canadian and English plays to critical acclaim and was awarded the 2006 Cologne City Award for his direction of The Pillowman. In New York, Andreas has directed readings at the Public Theater as part of the series of New Czech voices produced by the Immigrants' Theater Project, and other projects at Around The Block, The Theater For The New City, the Martin E. Segal Theater (CUNY) and The Mint Theater. He received the 2008 Golden Penguin for best direction at the Penguin's Day Festival for the one-woman show “Which is My Drug of Choice?” by Kai Hensel. Andreas and Mario launched a project in Berlin in 2008 with five German actresses and a German playwright as part of an initiative for healing and reconciliation between Jewish and non-Jewish German impacted by the Holocaust. In 2014 Andreas received the H.O.L.A award for Best Production for the “Charlotte's Song'' by Nancy Ferragallo and again in 2016, for Best Ensemble for the “Exile is My Home” by Domnica Radulescu. He has become a respected playwriting teacher and developed a second career as a cultural journalist for one of Germany's most esteemed broadcasting networks, with hundreds of interviews on art and life. Andreas is a member of the Lincoln Center Directors Lab Network and Artistic Director of One Heart Productions. --- Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/ozzie-stewart/support

When Allied soldiers first encounter the Concentration Camps in Germany, it's hard to believe: millions worked or starved to death. But now the investigators start to hear about the camps in the East – especially a place called Auschwitz – designed only to exterminate. And in Hamburg, two Jewish German refugees now lead the British Army investigation into Tesch & Stabenow AG. It appears to be a harmless pest-control company...but it also marketed Zyklon B, the principal poison gas used in the camps. The trouble is, the British Administration needs Tesch & Stabenow to keep working, needs its products to fumigate factories and ships in the harbour. Featuring Mark Edel-Hunt as Captain Anton Freud and Andrew Woodall as Sergeant Fred Pelican, War Crimes Investigators. Cast: Roger Barrett - LUKE NORRIS Charles Bendel - HENRY GOODMAN Robert Storey - HARI DHILLON John Amen - JOSEPH ALESSI Robert H Jackson - JOSEPH MYDELL Colonel Leo Genn - NICHOLAS WOODESON Captain Anton Freud - MARK EDEL-HUNT Sergeant Fred Pelican - ANDREW WOODALL Bruno Tesch and other roles - JONATHAN CULLEN Alfred Zaun and other roles - NIGEL LINDSAY Emil Sehm and other roles - JASPER BRITTON Titles - LEWIS MACLEOD Sound Designer - ADAM WOODHAMS Studio Manager - MARK SMITH Casting Director - GINNY SCHILLER Original Score - METAPHOR MUSIC Writer and Director - JONATHAN MYERSON Producer - NICHOLAS NEWTON A Promenade Production for BBC Radio 4 and BBC Sounds

  Richard Gale & Gary Null PhD Progressive Radio Network, January 7, 2022 During the past two years, the rise in wokeness and its cancel culture has shocked the sensibilities and moral fabric of the nation. It has fuelled divisions between races, class and economic status, levels of education and political allegiances. However, the anger that wokeness has carried into civil discourse is a symptom of a much deeper causal factor buried in the national psyche; that is, America's pervasive “reality deficit disorder (RDD).” This is a condition that has proliferated across the American landscape since the Age of Enlightenment and the 19th century's advent of scientific materialism as a secular religion.  The proponents of modern behaviorism and the neurosciences are likewise saturated with RDD. The Woke self-congratulating experts and false prophets are its public face.  These are plastic liberal intellectuals who have found reinforced their sense of self-righteousness by spreading the post-modern gospel of Robin DiAngelo's 2018 bestseller White Fragility. Despite the widespread adulation DiAngelo has received from liberal educators, the mega-corporate elite, and the left media, she has managed to jockey herself away from the deep scrutiny her writings and lectures deserve.  An exception is Jonathan Church, author of Reinventing Racism, who brilliantly exposes DiAngelo's flaws and deconstructs her façade of her impartial objectivity.  Church takes a more philosophical offensive to shed light on DiAngelo's implicit biases and contradictions that in turn distort the very ideas she attempts to proselytize. While we agree wholeheartedly with Church's polemic, we would take a more cognitive approach and state that DiAngelo's racial theories of irredeemable Whiteness as an inherent social construct have no basis in reality whatsoever. White Fragility reads like a tantrum by an author with a third-rate intellect who is deeply confused about her own gender and racial identity. “All white people,” DiAngelo wants us to believe, “are invested in and collude with racism.” If you were born White then racism is built into your socialized development and behavior regardless whether your family background is exemplary of racial justice or not. There can be no escape from this curse, DiAngelo suggests, no redemption or purification by fire regardless of how much penitence, public service or charity you perform for the greater good. We wonder whether she would include the indigenous blond hair, blue-eyed Finno-Ugric peoples inhabiting the northern forests and tundra of Scandinavia and Russia's Kola Peninsula as being socially structured and therefore colluding in the world's racism. The author reminds us of someone who has read every published book about chocolate and thus feels qualified to write one of her own despite never having tasted chocolate. Philosophy and postmodern sociology in general, notably the modern philosophies of science and mind, often suffer from this mental affliction. They write books about other philosophers' books who in turn wrote books about their predecessors' scribbling. Right-wing critics of wokeness and certain factions within postmodern Critical Race Theory likewise indulge in a similar cognitive hallucination built upon feeble-minded pre-Galilean superstitions. Their perceptions about themselves and the world, their righteous anger and biases, are similar to dreamscapes, phantoms they have conjured and which can have dire long-term consequences to the welfare of innocent victims prejudiced and canceled by their vitriol and condemnation. There have always been conflicting ideologies, cherished beliefs and inflamed emotions towards racial discrepancies, social order and justice or how the nation should be governed. But today these cognitive afflictions, masquerading as passions and righteous causes have disintegrated into tribalism. This is now fomenting new class and racial distinctions and struggles as well as media turf wars. No one can accurately predict where this collective reality deficit disorder will lead ultimately but it certainly won't contribute to a positive advancement of human well-being. It repeats the old adage of garbage in, garbage out. “The greatest need of our time,” the Trappist monk Thomas Merton wrote in his Conjectures of a Guilty Bystander, “is to clean out the enormous mass of mental and emotional rubbish that clutters our minds and makes all political and social life a mass illness. Without this housecleaning we cannot begin to see. Unless we see we cannot think.”  Merton believed that this “purification must begin with the mass media.”  We would suggest it also begins with our educational institutions. Teachers who embrace White Fragility's social folly and logical fallacies need to introspectively gaze and observe the destructive ataxia nesting in their own minds.  If anyone wonders why the nation is so angry, screaming and protesting, one reason is because the failed neoliberal experiment, the culture of political nepotism, a captured and biased media, and a thoroughly corrupt judiciary have created this horror show. And DiAngelo seemingly wants to gather tinder to keep racial conflagrations burning. "Nothing in all the world is more dangerous," Martin Luther King lamented, "than sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity." It is our deep ignorance about not first knowing ourselves and appreciating our intrinsic interconnections with each other and the environment that perpetuates the suffering around us. These deeper existential relationships can potentially outsmart and surpass the benefits Critical Race Theory has to offer. Underlying any social structure is to be found cognitive causal relationships. This includes our attachments to whatever accomplishments and failures we experience in our lives through racial identity, which may lead to a reality deficit with all of its superiority complexes, apathy and depression. First, there is sufficient empirical science to reach a consensus that we are a culture that has become habituated to mistaking its unfounded perceptions about itself and the world as reality-based. This applies to our cognitive conceptions of Whiteness, Blackness, Yellowness, etc. Church makes this clear; DiAngelo's use of the term Whiteness is “nebulous” and “vague.”  He points out that her logic falls into a Kafka Trap, referring to Kafka's novel The Trial when an unassuming man is dragged into court and accused for an unspecified crime; subsequently his unwavering denial is itself interpreted as absolute proof that the accusation is true. “Yes, all white people are complicit with racism,” writes DiAngelo, “People will insist that they are not racist… This is the kind of evidence that many white people used to exempt themselves from that system. It is not possible to be exempt from it.” Consequently, for DiAngelo, Whites can only speak about their “whiteness” in terms of how it reinforces an implicit racism within the social system. But from a neuro-scientific perspective, all colored racisms are skewed perceptions of reality. For example, when we gaze into a deep azure sky we immediately assume there is physical blue over our heads. However, there are no blue-colored photons reaching our retinas. Rather, our brains receive the emitted photons and through a complex channeling of information from the eye to the visual cortex. The brain then Photoshops the color azure and projects it through our glance into the empty space of the sky. The same is true whether we gaze at a verdant forest canopy, a fiery sunset, the fluorescent, shimmering hues of a fanning peacock's feathers or observing an African, Asian or European person crossing the street. There is nothing mysterious behind this; it is visual brain science 101. No neuroscientist questions this visual phenomenon.  We reify the sensory stimuli the brain receives from the objective world and then grasp and cling to these as being factually real. Theoretically race may be understood as only a conventional or relative appearance arising to our mental perceptions. No absolute objective claims can be made about it; therefore, there cannot be any absolute analyses or one-size-fits-all solutions for confronting racism either. In striking contrast to White Fragility's cognitive deficiencies, we may consider an argument posed by the great Jewish German existentialist Martin Buber. Buber speaks of an I-You relationship when we engage with another person as another subject instead of as an object. There's a subject there, and that subject is every bit as real as the subject over here. For example, as much as I might care about my own well-being, then so does another person. To transcend White Fragility's divisions and its many shortcomings, which relate to others as I-Its -- as mere objects -- we simply need to be aware of Buber's advice, and become fully engaged with that reality. Buber highlights this as a profoundly existential problem in modern society. It is debilitating.  It is dehumanizing, although for DiAngelo and the cancel culture preserving racial I-It relationships is not only valid but essential. When we regard others simply in terms of whether the color of their skin is appealing or unappealing, pleasant or unpleasant, superior or inferior, and so forth we are bifurcating impressions that have no substance in reality. We are simply treating other sentient beings as if they have no more sentience, no more subjectivity, no more presence from their own side than a robot or computer. But that seems fine for DiAngelo and her tragic dehumanizing dogma. If DiAngelo were unintelligent or had severe brain damage, we might understand and would certainly sympathize. But she -- and we would argue many of those who would carry White Fragility's banner into school classrooms -- are likely very educated people. That is the calamity and the clear evidence for the deep-seated spiritual impoverishment when a person is viewed as nothing more than the race of their physical bodies. If anti-racial wokeness is true, then the more deeply we probe and investigate it, the truer it should appear. This was one of William James' fundamental principles when he made efforts to turn the psychology of his day into a valid science. If James' methodology had not been obliterated by the rise of behaviorism in 1910, psychology would be completely different today. We might actually be treating and curing people of mental disorders without prescribing life-long medications. On the other hand, if DiAngelo's hypothesis is false, the more deeply one investigates, which includes introspection, the more false it will appear. That is where robust inquiry comes in: to determine what is simply true regardless of whatever your personal unsubstantiated and biased beliefs about it might be. What you believe has absolutely no impact upon whether something is true or not. This is also basic Buddhist epistemology that has been repeatedly replicated by contemplatives for several millennia. Neuroscience, including its gross failures and tendencies towards metaphysical realism, has more to tell us about the inherent dangers in White Fragility's doctrine. First, modern brain science has not produced an iota of evidence to confirm that the mind and consciousness are solely a product or output originating in neuron and synaptic activity. None. Contrary to the evidence, most neuroscientists and evolutionary biologists nevertheless embrace this opinion as a settled matter. But it is ridiculous to believe that evolution somehow dragged along our ancient single-celled ancestors until some point was reached when a conscious mind -- a “nothing” that is not observable, not measurable, not quantifiable, without atoms or photons, mass, electric charge or spin – mysteriously arose out of something, such as genes and biomolecular phenomena. Therefore cognitive scientists pretend to know something about the mind and consciousness when in fact they haven't a clue. Although DiAngelo is not stating that socialized racism among Whites is genetically determined, the trajectory of her argument has the potential to lead towards that conclusion. She does consider systemic White racism as being unconscious. Therefore she has moved her social theory into psychology. Since modern psychology today is becoming increasingly informed by the neurosciences, which in turn is being informed by evolutionary biology, it is only a small leap away to find her theory complementing genetic determinism as a means to explain Whiteness' conditioned racism. If her socialized determinism, and that of the neuroscience and evolutionary biology fields, are correct, then it would break the fundamental physical laws of energy conservation and causal efficacy. In effect, DiAngelo is saying White people have no choice. It's socialized chemistry or its socialized chemistry; either way its socialized chemistry.  In effect, DiAngelo is admitting that her own perceptions about reality are fundamentally flawed. Why is that? Dr. Donald Hoffman has been a professor of neuroscience at the University of California at Irvine for over three decades. He has an impeccable background having studied artificial intelligence at MIT. But unlike the vast majority of his colleagues, Hoffman broke ranks and passed beyond neuroscience's 19th century mechanistic base and dared to study modern quantum physics and relativity theory. Theoretical physics is almost anathema in human biological research and medicine, which is why these soft sciences have made so little progress to improve human health and well-being. Hoffman has performed hundreds of thousands of simulations comparing different species and their chances for survival based upon their ability to perceive and comprehend reality more accurately or not. His discoveries are startling and utterly revolutionary. Hoffman discovered, across the board, species that best perceive reality go extinct more rapidly than competing species that only perceive what is necessary for them to remain fit and survive. During an interview following a TED Talk, Hoffman stated, “according to evolution by natural selection,” – and here he is limiting himself solely to evolutionary biological theory and not the various competing theories about the nature of consciousness – “an organism that sees reality as it is will never be more fit than an organism of equal complexity that sees none of reality but is just tuned to fitness. Never.” In other words, evolution has nothing to do with perceiving reality more clearly, but only to be more fit in order to adapt, survive and procreate. And now physicists are even telling us that the primal cause behind all physical objects may be consciousness itself, which has no association whatsoever with natural selection. For example, Professor Edward Witten, regarded as “the world's smartest” physicist at the Institute for Advanced Studies at Princeton, has been compared to Newton and Einstein. Witten doesn't believe science will ever understand consciousness. “I think consciousness will remain a mystery,” Witten stated during a lecture, ”I have a much easier time imagining how we understand the Big Bang than I have imagining how we can understand consciousness.” Or we can listen to Stanford University theoretical physicist Andre Linde: “The current scientific model of the material world obeying laws of physics has been so successful that we forget our starting point as conscious observers, and conclude that matter is the only reality and that perceptions are only helpful for describing it. But in fact, we are substituting the reality of our experience of the universe with a conceptually contrived belief…” One may feel our critique is too abstract with little or no practical application; however to at least conceptually understand race in terms of our sensory perceptions can have enormous benefits to cut through and lessen the false semblances that arise from reality deficit disorder that winds up producing books such as White Fragility. Moreover, contrary to DiAngelo's arguments, British journalist Melanie Phillips offers a clearer understanding for why we should not rely upon the pundits of anti-racial wokeness to save us from ourselves. Despite disagreeing with Phillips on many of her other socio-political positions, she correctly identifies the fundamental flaws being voiced by arrested development wokeness across our campuses and within the corporate wing of the Democrat party. First, it is unable to establish a hierarchy of values and morals. For example, if one refuses to say that any lifestyle or culture is better than another, then it cannot be said that liberalism is better than conservatism or any other ideology.  Consequently, faux liberalism cannot legitimately defend the very principles upon which it defines itself: racial and gender equality, freedom of speech and religion, justice and tolerance, and class struggle.  It contradicts its own principles and follows DiAngelo's footsteps to remove the dignity of the individual, which in the past was at the heart of authentic liberalism and once served as its moral backbone. What we are witnessing therefore in Woke liberalism – and in DiAngelo's reinvention of racism -- is “the strong dominating the weak,” and this is an ill-liberal ideology that is already showing signs of having catastrophic consequences in classrooms and the workplace. Finally, if DiAngelo's theory is correct, then all Whites, without exception, in American history, were unconsciously transmuted into racists starting at the time of their birth. What is her proof? Is there any scientific evidence to support this outrageous claim? Did she consider the lack of sensitivity towards other peoples and races who were victims of racial identity and violence, such as the Jews who experienced genocide at hands of their Nazi overlords? And what would she say against those Whites who have fought against racism throughout the American experience, such as the Abolitionists in the US and UK who put their bodies at great risk?  In principle she is labeling them too as racist despite their fighting, protesting and even dying as committed anti-racists. Many Whites have embraced other races and cultures with open arms; however, DiAngelo wants us to believe this legacy was a sham, because in some strange voodoo way they were unconsciously racist. Is this not the height of hubris and arrogance?

Mike Isaacson: The holes! The holes! The holes! [Theme song] Nazi SS UFOsLizards wearing human clothesHinduism's secret codesThese are nazi lies Race and IQ are in genesWarfare keeps the nation cleanWhiteness is an AIDS vaccineThese are nazi lies Hollow earth, white genocideMuslim's rampant femicideShooting suspects named Sam HydeHiter lived and no Jews died Army, navy, and the copsSecret service, special opsThey protect us, not sweatshopsThese are nazi lies Mike Isaacson: Welcome back to The Nazi Lies Podcast. This episode, we're lucky enough to have Robert Jan Van Pelt, Architectural Historian at the University of Waterloo and chief curator of the traveling Holocaust exhibit Auschwitz: Not Long Ago, Not Far Away. He's the author of several books including Auschwitz: 1270 to the Present and The Case for Auschwitz where he specifically takes on Holocaust deniers or as he calls them negationists. Thanks for coming on the podcast Dr. Van Pelt. Robert Jan Van Pelt: Thank you very much. It's a pleasure to be here with you today. Mike Isaacson: Thank you. So today, we're lucky enough to have a guest who's actually familiar with the Nazi lies he's debunking. So his book, The Case for Auschwitz, documents the testimony in the David Irving libel trial. So before we discuss who they are, why do you call them negationists? Robert Jan Van Pelt: The term was actually coined in the mid-19th century by a Scottish philosopher, his name is Patrick Edward Dove, in a book called The Logic of the Christian Faith. And basically, he refers to negationist as a German idealist like Immanuel Kant or Wilhelm Fried Hegel, who basically said that physical reality doesn't exist, or at least it's not relevant, that everything is in the mind. And so he talks about them as people who are negating, who are denying, actually the existence of the world as we experience it every day. And so, the term has a philosophical background, but in the 19, late 1980s, early 1990s, it became to be applied by a number of philosophers both in France and also in the United States-- Thomas Nagel is one-- to people who we normally call Holocaust deniers. Now, when I got involved in the struggle against Holocaust denier, so negationist, I was intrigued by, let's call it the philosophical aspects of this whole thing. You can of course say, these are all crazy people or they're bad people, they're anti Semite, blah, blah, blah. All of these guys passed judgment on it. But I was always fascinated by what it takes to actually deny reality. And of course, today, when we're in the middle of many denials that are around; from vaccine denial to COVID denial to climate denial and so on, I think that one of the interesting aspects of Holocaust denial is that it was a trial run that occurred in the 1980s 1990s of actually what we're seeing today. Trial, almost like a laboratory experiment, of how do people deny, what does it take to deny, what actually does it take to actually establish reality in a narrative? And so when I was asked to join the case, the defense team of Deborah Lipstadt who was being sued by David Irving, a English Holocaust denier, for libel in a British court, I basically took a year off of sabbatical to basically research this phenomenon. I very much went back also to the great what we might call epistemological questions, the questions of how do we know what we know? And going back to 17th century philosophers who talk about skepticism, can we have radical skepticism, under what conditions can we actually challenge a particular motion, when is it okay to accept something going back to legal theory? When actually do we have enough certainty to convict a man or a woman and chop his or her head off? Questions about negotiating a world in which in principle, we can always say, I don't believe this, I don't believe that. But then if we never have any certainty about anything, that we really cannot move forward, either individually or collectively. So I was interested in those questions. So in my choice of the term negationist, I in some way, try to show that larger context in which I was operating. And also, I wanted to connect back to a discourse, an argument that had been made first in the 1950s, by the Jewish German and later American philosopher, Hannah Arendt, who in 1941, ends up in New York after having fled from a German concentration camp or a French concentration camp controlled by Germans. And in a very famous book called The Origins of Totalitarianism, she basically says that one of the central characteristics of fascism, that is also national socialism, and she also puts it totalitarian communism in the statement, is that they basically attempt to acquire control over people and are successful in it for a considerable time, at least, they were in the 1920s and 30s, and 40s, by shaking the belief of people that they actually can understand reality to make everything into a question mark. And of course, in English, we have the term gaslighting for that. This idea is that nothing is sorted anymore. And so when people are put in a position in which everything might be a lie, ever say might be just a fiction, then in some way they become, as she said, the perfect raw material for a fascist state. And so again, by moving the focus a little bit away from the denial of the Holocaust, per se, to denial of reality, I thought that my work might have a somewhat larger relevance. Mike Isaacson: Okay, so now on to the negationists, who are these people that we're talking about? Robert Jan Van Pelt: Now, they're not the people who one would expect. If we talk about common parlance Holocaust about negationists who denied the Holocaust, one would first expect that the people who would have denied the Holocaust were Germans who were involved in the Holocaust, and who found themselves in front of allied courts after the war, and who were pleading for their lives. Now, they did plead for their lives, of course, but they didn't say that the Holocaust didn't happen, and hence, they were not guilty of any involvement in the Holocaust, like the shooting of two civilians, or putting them on transports to death camps, and so on. What they said, yes, it happened but that I only had a very minor role in it, or I wasn't there, or you really got the wrong man. So generally in the 1940s, and the 1950s, when these trials happened, and even later, the 1960s, the general statement of these perpetrators was, yes, it happened but it happens to be that I had no role in it or that my role was not that important. When we talk about Holocaust deniers, we have a different phenomenon. They actually say that it never happened, that it's all a fiction, that it is all basically created, in the case of Irving by the British Secret Service as a piece of war propaganda in the 1940s, during the war, and that it was basically a piece of atrocity propaganda, and that this atrocity propaganda got a second life after the war. Now, then the question is, who are the people who basically are carrying that message? And it's a very kind of motley crew, they are people from different backgrounds and I've always found this very interesting. When we look at the 1950s at the first Holocaust deniers, they actually come from the extreme left. And they come out of a particular French situation, many of them are Frenchmen. And the denial itself in the beginning isn't that much related to the Holocaust, but it is actually related to the Soviet concentration camps. The Soviet Union was in the 1930s, the 1920s and 30s, and also the 1940s. Of course, for many communists in France, and also elsewhere, it was utopia realized, especially after 1941, when the Red Army had an incredibly important role in ultimately crushing the Third Reich and defeating Marxism. In 1945, the Soviet Union was seen by many in the West as a heroic nation, a nation that that could be credited, and rightly so, with an incredible contribution to the defeat of Hitler. Many people say that around 90% of all of the soldiers who died in the second world war on the Allied side were Soviet soldiers. And so in 1945, and 46, in France, communism was a very popular political choice. It was a choice that expressed gratitude of people who were anti fascists, and rightly so, for the achievement of the Soviet Union. And it showed the promise of a new world. What happened was that, in the late 1940s, stories started to circulate about the good luck. That, in fact, the old system of camps that had existed at Sarris times and then also later in the 1930s, had not disappeared. And a Soviet defector came to the United States and started basically giving an account of all the Soviet camps, his name was Kravchenko. And many communists, especially in France, said, this is all made up, they don't exist, these concentration camps don't exist. They are a piece of CIA propaganda, because of course, it took place during the Cold War. And it very much served American propaganda interests to show that the Soviet Union, especially Europe, that the Soviet Union was a horrible state that nobody ever should vote communist. And so the discourse of a concentration camp system being a complete fiction, created, in this case by a malicious agent, that is the CIA, began in France. And then it didn't take that much at a certain moment for in hindsight, or in a second interpretation of this discourse for the concentration camp system to become the German concentration camp system, that this was as much a fiction as the Gulag was, or had been as much of fiction that the survivors were liars, so that had been created by Allied propaganda. And once that was set in motion, that idea, you get a number of people who, for different reasons, start to become members of that in-group, members of a group of people who are interested in working out in some way that narrative that denies first a concentration camp system. And a number of them were actually concentration camp survivors, interestingly enough, most important one, French Michael [unintelligible 13:45:12], who had been in a concentration camp as an inmate, but he had never seen anything that resembled gas chambers and crematoria. And he said, "The camps were bad, but certainly they were not extermination machines, they were not factories of death, of murder." And then you've get a sociological phenomenon of groups of people who bond over this common course, and attract then, in the 1970s, what I would call the intellectuals, a number of people who could join this movement, especially in France again. So it doesn't start in Germany, it starts in France. And the most important of men who in some way then starts to supply a theory and a whole body of work is a professor of literature, whose name is Robert Faurisson and who teaches literary theory at the University of Lille in France. Mike Isaacson: There were some other names in your book that you gave, you gave Arthur Butz. Who else? There was a guy...Staglich? Robert Jan Van Pelt: I would say there are many people who will start to make a contribution. I worked with Errol Morris on a movie, Mr. Death: The Rise and Fall of Fred Leuchter, Jr. and we were discussing and making the movie, and actually I'm quoted in the movie, how do these people get together? What is their motivation? And I said, "Some way it is like a club because like the rotary club or the Freemasonry, you get into it, you don't really know what you're getting into it. But once you get into it, you get really committed to it because it becomes part of your social life." Arthur Butz, professor of electrical engineering at Northwestern University, got interested. People get interested in the argument, they get interested in the nuts and bolts of the series. You have many buffs, you have many people who are interested in history, and their history buffs. And what makes a history buff, at a certain moment, different from a historian, is that a history buff always focuses on the detail and gets completely fascinated by the detail. And that can be a detail of the uniform, of the correct uniform of a civil war and actor. And of course, there are many of them in the United States, and that's all perfectly innocent. But sometimes there are history buffs who get focused on a detail like Sherlock Holmes. They see themselves as a Sherlock Holmes, and they think that there is a hidden reality that is not being stated, that is being hidden from the world. And that by focusing on the detail in the way that Sherlock Holmes does that in his of course, fictional investigations, that is, in some way, the way to the truth. And it has to do to with the CSI effect, which is idea of the fact that history can be recovered, can be, in some way, unveiled by the study of a detail. And of course, that makes incredibly good television. So a person like Butz, I think, gets interested in all kinds of what seemed to be very obscure details of the accounts of for example, the gas chambers or the crematoria is very suspicious, doesn't believe that the reality as told is really reality as it happened. And then gets interested in analyzing these details in such a way that this whole new world in some way is revealed once the detail is unmasked as a lie. And so it takes a certain mindset of people who in some way fall for the myth of Sherlock Holmes, or want to be Sherlock Holmes, but of course that is not normally the way that reality can be discovered even not, I would say in a criminal investigation. Mike Isaacson: Okay, so now let's talk about Auschwitz. Why Auschwitz? What about Auschwitz makes it command some attention? Robert Jan Van Pelt: So it commands a lot of attention, both for Holocaust deniers, they focus most of their attacks on the evidence of Auschwitz. But also, they do that because in some way many Holocaust story and some people who think about the Holocaust, if you hear the word Holocaust, and you ask an ordinary person in the street, does any name come to mind when you hear the word Holocaust of the place? Most people will say Auschwitz. In 1945, in the west, in Europe, they probably would have said American Belton. But since the 1970s, that is certainly Auschwitz. And there are very legitimate reasons for that. And I can just name a few of them. The first is that Auschwitz is the single largest place where Jews were massacred not only Jews, but also separatists normally, or Soviet prisoners of war. Also, other victims group in the Holocaust, one could say, and of course, also Polish non-Jewish patriots who were murdered there. Now, if we just accept for a moment to rough estimate of 6 million Jews victims of the Holocaust, then 1 million of them were murdered in Auschwitz. So that's the first thing. It is the largest of the extermination camps, the second largest Treblinka had a death toll of around 850,000, and then it goes down. So it is the biggest. The second, which is very important, is that Auschwitz is a place for which victims came from all over Europe. So, quite often, extermination camps that were very important in the Holocaust, and I give one example, Belzec that had 550,000 victims, but Belzec which was at that time in eastern Poland, it's still in eastern Poland today, it had a reasonable function. The victims came from around 200 miles 150 miles from around Belzec. It was a very densely settled area with Jews. Traditionally, it was the heartland of the Jews, around Lviv today in the Ukraine. But Auschwitz had victims coming from all over Europe, from Greece, from France, from the Netherlands, from Germany, from Italy, from Poland, and so on. So basically, when we talk about the Holocaust as a pan-European phenomenon, something that touched almost every European nation, that was either occupied or ruled by Germany. Then Auschwitz talks about that pan-European dimension of the Holocaust. The third thing is that Auschwitz is unique in that it doesn't have only gas chambers, and the word homicidal or genocidal gas chambers in Belzec, in Treblinka and Sobibor, in Majdanek and Kamno, but the gas chambers were actually part of crematoria. There were buildings in which the victims were brought into the building, they were then murdered in the gas chamber and their corpses were incinerated in that very same building. And you did not have that combination in the other camps, that is that if you have gas chambers in Treblinka, then after the murder, the corpses of the victims were taken out of those gas chambers and originally they were buried to mass graves, and later the bodies were incinerated on open pyres. So, what happens when you get a gas chamber that is in a building that has very complicated ovens, I mean ovens in the case of crematoria two and three that have the incineration capacity of almost 1500 corpses per day, you get actually a very complex building. Architects get involved, engineers get involved, a lot of money gets involved, because the buildings need to be constructed. Which means also that there is going to be a lot of evidence. We have no designs for the gas chambers in Treblinka, they didn't survive, they probably were drawn up on the proverbial back of an envelope or on a napkin. This is how architects quite conceive of their projects. But in the case of Auschwitz, because these were expensive buildings, it took time to build, they took resources, financial and also in building materials, there's a lot of evidence about that. And in this case, also, that's important, because when you have to commit a lot of resources in a crime, the crime of genocide, then it becomes very clear that it's intentional. And just to go back for a moment, in 1941 or 42, around 2 million Russian Jews were murdered in the then occupied Soviet Union, that would be today's Ukraine, Belarus, and the Baltic countries mainly, and a little bit of today's Russia also. They were murdered with men having rifles, by execution platoons, and so on. But those machine guns and those rifles had not been created to murder civilians, they had been created to be used in battle. So in that case, if you go to the smoking gun in those massacres, those killings, like the one in BabynYa in Kiev, that 80th anniversary will be happening in two months in the beginning of October, then you have the smoking gun, so to speak, you never can say this gun was actually made for the purpose of killing civilians. But if you go to a homicidal gas chamber in Auschwitz, and then you basically see it in relationship to the crematoriums that are in the same building, it's very easy to move the corpses from the gas chambers to that crematorium often, then basically, you have an installation that can only make sense in terms of a genocide, in terms of killing innocent civilians, civilians who cannot resist. Those gas chambers have no possible imaginable role in a battle. Now, you cannot, in some way, trick armed soldiers to go into a gas chamber and then you close the door and you bring in the gas. So in the case of Auschwitz, the fact that we have these very sophisticated expensive buildings that basically can only be explained from the perspective of genocide, actually, of which there were two is very important because the Auschwitz crematory and gas chambers are undeniable in that sense, as tools of genocide. And then the last reason is that actually, there's still a lot of stuff left enough. It's not only in terms of ruins, the ruins of this crematoria, but also there is a lot of paperwork preserved in the archives. And then finally, unlike these other camps, these extermination camps, Treblinka, Sobibor, and Belzec, Belzec had only two survivors, extremely effective extermination camp. Sobibor around 250, Treblinka around 200, but around 100,000, people actually left Auschwitz alive. Because Auschwitz was not only an extermination camp, but it was also a slave labor camp. And so this is why you have in Auschwitz, these selections upon arrival of the Jews where basically those who can't work are sent immediately to the gas chambers. And those who can work are basically worked to death or until they are moved somewhere else. And so what you have in the case of Auschwitz is enormous amount of eyewitness evidence. Not necessarily what happens right inside the gas chamber, it's impossible to have eyewitness evidence of that in a squared nature of the killing in the gas chamber, but eyewitness evidence of these buildings, the chimneys, the smoke. And then also in the case of the two slave workers that worked in the crematoria. A lot of eyewitness evidence was produced by them after the war, there were enough survivors of them to give evidence immediately after the war. And even a number of them had some good abilities to draw what they had seen. So there's also drawn evidence. So all in all, Auschwitz is in some way the crown jewel, in a sense, in the case that the Holocaust did happen, because of the nature of the evidence and the amount of the evidence that we have about the place. And that is exactly the reason that Holocaust deniers or negationists attack Auschwitz, because they want to attack that evidence. Mike Isaacson: So Irving's principle claim is that far fewer people die at Auschwitz in the Holocaust in general, than is the general consensus among historians. So you mentioned that a million people died at Auschwitz. How did we arrive at that number? Robert Jan Van Pelt: The number has evolved over time. And that actually is one of the reasons that in about 1990, the Holocaust deniers said you can never trust any number. When the Soviet, the Red Army, arrived on the 27th of January 1945 in Auschwitz, they had to make an informed guess immediately about a number of people that had been murdered in Auschwitz. And their first guess was around 5 million. And they didn't define who these people were. These were citizens of European nationals, they said. The Soviets were always very hesitant to actually divide the victims into groups. These were 5 million troops or 1 million troops, whatever like that, they never really wanted to go in there. They didn't want to separate the troops out. Then, the first forensic committee that was working there, reduced it to 4 million on the basis of almost no extra evidence, basically talking about the cremation capacity of the ovens. And said the ovens would have cremated so many bodies per day, these ovens existed in these four buildings for so many days, we assume that they were in operation 80% of the time, so they came to 4 million. Already at that time, basically, Jewish demographer said this is impossible. And they basically put the number closer to 1.5 million. They said, "Where would all those people have come from?" And in 1946, Rudolf Hoess, the commandant of Auschwitz from 1940 to 1943, he was then relieved of his duty, was arrested and ultimately tried. He testified first in Nuremberg as a witness and then was tried in Poland. And he wrote his memoirs while he was in prison before he was executed. And he also testified, he said, "The 4 million figure is absolutely obtainable. My calculations are that we murdered around 1.1 million people in Auschwitz during my reign as commandant." So he didn't have the whole period, but he had long enough. And by implication, if we then also take the murder rates during the time of his successor, this would have meant that the total number that he would agree to as a commandant, as a witness, as a person around the place, around 1.6 million. And he gave a detailed accounting of where those victims would have come from. He said, "The only way that you can really look at it, is to look at the transports. Which transports of Jews arrived in Auschwitz, at what time, how many people were in each transport, and how many of the transport were killed on arrival. And so there were really two numbers by, let's say, 1950. The first number was based on Hoess' testimony. And that was somewhere one and a half million. And then the second number was the official number that was fixed by the Russians. It was the Cold War. Of course Auschwitz was in Poland, it was being ruled by the communists. That was the official number of 4 million, but it didn't give any details of where those 4 million people would have come from. And so at the memorial in Auschwitz in the 1950s 60s 70s, and 80s, that said, 4 million people were murdered here, but it didn't give a breakdown of that number. However, at the Auschwitz Museum, which was a very professional Museum, it is basically the organization, the institution that preserves the Auschwitz site, it's a Poland State Museum, the historical department had already started to work on a detailed analysis of transports, and of course, the Germans had destroyed much of the evidence, and they had to come to the conclusion that the total number of people who had been deported to Auschwitz was 1.3 million. And the total of number of people that had been murdered in Auschwitz was 1.1 million. And that number still stands, by and large. When they used to say murdered in Auschwitz, the question is how? Because even if you were to say, "Okay, we accept the figure, 1.1 million people died in Auschwitz." then the question, of course, remains did they die of natural deaths or that were they actually murdered? People died in Auschwitz in all different ways. People were murdered in gas chambers. Majority of people were murdered as they did slave labor, they were beaten to death on the site by overseers. People were murdered during torture sessions in the camp, the [unintelligible 33:37:22], people were murdered when they were ill, when they were seen that they could work anymore, they were given an injection in the heart, which was poison. But also people died as a result of infectious diseases, for example, typhus, or they died as a result of starvation. And so the question now is, how did people die? And can we "blame" the Germans for all of those deaths? So one of the things that deniers like Irving did early on, is to say, "Okay, we accept that Auschwitz and also other camps are really deadly places. But almost everyone died as a result of typhus, as infectious diseases." And we might say that the Germans were not acting wisely by bringing so many people together in the place. But ultimately, typhus happens also in other places. So we can't really say that the deaths as a result of typhus are part of a genocidal programme. They might be more part of mismanagement by the camp, or they are the result and this is actually blaming the allies now, turning the finger to the allies, they are the result of the terrible conditions created in Germany as the result of the Allied bombings. And in that case, the deniers point actually to Bergen-Belsen, which in 1945 was liberated by the British Army. And that became the symbol of the German death camps because of a lot of news, men arrived to the British troops in Bergen-Belsen on the 15th of April 1945. And what you saw in Bergen-Belsen, that camp had never had any gas chambers, they had never had any crematoria. It was, for most of its history, a relatively good camp to be. If you look at all of the options in the German concentration camp system, it was one of the better camps. But what the Allied soldiers saw in 1945 was the result of the typhus epidemic. And the typhus epidemic, according to Holocaust deniers, was the result basically the disintegration of the German economy and the German system to supply the camps with food and so on. And they ultimately decided if you have to blame anyone for the situation in Bergen-Belsen, these are the Allied bombardments which have destroyed the food and other infrastructure of Germany. And so, this is where many deniers are. They are in this grey zone. What they will say is that, "Okay, we agree that people died, they didn't die because a number of SS men put them in a gas chamber, and then supplied the chamber with cyanide, they died as a result of typhus." And this is in that discourse in the early 1990s, when actually an American historian at Princeton, basically endorsed this vision, his name was Arno Mayer in a book Why did the heavens not darken? that man like Irving was very much encouraged to take the position which he took, which he said, "This is all a big misunderstanding really. Auschwitz was not a good place to be but blame the bacteria, don't blame the Germans." Mike Isaacson: Okay, so moving along. Robert Faurisson has an infamous line, “No holes, no Holocaust.” So, what does that line mean, and what is the significance of the holes? Robert Jan Van Pelt: Yeah. So this goes back to the idea of show me the smoking gun, show me the evidence. Now, the two of the major gas chambers in Auschwitz, two of the crematoriums, which were the largest factories of deaths, they were underground gas chambers. And so now the question is, how did the gas enter into the gas chambers? Was it removed after the gassing, but also how did it enter? Now, people hear the word gas, they think that gas would have been pumped into a gas chamber through a system of pipes. But that actually was not the case in these Auschwitz crematoria. The gas that was used in Auschwitz was actually a delousing product, a cyanide delousing project that came in a tip. And it was really to use in ships of the Navy, it was also to use to kill vermin in grain silos because of course, all kinds of vermins would be eating the grain, it would be used on the front in the battlefield to delouse the uniforms of soldiers. Lice is everywhere where we have a lot of people who are camped wash and spent a lot of time together. So, what happened was that in the First World War, the German army had developed a delousing agent, that basically consisted of cyanide and that was commercially marketed since the 1920s. It was liquid cyanide that is soaked in either gypsum like substance or in paper discs. That happens in factory conditions. And then these paper discs or this gypsum full of cyanide is then packed in a tin, ordinary tin like canned tomatoes or something like that. In that tin, the cyanide has a shelf life of over six months. And so those tins can be shipped to whoever ultimately needs delousing job. And then what happens is that if you need to delouse, let's say a tom of clothing, then you put this in a room, seal the room, the windows and so on, and the doors, but keep one door that you can open and close, go into the room with a gas mask, open the tin with an ordinary tin opener, and then throw the contents on the floor, in this case the gypsum or the paper discs with the cyanide in it. What happens is that the cyanide will start to de-gas from the substance in it with a soak. And it will do so for around 24 hours. It de-gases very slowly because it needs not only to destroy the vermin, but also their eggs. And that takes a long time, it takes 24 hours. And immediately after the soldier or the medic has put all of that stuff on the floor, he walks out of the room and then closes the door, tapes the door so that it is sealed, takes off his gas mask and then you have to wait for 24 hours until the degassing has stopped and all of the vermin and the eggs basically are destroyed. This was the way that in Auschwitz, lethal gas was used gas chambers. Now, the problem with homicidal gas chamber is that you cannot simply put people in a room and then have a medic come in with a gas chamber with a gas mask, and then open a couple of tins, throw the contents on the floor and then walk out. That's not going to work. You need to introduce the gas in a different way. So the construction that the Germans used was that they had holes in the roof. In the case of those crematorium two and three, they had four holes in the roof. And in the first incarnation of a gas chamber, now if it was a crematorium two, they had to open the cover and then they dumped the contents of the tin inside the room. So that fell on top of the people who were crowded in tight room and then they closed the cover again and waited for 24 hours. And then opened the doors and started airing the place until people could come in and take the corpses out. That worked well until daily transport started to arrive of which people needed to be murdered. Now, the problem was the cyclone B as it was being shipped to Auschwitz, that it had this 24 degassing cycle. The degassing is very slow from the material in which the cyanide soaked. And if you're in a hurry, and the SS was formed late 1942 in Auschwitz in a hurry because of the daily arrival of train, so you needed to have the gas chamber available relatively quickly after it had been used and you needed to burn the corpses of the people who had been killed basically within the next 24 hours before the next train arrives with victims, you couldn't afford any more to wait for the 24 hours for the degassing to stop. The moment that everyone was murdered, and that mostly happened after 10 15 minutes, you wanted to basically be able to enter the gas chamber and then start cleaning up the gas chamber. Taking out the corpses you take out the gold off the teeth and so on, and then bring the corpses to the ovens. So the key to that operation was that you now had to remove the still degassing cyclone from the room 15 minutes after you had introduced it. That was the technical problem. And the technical solution was to actually lower now with let's call it a little basket. Put all of the contents of the tin in the basket, lower that basket into the room, basically murder everyone within the first 15 minutes because that's the time it takes with that cyanide concentration, and then hoists the basket out of the room through that same hole in which you have lowered it and discard the still degassing cyclone on the roof of the building. The problem of course, is that if you simply have a dive basket going down into a room, the victims can interfere with it. So the solution to prevent the interference of the victims with that lowering of the cyclone into the room was to create a wire mesh column, a cage around it, so it is lowered in the center of a cage. And the victims can see it. And through the cage, all of the cyclone material, the cyanide can drift into the room, but they cannot actually interfere with it. And so four of those cages existed in crematorium two and the gas chamber in four and crematorium three. The problem in terms of evidence is that we have a lot of eyewitness evidence of these cages, these columns as they're called, these gas columns. We have evidence of the man who made it in 1942, we have evidence of people who worked in those gas chambers, cleaning it up afterwards, and who survived the war. We have evidence even by Rudolf Hoess, but none of these cages survived because they were taken out before the destruction of the crematoria at the time that Auschwitz was evacuated at the end of the war. So first of all, we don't have those cages anymore, those columns. Second of all, we don't have drawings, we don't have original drawings, we don't have blueprints, because they were added into the building after the building was almost completed. And so Holocaust deniers, and especially Robert Faurisson, have said, "Because you cannot show me those cages, because you cannot show me the original blueprints, they'd never existed." And on top of that, those cages connected to the outside world through a hole because at the top of the cage was a hole and the cyclone was lowered through that hole in the cage. So they said, "If you cannot show me those holes in the concrete roof of the gas chamber, if there are no holes there at the alleged place where they were, then you can never say that actually there was any means of introducing the cyclone into those underground spaces." The problem with such roofs is that they were dynamited at the end of the war by the SS. And so they were destroyed, they're basically in pieces. So, how do you now show into a dynamited concrete slab in which there are many holes? No, the whole steps were purposely created to allow for the introduction of the cyclone. And a friend of mine, the late Harry Marcel, actually solved that problem in the year 2000 at a time of the Irving trial when he went to some forensic archaeological expedition to Auschwitz, and actually was in the case of crematory two, able to locate three of the four holes by looking actually at an important design detail. They said when you create a hole in the concrete slab, you have to do something with the rebar because if a rebar would probably run through that hole in some way, you cannot have that, otherwise the hole doesn't function. So what you do before you pour the concrete, you cut the rebar at the point and you bend to the end of the rebar back 180 degrees. And those kinds of details are still visible in the slab of that covered gas chamber of crematorium two. So in that sense, we have the forensic evidence, the physical material forensic evidence for the existence of those holes. Mike Isaacson: Okay, another thing I've seen negationists take aim at is the lack of insulation on the lights in the gas chambers. So, according to them cyanide is explosive and would have ignited in such a room. So, why is this a lie? Robert Jan Van Pelt: This the argument might be right, cyanide can be explosive, but the question is what concentration? Chemical substances behave very differently and behave at different concentrations. And the Auschwitz cyanide gas chambers operated at a very low concentration, it doesn't take that much to murder people. It takes around 500 600 parts per million and then you will be dead in 10 minutes. So the argument is derived from high concentration of cyanide into gas chambers. I certainly have not replicated the thing in a lab, so I must say that in this case, I need to lean on the authority of others. But basically, I have been taught that this can be all explained because of the low concentration of cyanide used in the Auschwitz gas chambers. Mike Isaacson: Right. So one of the strongest pieces of supposed evidence comes from Fred Leuchter, who claimed to have illegally taken a brick from Auschwitz to run some forensic tests. So, what can we say about Leuchter's tests? Robert Jan Van Pelt: Now, of course, the strongest piece of supposed evidence that the Auschwitz gas chambers would never use these gas chambers. In 1988, he went to Auschwitz to take samples of the walls of the homicidal gas chambers, and also of the walls of delousing chambers, that used cyclones. And so he did a compare and contrast method. One of the big differences, and in the case of the walls of the homicidal gas chambers, he said there's very little cyanide in there. And in the case of the level of cyanide in the delousing chambers, he said, "When we take samples, there's a very high concentration of cyanide." Now, there were many different problems. First of all, there were problems, this is basic assumptions. And if you go into delousing chambers, you see actually that the walls are blue, that these are originally whitewash walls that became blue. And this is Prussian blue, and it actually indicates the pigment is the result of binding of cyanide molecules with iron, basically the result is ferro ferricyanide, and that creates a blue pigment. Now, why do you get that cyanide deposit in the wall that creates this blue stain? The first reason is typically, in these delousing chambers, cyanide could be used in high concentration, it would be used over a long period of time, that is typically 24 hours at a time and this were also used continuously. And in order for Prussian blue, for ferro ferricyanide to form, it can only form when there is actually a low level of carbon dioxide in the room. And this actually has been replicated forensic labs in Poland. However, when you have a relatively high level of carbon dioxide in the room, as when you have also the cyclone material, the carbon dioxide prevents the formation of this pigment, prevents the binding of the cyanide with the iron atom. And this is why in homicidal gas chambers, you typically will not find this blue pigment, unless that homicidal gas chamber was also used for delousing. So this is one line of explanation. The second thing has to do with the fact that the homicidal gas chambers were basically destroyed. What Leuchter did was take samples of bricks that had been exposed to the elements by the time he came there for 35 years. The plaster that had covered the brick didn't exist anymore. It was very few samples, so that he took actually, the samples from the brick. That brick had not been exposed to cyanide at all because it had been covered by plaster. So the problem is his samples that he took from the homicidal gas chambers is that we actually do not know if they were ever exposed to cyanide because they would have been covered. And also then he took samples, we don't really know how much of the dilution of the sample material. We don't know how deep he went. So none of these things was ever recorded. So ultimately, chemists who have looked at his methods say this has no value whatsoever. This is the most amateurist forensic investigation. And certainly, the argument also of the complete different chemical conditions that exist in a homicidal gas chamber. That is especially because of the high level of carbon dioxide, the results of the breathing of the victims before they die, and the absence of a heightened level of carbon dioxide in delousing gas chambers provide enough evidence to show that Leuchter's results are worse. Mike Isaacson: Okay, so like I mentioned earlier in the show, you're the chief curator of Auschwitz: Not Long Ago, Not Far Away. What does Auschwitz have to teach the public today? Robert Jan Van Pelt: Yeah, there's no simple lesson. Some people will say what hatred can do. I'm a professor in an architecture school, for me, when I talk with my students about places like Auschwitz, I like to look at the macro level, at the role of professionals, of architects of people who get involved in creating these places, and who do this without really asking themselves any questions of what they're making. Or if they ask those questions, who do not really care how things are going to be used. Nowadays, bureaucrats, engineers, all of us, many of us have an incredible amount of power of ability to influence the lives of other people for good or for evil. And, of course, we find it very much right now on a very individual level when we're talking about vaccines, and masking and so on. And, in many ways, for me Auschwitz, it's not a story of a number of evil geniuses who are plotting to create hell on earth, certainly, that was a part of it. Certainly, there are moments in the history of that camp where you can say, "This is one of the major crimes in history that is being planned here." But it's also a story of a hell of a lot of people who with great thoughtlessness get themselves involved in this, and then at a certain moment, don't have the backbone to pull out. And, as a historian, I went into the research of this camp because so much evidence is there, in order to find in some way that diabolical dimension. And in the end, yes, the result is diabolical. But for the rest, I became actually fascinated by the incredible importance of mediocrity, of lies, of people lying to themselves, of where they are and what they're doing. And in that sense, I think that Auschwitz is in many ways, also a good metaphor of the situation we find ourselves in today. Mike Isaacson: Yeah, I believe Arendt called it the banality of evil, right? Robert Jan Van Pelt: Evil is not banal. Obviously, evil is not banal, but it's banal dimension to evil. And very few people do bad things because they want to do bad things. But most of us end up doing bad things because we're lazy, because we're intellectually lazy, because we do not basically ask for the truth. Because we're willing to basically make empty slogans into a convenient truth for ourselves so that we do not have to look in the mirror and do have to face very inconvenient facts. And we are right now clearly in many different ways, both climatalogically but also socially and politically on the crossroads. And when you have to make decision on what road you want to go, you have to ask tough questions to yourself. And certainly none of the people who were involved with Auschwitz between 1940 and 45 asked any of those tough questions. Mike Isaacson: All right, Dr. Van Pelt, thank you so much for coming on the podcast to debunk the Holocaust negationists. To learn more about Auschwitz and its detractors, check out The Case for Auschwitz: Evidence from the Irving Trial. Thanks again. Robert Jan Van Pelt: Thanks very much. It was wonderful to be with you. Mike Isaacson: If you liked what you heard and want to contribute to making this podcast, consider subscribing to our Patreon. Patrons get early access to episodes and free merch. You can also make a one-time donation to our PayPal or Cash App with the username NaziLies. Include your mailing address to get some swag. [Theme song]

Ahead of the para events at Tokyo 2020 (in 2021), we investigate the history of the Paralympic Games. Our special Paralympian guest is two-time swimming medalist Peter Hill. Long before it became a Paralympic sport, Peter was also involved in the early development of murderball (yes, that's a real sport), and he's dabbled in many more para-sports. How are some questions for after you listen to today's episode: What's my favourite Paralympic sport? What does the Greek word “para” mean? What was the name of the UK hospital which used sports to try to help injured people after World War II? And what was the name of the Jewish-German doctor who ran the program at that hospital? What happened on 29 July 1948, the same day as the London 1948 Olympic Games began? When did the first Winter Paralympic Games happen? Read industry reviews of Dad's World War II novels, A Chance Kill and The Slightest Chance, at paulletters.com. Available on Kindle, as well as in paperback. Dad's first wartime novel, A Chance Kill, is a love-story/thriller based on real events in Poland, Paris, London and Prague. The Slightest Chance follows the remarkable true story of the only escape from Japanese imprisonment by a Western woman during World War II. Please rate and review us wherever you get podcasts. And share our podcast on social media and recommend it to friends – that's how we'll keep going. We'll be back on the first Monday of next month! Podcast cover art by Molly Austin All instrumental music is from https://filmmusic.io and composed by Kevin MacLeod (https://incompetech.com) License: CC BY (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) Sound effects used under RemArc Licence. Copyright 2021 © BBC

Sebastian Haffner was a non-Jewish German who emigrated to England in 1938. This memoir (written in 1939 but only published now for the first time) begins in 1914 when the family summer holiday is cut short by the outbreak of war, and ends with Hitler's assumption of power in 1933. It is a portrait of himself and his own generation in Germany, those born between 1900 and 1910, and brilliantly explains through his own experiences and those of his friends how that generation came to be seduced by Hitler and Nazism.

Kristallnacht, or The Night of Broken Glass, was the national pogrom against Jewish German citizens devised by Hitler and his associates, and carried out by soldiers, and what we now refer to as "everyday German citizens". They myth that there was a more rational Germany hidden beneath the rabid lust for blood displayed by the nazis is nothing more than historical revision. Hundreds of thousands of people, some in uniforms and some not, actively participated in the bloodshed, beating Jewish people in the street, burning their places of worship to the ground, and robbing their places of business. Millions more "everyday German citizens", most of them good Christians by today's standards, cheered as the blood flowed freely in the streets. On that fateful night 30,000 Jewish men were arrested and taken to concentration camps, the first time Hitler issued orders to arrest people strictly because they were Jewish. As is the fashion of fascistic dictators, Hitler blamed the event on the murder of a German diplomat, but the plan had been in the works for some time prior. The nazis then codified their dastardly plan to exterminate the Jewish people by initiating a billion Reischmark atonement tax, and enacting discriminatory laws. Of course the only way that such an horrible plan could come to fruition was the evil genius factor or at least that is how some historians recall it. In fact, Hitler was an awful leader. His famed promise of a 1,000 years of German supremacy lasted only twelve years. Further, he completely ruined his own burgeoning economy, much of which was acquired by denying Jewish people the right to conduct business, by fighting battles that he had no chance of winning. His obsession with exterminating the Jewish race was also his downfall. Had Hitler not poured so much money into the despicable final solution, he may have been able to pull off a sound defeat of the allies. So, how did such an obvious buffoon become the nation's fearless leader? What happened to the moderates? Where were, as they like to call themselves, the voices of reason? Well, moderates are one of the reasons Hitler came to power in the first place. The motto back then, as it is today, was to simply not get involved, to allow god to handle it, or, in a blunt sense, to ignore all wrong-doing. This avoidance allows one to distance themselves from violent actions committed against their neighbors. You can always place the blame on others when you do not feel obligated to act. Had the German people not sat back and observed Hitler's party go from an obscure group of clowns to the identity of the nation, I would not even be doing this episode in the first place. I cannot possibly overstate the need for outspokenness in a time when our civil liberties are under constant attack. The right does not bow to intimidation, and neither should we. However, instead of charging the capitol like a bunch of buffoons, or subjecting our families to fear with unchecked militias, it is high time that we raised our voices against the pervasive idiocy of right wing extremism. The right has clearly demonstrated that they have no interest in working together, so it obviously follows that we should remain apart on certain issues. There is nothing wrong with disagreeing. Civil disobedience must be our call to action. We need not waste our time attacking conservative institutions; we need only show them for the shams that they all are, built upon the blood and sweat of our ancestors, they are the hollow tombs that Christians love to refer to. So raise your voice before it is silenced by the oath keepers who have rejected our way of life. Shout at the top of your lungs. Sing the song of freedom out loud for if you do not someone will force to sing a different song, a song that will no doubt be built upon the blood and sweat of your children. Do not be silenced. Do not be complicit. Do not be moderate. Do not be another innocent bystander. --- This episode is sponsored by · Anchor: The easiest way to make a podcast. https://anchor.fm/app Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/morecontentplease/support

In a lonesome spot on North Mahanoy Mountain, near the No. 3 Reservoir on Waste House Run, lies a grave with a peculiar history. This is the final resting place of Jost Folhaber, a Jewish-German merchant who became the first known murder victim in Schuylkill County. This spot, known locally as "Peddler's Grave", has been one of the Coal Region's best-kept secrets ever since Folhaber's gruesome death in the summer of 1797.

From stories of amazing resilience to Jewish naming traditions. My guest, professional genealogist Caitlin Hollander (from Hollander-Waas Jewish Heritage Services) shares her family history stories, advice on researching Jewish ancestors and so much more. Resources:Support the podcast & buy me a cup of coffee https://ko-fi.com/genealogystories (Ko-fi.com/genealogystories) www.genealogystories.co.uk/jewish-genealogy and https://www.hollander-waas.com/ (https://www.hollander-waas.com/) Minute Notes:[00:47] How did you get started tracing your family history? Caitlin shares stories of her grandfather. [02:15] I ask Caitlin about her heritage, from a mix of backgrounds including Jewish and Italian. [03:18] Caitlin shares stories about her favourite ancestors - in particular about a grandmother that married the local butcher. We chat about our female ancestors and their careers. [05:00] Caitlin explains her Jewish-German ancestors, the terrible impact of Holocaust and survival stories. [09:58] How does Caitlin cope with researching such harrowing stories? [14:00] If you could meet anyone of your ancestors - who would you meet and why? Caitlin shares stories of the resilient women in her tree, whom often defied convention. We share some stories about our favourite female ancestors and how we relate to them as women. [16:30] Caitlin explains the use of Jewish mother's surnames, the fluidity of surnames and the use of patronyms within Ashkenazi Jewish communities. [21:46] What kind of markers do you use to ensure you've found the right person? What impact has DNA had upon your research techniques? Caitlin explains the pro's and con's of working with endogamy within genetic genealogy research. She delves into the inter-marriage between certain families and how this can help you to ascertain whether you are on the "right track". [26:53] Caitlin shares a story about finding someone based on their signature - having to use a wide range of clues due to the fluidity of names and places. [29:33] Caitlin explains a very old Jewish tradition of re-naming the sick in order to trick the Angel of Death. She explains the way people have negotiated with these traditions. [33:33] Caitlin tells us a story about how sometimes names can tell us about our ancestors feelings about one another. [35:54] Do you have a favourite time period? Caitlin explains her love of different places and the types of records they produce. Caitlin shares why she loves tracing her family history. [37:58] How do you think the pandemic will effect the future of genealogy? [40:11] What would you say to someone who is thinking of tracing their family history - but is worried that now is not the best time? Caitlin shares her hopes, her frustrations and the loss of records and some more stories from her personal family history.

This week John shares the life of Fredericka Mandelbaum, the Jewish-German immigrant who started a school for criminals in 19th century New York and created a progeny of world class criminals like Sophie Lyons, Max Shinbaum, George Leonidas Leslie, and Alan Worth. Promo code: www.Feals.com/Profiles for 50% off your first month's membership order. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Palm Beach Opera Vocal CompetitionRenata Scotto is an Italian soprano and opera director.Don Pasquale is an opera buffa, or comic opera, in three acts by Gaetano DonizettiValència is the capital of the autonomous community of Valencia and the third-largest city in Spain.Montserrat Caballé was a Spanish operatic soprano.Arturo Toscanini was an Italian conductor.Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart was a prolific and influential composer of the classical era.Robert Schumann a German composer, pianist, and influential music critic.The Spoleto Festival (Festival dei Due Mondi) is an annual summer music and opera festival held each June to early July in Spoleto, Italy, since its founding by composer Gian Carlo Menotti in 1958.Opera Idol was an annual opera competition for amateur singers run by Cincinnati Opera.Ainadamar is the first opera by Argentinian composer Osval do Golijov.Carmen is an opera by French composer Georges Bizet.The Marriage of Figaro is an opera buffa (comic opera) composed in 1786 by Mozart.Don Carlos is a grand opera composed by Giuseppe Verdi.Diego Velázquez was a Spanish painter, the leading artist in the court of King Philip IV, and one of the most important painters of the Spanish Golden Age.Manuel de Falla was a Spanish composer.Francisco Albéniz was a Spanish virtuoso pianist, composer, and conductor.Reynaldo Hahn was a Venezuelan, naturalized French, composer, conductor, music critic, diarist, theatre director, and salon singer.Enrique Granados was a Spanish pianist and composer of classical music.Franz Joseph Haydn was an Austrian composer of the Classical period.Tomás Luis de Victoria was the most famous composer in 16th-century Spain, and was one of the most important composers of the Counter-Reformation, along with Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina and Orlando di Lasso.Antonio de Cabezón was a Spanish Renaissance composer and organist.Martín y Soler was a Spanish composer of opera and ballet. Although relatively obscure now, in his own day he was compared favorably with his contemporary, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, as a composer of opera buffa.Luigi Boccherini was an Italian composer and cellist of the Classical era whose music retained a courtly and galante style even while he matured somewhat apart from the major European musical centers.Giuseppe Domenico Scarlatti was an Italian composer.Farinelli was the stage name of Carlo Maria Michelangelo Nicola Broschi, a celebrated Italian castrato singer of the 18th century and one of the greatest singers in the history of opera.The Vienna State Opera is an Austrian opera house and opera company based in Vienna, Austria.Otto Klemperer was a Jewish German-born conductor and composer, described as "the last of the few really great conductors of his generation."Bruno Walter was a German-born conductor, pianist and composer.Herbert von Karajan was an Austrian conductor. He was principal conductor of the Berlin Philharmonic for 35 years.The Spanish National Youth Orchestra is a Spanish youth orchestra.Teresa Berganza is a Spanish mezzo-soprano.Sir Georg Solti was a Hungarian-born orchestral and operatic conductor, best known for his appearances with opera companies in Munich, Frankfurt and London, and as a long-serving music director of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra.Luisa Miller is an opera by Giuseppe Verdi.Lorin Maazel was an American conductor, violinist, and composer.Zubin Mehta is an Indian conductor of Western and Eastern classical music. He is currently music director of the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra (IPO) and Conductor Emeritus of the Los Angeles Philharmonic.Carlo Maria Giulini was an Italian conductor.The Symphony No. 5 is Beethoven’s 5th symphony and is one of the best-known compositions in classical music and one of the most frequently played symphonies.The Goldberg Variations is a musical composition for harpsichord by Johann Sebastian Bach, consisting of an aria and a set of 30 variations.La Traviata is an opera composed by Giuseppe Verdi.Roméo et Juliette (Romeo and Juliet) is an opera by Charles Gounod.Giacomo Puccini was an Italian opera composer who has been called "the greatest composer of Italian opera after Verdi."(Ravenni & Girardi n.d., Introduction.)Richard Strauss was a leading German composer of the late Romantic and early modern eras.Johannes Brahms was a German composer, pianist, and conductor of the Romantic period.Nikolaus Harnoncourt was an Austrian conductor, particularly known for his historically informed performances of music from the Classical era and earlier.Pablo Casals was a cellist, composer, and conductor from Catalonia.La 1 (La Uno, The One), is the flagship television channel of Spanish public broadcaster Radio televisión Española (RTVE).La 2 (La Dos, The Two) is Spain's second state-owned television channel for the public broadcasting service.Senegal is a country in West Africa.José Plácido Domingo is a Spanish opera, conductor, and arts administrator.Otello is an opera by Verdi.Franco Ferrara was an Italian conductor.Guido Cantelli was an Italian orchestral conductor."Fritz" Reiner was a prominent conductor of opera and symphonic music in the twentieth century.Alicia de Larrocha was a Spanish pianist and composer. She was considered one of the great piano legends of the 20th century.The Tudors is a historical fiction television series set primarily in 16th-century EnglandMedici is an Italian-British historical dramaSpotify Technology S.A. is a Swedish media-services provider founded in 2006.

The Three Escapes of Hannah Arendt, a comics biography of the Jewish-German philosopher by Ken Krimstein. Ken is also a frequent cartoonist for The New Yorker and other publications—and he grew up in Deerfield! Ken tells us how he became a cartoonist and how a cartoonist approaches the difficult life and ideas of Hannah Arendt. You can check out The Three Escapes of Hannah Arendt here at the library. Ken's book will be celebrated in an upcoming exhibition of his drawings at the Spertus Institute for Jewish Learning and Leadership in Chicago next month. We welcome your comments and feedback--please send to: podcast@deerfieldlibrary.org. More info at: http://deerfieldlibrary.org/podcast Follow us: Facebook Twitter Instagram YouTube Pinterest

On this very nerdy episode of The Sofa King Podcast, we talk about discoveries, math, and quantum shift in the world that was Albert Einstein. Virtually every discovery about Quantum Physicist is based in part on papers written by a very young Albert Einstein. By the age of 26, he proved that atoms and molecules existed; he showed that light was in fact particles called photons, and he of course came up with the famous Theory of Relativity. He won a Nobel Prize for his discoveries, and not even for his good ones! Einstein was a Jewish German, born in 1897 in Württemberg. He moved with his family to Italy and then back to Germany again. Eventually, as Hitler came to power, however, he (and great many German Jewish physicists) fled the country. Eventually, he ended up in the United States at Princeton University, where he spent the rest of his life. He was married, divorced, and gave his Nobel Prize money away as a divorce settlement. He was married again to his cousin, and he even has a “missing daughter” that nobody knew about until the 1980s. Albert Einstein’s genius was so great that every other genius of the era bowed down to him. As Quantum Physics took off (thanks to him), he backed away from it and remained the brilliant loner he always was. He was the reason the US actively pursued the development of the Atomic Bomb, after he co-wrote a letter to the president showing what a dire threat it was. Afterwards, he became friends with J. Robert Oppenhiemer for the rest of his life and lobbied for peace and the end of nuclear bombs. He was a socialist, a rebel, an early supporter of the NAACP, and he was so mistrusted by J. Edgar Hoover that he had an 1800 page FBI file gathered over the course of 22 years. So, what was he like as a person? Why were his discoveries such a big deal? Why did NASA write an article trying to prove he wasn’t a space alien? Why did the coroner steal his brain, and where is it now? Listen, laugh, learn. Openheimer Speech on Einstein: https://www.nybooks.com/articles/1966/03/17/on-albert-einstein/ NASA article on Einstein Being a Space Alien: https://science.nasa.gov/science-news/science-at-nasa/2005/23mar_spacealien Einstein Socialism Article: https://monthlyreview.org/2009/05/01/why-socialism/

Noam Zadoff begins his biography of Gershon Scholem, one of the 20th century’s greatest scholars and an equally perplexing intellectual, at the point where Scholem ends his own autobiography From Berlin to Jerusalem: Memories of My Youth—with his arrival in Jerusalem in 1923. Gershom Scholem: From Berlin to Jerusalem and Back (Brandeis University Press, 2018) situates Scholem’s thought in the context of his biography, by skillfully reading Scholem’s self-fashioning against the grain and together with materials held in his archive. With particular focus on his conflicted and shifting relationship to Germany and German thought and language, Zadoff contributes to the ever-growing scholarship about Scholem. Zadoff moves beyond Scholem’s early ambivalence towards German culture as he sought a Jewish future in Israel during the inter-war years. Despite his early rejection of Jewish-German assimilation and his idiosyncratic Zionist dreams, we find that not only was his world-view framed in reference to Germany—of his youth, the Holocaust, and the after-war years—but this relationship becomes a barometer to understand his evolving thought. The book is divided into three sections, the first of which focuses on Scholem’s early period in Jerusalem, his political activities there, relationship to the Hebrew Language, and to the Hebrew University. The next section is about Scholem’s response to the Holocaust and his pivotal role in collecting and reclaiming manuscripts and books that were looted from the Jewish communities of Europe. The last, and perhaps most revealing section, focuses on Scholem’s “return to Germany,” during the last part of his life, particularly his involvement in the Eranos seminars. Zadoff begins the book by asking how the images of Scholem in Israel and Germany could be of the same person, at home he was known as a fiery intellectual, demanding German teacher, and scholar of the kabbalah, while in Germany he was a literary personality and a nostalgic link to German culture of the pre-War years. At its conclusion, we are left with a well argued narrative that does not strip its subject of its complexity. Noam Zadoff is an Assistant Professor of Jewish Studies and of History, and the Director of Olamot Center at Indiana University, Bloomington. Moses Lapin is a graduate student in the departments of History and Philosophy at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem, and an avid lepidopterist. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Noam Zadoff begins his biography of Gershon Scholem, one of the 20th century’s greatest scholars and an equally perplexing intellectual, at the point where Scholem ends his own autobiography From Berlin to Jerusalem: Memories of My Youth—with his arrival in Jerusalem in 1923. Gershom Scholem: From Berlin to Jerusalem and Back (Brandeis University Press, 2018) situates Scholem’s thought in the context of his biography, by skillfully reading Scholem’s self-fashioning against the grain and together with materials held in his archive. With particular focus on his conflicted and shifting relationship to Germany and German thought and language, Zadoff contributes to the ever-growing scholarship about Scholem. Zadoff moves beyond Scholem’s early ambivalence towards German culture as he sought a Jewish future in Israel during the inter-war years. Despite his early rejection of Jewish-German assimilation and his idiosyncratic Zionist dreams, we find that not only was his world-view framed in reference to Germany—of his youth, the Holocaust, and the after-war years—but this relationship becomes a barometer to understand his evolving thought. The book is divided into three sections, the first of which focuses on Scholem’s early period in Jerusalem, his political activities there, relationship to the Hebrew Language, and to the Hebrew University. The next section is about Scholem’s response to the Holocaust and his pivotal role in collecting and reclaiming manuscripts and books that were looted from the Jewish communities of Europe. The last, and perhaps most revealing section, focuses on Scholem’s “return to Germany,” during the last part of his life, particularly his involvement in the Eranos seminars. Zadoff begins the book by asking how the images of Scholem in Israel and Germany could be of the same person, at home he was known as a fiery intellectual, demanding German teacher, and scholar of the kabbalah, while in Germany he was a literary personality and a nostalgic link to German culture of the pre-War years. At its conclusion, we are left with a well argued narrative that does not strip its subject of its complexity. Noam Zadoff is an Assistant Professor of Jewish Studies and of History, and the Director of Olamot Center at Indiana University, Bloomington. Moses Lapin is a graduate student in the departments of History and Philosophy at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem, and an avid lepidopterist. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Noam Zadoff begins his biography of Gershon Scholem, one of the 20th century’s greatest scholars and an equally perplexing intellectual, at the point where Scholem ends his own autobiography From Berlin to Jerusalem: Memories of My Youth—with his arrival in Jerusalem in 1923. Gershom Scholem: From Berlin to Jerusalem and Back (Brandeis University Press, 2018) situates Scholem’s thought in the context of his biography, by skillfully reading Scholem’s self-fashioning against the grain and together with materials held in his archive. With particular focus on his conflicted and shifting relationship to Germany and German thought and language, Zadoff contributes to the ever-growing scholarship about Scholem. Zadoff moves beyond Scholem’s early ambivalence towards German culture as he sought a Jewish future in Israel during the inter-war years. Despite his early rejection of Jewish-German assimilation and his idiosyncratic Zionist dreams, we find that not only was his world-view framed in reference to Germany—of his youth, the Holocaust, and the after-war years—but this relationship becomes a barometer to understand his evolving thought. The book is divided into three sections, the first of which focuses on Scholem’s early period in Jerusalem, his political activities there, relationship to the Hebrew Language, and to the Hebrew University. The next section is about Scholem’s response to the Holocaust and his pivotal role in collecting and reclaiming manuscripts and books that were looted from the Jewish communities of Europe. The last, and perhaps most revealing section, focuses on Scholem’s “return to Germany,” during the last part of his life, particularly his involvement in the Eranos seminars. Zadoff begins the book by asking how the images of Scholem in Israel and Germany could be of the same person, at home he was known as a fiery intellectual, demanding German teacher, and scholar of the kabbalah, while in Germany he was a literary personality and a nostalgic link to German culture of the pre-War years. At its conclusion, we are left with a well argued narrative that does not strip its subject of its complexity. Noam Zadoff is an Assistant Professor of Jewish Studies and of History, and the Director of Olamot Center at Indiana University, Bloomington. Moses Lapin is a graduate student in the departments of History and Philosophy at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem, and an avid lepidopterist. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Noam Zadoff begins his biography of Gershon Scholem, one of the 20th century’s greatest scholars and an equally perplexing intellectual, at the point where Scholem ends his own autobiography From Berlin to Jerusalem: Memories of My Youth—with his arrival in Jerusalem in 1923. Gershom Scholem: From Berlin to Jerusalem and Back (Brandeis University Press, 2018) situates Scholem’s thought in the context of his biography, by skillfully reading Scholem’s self-fashioning against the grain and together with materials held in his archive. With particular focus on his conflicted and shifting relationship to Germany and German thought and language, Zadoff contributes to the ever-growing scholarship about Scholem. Zadoff moves beyond Scholem’s early ambivalence towards German culture as he sought a Jewish future in Israel during the inter-war years. Despite his early rejection of Jewish-German assimilation and his idiosyncratic Zionist dreams, we find that not only was his world-view framed in reference to Germany—of his youth, the Holocaust, and the after-war years—but this relationship becomes a barometer to understand his evolving thought. The book is divided into three sections, the first of which focuses on Scholem’s early period in Jerusalem, his political activities there, relationship to the Hebrew Language, and to the Hebrew University. The next section is about Scholem’s response to the Holocaust and his pivotal role in collecting and reclaiming manuscripts and books that were looted from the Jewish communities of Europe. The last, and perhaps most revealing section, focuses on Scholem’s “return to Germany,” during the last part of his life, particularly his involvement in the Eranos seminars. Zadoff begins the book by asking how the images of Scholem in Israel and Germany could be of the same person, at home he was known as a fiery intellectual, demanding German teacher, and scholar of the kabbalah, while in Germany he was a literary personality and a nostalgic link to German culture of the pre-War years. At its conclusion, we are left with a well argued narrative that does not strip its subject of its complexity. Noam Zadoff is an Assistant Professor of Jewish Studies and of History, and the Director of Olamot Center at Indiana University, Bloomington. Moses Lapin is a graduate student in the departments of History and Philosophy at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem, and an avid lepidopterist. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Noam Zadoff begins his biography of Gershon Scholem, one of the 20th century’s greatest scholars and an equally perplexing intellectual, at the point where Scholem ends his own autobiography From Berlin to Jerusalem: Memories of My Youth—with his arrival in Jerusalem in 1923. Gershom Scholem: From Berlin to Jerusalem and Back (Brandeis University Press, 2018) situates Scholem’s thought in the context of his biography, by skillfully reading Scholem’s self-fashioning against the grain and together with materials held in his archive. With particular focus on his conflicted and shifting relationship to Germany and German thought and language, Zadoff contributes to the ever-growing scholarship about Scholem. Zadoff moves beyond Scholem’s early ambivalence towards German culture as he sought a Jewish future in Israel during the inter-war years. Despite his early rejection of Jewish-German assimilation and his idiosyncratic Zionist dreams, we find that not only was his world-view framed in reference to Germany—of his youth, the Holocaust, and the after-war years—but this relationship becomes a barometer to understand his evolving thought. The book is divided into three sections, the first of which focuses on Scholem’s early period in Jerusalem, his political activities there, relationship to the Hebrew Language, and to the Hebrew University. The next section is about Scholem’s response to the Holocaust and his pivotal role in collecting and reclaiming manuscripts and books that were looted from the Jewish communities of Europe. The last, and perhaps most revealing section, focuses on Scholem’s “return to Germany,” during the last part of his life, particularly his involvement in the Eranos seminars. Zadoff begins the book by asking how the images of Scholem in Israel and Germany could be of the same person, at home he was known as a fiery intellectual, demanding German teacher, and scholar of the kabbalah, while in Germany he was a literary personality and a nostalgic link to German culture of the pre-War years. At its conclusion, we are left with a well argued narrative that does not strip its subject of its complexity. Noam Zadoff is an Assistant Professor of Jewish Studies and of History, and the Director of Olamot Center at Indiana University, Bloomington. Moses Lapin is a graduate student in the departments of History and Philosophy at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem, and an avid lepidopterist. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Noam Zadoff begins his biography of Gershon Scholem, one of the 20th century’s greatest scholars and an equally perplexing intellectual, at the point where Scholem ends his own autobiography From Berlin to Jerusalem: Memories of My Youth—with his arrival in Jerusalem in 1923. Gershom Scholem: From Berlin to Jerusalem and Back (Brandeis University Press, 2018) situates Scholem’s thought in the context of his biography, by skillfully reading Scholem’s self-fashioning against the grain and together with materials held in his archive. With particular focus on his conflicted and shifting relationship to Germany and German thought and language, Zadoff contributes to the ever-growing scholarship about Scholem. Zadoff moves beyond Scholem’s early ambivalence towards German culture as he sought a Jewish future in Israel during the inter-war years. Despite his early rejection of Jewish-German assimilation and his idiosyncratic Zionist dreams, we find that not only was his world-view framed in reference to Germany—of his youth, the Holocaust, and the after-war years—but this relationship becomes a barometer to understand his evolving thought. The book is divided into three sections, the first of which focuses on Scholem’s early period in Jerusalem, his political activities there, relationship to the Hebrew Language, and to the Hebrew University. The next section is about Scholem’s response to the Holocaust and his pivotal role in collecting and reclaiming manuscripts and books that were looted from the Jewish communities of Europe. The last, and perhaps most revealing section, focuses on Scholem’s “return to Germany,” during the last part of his life, particularly his involvement in the Eranos seminars. Zadoff begins the book by asking how the images of Scholem in Israel and Germany could be of the same person, at home he was known as a fiery intellectual, demanding German teacher, and scholar of the kabbalah, while in Germany he was a literary personality and a nostalgic link to German culture of the pre-War years. At its conclusion, we are left with a well argued narrative that does not strip its subject of its complexity. Noam Zadoff is an Assistant Professor of Jewish Studies and of History, and the Director of Olamot Center at Indiana University, Bloomington. Moses Lapin is a graduate student in the departments of History and Philosophy at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem, and an avid lepidopterist. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

One of the top Klezmer clarinetists in the world, Christian Dawid talks with Neil about discovering Yiddish music in postwar Germany, the vibrant Jewish music scene in Berlin and his experiences as a non-Jewish German in the Klezmer world. 

Prof. Michael Levin is a historian of architecture at Shenkar College for Engineering, Art and Design, and co-editor of Richard Kaufmann and the Zionist Project. He discusses with host Gilad Halpern the life and works of the Jewish-German architect, who was hired in 1920 as the chief planner of the Zionist community and who single-handedly shaped the landscape of modern Israel. A launch event, complete with a tour of Jerusalem guided by Prof. Levin, is organized by the Van Leer Jerusalem Institute on Monday, September 26. Song: Ester Rada - Ata Pele This season of the Tel Aviv Review is made possible by The Van Leer Jerusalem Institute, which promotes humanistic, democratic, and liberal values in the social discourse in Israel.

Dr. Michal Aharony, political philosophy and Holocaust studies professor at Beit Berl Academic College, recently authored Hannah Arendt and the Limits of Total Domination: The Holocaust, Plurality and Resistance. Dr. Aharony talks to host Gilad Halpern about her work, which evaluates the Jewish-German philosopher's theories on totalitarianism through testimonies of Holocaust victims and survivors.

Evaluating the Jewish-German philosopher's theories on totalitarianism through testimonies of Holocaust victims and survivors.