Ep. 29- German Resistance to the Nazis with Mark Roseman

The topic of resistance during the Holocaust is always a controversial one. What is resistance?  What did it take to stand up to the Nazis when the vast majority of Germans did not.

In this episode, I talk with historian Mark Roseman about a remarkable group of socialists in Nazi Germany who made the difficult choice to stand up in ways both big and small.  We also talk about nature of resistance and what makes a resister or rescuer.

Mark Roseman is a distinguished professor of history and the Pat M Glazer Chair in Jewish Studies at Indiana University.

Roseman, Mark. Lives Reclaimed: A Story of Rescue and Resistance in Nazi Germany (2020)

Follow on Twitter @holocaustpod.
Email the podcast at holocausthistorypod@gmail.com

The Holocaust History Podcast homepage is here

You can find a complete reading list with books by our guests and also their suggestions here.

Transcript

Waitman Beorn (00:00.912)
Hello everybody. Welcome to the Holocaust history podcast. I'm your host, Waitman Born. And on today's episode, we're talking about a really, really important topic, which is that of rescue. how did individuals help, Jews during the Holocaust? How do they make decisions about how they're going to do that? And what were the different ways that they did that? And I'm very fortunate to have with me, a great scholar, Mark Roseman, who was written on this topic.

And he's here to talk to us about this particular aspect of the Holocaust. So Mark, welcome to the podcast.

Mark (00:38.69)
Hi, thanks so much for having me.

Waitman Beorn (00:40.62)
so can you tell us really quickly, you know, sort of what your background is, how you got into this topic and then maybe how you get into the specific topic of rescue.

Mark (00:52.11)
Absolutely. So I was originally a historian of modern Germany and my first book was about the reconstruction of Germany after the Second World War. And by chance, quite some way into my career, I met a woman who had survived living illegally in Nazi Germany and I wrote a biography of her called The Past in Hiding. And she had been

protected by a group that was then largely unknown in Germany as for part of the time that she'd survived a Nazi rule. And I always knew I wanted to write a book about them and eventually I did and that also forced me then to think a bit about rescue in the larger sense. So the book is lives reclaimed and that's how I came to write it.

Waitman Beorn (01:49.712)
And so if we thinking about rescue or really any of these sort of buzzwords, because there are lots of them, you know, in terms of Holocaust history, whether it's resistance or bystander or even, you know, perpetrator, how do we define rescue? What does that mean? And I guess what is at stake in that definition?

Mark (02:15.532)
Yes, I think it's a really great question. it's, you know, it's all these categories are helpful up to a point, they all do some important work, and they make us think about some aspect of the Holocaust, and they also all have blurry lines, and at some point become problematic. And at the moment, when scholars are really engaging with them is often the point at which those

blurriness of those lines becomes clear. And so there's a lot of work at the moment on the bystander. We realize what a complex category that is. And obviously there was a long period of work on the perpetrators. We realized how difficult it is to draw the line between perpetration and participation and so on. And I think rescue is having its moment amongst historians. As a result of that, the challenges of that term.

have become evident. And one of the things that's distinctive about rescue, I think, is that, and this probably makes it a little bit different than many other aspects of the Holocaust, is that commemorative practice, in other words, celebrating the rescuer, remembering the rescuer, preceded a lot of the scholarship, particularly historical scholarship, others.

And so in that sense, the term and how we think about it was given shape by, above all, by the Israeli Museum Yad Vashem, has a whole, which has since the 1960s has had

Mark (03:59.794)
a process of recognizing the rescuer. So what's distinctive, I think, about rescue in relation to some other Holocaust categories is that for a long time, this term was defined by this commemorative practice, this recognition. And so then when historical scholarship became more intense around the subject, it had to grapple.

with a term that was already well in triumph. So we should use it because it's there, but it does have some difficulties. And the biggest difficulty I think is that when we think about rescue, well, there two. One is when we think about rescue, we tend to think about somebody who's sort of pulled out of the maelstrom and is then left secure and safe on the bank of the raging river. And this happens.

But very often when people survive, it's as a result of a whole series of actions from different people and of course from themselves, self -help is always key. And you couldn't say that any one of those actions in themselves was the thing that led to them surviving at the end. So in that sense, rescue gives us a sense of closure, which actually the process of help.

rarely or in many cases does not happen. So one real problem with rescue is that it implies this complete closed action and thereby leaves out the huge terrain of help, which is so often the piecemeal way in which people tend to survive. So that's one issue. Yeah. No, no, go ahead. Go for it. I can always go back to that one later.

Waitman Beorn (05:43.8)
Yeah, seems like... sorry, ahead. sorry, second issue.

No, I mean, it seems like, yeah, I want come back to that, but it seems like, you again, this is one of those issues where. Rescuer, as you sort of suggest, it is kind of like a scene is kind of a binary term, you know, like it's on or it's off, you know, like it's 100 percent, you know, someone saving someone or you're not, you know, and I had I had Amy Williams on the podcast earlier talking about the kinder transport, you know,

I think it's a great example of what you just mentioned in terms of the commemoration and arguably the valorization preceding the historical investigation into it. know, Britain, you know, from a public perspective loves the Kindertransport because it lets them be the hero of, you know, saving the people, but then nagging and sort of historians are running along behind it saying, but what about the, you know, what about the parents?

What about everybody else? You know, and then more recently, scholars looking into it have said, you yes, many of these children were rescued, but many of them also didn't have great experiences with the families that have rescued them. and then, you know, one of things that Amy brought up that just the reason I jumped in that really spurred me was that some of these children, particularly older ones, are then involved in trying to get their parents out.

and are doing the labor and the work of, of trying to sort of raise awareness or get the government. And in a certain sense, as, you kind of point out, like they're rescued, but it's not this sort of everything's great now. And all of a sudden you're safe, you know, that they're, they're, they're safe from physical danger. but they still have an awful lot of psychological trauma and things to deal with, as they're, as they're working. Right. And so like, again, this idea of, of rescue being

Waitman Beorn (07:43.32)
sort of a death by a thousand cuts, suppose, or has, that's not a great way to say it, but has, you know, many, many authors rather than, you know, one person sort of doing it was sort of something that, that seems to jive with what you're talking

Mark (08:00.12)
Right. And you know what you said, I think is very good because it reminds there are two separate issues there. One is does the notion of rescue actually convey an accurate sense of what happens? And I would argue that quite often it doesn't for the reason that it got spelled out. But the other is also, as you point out, we shouldn't over freight the notion. In other words, you know, it's about

Ultimately, what we're talking about is helping somebody survive. That doesn't mean you're helping them to be totally balanced human beings or without any other challenges or, know, et cetera, et cetera. That's clearly over -frating the term. I think, you know, the reality of the kinder transport children, I mean, even leaving aside the question of why their parents are not allowed in,

is obviously they have to confront all sorts of challenges and the strange land, the intimacy of a domestic situation quite often, which, you know, with its own challenges and also, as you say, many, older ones working desperately to try and find a basis on which to get their parents out and feeling very burdened if they don't manage to do so, which often they don't.

Waitman Beorn (09:22.584)
Yeah, I mean, and again, I don't want to, I want to get back to sort of the second, the second aspect. So I didn't want to interrupt your flow there, but what is the second sort of problem or challenge?

Mark (09:32.194)
Yeah. So the other problem is, is not inherent in the in the the notion of rescue per se, but in the but the commemorative practice has helped to give rise to the idea of the selfless individual.

And there were definitely many of those and it is also the case that even those who weren't selfless often had to be pretty courageous to act at all. But nonetheless, it has Yad

requirement in fact to be recognized, which again is understandable, but the problem is how does it interact with the reality, their requirement that there should be no kind of payment or anything else involved. On the one hand, misleads us as to the way it often worked, but actually also often distorts the record because many of those who were very conscious of what people who'd helped them had done.

felt then obliged to conceal the fact that there had been payment involved in order for Yad Vashem to recognize something that they really felt should be recognized despite the fact that there was pay involved because they knew that it would be very easy for the person not to act and they knew that they were taking real risks and they knew that they were alive because of what had been

Waitman Beorn (10:40.356)
Mm.

Mark (11:00.096)
of what had been done, but nonetheless, and on one level,

helping somebody, actually it wasn't just involving risk, but it also involved real costs and times of acute scarcity. And there weren't that many people, helpers, who were so well placed that those costs of food, stuff, and so on were easily defrayed. So in that sense, the requirement that it be done without payment was setting quite a

setting quite a high bar. that's the other problem. There's not necessarily a problem with rescue per se, but rescue as it's come to be envisaged through the mechanisms of commemoration.

Waitman Beorn (11:49.818)
Well, and this is a good point because it is, you know, whether Yad Vashem intended it or not, you know, it has sort of become the industry standard, I suppose, for rescue, right? Because it does have this formal process of, you know, submitting, you know, evidence and information. And it has these sort of requirements, which are kind of, again, you know, in some ways artificially, but they're black and white, at least theoretically.

I mean, one of them is also that, I, if I remember correctly, one of them is that the rescuer has to be at some personal risk to themselves as well, which is already kind of another, another element. And on the one hand, you know, you can sort of see why, you know, these kinds of definitions are not always great for the complexities of history because, you know, I suspect that the, one of the reasons for this no payment,

requirement is that there are certain there were lots of circumstances where rescuers extorted money, you know, blackmailed in, you know, required money in ways that I think we would agree are unethical or are deeply selfish. But the problem is that then you throw out all the people who, you know, particularly in Eastern Europe, who literally don't have enough money to feed a new family of five people and they need the money to go buy the food.

that they're using, and they may have asked almost in a sort of embarrassed way of like, I need some money because I have to go buy extra food. And as you point out, that family would have known that and they would have had no ill will to those kinds of people. Cause they would have said, look, we totally understand. You had to feed twice as many mouths as you normally do. But it throws out people who might be considered rescuers.

Mark (13:45.92)
Absolutely. And I think also, you know, we need in any case to make a distinction between what's involved when you celebrate somebody and, and want to recognize their actions, in other words, an act of memorialization, commemoration, and so on. And what's involved when a historian seeks

understand what happens in a given moment. you know, if we want to understand how it is that some people survive and what the role of Gentile society is in aiding and abetting or not survive.

That's one set of questions and that's not normative, although it may in the end be somehow useful in terms of understanding how you can survive under a dictatorship or it may not. But it's not a normative question, it's descriptive analytical question about how that happens. That's one thing. When an institution says, really want to honor those who act, that's something else and they're perfectly free to choose their

criteria and they don't want to recognize people who done X. So that's fine. The only problem from that point of view with Yad Vashem is that it's actually leading people to give misleading evidence because the bar is set just wrong.

That's a problem then also with the commemorative thing, but I do want to make the distinction, I feel it perfectly legit for commemoration to have a different set of criteria to, the problem for the historian is that commemoration had so established the terms of art that it's taken a while to kind of, for the historians to kind of come out from underneath that and say, hang on a minute, you know.

Waitman Beorn (15:26.106)
short.

Mark (15:44.502)
As in my book, for example, I suggest that in fact, it would be, I think, better to be talking about help often. We're stuck with rescue now, and that's category, but I think help is often a better term for capturing the range of ways in which survival is in one way or another assisted by others.

Waitman Beorn (16:12.346)
I mean, this is a great point because it's something that I've been thinking about as well, because in the same way that collaborator or perpetrator has a negative connotation just automatically, rescue or has a positive connotation automatically. but rescue is also in some ways a value neutral behavior. You know, it is, it is, it is something that you have done.

you either, you know, as you helping is probably, as you say, a better, you either help the person in some way or you didn't. And even even people like, for example, Christians who take in Jewish children or particularly Jewish young children and sort of forcibly convert them to Christianity, which is a horrible thing. But empirically, they have rescued that person, you know, and but that doesn't mean that there is someone that is necessarily worthy of commemoration, just like the person who

know, kind of extorted money from a family to hide them, you know, but didn't turn them into the Nazis and may have done it only for selfish reasons, but empirically sort of absolute value, they have rescued those people. But we wouldn't call them rescuers, right? Because we would feel like that's giving them an honorific that they don't deserve.

Mark (17:32.822)
Right. And in fact, I mean, I that's a very good point. And one of the problem with these categories, and it's also true of perpetrators, is that it implies that there is a category of person, whereas it may be that what we be talking about is a category of action. I think having acted, people are in a particular place. know, a perpetrator, this is Raoul Hilberg's point.

you know, his argument is, you know, all sorts were involved in the machine, but something that they share is that once they've done it, they've done it, they've acted, they've been in the machine. And there are one way or another, they are shaped by that. So they have, by dint of perpetrating, they have become perpetrators. But it may not be, it may be that it's not so straightforward to explain perpetration by reference to what is a

So the act creates the category. And that may be true a little bit of rescue. I mean, I don't want to belittle the fact that there are many people who do act out of moral considerations. And that's certainly the case of the group that I look at. I I think they over emphasize principle in their account of what they did after. But the fact is they were.

very much an anti -Nazi group that was very much thinking about how to remain moral actors whilst living under this horrific regime. And that was not irrelevant for what they then came to do. So we have a complicated sort of dance around, we foregrounding the actor or are we foregrounding the act?

Even leaving aside the issue of rescue versus help, the same thing is with the helper and the helper. Is there a kind of person called a helper or is it somebody who happens to have helped and therefore by dint of their action is someone who is descriptively a helper because they helped? Or did they help because there's something in them that makes them one of life's helpers? I think that's a challenge that

Mark (19:57.794)
that we face.

Waitman Beorn (19:59.012)
Well, and this is one of the things that we're going to move now. And it's a great segue into sort of the specifics, you know, but one of the things that I always tell my students, that's going to really annoy them is that I'm going to complicate everything because that's what history is. Like, history is, yes, but, you know, it's more complicated than that, you know? And, and it's almost, it's interesting because, you know, I, I come to the, I mean, I think I've sort of moved into

writing much more sort of integrated histories. But I came to this first by looking most intently at perpetrators. And this is almost like a photo negative of the same conversations that you have about perpetrators, which is sort of motivation versus ideology versus situation. It's the same thing, except it's in the service of a good thing versus a bad thing. But we're still having this debate about, and we might talk later about, there's a scholar.

named the Hama tech who sort of also is asking these questions as a, in a collective biography sort of sense of thinking about, you know, what is it, what are the, you know, if the authoritative personality, right, is the perpetrator side of this, then hers is kind of like, what is the rescuer? What sort of things do rescuers have in common? If we can, you know, almost in a predictive sort of sense, which I always find, you know, has its pros and cons. but one of the things that, you

Mark (21:03.564)
Mm

Mark (21:23.174)
I think she was a very Nechonotech Polish sociologist. I think she was a very important figure in the field. She was one of the first people to really devote serious research to the question. so although I necessarily agree with everything that she wrote, I found it very important and very helpful.

people are looking out for a sociological approach, I still think she's very much still worth reading, the Chammatech.

Waitman Beorn (21:59.472)
Absolutely. mean, and she and she raises, you know, sort of generic categories of kinds of people and kinds of behaviors, you know, and, and, she's not a political scientist, so it doesn't have to be predictive, which is great, you know, but they do make us think about these people because one of the things in a certain sense, I suppose, and you can, you can correct me if you think I'm overselling this, is that in many ways perpetrators are much more ordinary

people, but often it seems like rescuers and to a certain extent, resistors, depending on how we define the term are actually extraordinary people because the vast majority of people don't choose to engage in rescue or helping behavior because of the risks and everything else. And so the kinds of people are are sort of numerically extraordinary. They are out of the ordinary. They are they are doing something different than

than most people, which I always talk about when people, whenever students are sort of saying, well, I would have done this, that other thing, or why didn't this person react in this way during Holocaust? I always say, it's often unfair of us to expect ordinary people to do heroic things because what makes people who are rescuers in some ways extraordinary, extraordinary is that they are doing something that most people are not doing. And that

whether it's heroic or not, that's more of sort of a value judgment thing, but they are, they are out of the ordinary. And so maybe we should talk about the people that you worked on because this is a group of people who have done

Mark (23:40.6)
I was going to say, I think that's a really great point. And I would just modify it to the extent that normality is a very fickle concept here. Because obviously you can have certain kinds of societal moments in which by dint of a sort of radical nationalist regime,

Waitman Beorn (23:53.17)
Yeah.

Mark (24:09.528)
sort of sentiment is radicalized and inflamed. then so what what then counts as ordinary.

Mark (24:20.942)
might seem extraordinary in another area. in that sense, yes, you're right. The people who are rescuing are definitely going against the flow, but the people who are perpetrating are acting in a way that perhaps in another context, or they themselves in 10 years earlier before they'd gone through this societal process might not have acted in that way. So ordinary, not necessarily in the sense of you and me, but certainly ordinary in the sense of going with

flow so I think you're absolutely spot on there.

Waitman Beorn (24:55.438)
so the group that you worked on, the Bund, can you tell us a little about, give us some background, know, because now we're talking about rescue in Germany of predominantly German Jews, which is a different phenomenon with different trade -offs and risks than in Eastern Europe. know, who is the Bund? What is their sort of prehistory? And how does that, how do they get into sort of this behavior?

Mark (25:00.557)
Really.

Mark (25:24.736)
Absolutely. this group, I mean, there are a million groups that call themselves the pond, because it just means Lee. Just mean Lee. Yeah. Right. No. No. Yeah, exactly. It just means League or Federation. And it also means covenant.

Waitman Beorn (25:30.254)
Right. I was going to say we need to, we need to clarify exactly which boon we're talking about. Cause it's not the Jewish boon. And it's certainly not the German American boon. so like,

Mark (25:45.422)
and as in the sense of biblical covenant and that meaning is a little bit in the background for a lot of these youth groups that came to be known as the sort of Bundish youth groups in the in Indoor period. They had a sort of intense bond, they sort of felt that they were creating an alternative kind of family and my group is not necessarily a youth group quite in that sense but that sort of vibe.

Also is there that sort of a sort of socialist stroke sort of youth movement sort of alternative lifestyle kind of grouping that emerges in the rural area and industrial area of Germany after the First World War.

sort of were in some ways utopian in the sense that they had a vision of a sort of better society that they wanted to create. But they also sort of rejected the idea of utopianism because they wanted to be practical and small steps. And so it was very much also about living an ethical life. And in fact, one of the sort of things that oddities is them, they weren't far from unique in this either, is that they're trying to bring in Kantian ethics.

and socialist understanding of societal change. And there's a certain kind of tension there between the sort of individual voluntarism and a dialectical materialist, which I think they didn't fully resolve, but that wasn't a problem insofar as being able to act. So this was a group that then had various sort of local branches around the raw and then beyond that.

led by a sort of visionary figure called Arthur Jacobs, who was a former grammar school teacher who is now very much involved in the adult education movement. And they had this idea of sort of trying to

Mark (27:48.783)
the basis for an ethical community, new relations between men and women working towards an equitable society, also trying to work within the main working class parties in the region to see their vision realized also there. Arthur was married. Now go ahead.

Waitman Beorn (28:10.574)
Are they, sorry, are they, are they a political movement or more of sort of as you, as you, I mean, the modern lifestyle movement is very trivial, trivial as a trivializing term. I don't mean to use it that way, but are they more of like a philosophical kind of group or are they actual political movement that's trying to, you know, that is, is, is set alongside, for example, the communist party or the socialist party, or are they something different?

Mark (28:38.614)
Right, they're not a separate party and they have members both in the Social Democrats and the Communists. They do try and make things happen at the local level.

They have all sorts of practical initiatives. They're also very much into education. So they're trying to shape the grassroots through education. have an elementary school, they manage to take over and run according to their values for a bit. They're offering courses through the adult education institutes. So they have a sort of of shaping through education, sort of march through the institutions and so on.

political in that sense, but they're not, they're not a separate political party, they're not standing as the Bund for election. So it's a sort of a hybrid, but they understand themselves very much political, but there's a sort of fair amount of fantasy involved here, the idea that through these small steps, you can, you can change society, but that is nevertheless what motivates them.

I was just going to add that Arthur Jacobs, is the leader of the group, is married to a Jewish woman, Dora Marcos. Through her, the group attracts quite a lot of Jewish men. She had also founded a left -wing Zionist youth movement, Blue White Branch of Earth in Essen.

And so the group is accustomed to sort of interaction between Jews and non -Jews, like a number of other left -wing groupings in Germany before the Nazis come to power. But that's an important bit of the background, I think, to understand what happens later.

Waitman Beorn (30:39.001)
Yeah, I mean, this seems like, you know, then again, you one of the things that the homotech, for example, talks about, and again, I'm not suggesting that she has all the answers, but is one of the sort of predictors is sort of a prehistory. And it sounds like one of the things that you're suggesting is that this group of people have a certain prehistory in terms of the things they believe and also their relationships with with Jewish people that that serve them well in

when the Nazis come into power, is that accurate?

Mark (31:12.152)
That is accurate, although it's also true that I think there's a fair amount of sort of unwitting racist attitudes as well, the group realized once the Nazis had come to power that they actually really had to work on themselves. And although they have quite a number of Jewish members, they're pretty hostile to organized religion as good socialists.

And so they, and you know, many of the Jews in the region are sort of solid middle -class citizens, small business and so on. And they as good anti -capitalists and anti -bourgeois socialists don't necessarily see them as kindred spirits. So there's quite a lot to overcome, I think, for the group as well.

and before it acts. So what you say is absolutely correct, but it's not, I just want to say that for them and I think for other left -wing groups, it's not a straightforward move from their certainly anti -Nazi, no question values to actually

being ready to engage themselves on behalf of the people who were becoming the Nazis, the Nazis victims. I think that was often quite a difficult thing after the war to talk about. It's something I had to sort of reconstruct a bit in the history of the group. But I think that it's true of them and I think it's true of other left -wing groupings too.

Waitman Beorn (32:50.048)
So when the Nazis came to power, obviously, actually, you know, literally their first enemies are the communists and the socialists. Does the Bund get targeted as such by the Nazis or is it sort of lumped into this kind of left Bolshevik kind of bugaboo that the Nazis are after?

Mark (33:12.952)
Both. Since many of its members are members of the Communist Party, many are targeted and indeed a number have short periods in concentration camps. And short periods in concentration camps is no small thing. It's something that you didn't necessarily survive, you certainly never forgot. But the group itself is targeted.

Mark (33:50.23)
rhythmic and dance and this, gymnastics. And this is shut down. She's only allowed to privately teach Jewish pupils thereafter. The group had been quite visible and quite prominent and there's a sort of warrants out for the leader, Artiakos, who sort of goes on the run for a little while. And the group lodged a lot of its papers with a solid middle -class

of the Coup company who was a member who they thought was beyond reproach, but unfortunately he wasn't. Lucky for the historian, because it turned out that a lot of the papers from the group, early papers that survived, because they burned a lot of their stuff, survived as a result of the confiscation stuff from this guy's house. So I was very thrilled when I went to...

Mark (34:49.45)
It all sort of turned up because it was being used by the authorities to deny Arthur Yaakov's his pension as a former grammar school teacher. So I was rather thrilled at all the stuff that turned up in his personnel file. So, it was, it was the happy harvest of the historian, as you know, as well as I, as a historian of the dictatorship, you were in an ambiguous position that you're the beneficiary of the authority's brutality.

their loss was what enabled me because they began to be very careful and they went through what they called house cleaning in which they would sort of monitor the other and make sure that they got rid of incriminating stuff, if it was stuff that was of great personal value, might expose this group.

So yeah, was lucky there, but it was a sign that the group really was being targeted on all sorts of ways. It had to go through quite a tough period. And I think that's the point at which a lot of groups just folded, but they didn't.

Waitman Beorn (35:59.792)
So what kinds of things were they doing? And obviously, you know, the Nazi regime changes over time. does the actions that they're taking change over time? You know, what are what kinds of and here we get into sort of, I suppose, in a certain sense, to make things more complex, which I guess we do as historians, you know, is the intersection at times of resistance and rescue, because at a certain sense, you know, foiling Nazi plans

victimized Jews is also in some ways a form of resistance too, right? So, I mean, how do these things, how do they begin to sort of enter into this sphere?

Mark (36:38.774)
Okay, yes, great questions. So I guess you've raised two things. One is a sort of category question, and the other is what did they get up So let me take the category question too. And I do think that one of the key issues here, so often, and something I was trying to get my students to understand, is the utility of a concept depends on the work you want it to do.

Waitman Beorn (36:45.08)
I love category questions.

Mark (37:08.734)
If, for example, we are asking, you know, what kinds of sort of grains of sand were put in the sort of mechanisms of the Nazis and every action that does that, we want to know that, then, you know, that's a fairly capacious understanding of resistance.

and help the Jews certainly fits into that. And this term rescue resistance has been coined and I think it's quite legit. If resistance is understood as something in some way or another contributing to the regime's downfall, in other words, actively working against the regime's ability to perpetuate itself.

which is another perfectly legitimate way of defining it, then it's pretty obvious that rescue in itself does not meet that definition.

since it's in almost all cases doing nothing to actually hasten the demise of the regime. So I think rather than getting caught up in terminology, the key thing is to think about what work do we want the idea to do. So if we're sticking for the moment with rescue hastening the regime's demise,

I would say the bun doesn't do that much except in the sense of trying to educate its members and do some outreach in terms of making them aware of how horrendous the regime is. And I think that was one the things that also for me, again, in reconstructing its experience in the thirties, it was an obvious point, but one sort of doesn't see it. But even for a group that is in many ways predestined to be anti -Nazi, you know, they don't know where the regime is going to go.

Mark (38:59.352)
they see a ton of people being enthusiastic about it around them. There's a sense of energy and national revival. There are people who are unemployed who are getting back to the workplace. And for sort of young, not particularly well -educated, but articulate young working class people with a certain potential for leadership, there are options. And I have some examples of people who are really standing at the crossroads of whether I should take this.

this opportunity. you know, we also, you know, there are young Jews who in 1933 are wondering if there's a space for them in this new kind of exciting regime. Obviously it becomes very clear pretty quickly that there isn't. But so in that sense, they really had to kind of work out where they stood, they had to sort of work through what was really wrong here.

And so they're doing that self -education. They're trying to do some outreach, but they're not, some of its members, because they're also still active communists, doing other things, and some end up in concentration camps for shorter or longer periods. But the group itself, I would say in terms of active resistance in the sense of hastening the downfall of the regime, even indirectly, what it does is fairly limited. But it really, tries to be a space of thought

and a sort of ethical action in the small sphere and trying to sustain its kind of moral and political sense of self at a time when it's extremely difficult. That involves some help for Jews and certainly helping the Jewish members to get out of the country and so on. And they're certainly helping other left -wingers on the run, giving them place to stay for a few days and things like this.

But it's really only with Kristallnacht in 1938, night, pogrom night of assault on Jewish businesses, on synagogues, on Jewish homes, when the full...

Mark (41:13.038)
kind of potential for violence of the regime becomes more obvious. And at that point, the group makes a conscious decision as they put it to step out of their reserve and to reach out and assist you. So their history of hell really concretely starts then in November, 1938. And until then, I wouldn't say the Jewish issue was particularly high on their radar.

partly because they say that the issue of religion was not something that the, obviously the Nazi assaults are not just about religion, but still I it makes a difference, that it's not necessarily high on their agenda. Suddenly, it is. And that really is a turning point in terms of the group's actions.

Waitman Beorn (42:05.872)
And so how do they, I guess one of the questions, and there's a question that comes up in your work as well, which is this question of the individual versus the collection of individuals, you know, in terms of who is doing the work, right? Which gets back to, I think, some of the things we mentioned at the very beginning in the sense of, you know, we rescue being in some ways the culmination of many different.

activities at different times with varying levels of both risk and benefit. I often tell students that one of the ironies, of course, of the Polish Jewish experience is that while many, many, many Poles were anti -Semitic and or apathetic to the Holocaust, almost every Jew that survived, survived as a result of at least someone or often

more than one person, helping them in a variety of ways. You know, from the sort of big ticket item, I suppose, of, you know, hiding them to someone who gave them food for a night or gave them clothes to wear or whatnot. So in that sense, looking at the boond, how organized are they? How do they, do they organize and say, look, okay, now I want you to go out and find someone to help, or is it, are they helping?

their members or are they, is it some mixture of the two where they're kind of coming across opportunities to help and are given sort of a directive that when you see these opportunities, you should take advantage.

Mark (43:42.999)
Well, it's only been helping their members, but they are given directives. And so they really are sent out to help. And I think that that's very important because it helps overcome the anxiety that you would have as an individual because you have this mission and you've been sent out to act.

And so I think that's key. So in that sense, the sort of moral pressure within the group is very important. And of course, it then very much depends on the leadership and what the leadership is saying. And here I think, know, Arthur Yaakob's role is key. And of course, it's not irrelevant. The group didn't emphasize this after the war because they wanted to foreground their principle. But it really is not irrelevant the fact that he's married to a Jewish wife who has all sorts of Jewish relatives.

acquaintances and they see what's happening to them and I think that's key and very often we find with

groups that are sort of helping Jews, that somewhere there's a mixed marriage couple or there's a converted person or a converted couple. In other words, there's some place, and this is not just true of Germany, it's also true of other places, I think in Western Europe in that there's someone or some collection of people who cross the divide between those who are not directly subject to the policies of the Nazis and

I'm more able to act and those who are the victims of those policies and therefore able to communicate what's at stake and convey the humanity of those who are being targeted and make it real. And in the case of the group Bund, the documentation in all sorts of ways through diaries, through letters, I

Mark (45:40.298)
I think they're one of the best documented groups helping that exist. I I was really lucky there. You really can see the way in

this experience of this couple, this leading couple, this mixed marriage couple is disseminated as experience down through the group and creates a real sense of what is actually going on for Jews. So there's this sort of creation of empathy, if you like, and there are directives that you should go out and do this. And sometimes the people...

where we're out to assist, trying to reach out to strangers. The strangers are very wary. They think it's a trick because the Gestapo is not above trying to expose people in that way. And sometimes they're just too nervous to even accept help.

but there is this kind of outreach. And one of the examples, and these gestures can be a very small sort of symbolic, just a symbol of solidarity. And one of the examples, which took a great deal of courage, but is a woman

herself was in fact was married to somebody who was half Jewish, who had already left the country. So she has that personal stake in it as well. And she has a personal contact then through to a wealthy couple who had hosted concerts that she'd got to go to via the Jewish relatives. And she decides to go and show her solidarity, visiting them carrying a bunch of flowers.

Mark (47:27.658)
And that involves going because this is a very visible prominent wealthy group that involves going through a mob outside the house. I mean, that's not that's quite something. The front door had been smashed in so it was sealed. So she has to go through around to the to the to the maid's entrance or the side the tradesman's entrance.

And she delivers these flowers to this traumatized couple. And I think in that case, there was nothing, they were just too traumatized and there was very little that she could do. And in fact, when she goes back to see if they have the assets to help somebody, some other Jews on the orphanage, she finds that they've committed suicide. So help is not given in that sense. But I think it was important

as a learning experience for her that she actually, because I think she was a particularly bold woman necessarily by constitution, although maybe in some ways part of the awkward squad or something about, bit like Nehama Tex, people who was a little bit on the edge in some ways. But she had the courage to walk through this mob with her flowers.

and to be seen visiting a prominent Jewish couple and that really took something and she survived it. So whilst they couldn't really benefit from it anymore, she learned something. So yeah, the group is directing and they're putting backbone for people for whom it might otherwise be a very difficult step.

Waitman Beorn (49:12.046)
And these are some of examples that you give from your research that I found really striking. You know, there's another example, a similar kind of thing where I think it was in, it was in Essen where the Jews of the Essen were confined in a coal mine or a barrack someplace. yeah, and the member of the Boon sort of walked with them and was also helping to get them things.

Mark (49:30.883)
works.

Waitman Beorn (49:41.472)
And again, you know, these are not sort of massively sort of heroic, outwardly heroic kind of behaviors. But if you consider the environment in which they're taking place. They absolutely are, I mean, they require a great deal of courage and self -confidence to sort of, you know, walk, walk with a group of Jews as they're going from one place to another or going visit them as they're waiting to be deported.

Mark (50:07.01)
Mm -hmm. Mm -hmm. Mm -hmm.

Waitman Beorn (50:11.768)
which, you know, in a certain sense, it no, it's not saving those people's lives. But as we say, if we think about rescue or helping on a spectrum, it is providing some kind of material comfort or good at a great risk. at some level, and I mean, so here we think because it's almost like it's almost like the level of risk is not commensurate with the level of of rescue, you know, because

You know, you could be rested and sent to a concentration camp for something relatively minor, or you could be sent the same outcome for, something, you know, hiding somewhere. I mean, so it's an amazing kind of... And the book is, your book is full of examples of individuals just doing sort of basic humanity, human kind of behaviors, but in public in a way that exposes them, that I think is really powerful.

Mark (51:02.158)
Mm -hmm. Mm -hmm.

Mark (51:09.174)
No, I think that's very well put. And it also reminds me of a point that I think we often don't think about. Obviously, where you know somebody very well personally, and then you act, the logic of your action is that, okay, I don't know the other people, but this is somebody I really know well, so I've got to do something. So there's that. So what then carries you over the threshold?

is the quality of the personal relationship. I'm not belittling the act, even so, it still takes the same courage, but it creates a certain logic to focusing on this person. But where you're reaching out beyond that, which the Bund called on its members to do, then...

you also are confronted with a sort of massive kind of arbitrariness. You know, why am I helping this person and that person? as they wrote several times, it's using a German phrase. It's like a sort of drop of water on a hot stone. And I think we often don't think about that. We tend to think about, well, the threat and the terror and the courage, and absolutely there's that. But there's also, you've got to overcome this sense of arbitrariness. You've got to trust that

acting in itself, even if you know that it's just a tiny gesture in this world of horror, you've still got to trust that it's worth doing. And I think one of the things that helped the group there was this sense that the acting was also good for them. In other words, it was morally necessary for them to remain human to act.

And that then overcomes the arbitrariness of knowing how small what you're doing is. And indeed, in Arthur Yaakov's diary, he records an exchange with somebody who is helping, as you were saying before, in this case, is helping, she's about to be deported and he's assisting her.

Mark (53:27.539)
and she thanks him for helping, she thanks him for help and he says, you're helping me, our lives would be unsupportable if we didn't have this opportunity to act, which in some ways is an unfair thing to say to her because I think she'd been keeping it together and the way he records it, she breaks down at that point, it's just too uplifting a sentiment.

Mark (53:56.851)
But I think it is what helps them to act, but it does remind us that there's actually this other level, as you said, you know, that what you're doing is often so small, but what it takes is so large. And there's this level of also confronting the seeming arbitrariness of your tiny gesture, particularly as I say, when you're not helping an interviewer who you know really well, where the personal connection is the thing

in a way gives it logic and makes it less arbitrary.

Waitman Beorn (54:29.72)
One of the things that struck me in that regard, and again, I hope I'm remembering this correctly, but it's one of things that you do, I think, really interestingly with the sources is you think about what the rescue behavior meant to the rescuers themselves, both in the moment, but also looking back. And I think those are two separate two separate conversations. But one of the things that struck me was there was a moment, I think it was I think it was Dora.

who had been sending things to a Jewish woman, you know, care packages and things like this. And then at one point she asks that woman for parenting advice. And you suggest that, in some way that Dora didn't want this to be kind of a dependency relationship and that she was actually concerned that, you know, it didn't seem like that this other woman was just sort

Mark (55:07.042)
point

Mark (55:12.152)
Mm -hmm.

Waitman Beorn (55:29.016)
a drain on her, you know, which is an amazing kind and then she was reaching out to kind of to try to balance the books and give this woman, you know, some level of sort of self assurance or, or feeling that she wasn't sort of a drag on, you know, on, on, on door, which I thought was a really interesting, interesting psychological piece, just like what you mentioned with Archer when he's, also seems like someone who he doesn't want people to think that he's

I'm not putting this right way, that he's sort of taking personal pride and pleasure in all of these behaviors. You know, that he's not doing this to make himself feel better. And he seems very self -conscious that other people will think that he's doing this, I suppose, in some kind of performative or self -congratulating kind of way. Does that make sense? I mean, it seems like that's something that comes through.

Mark (56:22.254)
I think what you said is really good. think the last thing, the very last thing about it, I'm not sure. I think the issue is more that they're so conscious of a Kantian sense of freedom, of ethical freedom of the individual. And they don't want individuals to be in the servitude of forced gratitude. think there's that. So as you say, it's actually Lise Jacob

who was involved in this amazing correspondence with a Polish, sort of a German Jew who had been deported quite early into part of the sort of occupied Poland and a connection had been established and they were strangers. And so the group begins sending parcels to this person. It is amazing what you could do right up until 1942. You could send letters and then you could send parcels and you could send letters hidden in parcels.

Waitman Beorn (56:49.828)
Sorry, yeah.

Mark (57:18.626)
that they would go to a post office, you could mail this stuff and it would be delivered. this woman actually she was a distant relative of Erich Fromm, as it turns out, and sort of highly educated in her own right, in many ways on a similar kind of politico -spiritual level to the group. And so they have this rather high minded exchange. And she's sort of absolutely

blown away by this as a parent of I think six children to reflect then for the group to model parenting, which I think as you say, she's really being asked because they want to give her this, it's maybe slightly constructed, but they want to give her the sense that she's really giving them something and not merely the beneficiary. And I do think there's sort of spiritual psychological dimensions, even where you don't have a group that's so mindful of it as the Bund was.

is significant. After the war, somebody who survived in Theresienstadt writes to another group member, Elsa Bramesfeld, and says, know, the parcels that you sent, I they only came intermittently. They were certainly incredibly valuable sources of food or things that you could bargain with in Theresienstadt when they actually got them.

But even more valuable was the sense conveyed that there's somebody out there who hasn't forgotten you. There's some vestige of the society, the room, where you still have a connection. And that kind of moral or morale boosting aspect of it was absolutely key. And again, I think because we are quite understandably and rightfully so focused on the physical act of, know, does somebody live or do they not live?

Obviously that is the fundamental question. But I think we perhaps don't necessarily think enough about the psychological dimensions of help, both for the actor, but also for the recipient. So there's a sort of interplay here, you know, between the way in which the helpers are imagining what it is to be the predicament of those they're helping and the way in which those receiving them are imagining the meaning of the fact that

Mark (59:40.994)
bothered to take the risk of sending them a parcel of whatever it is they've sent.

Waitman Beorn (59:45.786)
Well, and there's a moment, I think it's Archer who says something to the effect of, know, this literally gave me something to do and something to focus on, you know, and that allowed me to like, to not sort of lose myself, I suppose, in sort of the despair of inaction in the face of the Nazis. And so like, as you see, my quote, I think I'm quoting that sort of relatively

Mark (59:57.602)
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Mark (01:00:11.203)
Yeah.

Waitman Beorn (01:00:15.492)
paraphrasing it relatively correctly. sorry. I'm kidding. I'm mixing up the people.

Mark (01:00:17.004)
You are, but I think it might be Lisa again. Yeah, no, very much so. And in fact, this was part of, but it was Arthur, this was part of his council, know, when people, because obviously something that, I mean, the traumatic thing for the members of the group who don't get called up to serve is the air war over the Ruhr.

which becomes more and more intense and the threat to their lives is from the air. And so he is trying to give them advice about how to cope with that, this unbelievable threat that suddenly comes out of nowhere and becomes more and more intense and more and more disruptive. And action, this kind of action is part of the therapy, if you like, for dealing with their own

her own fears.

Waitman Beorn (01:01:19.204)
Yeah, I mean, and this gets is one of the questions I think is really, really interesting, which is how they make sense of what they have done after. you can you talk a little about about this? Because, you know, this is one of those interesting and it kind of gets to the conversation we had a minute ago of of. How do rescuers talk about what they have done?

Mark (01:01:31.074)
Mm -hmm. Mm -hmm.

Waitman Beorn (01:01:48.494)
And it seems like many of them are concerned that people aren't, people don't think that they're essentially bragging about, about what they have done, but also in the context of, and I think this is another question for categories, you know, and definitions, but, levels of success and, and what impact, successful impact, I'm using scare quotes here for the audience, you know, these people actually had, and then how they make sense of that after the war as well. Can you talk a little about this?

Mark (01:02:17.23)
Absolutely, that's a great question. And actually, you know, I was thinking about this when you were talking about the Chammatech. So I think I'd like I'd sort of there are two, two levels here, one which is about groups like the Bund, which I'll come back to. But first, a sort of more general thing. And that is, obviously, it's not the case that there wasn't scholarship about rescue before historians over the last 10, 15 years really began to engage with it more closely.

And a lot of it was somebody with sociologists like Nechama Tech, also sort of people, of ethical philosophers and so on, moral philosophers and so on. And a lot of it sort of starting in the eighties. And a lot of it was based on interviews. And I think one of the, if there's one issue that you already talked about that sort of bedeviled

thinking about rescue, was this legacy of terms that were shaped by commemorative practice. If there's another, it's that there was too little reflection on what it had changed in terms of asking people about their act after the war. And it's not really about memory in the sense

people have forgotten what they did. mean, they may have done, but I don't think that's the main issue. The issue is that I think more than many other kinds of action, the meaning of what you've done is so different in a post -war world in which what you've acted is either valorized because now post -Nazi, it looks good, or

as in certain places like Poland, where it's actually rather a dirty secret because it marks you out as somebody who sort of exposes the rest as not having acted and therefore is something that you're actually rather wary about talking about. But whatever the case, you're in a different situation in which your own attitude to what you've done and the broader context of what you've done is very different. And so that was one thing where I felt

Mark (01:04:42.254)
Obviously she had to use what she had and she's a sociologist and she uses the technique of the interview as did others like Alport and so on. So I think one of the challenges for the historian was to try and reconstruct the everyday and sort of try

work, look at the sort of dynamic interplay between what people say afterwards and things that may be a bit different. And so that you're both trying to recover the past a little bit from the way in which they've glossed after the war. And that's why one reason why I call my book, Lives Reclaimed, because I wanted to try and get a term that was sort of ambiguous between the group saving lives and the historian trying to recover a bit what the lives have been like.

And at the same time, also, for the historian to think about the process by which rescue has been refracted in the post -war period, so that the story is not just what happened between 1943 and 1945, but it's also how in succeeding decades and generations has those events been occluded or slightly reworked or they look a little bit

in terms of how outsiders see them or how how individuals see themselves. And I think one of the challenges for the interview research by people like Nechamatec and so on was how did you take into account, and I feel often they didn't enough, the very different sort of moral and political landscape in which the conversations are taking place. So that's a sort of broad,

context thing that I really think this issue that rescue has been, as I say, refracted a little bit by memory is a major issue that historians are now having to confront. I it's not really about forgetting, it's about things just look different after the event in the very different circumstances of the post -war world and maybe even in the diaspora because sometimes people are talking about actually moved

Mark (01:07:09.215)
countries. Quite a lot of the interviews are in the US of people who have emigrated. So again, there's all those political changes. All right, so that's

Waitman Beorn (01:07:21.092)
Yeah, I mean, it seems like that. And what is the situation in Germany in the postwar period and how does this change? And precisely the the context that you mentioned in the context of Poland, where and I should say for our listeners, also Ukraine and also Lithuania and every place else, you know, I'm not picking on Poland, but where where someone who rescues Jews

is a, is a painful reminder of the inaction of others. Is this something that also happens in Germany? you know, there's, there's obviously in the, the, in the resistance world, the ambiguous, you know, relation of a lot of Germans to the July 20th plot against Hitler, where, know, there are plenty of them that are kind of like, you're still traitors, even though, even though you're fighting the Nazis. And I'm not getting into July 20th, because that's, that's complex in all kinds of ways. And those people aren't all heroes either.

Mark (01:08:07.554)
We'll see.

Waitman Beorn (01:08:21.06)
But for the people that you worked on in Germany, the Bund rescuers, is there a public confrontation or lack of confrontation with rescue by Germans? And how does that change over time? Or does it change over

Mark (01:08:39.694)
It does absolutely change over time and so you raise really, really great issues there. And there are certainly some major shifts. I mean, you could say that in the immediate post -war years when there was sort of denazification going on and people had to establish their bone and thigh, everybody wanted to have had a Jew in the attic. Then fairly rapidly, you move into a sort of period where

the comfortable sense is the sense that you didn't know and in any case you couldn't have done anything. And so then people don't necessarily want to talk about rescue and there is very little work done. On the other hand, I don't think it's the case that people who did help are worrying about what the neighbors are thinking and they're having to be silent about it. I don't think that's quite the same. And if I think about some of the stories about Poland.

where people sometimes even feel physically at risk because that kind of threat, I don't think is the case in Germany. In rescue and resistance, you mentioned that interplay and I think that's important in the German context. And there are moments when resistance, I think, is really the of theme in which people are sort

thinking about recovering. And so as you say, in the 50s, in the 50s, rescue is not really talked about that much, but you could because it doesn't seem to have the same issue of disloyalty as resistance where resistance, people saying resisted is seen as really having let the side down except in certain, you know, specific left -wing minors. In the 60s, I would say there's a sort of shift where there's this recovery of

beginning to remember the left -wing existence, particularly in the early years against Nazism. And at that point, I think where sort of every kind of leaflet that was posted to a war, they're seen then as an act of defiance, you know.

Mark (01:10:55.04)
I think rescue has not taken that seriously at that point because it doesn't seem to have been tackling the regime. And so it does take a while for rescue as an act to begin to be valorized. And I think it's really in the 80s that you find...

people taking a greater interest and then it starts to become something that is kind of much more recognized also in the German context. there are certainly very significant shifts here. And so part of what I was looking at with my group is A, what were they after in the post -war period? And B, how did the stories that they were telling sit in the larger

Mark (01:11:48.34)
in the larger context of post -war West Germany. Of East Germany is a whole different kind of worms and here too, rescue is not particularly at the foreground because the story of persecution of the Jews is not really at the heart of the communist story of the fight against fascism that's foregrounded.

Waitman Beorn (01:12:14.216)
Is this something that for the for the members of the the boons? I mean, does the boon continue as a as a sort of political social force after the war and then does rescue or the actions of the group during the war become sort of I guess I'm trying to think of the right word, you know, a positive selling point for our for our organization. We can say that during the war.

you know, this was our approach in the context of, you know, modern West German politics in the sixties or seventies.

Mark (01:12:51.507)
So they certainly continue and I met members and I was present at one of the last meetings assisted by younger people who were not in the group but were sort helping the older members still meet. But

A key disappointment for the group is that they don't manage to recruit a new younger generation of members to fill the ranks. And that's a whole interesting other story about why they don't manage to do that and what is it about them that doesn't resonate. And there are some paradoxical ways in which despite having been so anti -Nazi, they get tarred in some ways

qualities of discipline and authority and things like that that are sort being rejected as a result of people being burned by the Nazi experience. there are sort of paradoxical ways in which the Nazis discredited them, although they were anti -Nazis. I think I did meet with younger people who, well, no longer young.

by the time I took them, but who had been young, who'd encountered the group in the 40s and 50s. And they had found the stories of their opposition to the Nazis inspiring. The style of the group didn't make them want to join it, but they were inspired by that. I don't know that rescue and help for Jews was necessarily at the forefront of that. I think it was more about maintaining an anti -Nazi compass and having demonstrably not been fellow.

fellow travelers that was the thing that kind of most resonated with the young people. One of the things that was really, I think, a real sort of tragedy for the group was that

Mark (01:14:44.678)
In the late 60s, a book came out about resistance in Essen, which was one of the first and a really great book about this sort left -wing resistance as part of this recovery process by historians of a sort of whole story of sort of grassroots opposition to Nazism that had been really neglected until then. And the Bund is mentioned only once in a footnote

accusing the group of having vastly exaggerated its record on the basis of some of its post -war things. after that, when Dora Jakobs produces a kind of a collection of pieces about what the group had done.

She's very underplayed as the resistance side because I think she's very conscious of not wanting to be exposed in this way. I think the critique was quite unfair. I I understand how it came to it. It's partly their rhetoric and it's partly some things they had done which I can document were a bit unbelievable and other groups were not doing them. So without a sort of evidence, it sounded like big talk.

But still, the group really did not get its recognition. So in that sense, their actions absolutely did not benefit them. And it was only very late on when the oldest members were still around, a sort of a receptive, sorry, the younger members who were now old were still around, that a receptive, wider world in Germany began to then celebrate

kinds of things that they were doing. I'm very glad that as a result of my submission and some others that Yad Vashem then did recognize some of the members. you know, coming back to one of your earliest points.

Mark (01:16:52.994)
that some, they got recognized as individuals, know, as sort of moral individuals, but the whole group context was sort of lacking. And there were some key members of the group who, because you couldn't demonstrate that they had individually had, you know, X staying with them, don't get recognized, but actually had been vital parts of this organism that had acted out, had helped and had in the end.

saved some lives. in that sense, although I was very glad that there was this recognition, it was again a sign of how the commemorative practices filter what actually happened and only let some light through and block some other. So they didn't get the recognition that they merited in my view.

Waitman Beorn (01:17:46.788)
Well, it's very interesting again, like, you know, looking at this as kind of like a in comparison to perpetrator testimony, right? Particularly in the interview context. But I think one of the things that you brought up as an historian, you know, makes us think about what does it mean when you are relying on the interview format as a way of understanding why people are doing anything. Right. And so just like for perpetrators, they're very often for a variety of reasons.

Mark (01:18:10.648)
Thank

Waitman Beorn (01:18:15.928)
reticent to talk directly about anything they've done personally that's bad. I feel like most people, particularly people that probably are involved in these kinds of rescue behaviors, you know, if they have the slightest bit of self -awareness or uncomfortable, as you sort of suggested already, are uncomfortable talking about heroic, courageous things that they've done. And so I wonder if at a certain sense, the format of particularly of an interview where, you know,

Mark (01:18:18.968)
Mm -hmm. Mm -hmm.

Waitman Beorn (01:18:45.826)
you are conscious of the fact that you don't want people to think that you are trying and even unintentionally to make yourself look good in the context of Jewish suffering. The interview format itself is a challenge to doing historical work because, you know, it's kind of like pulling teeth perhaps to get people to really admit at a certain level how courageous they were.

Mark (01:19:13.102)
Totally, totally. so that's one side of it that you sort of, and you can see this running through interviews with the Nehometek and all sorts of others, there's this sort of modesty and this downplaying and so on, which is kind of almost the natural thing that one understands would happen. On the other hand, there's also this process, which we all do, of rationalizing your actions. So you kind of foreground, you know, the principle.

Waitman Beorn (01:19:13.712)
I mean, think,

Mark (01:19:42.496)
and the idea and so on, which sometimes can be the product of the action as much as the cause of the action. And certainly I think the group does, I mean, that's a different thing because where groups are constructing narratives, the Bund was constructing a narrative about why it acted because it wanted to be relevant in the post -war period. there, I think very much.

It's telling an oversimple narrative about its ethical motive. Not that it didn't have them, but the fact that, for example, that it had these close connections with the Jewish world, which I think was so key in terms of generating empathy and awareness of what was happening and how it manages then to mobilize its ordinary members. That's all disappeared because it doesn't fit this political narrative that the group itself wants to tell. So I think both...

In that sense, there's a sort of tendency to revamp or to rephrase, maybe unconsciously after the war and on the other level is exactly what you say that you, there's also this down plane. And that discrepancy also between what it took to make very small gestures is also a problem because you're conscious that have how little you did.

though you yourself remember how much it took to do that little.

Waitman Beorn (01:21:01.189)
Yeah.

Waitman Beorn (01:21:07.6)
And that's amazing. it just, it just sparked something. I remember, don't, I don't remember the situational details, but it comes from the Vietnam war where a soldier basically intervened in an atrocity that was ongoing by American soldiers. And he said something to the effect of, just made me mad. And that's why, and, and, and it was, it's really interesting because that's one of those sort of key, like if you ask him maybe 10, 15, 20 years later, he might say,

Mark (01:21:25.262)
Mm -hmm. Mm -hmm.

Waitman Beorn (01:21:36.972)
any number of principled reasons. Cause he's really thought about articulating back, but in the moment, and again, it doesn't, it doesn't mean that it's not coming from a moral place, but there's just some truth in the, you know what? just, I just, I had to act and it just made me, it made me angry that this was happening. And I feel like that's something you're articulating as well that for some of these people, they may have started with just, you know, I saw somebody and I was like, I'm that's wrong. I'm going to help that person.

Mark (01:21:42.04)
Mm -hmm. Mm -hmm.

Yeah,

Mark (01:21:52.62)
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Waitman Beorn (01:22:06.318)
And then later on, they're looking back and they're like, well, you know, I also disagree with the regime and human rights and whatever else, in the moment, the thing that first got them moving down the, the, the road was not some sort of well thought out, articulated intellectual opposition, but just kind of a visceral human reaction.

Mark (01:22:26.798)
That's a really good point. And I think probably I didn't make enough distinction between this kind of individual response, as you say, and what happens when you have a group, which is very much kind of has a moral and political purpose because there, when I talk to individuals, it was in the shadow of a group effort very early on to create a narrative of what had happened. And so,

it's slightly different from what you were saying, which is this individual process of making sense. And I think I didn't make enough distinction about that. So I think where you have a sort of group like this, it's...

It's a political, it's a political, although political moral thing as much as the individual trying to catch themselves and think, what the hell did I do there? Because they have a story to tell. And then when you interview individuals, you interview individuals who are under the umbrella of a story.

Waitman Beorn (01:23:33.146)
But I think that's important. And I think it's important in this book that you've written as well. And it's a difference and a good one, I think, between the people that Nahama Tech is talking about, because those people are generally very much isolated. And I think that one of the sort of themes that runs through her work, but also through a lot of work on rescue behavior in Eastern Europe,

Mark (01:23:43.884)
Right.

Yes.

Waitman Beorn (01:24:00.054)
Is one of isolation because of the, know, there just aren't these organizations in the same way. And so the, the point that you're making is a good one that, know, here you have people who are working together collectively. but that also means that they have a certain allegiance to considering how their organization is viewed as a rescuer. In addition to how they individually might be. And so they have to, as you, as you point out, they have to then consider.

You know, that when I'm, when I'm talking about what I'm doing, it's not just what I've done because I did it as part of, of this organization. And so that there needs to be some way of, sort of reconciling those, those two things, at least, at least publicly. And I suppose that's the tough work that you have to do as an historian sort of unpack. You know, where is this person, you know, suggesting that, you know, they're doing something from a organizational perspective versus from an individual perspective. And, know,

how they're reading that back onto what they did and that kind of thing in the past.

Waitman Beorn (01:25:07.376)
So, I mean, I think that this is a I think a really cool piece of the book that you've written that is really interesting, particularly all the things that we've just talked about for the last 15, 20 minutes, which is about, I think a lot of people don't look at, lot of historians don't look at how rescuers view themselves after the fact, because they are so interested in, and not wrongly, but interested in the what happened and what did you do, you

But also, but then sort of leave them, leave them alone after the, after the war ends and after everything else, you know, then it's, then it's sort of the focus shifts. And so I think it's really interesting to think about the ways that these people make sense of their own behavior. Yeah. So I thought that was really interesting.

Mark (01:25:52.622)
But what there has been is some really great work on the memory of rescue. So there's one sort of bunch of historians who are really trying to recover what help actually looked like and why it happened and when it happened.

And they're also historians who are thinking about, what has been the presence of rescue in post -war era? How has recognition, when did it emerge and how has it taken the shape that it has? And I suppose what I was trying to do, but I was trying to bring these two literatures a bit together because I'm interested in the sort of interplay between experience and the way experience then.

is reshaped after all, partly because I know as a historian to get at the past we often have to get through, we have to look through the refracting lens of a person. I I had also some really great wartime records but I also had to use obviously you know important post -war ones as well and so you need to be mindful of what it is that you're looking through when you're using this particular lens.

Waitman Beorn (01:27:11.76)
And I think that's one of the things that I really took away that's really interesting is, and as you've articulated already, this idea of the, you know, often I think as historians, we sort of look at the past as like the past happens, the public forgets about it, and the story and uncovers it, and then it becomes public knowledge, maybe out of a film or a TV series or some event. But what's interesting is that in this instance,

You know, the past happened. the public grafted onto it, made it a big deal, you know, for commemorations and, you public, you know, public sort of knowledge. And then the historians come along and have to try to, as you've, as you suggested, unpack it. And I think that's a really, really interesting, because I think often we, we, we see things going the other direction, with, which has its own challenges, but this is a different one that I hadn't really thought about.

until I'd read your book. And so it's really interesting to sort of think about the ways in which public commemoration, which often I think historians are like, I wish the public would commemorate my topic more. But actually that might not always be always a helpful thing because sometimes if the public commemorates it, they essentialize it in ways that aren't super helpful. And then you have to go back and sort of argue against, as you sort of suggest, this established

sort of understanding conventional wisdom of what these things are. And so, yeah, I think that's a really fascinating thing. We've taken up a ton of your time, so I don't want to take up much more. Can we end with sort of the way that we always end this podcast, which is, you know, what are two, well, I said you could have more than one book, but what book would you or books would you recommend that have been particularly meaningful for you in regard to this topic or the Holocaust in general?

Mark (01:29:06.126)
Yeah, I mean, there's so much great new research. This is a real tough one. I will say, Wayman, I really enjoyed your book, which I, as you know, I read in manuscript and I'm looking forward to seeing the final published version, which I'm glad to has just arrived on my desk. But I'm going to go for a classic, which I think is still not quite well enough known.

And this is Sebastian Hafner's Defying Hitler, which for understanding German society in the 30s, I still think is one of those amazing books. As you know, Sebastian Hafner was a German.

legal trainee and then he became a journalist in the 30s because he couldn't face practicing law under the Nazis called Rheinmann -Prezl. And he makes the mistake of falling in love with a Jewish woman who gets pregnant and so he decides to follow her to Britain. And where he becomes renamed himself Sebastian Hafner and becomes quite a well -known journalist in Britain before returning to Germany after the war.

But soon after he comes to Britain, he writes a manuscript about what the Third Reich had been like, which he then puts in a desk drawer and doesn't touch, and in other words, published in his lifetime. And then his son and so on sees it into print.

So we have something that was not in any way written for sort of British consumption. And he writes other things that are then much more shaped by the sort of political circumstances of the late 30s, early 40s and so on. And what I think he really captures, and that's also very relevant for understanding the circumstances that the Bund found themselves in, is, you know,

Mark (01:31:14.732)
My students are always talking about brainwashing. You if there's one term that they use, I'm trying to get rid of, it's brainwashing. Although the irony is that the fact that they all say it seems to prove that actually it does exist since they've all been brainwashed. But I try to sort of make clear the regime is not like that. And there's actually a recent book which is about to come out in English by Janos Stojwa.

Waitman Beorn (01:31:29.04)
They've been brainwashed.

Mark (01:31:44.554)
which I think also makes this point very well, that the regime is often not even working that hard to make sure everybody's thinking the same way. And even if they are, are awful lot of people thinking all sorts of different things. But what it does do very early on is it confronts people we're having to make daily choices.

And this is the thing that Hafner sort of he said, you know, he talks about these moments where he's kind of just forced to make a choice and he finds himself, you know, making the weak choice because otherwise it would have been too generous, know, too dangerous. know, very early on in 1933 when Sturmabteilung members invade the law library where he's doing his training because they want to chuck the Jews and they say to him roughly, you a UNarian.

and he finds his compromise himself by saying yes. Or you know, then they're at a boot camp, they, in order to finish their legal training, they have to take part. And they're all sort of, as he says, each one being the Gestapo of the others. And there they are with their arms raised around a radio, because it's quite complicated, especially if you're thinking about professional future, not to do that. But they've then created the sense of this seamless group. And that sense that actually the way the

works is by having these small moments in which you're kind of induced and he says this is quite different you know from it's not the previous way it's been about trying to influence you or get you

put vote one way or the other. It's actually politics reaching right down to your individual level where you are called upon to make this little gesture and in so doing create the wall of gestures that others then confront. And I think that is still an absolutely invaluable lesson about how this works, how this regime, how the society works.

Waitman Beorn (01:33:48.412)
Absolutely. We will put that in the show notes. And for everyone else, thank you so much for listening. Please, if you have a chance, give us a rating, leave a comment on your favorite podcast site. That's really helpful for us. Once again, Mark Roseman, thank you so much for coming on. Really appreciate

Mark (01:34:10.68)
been a great pleasure.