The Forgotten Heroes of the Holocaust with Richard Hurowitz

- Richard Hurowitz has written a book entitled In The Garden of the Righteous, the Heroes Who Risk Their Lives to Save Jews during the Holocaust. Richard, what made you decide to want to write this book?

- You know, the origin of the book probably originally goes back to when they opened the Holocaust Museum in the United States, which is early nineties. And I was in college at the time and I went down with my family to see it and I went through the museum and the exhibit, which hasn't changed actually to this day, although they are in the process from my understanding of actually redoing it for the first time since, since the museum opened. You know, it's a very inner innovating exhibition. You know, I've spoken to many, many audiences about the book and everyone has the same visual memory of a pile of shoes there from all of the, all of the victims. And if you look very closely, you see children's shoes and reminds you that of the 6 million Jews who died one and a half million were children. And it, you know, I, at the time I was in college and I found this extremely upsetting and I came out into a small exhibition at the end that they had of people who tried to do something in rescuers. And I gravitated in particular to a photo of a young guy who was about my age at the time, who was a medical student at the University of Munich. And he was part of a group called the White Rose, who are very well known in Germany today, but are not very well known outside of Germany. And I was very taken by this story about how they had tried to basically foment a student uprising against Hitler. They were very idealistic. They were religious too, but, but you know, very Ed, I, they did this by circulating mem leaflets throughout, throughout Germany. They got, as far as Austria, this was known at the time outside of, outside of Germany, the leaflets would later be used by the British. They, they parachuted them into Germany. And the leaflets basically talked about how, you know, this was not the Germany that, that they believed that, that, that everyone believed in. And, and they were one of the first people to publicize the Holocaust in these leaflets. In any event, the story has a very tragic ending because they were, after about a year of this, and it was actually starting to drive even Hitler personally crazy. They were caught by a maintenance man at the University of Munich. They were turned in as happened to many people who tried to do something and they were summarily executed within days. And actually Sophie Shool, who was the girl, young college student who was at the center of this. And when she was tried, she said something like, you, everybody believes, everybody agrees with us in, in, in, in Germany. They're just afraid to say it. Which of course was not true, right? But, but there, it's obviously a very ins inspiring message. I thought about doing my thesis. I was studying history at Yale on, on the, the them, but I, I ended up doing something on Alexander the Great, but the story stayed with me. And on the 75th anniversary of the Execution of the White Rose, I wrote an article about it for the New York Times, was sort of a history piece, just saying, telling the story and then talking about, you know, what we, you know, what we can learn from them. And it happened to coincide with the student activism on the back of the Parkland shooting and, you know, as these things happened. So everything came together and it, it, it went fairly viral. It went to one of the top, you know, the most read stories of the, of the day. And it, it really, you know, I was, I read the comments, you know, it was all, all positive, which was unusual. 'cause usually anytime you mention the word Nazi, somebody's gonna write something. And I've actually, since I've, in all my years of writing about this subject, I've actually never had anybody ever do that, which is pretty remarkable. So then I started writing a series of these for a number of different publications, including the Wall Street Journal and the LA Times. And I had a very similar response and I also learned through that that rescue is a very understudied area of the Holocaust and of history. And yet at the same time, I think there's, they're unbelievably inspiring. They're very important lessons we can learn from these people who are in some ways among the most heroic people in history. So I decided to turn it into a book. And the book is, you know, 10 stories of different types of rescue and a little bit on like why people did this and what we can learn from them.

- Yeah, it really is an inspiring book and beautifully written. May I say thank you and researched obviously, and some, some characters that one hadn't heard of, at least I hadn't heard of before, such as Aris Dea Mendez. I'd like you to talk about his story in a moment, but before you do, what, what a number of rescuers were a tiny, tiny minority of course, of people in occupied Nazi occupied Europe. What, what made people rescue others when so few did? First of all, how, what percentage would you say it it is?

- Well, the, so the Ya Em in in in Jerusalem, which is the title of my book, comes from The Garden of the Righteous, which is every time they recognize someone as a righteous among the nations, which is the highest award that the state gives for this, there are about 27,000 people who've been recognized. Now that's out of a population of Europe at the time of, I think about half a billion. So one analogy I like to use with, you know, when talking about it is if you, just to visualize it, if you were to fill up a basketball stadium, which usually seats about 20,000 people with a representative of Europe at the time, you would have one person who was a righteous among the nation. So it was about, you know, one in 20,000. I think the, the criteria indier are a little bit too strict. I think there were many people who did things that wouldn't rise to the level of, you know, what, what that were still pretty heroic. You know, people who gave people food, let them stay overnight. There were also many people that we never know about who did, did this. A lot of it was clandestine, people died. But even if you multiply by 10 or a hundred, you're still talking about a very small, less than 1% of the population really did anything to help others. So, you know, the, they were exceedingly rare and the, unfortunately, there wasn't a lot Andrew, of systematic study that was done in the years after the war for a variety of reasons. And, and I think part of that is people were very interested in evil. They wanted to know why people either perpetrated crimes or collaborated or just went along with it. So you had the famous Milgram experiments at Yale, you had the Stanford prison experiments where you're sitting. And also a lot of the rescuers were, for a variety of reasons, people didn't, you know, they were, they were remained anonymous partly out of just modesty. I mean the, it's kind of almost spooky. The, I've read hundreds of testimony and they all, they people use almost the exact same words. I I didn't do anything extraordinary. I just did what a decent person would do. So there was one study that was done by some freudians and they concluded that how you, what the difference between people who rescued or didn't had to do with how they were ra disciplined as a child, which is very Freudian. But I think there was, there is something to that. And so as I, what I can tell you is having gone through many, many, many cases, I see certain patterns have like emerged. You know, one thing, you know, people in creative professions tended to be more likely to help people in international, for sure professions. Whether it was diplomats or, or people in international business, people who had colleagues around the world that, that, that, that, that was helpful. One thing that was completely not helpful was education. Every member, every attendee at the Vse conference had either a PhD or a law degree. And so, and if anything, it might have gone been counter, but I think would say two things. One is two things that I could would say were almost universal is that every rescuer generally had something they believed in greater than themselves. It could have been political, it could have been custom, well most likely it was religion, although not every rescuer was religious, but a lot of rescuers tended to be religion. And it was cross religion. I mean, it was Protestants, Catholics, Orthodox, Muslim. 'cause the Albania was a majority Muslim country, but it was people and it was people who believed in the teachings, like internally, it wasn't for external displays of piety. I I I, I think the parable of the Good Samaritan saved more Jews than anything else during the war. And then the other thing I think that is, was basically universal is that every rescuer seems to have had, and this goes back to the study I was talking about, early in their childhood, one at least one figure, often two, often a parent, but not always who did a couple of things. One is more, more obvious than the other. The obvious one is that they exposed them to people different than themselves and said, you know, we don't believe in bigotry. We are tolerant of people different than us. And the second thing is that they often came out of loving homes and were supported as children. And this could do, you know, the, the Freudian study would say they were disciplined in a rational way. But all of this is important because it means that they often, they had a significant amount of self-confidence, which comes out of being in that kind of home. And if you think about it, to be a rescuer in occupied Europe, you really had to have a lot of self-confidence. 'cause first of all, you had to believe not only that, your moral compass that yeah, you had to believe that your moral compass was correct. You also had to believe that if you took action, you could make a difference. And so, like Arena Sendler, who is one of the chapters in my book who led a network of mostly young women who went saving about 22,000 children and ba Jewish children and babies from the Warsaw ghetto. She went back and forth several times a week. It was extraordinarily dangerous. Her father was a doctor who actually died from typhus that he caught from some very impoverished Jews who told her that if she saw someone drowning, she had to help. And that if she saw someone in jeopardy, right, you had to, and she talked about this later, she talked about this, she lived actually in the end, well into her eighties. And she, when she gave interviews later in her life, she would refer always to her father and this message that she got from him. So I think, I think that that was to the extent there was a secret formula, it all has to do with, I think, you know, early childhood and how, how you're raised and the values that you're raised around.

- Well, what references do any of those criterion have for Aristedes Deus Mendez and tell us all about him.

- Well, he's, he's a, yeah, people often asked me, who's your favorite? And I'm not really, I shouldn't really say it's like asking who's your favorite child? But I think if I have that he

- Is my favorite.

- He my favorite too, actually. He's amazing. And, and actually the Christian science monitor called him the breakout star of the book, which I, I was founder. Yeah, I agree. I agree with that. Yeah, he is so, so he was, he's an amazing story. And, and, and someone who was definitely, definitely inspired by both, I think his, the values he was raised on, and he was also happened to be a devout Catholic. He, so he actually undertook the largest, they believe it was the largest single rescue by an individual during the Holocaust. And yet nobody knows his name. And one of the reasons, to go back to your first question, I've decided to write the book is I feel there is a historical injustice that we all know, if you had asked me who was Heinrich Himmler or Herman Goring, everyone would know who he was. But this man who's, again, the large is probably rescued about 10,000 people during three weeks, is unknown. And so what, he was a, a Portuguese diplomat. He had been born when Portugal was still a monarchy actually. And he was an aristocrat. He was a twin. And both he and his brother went to law school like their father. But then they both decided to go into the foreign service. And his brother was sort of one of these diplomat. He had a meteoric career, he was, became foreign minister and was, was exceptionally talented. His brother IRS was also talented, but he was a different kind of diplomat. He was one of these like bon. And so wherever they sent him all over the world, he was a, you know, really beloved, he was entertaining, constantly fascinating people, their stories about, you know, Einstein doing math problems with his kids. And his daughter was in the, you know, a royal wedding in France and he had 14 children and they used to fly in his house in Portugal, the flag for everywhere that they were born. And he actually had, two of his children were American. So the American flag flew there, and two of his children would actually later be the D-Day. But in any event, he, he found himself, he was sort of a mid-level dip diplomat, and he found himself as Consul general, which during the war became extraordinarily important because Dorothy Thompson, the journalist, had a very famous line where she said, we live in a time when, you know, pieces of paper decide someone's life. And, and so what, but by being cons general, he was basically in charge of visas for people. And he found himself in, in Bordeaux as the Consul general for Portugal. And this was in June of 1940 when the Nazis invaded France. And you know, at that point, as I'm sure most of your listeners will know, there was the, you know, there, there was a massive traffic, like massive exodus out of Paris south where you had literally, you know, millions of people in probably one of the worst traffic jams in history. There were horrific scenes of the lfa, you know, scraping people and everyone was fleeing south because, you know, that was, the Germans were kind of, you know, follow, like were in the north. And, and the idea of hope was also if you could get to the South, you could get out of, out of France. So he, you know, he's in Bordeaux and literally, you know, hundreds of thousands of refugees show up. It was a very dramatic scene because actually the French government in exile came there. De Gaul was there. The, the soon to be VC government was there, everyone is in Bordeaux. And what's, what's he had been, so, just to back up one second, Portugal at the time, the dictator of Portugal Salazar and Salazar was a sort of a very complicated Machiavellian figure who, you know, wasn't quite a fascist, didn't believe in political parties, he was a virulent anti-communist. So, but he was basically a corporatist but, but ruthless and his primary foreign policy goal, because if you think about where Portugal is basically surrounded by Spain, was to keep Spain out of the war. And Franco was of course an ally of Hitler and Mussolini. And so the idea that, and was opposed to refugees coming across the Spanish border, Spain was neutral. If you could get to Spain, you were safe. So Salazar was very focused on not having refugees in, and a number of months earlier, he had circulated something called Circular 14, which basically said that nobody was allowed to come, you know, into, into Portugal without getting permission from Lisbon. First there were a few carve outs, which was Americans, I think British French, if they were famous, which was, I, it was a very, very, very set set. But it was very clear that if you did not have a, they also said specifically not Jews and, and people without a, a passport could not come in. So by June of 1940, Susan Mendes had actually already been reprimanded a couple of times because he had given visas to people because he felt quite sorry for them. One of whom wasn't even Jewish, who was a professor who was on the run from, from, from from from Franco. So he knew that, you know, I just mentioned that because he knew that giving visas to people would get him in trouble. But in any event, all these people are in, in Bordeaux, and they're going door to door seeking exit visas because in order to get out of, of France, and again, the, it was the, the clock was ticking 'cause the German army was bearing down and everyone knew that the French would capitulate shortly, they were going door to door and nobody would give them a visa, including the American embassy. And the rumor went around that the Portuguese diplomat might be, might be, might be sympathetic. So, you know, this four crowd started forming outside his consulate. And he came down and he found actually a young rabbi who had a very large family, as I mentioned, he had 14 children. And he said to the rabbi, why don't you come in with your kids? My consulate is empty. I have plenty of room. Why don't you stay the night? You shouldn't be sleeping on the street. And so the guy, he came in, and then Susan Mendez had this very long conversation with him where he talked about how he thought he was a, possibly a descendant of Converso. And he asked him about, you know, his family. And at the end of the night, he said to the rabbi, he said, you know, I think I can give you visas for your family. And the rabbi said, I couldn't take the visas because what would happen to all my other fellow Jews out on the street and all the other refugees. And he's, he kind of declined the bees. At which point Susan Mendez had, what I saw, the letter he wrote to his brother, he described as a nervous breakdown. He, he took to his bed and he, he was really tormented by this. And then he got up in very dramatic fashion, and there's many eyewitnesses to this. So I actually believe he actually did say this. He got up and he said, first he said to his family, I would rather stand with God against man than with man against God. And then he went down and he said, very dramatically, I'm going to give a visa to every person who needs one, regardless of religion or background. And then he did that. And so he went on this visa writing spree for, you know, three weeks. And, and at one point the word got back actually to Salazar because a woman came in for a tourist visa who was British. And they asked her to like, if she could wait for a few minutes because it was such a chaotic scene. And she got very offended and stormed out and she went to the British consulate to complain. And the, the, the, they duly, you know, cabled Lisbon. And, and so he was aware that this was going on. They actually literally sent by limousine, the, the ambassador from, from Portugal to Spain across the border to try to catch him. He was then running all, it was like a cat and ask game all over the south of France. He was writing visas. And then, and, and during that time, among the people that he wrote visas for were, I opened the book with the rescue of the people who wrote Curious George, who was ca who were carrying the manuscript with them. Salvador Dali, the Hapsburg family, including Otto von Hapsburg, who was mentioned in Meum. They had a, the Hitler had sent paratroopers to try to kill the Hapsburg family, the Rothschild family, Paul Rosenberg, who was Picasso and Matisse's art dealer, but, but mostly just very poor Jews who were on the run. And then the door slammed shut when Vichy capitulated. And, and, and then Susan Mendez was summoned back to Lisbon and they opened up an investigation against him for disobeying orders. And the initial res actually report, which I read, said that he had been, you know, take overtaken by his humanitarian impulse and he should be reprimanded. But that was it. The foreign minister then said, no, he should be basically demoted. And then Salazar personally got involved and said, no, he's fired and he loses his pension and he basically wasn't even able to work anymore. And the next few years watched him have this very slow, sad decline where he had grown up, you know, as a aristocrat. It was one of the reasons I think Salazar resented him. 'cause he was from the same part of Portugal. He went through his entire life savings, his wife died, he had a stroke, his children could not get jobs. And he had, he ended up having this very sad end at the same time. And he was still alive when this happened. You know, Salazar was, again very Machiavellian. And at the end of the war, he switched sides. It did not stop him from being only one of two heads of state to send condolences to Germany when Hitler committed suicide. But he did successfully move to the allied side. When he saw the handwriting on the wall. He allowed the allies to use the Azores as a landing base. And then after the war, he was one of the, you know, founding members of nato. And part of the way that they were able to convince the west that this dictatorship was okay was because he said, look at all of the look refugees we helped, which to some degree at the end of the war is true. But a lot of it was based on the war, what Susan Mendes had done. And this was beyond, as you can imagine, in like infuriating and upsetting to Susan Mendes who had basically, not only was he punished by Salazar, he was shunned by the entire diplomatic corps. His friends wouldn't speak to him, his children again had to leave the country. So that, you know, and until Salazar the Carnation Revolution in 1974, he was, he, he, and then his family after he died, kept trying to get his case reopened. They wouldn't do it. Israel recognized him fairly early on as righteous and then the United States in the eighties. But it wasn't until the nineties that he was finally rehabilitated, and now he's a national hero in Portugal. So I, you know, there's something really wonderful about his human humanity and this kindness that he showed. And he would, he talked about it afterwards. He said, well, I'm, he said, actually, I'm a, I'm a testament to the hospitality and the kindness of Portugal. Which was true. I mean, he was applauded in the streets when he did this. And he, this was someone who had been beloved as an emissary of Portugal. And so he could not understand why he was being punished for doing something that he thought would reflected well on the country. But there's something really, and then, you know, to save 10,000 people, and it may be more, if you think about it, there's hundreds of thousands of people alive today because of him. Because, you know, this is the, to the, the statement from the Talmud on the medal for that they give to the righteous, he who saves one life, saves the world. It's because these people all had descendants. Right. And some of these were, as I mentioned, famous accomplished people that he saved, but there were many, many people. So, so, you know, his, his gift to the world continues to, continues to down through the generations.

- Yeah, his nobility of spirits is, is fantastic. And shines through your book. I think it's worthwhile pointing out that the other country, or at least the other head of state who sent condolences on the death of Hitler, was Aon de Valera, the president of Ireland, neutral Ireland. Why was it that some communities such as Denmark and Albania and tell us about shoal managed to rescue almost their entire Jewish populations, whereas others actually gave theirs up in an active way?

- Yeah, this is a really interesting question in, in, in my view because it has so much relevance to today. So, you know, as you mentioned, there were, you know, the most famous example is Denmark, where, you know, 95 plus percent of the Jews survived Albania, which was a majority Muslim country, but where all three monotheistic religions had, had, had lived for centuries, had more Jews at the end of the war than at the beginning of the war. And you mentioned Le Chambal, which is a fascinating story to me. This was a Protestant town in Plateau in the, in, in the mountain mountainous region in the south of France where they had a long history of persecution themselves because they were the descendants of Hugins. But they were, they were non, the, the pastor there, Andre Truckman and his wife Magda, were, were, were very major figures in the nonviolent movement. They were also quite cosmopolitan. And basically they ended up in this very remote area because he couldn't get a job because of his pacifism, wasn't afraid to risk his life. He actually volunteered to be an ambulance driver, but didn't believe in violence, non-violence. What's remarkable about that area is right next door was Class Barbie and some of the worst, you know, violence against, you know, and the resistance fighting and Kmu was there. They, that town ended up, it wasn't really, it was actually an entire region ended up saving about 5,000 people, including 3,500 children. The children went to school there, they were treated, it was as if they were in camp. There was basically no evidence of denunciations. There was one roundup that happened where Cha May's young cousin was actually, he was like a housemaster. He, he, he ended up, there were about 15 kids and him who were actually deported east and murdered. But, but this was a very unusual situation where, and it was kind of an open secret, which is sort of, you know, gets to your question. I think, you know, why is it that they were able to do this? And I think what what what was unique about the not unique, sorry, what was common with these places? And there were other pockets throughout Europe is, is a few things. One is the entire community, well, they generally did not have a belief in religious bigotry. It was something in anathema. It had been actually legal illegal. It had been banned in, in Denmark several hundred years before. But they also, you know, and, and in Albania there was a culture of hospitality where they would rather somebody die than be who's a guest. They'd rather die than have a guest in their home or their country be be hurt. And so again, going back to what I was saying earlier, you know, a belief in something bigger than yourself, but, you know, these were places that, you know, over the temple in Les Jamba, it said, love thy neighbor, right? So they had the ethos to begin with, and then they really did not believe, you know, that like in Denmark, they viewed the Jews that were there as their neighbors and their friends and their fellow countrymen. So they were Dan first and Jews second. And there's an apocryphal story that the king that they, the king of Denmark wore a so of David as many Jews were forced to do in Europe at the time in solidarity. But he didn't, because from the beginning, the, the Danes refused to allow the Nazis to have any of the Jews wear a star of David. They, they would not permit it. And what's interesting about these places, right, is that, is that everybody stood together during the war. The fascist party in Denmark under occupation received consistently less than 2% of the vote. This is while the Nazis were occupying the country. And the, the, the, as soon as they got there, the, you know, the mach then the Navy in particular, they knew this was not something they wanted, they did not wanna be dealing with rounding up Jews because they knew that the Danes would be very upset about it. And that was there from the beginning. And so e even when the SS came, the advice back to Germany was, let us not, don't do this. You're gonna cause a problem, we're gonna have an uprising. And so the Nazis knew that and they didn't wanna, like nobody on the ground wanted to, to deal with that. And it ended, it ended up being that Hitler personally had to order the roundup of the Danish Jews. And then there was a tip off from a, from a Nazi who was a Nazi, but not an antisemite who taped off, he worked as a advisor in the, to the government. He then tipped off the Danish government and Denmark then tipped off the Jewish community. And then in, in sort of an amateur flotilla, like in Dunkirk, over several weeks they ferried almost the entire Jewish community to Sweden. The ones that were captured and sent to, to raisin stock. They continued to set to check on them. And so only 50 died of disease when they came back. Also, it's important to note that they were welcomed back with open arms. Their plants had been watered, their pets had been fed because in a lot of places people took advantage of the Jews and they came back and you find someone living in your house. And I think that what the lesson to me that is interesting is that when you had the entire community stand up, and you're talking about when MB bond, these were non-violent people, right? But you had, you had the entire community stand up, you were able to really stand up to the Nazis. And, and, and by the way, in, in, in Denmark, it turned out that the advice to Hitler was correct, because later this was one of the precipitating events to what a, a number of months later became a full blown uprising by the Danes against, against the Nazis. And so I think what the other important lesson for me is, which goes again to like the importance of children is I think if you can, which is why I think the anti-bullying campaign that people make fun of is actually pretty important. Because if you can create a, any kind of community where more than half of the people will cut off hate in its midst say, this is not what we stand for. You know, you could, these, these people prove that you can even stand up to the Nazis, even if you're, if you're unarmed. And in, in a lot of places for the Nazis, it was like pushing on an open door where not, not only did people not not object to the treatment of Jews and Roma and other people, they actually were the first people to run and collaborate and take of it. But in the places where they actually didn't do that, it showed that it became a more of an issue for the Nazis and you could, you could prevent it from happening.

- You've mentioned that there's not that much interest in terms of history or academics study on this subject of rescue. Very little focus on it. Why do you think that is?

- I think there's a few reasons. I think the, I think first of all, in the period right after the war, there was a, there, the one reason I'm moderately sympathetic to at the beginning was that the first generation of survivors felt that given how rare rescue was, and given that many of those people ended up surviving camps and had not been rescued, that they were concerned that we not distort the record. Although I will say from its beginning, Yad Vhe has as one of its core missions to honor the righteous and that the dedication of the garden of the righteous gold in my ear, who at the time was foreign minister, said she had a very poetic statement where she said the rescuers were like drops of love and an ocean of poison. And the Jewish people in the state of Israel will remember them forever and always. But again, one out of, as I mentioned, you know, the basketball stadium, you know, analogy, it was very rare. So there was a concern not to distort the record. I think part of it though also was in the beginning again, the rescuers themselves were ready, very reticent to come forward. Many of them were, had very difficult lives after the war and there was a lot of resentment towards them. So just 'cause the allies won the war didn't mean you saw the issue of antisemitism in Europe. So many of them came back and people were quite angry at them. Why did you do this? You could have put us at risk. Oscar Schindler famously had rocks thrown at him in Germany behind the Iron Curtain. Many stories disappeared for until after the Berlin Wall fell because it was quite dangerous to have been a rescuer. 'cause it was an implication that you were working with the underground and you were therefore anti-communist and were ally, you were, you know, suspect. And so Lorena Sandler, I mentioned like her children could not go to university. And so there were many people over there that had the metal in the drawer. And that's important because, you know, the real killing fields of the Holocaust were in the east of Europe. And consequently, you know, more Jews died in Poland than anywhere else. There were also more rescuers because there was more opportunity for rescue. So many of those stories did not come out until later. And many rescuers didn't know. People didn't know who had rescued them. You know, because you know, you, if you think about it, like the Susan Mendes story, you may have met him for five minutes, he stamped your visa. You remember this like amazing person who saved your life, but you don't know who he was. And then he was not put forward, he, there was no press coverage or her, you know, heroism about him later. So I think a lot of these stories just got lost. And then there was this effort sort of 20, 30 years after the war by led by a lot of people like my friend Abe Foxman, who had been rescued as children to start to say, you know, we really need to understand these people and we really need to, to, to celebrate them and honor them and learn from them. But you know, again, I think rightfully the, the amount of, you know, books and, and scholarship that's done on the Holocaust and World War II in general will always dwarf rescue because rescue was a small part of it. And in fact, part of the lesson is why was it such a small part of it? Why did so many, so few people do this? And so I think, you know, that that's, that's part of it. And I do think there just is a part of us that, you know, people tend to gravitate towards the bad, they gravitate towards evil. There's a fascination with it. And there's not such a fascination either in history or in the news with people who are heroic or who do amazing things. And I think we need to, we need to work harder to, to counter that narrative.

- This book's full of amazing stories. What's your favorite one? Favorite

- One? My favorite? Well, again, I, I would, I I I think my favorite is probably Gino Bartley, who, who was be just because it's, it's, this is the story of a, the cyclist a man. Yeah. So he was like cyclist, yeah, possibly the most famous athlete in Europe, definitely in Italy at the time. And so it was this wild story about this very famous celebrity who ended up rescuing 700 people. I mean, the story basically, so, you know, he won the Tour de France in 1938, was a national, well, should have been a national hero because Mussolini was obsessed with athletics and fancied himself presented himself as a sportsman. But at that time it was a big focus for the, for the government. And so, and they were on a winning streak. They had won the World Cup, they had done very well at the Olympic Games in Los Angeles. And Primo Carra was the heavyweight champion of the world. Everybody dedicated their victory to Mussolini. And the regime, except Gino Bartley. Gino Bartley was a devout Catholic. And he won the Tour de France in 1938. And he did not thank the regime. He dedicated his victory to Mary and he thanked his fans. When he came back on the train to Italy, nobody greeted him at the station because Mussolini was livid. And the interesting thing about him is he was so famous, there really wasn't much they could do to him. And the, the church was the only real counterbalance to the, to the fascist regime. But he sort of, you know, had taken this stand and then the war broke out and he, he actually was recruited and wor he was drafted, but he was put to work as a messenger and he was allowed to use his bicycle so he could stay in shape. But again, it's hard to put it into perspective 'cause cycling isn't as it was like the peak of cycling. And in, in Italy of all places, it was enormous. So this was the, this was the equivalent of like in the United States today, like LeBron James. He was that kind of, that kind of celebrity. And he was beloved. And so he worked as a bike messenger. But then during the war, so after the Allies came up in 1943 and, and the, you know, the, the, the Allied forces came up right below Rome and the fighting bogged down there, that's when it became very dangerous for Jews because the, the, the Italians sort of viewed the, what they called the German disease, the, the, the antisemitism to the point of wanting to murder Jews as kind of crazy. So actually anywhere you were in Europe where the Italians were the occupying force, they did not do roundups. In fact, a friend of mine who was the head of, was the head of this, the group at the Yad Vhe that gives out the ward for righteous. He, he had been rescued as a, he had been saved as a child. 'cause he happened to be in the one small part of France that was occupied by the Italians. So they had discriminatory laws, but they didn't do roundups. But after 1943 and after, you know, the, there was a brief moment where the Italian government, the Italian basically surrendered, but then the Germans came down, put Mussolini back into sort of a puppet regime in the north and occupied the north of Italy. So from below Rome on up, that became very dire for the, for the Jews of Italy, both the Italian Jews and the foreign Jews that were living there. And so there had been a, you had before that you'd been able to get out. There was an underground group that, that would, would take, take people out. And, and it was sort of coordinated between, partly with the Catholic church. Now the Jews had to go underground. And it's not that well known, but a big part of the Catholic church in the north took undertook this sort of, you know, underground operation. And, and, and one of the main figures who was a pope, almost the pope, he was the cardinal of Florence. And, and at the conclave when Pius the 12th was made Pope who did not distinguish himself with respect to the Holocaust. One of the other contenders was, was it was Cardinal de LaCosta who you could think about like if he had become Pope, what would've happened. He was later became the, he's made also righteous among the nations. He was the one of the ringleaders of this underground network, which hid Jews and partisans in monasteries and convents and the cloisters. And as we talked about earlier, fake papers were critical to this. And so what Bartley did, Gino Bartley is he was recruited in as by his priest, who was the cardinal 'cause he was so famous. His priest was the cardinal of Florence, where he was from. He, he rode all around with hidden with the papers hidden in his bicycle. And what was interesting is like if he was stopped at a, he was the only person who probably had an, who had a, a legitimate excuse for riding all over the north of Italy, and who also could physically ride from Florence to Genova in one day. And if they stopped him, he would say things like, you know, don't touch my bike. It's perfectly calibrated for the racing. So he had an excuse for people not to touch his bicycle. And, and he, he performed this very heroic service as a courier for the underground, bringing false papers. And it centered on Assisi, which is where they even allowed the underground even allowed Jews into the, into the cloisters. The other thing he did was he, he, he had a hid a family and some other people in an apartment he owned in Florence for the, you know, during the occupation, this was very dangerous. If he had been caught, he would've been killed. He was actually at one point hauled in and interrogated, which his son said was the most terrifying moment of his life. So he ended up, they estimate this as part of this underground saving 700 people. This never told anyone. There were rumors. He did tell his son, his son actually said to him, why are you telling me this if I can't tell anyone? He said, one day you'll know. And it, there were periodic rumors. And then later there was a book where, in a movie where he was mentioned, he got very upset, he wanted to sue them. He, he remained a very famous person in Italy. He became a commentator. And, and I've even seen footage of his 80th birthday party where this came up. He also saved a bunch of British soldiers and he said, I don't wanna talk about it. 'cause when you do something good and you talk about it, you take away from it. You take away because you're profiting from someone else's misery. And he also said, I wanna be remembered as a cyclist. He, he, he said, I have a, he said, there's some medals you win in this lifetime. And they go, in your trophy case, he said, there are other medals you get into hereafter and they're pinned to your soul. Which I thought was a very beautiful thing to say, but it's also remarkable to me that this man who was such a famous person and had such a platform and people pushed him to talk, he just refused to talk about it. And he really had this kind of genuine feeling that he didn't, that he, he didn't do anything unusual. He just followed his moral compass. He followed his, the teachings of his church. And so, so, you know, and I think like, you know, with his separate li you know, there, there's a whole story about him where like in 1948, he went back and won the Tour de France. And this was run the, you know, Italy was almost gonna have a civil war between the communists and the Christian Democrats. And things were very political and, and, and he won the Tour de France and pe and at that point, by the way, they, they had just tried to assassinate the, the head of the Communist party and it was, there was violence. And when his, the announcement of him winning the Chamber of Deputies, which is the sort of Italian Congress, they all got up as one and gave a standing ovation. So they used to say, Gino Barkley saved Italy. And he said, I don't think I saved my country, but I gave it back its smile. So he had this wonderful modesty as well. But, but again, you know, his story did not come out until after he died. And, and, and it, it came out later. And now he's, you know, he's a he's a well-known figure in Italy.

- Are there any rescuers today?

- Yeah, absolutely. I mean, I, I had a very interesting two hour conversation with a man whose name I, I will endeavor not to mispronounce Paul Resus Pina who if, if you've seen the movie Hotel Rwanda, he, he saved 1600 people who were basically holed up in the hotel. He, I spent, he, he could have been a person out of my book. Every single part of the profile made sense. It was completely not in his interest to do this, that he risked his life and, and he did that. So I think when, you know, there've been 40 genocides since World War ii, there's always rescuers. There were, you know, I personally was witnessed many people rescuing people out of Afghanistan in that horrible scene a couple of years ago. So yes, this does, this does continue. People ask, you know, what's happened with October 7th? It is a little troubling. I believe there will be stories, but actually with the, with the hostages coming back, there are very few stories or, or even anecdotes of people doing anything like this. But on the day of October 7th, there were people who did, who, who tried to save Jews. There were Bedouins, there were Muslim Israelis who, there was one man who tried, was killed doing it. I mean, there more than one. But these stories and Israel has already recognized them and awarded them with, you know, you know, honored them, the ones who survived and, and the ones who who died. So, so yes, I think there, you know, there do continue to be, to be rescuers and I think it's important to tell those stories.

- Yeah, there was a bit of an security guard who I met, who saved, who saved dozens of, of Jews at the Nova Festival. I think it was very interesting what you said earlier about how they say, I didn't do anything extraordinary. I just did what a normal person would do. Actually, of course, they were not doing what a normal person would do. Normal people are cowards and under these circumstances, or, or not so much cowards, but they have family, they have people who they recognize would be, would be oppressed as a result of, of them being brave. It's, it's truly remarkable, isn't it? These, these stories, this you have 10, 10 chapters of 10 different areas, including some ones that we don't have time to talk about, such as Princess Alice of Greece and the 10 POWs British pow saving a teenage girl from from the death marches. They are, it, it really is a fantastic book and many congratulations on it. What book are you reading at the moment? What's, what history book or biography have you got on your bedside table?

- I feel like I'm always reading a few books, but one I'm in the middle of right now is called Proto by a story named Laura Spinney, which is the story of Proto Window European. And which is the language that, you know, almost all European languages and all Indian languages come, come, come from, I feel like I, I get into, into sort of my son has been, has gotten me interested in, in, in this topic. And I had just read a book called The Mesopotamian Riddle, which is the deco, the decipherment of, of QA forum, which was a number it had took place in Victorian England. And it's one of these like wonderful stories of, of, you know, the dec the, the intellectual decipherment at the same time as archeology. And you get involved with the kind of ancient history, which, which I, which I love. And I'm about to start a biography of Gogan that just, just came out.

- Who's that, that by? Can you remember the

- Oh, i i, it, it's gotten a lot of attention and I will tell you it is by, I, I'm traveling so it's not on my not away. Yeah. Oh, it's wild thing. So it's by Sue Perea.

- Good. That's good to know. Thank you. And what about your, what if your, your counterfactual?

- Yeah, so I was, I love counterfactuals and the, the one I always gravitate to is like, which I really do believe, and I, I do believe in this sort of, I think it's misnomer to talk about the great man history, but I think different people in different, so, so Churchill May, 1940, I do believe if he was not there, the world would've gone in a very different direction. And World War II is obviously like completely full of counterfactuals. I was thinking to not to do that one. You know, another book I just finished, which is coming out shortly, is my friend Barry Strauss's book on Jews versus Rome.

- Hey, he's, he's, he's been on the show, in fact.

- Oh, there you go. Well he's another Hoover guy. So, so, so, so he has a very good book coming out. And, and I always wonder, you know, the destruction of the temple in 70 was this avoidable? For sure it was avoidable. And I was thinking, you know, you go back. 'cause I, my degree is in ancient history, like if Caesar hadn't been assassinated, but I actually think the moment was actually, but this is a little too wonky. If if if Claudia's son Britannica hadn't been poisoned, which opened the way for Nero to be emperor, this would've been it. But to answer your question, I will give you one that's very on point for this conversation, which is Herbert Hoover, the namesake of the Hoover Institute was the very different than FDR on the Holocaust. And he actually, from the moment during the, after FDR won the election in 1932, Hitler became chancellor. And in the period of during the transition, and FDR Hoover was, and FDR were both asked to protest the treatment of the Jews. And Hoover immediately did it. And then FDR when he came and countermanded it and said, that's not our problem. And then later, 'cause again, you always have to say, well did, when did people know things? But when we really knew what was going on, Herbert Hoover was extraordinarily outspoken. He was like Churchill that way. But he was one, he was the only one of the very few people of international stature who openly spoke out against the Holocaust, including in like 19 42, 43. He staged a, there was a pageant that was staged that, that he personally sponsored. I mean there's, I wrote an article about this for the journal, but because he's unfairly treated by history because he's known for presiding over the Great Depression, but in fact he had made his name originally because he saved probably more people than anyone in the history of the world from hunger after World War I as a volunteer, he had

- Organized food in Belgium in particular, wasn't it?

- He started in Belgium, but then it was all of Europe. Yes. And he did that as a volunteer. He was a businessman and that's what propelled him on his career. So I always, I questioned like if FDR had not been president and Herbert Hoover had been president during the Holocaust, I think it might have gone in a different direction. Certainly the United States would've been much more welcoming of, of refugees. Certainly we would have done things like bomb the train tracks to Auschwitz at all of those things that the margin that the west didn't do that a emboldened the Nazis to undertake the final solution, but also could have dramatically mitigated it, I think, I think he would've done. And so that's a very, you know, it's an interesting question because, you know, who occupies the Oval Office at any given time today is a, is is a crucial question. And, and these, these things are very personal. These people have, people have a lot of power. I mean, I did not talk about, in my book, I wanted to talk about people who are on the ground, but I do think people who have a, a, a a a, a platform either political or in an in another way, have a responsibility to speak out. And it, you know, it's a very long conversation about the United States and FDR and, and all of that. But I, but again the same way I think Churchill was a critical figure and Churchill to me, distinguished himself as basically a righteous among the nations from where his seat was. I think Hoover, Hoover needs should be recognized for that as well. So it's an interesting counterfactual on the, in terms of the Holocaust, like if Hoover had been president instead of FDR, what would've been different? I think it would've been, it would've been better. Richard

- Hurowitz, author of In The Garden of the Righteous, the Heroes Who Risk Their Lives to Save Jews during the Holocaust. Thank you very much indeed for coming on Secrets of Statecraft. Thank you for having me.

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