Curses

Marie Aroway. Although you probably don't know him by that name, he's better remembered by his pen name Voltaire. And Voltaire wrote a lot to paraphrase a popular musical about a certain founding father, writing like he was running out of time, composing everything from plays, novels, poems, essays, and even scientific papers.

By the time he died in seventeen seventy eight, Voltaire had written tens of thousands of works, and although he'd found popularity both domestically and overseas, he was not universally liked. While he was still alive, the Roman Catholic Church loathed him for referring to Christianity as propagandistic. He also perpetuated a number of myths about the Church. For example, he claimed that they had cut the number of Gospels down from fifty to four. But Christianity and the Church weren't alone.

Voltaire seemed to aim his pen in any direction he deemed worthy of criticism. He was also wildly anti Semitic in his writings about Judaism and the Jewish people, and also lobbed a heavy amount of vitriol toward Islam and people of color. He disagreed with the idea of Adam and Eve as represented in the Bible, and suggested that each race came to be through various means across the globe,

rather than descended from one couple. But in the same breath he would disparage black Africans as possessing less natural humanity than white Europeans. Voltaire was the embodiment of cognitive dissonance, perhaps best expressed in his stance on slavery. Scholars argue as to whether he actually opposed the slave trade itself, nor simply the harsh and violent conditions to which enslaved

people were subjected. Regardless and a bit surprising. He was more enlightened than others on the subject, and that got him into hot water with the powers that be. His body of work, although problematic and downright offensive at times, made him wildly popular, especially among his fellow writers. Victor Hugo once said, to name Voltaire is to characterize the entire eighteenth century. Depending on who you were, that could either be a good thing or a very bad thing.

Napoleon Bonaparte admired him, as did Frederick the Great, but those ringing endorsements don't exactly endear him to us today. Adolf Hitler insulted Frederick's conversations with Voltaire while outlining his plans for world conquest during World War II. The racist and nationalistic rhetoric within Voltaire's works have led to a backlash today. In fact, a statue of the philosopher that once stood in Paris was torn down back in August of twenty twenty. His legacy is tainted, some might say

it's cursed. After Voltaire died in seventeen seventy eight, a French polymath by the name of Beaumarche purchased the rights to as much of his back catalog as possible from his old publisher, but Voltaire's work had been banned in France, so in seventeen ninety nine beau Marche printed the manuscripts in Germany instead, but he lost a lot of money

on the venture and his life. He died a mere three months after he started publishing a complete collection of Voltaire's writing, and then in the early eighteen hundreds, another publisher put out a sixty volume edition of Voltaire's works. The endeavor practically bankrupted them. Over the next seventy years, at least eight publishers went broke by releasing complete Voltaire collections. One went blind, while another was killed by a woman

he accused of stealing. It appeared that whenever someone tried to publish a full series of Voltaire's portfolio, they met an unfortunate end, either financially or mortally. Voltaire was a controversial figure when he was alive. His opinions alienated almost everyone, and he was no stranger to having his work cursed

by his contemporaries. What no one realized, though, was that the twenty thousand letters and two thousand books about religion and other cultures that he left behind might actually have been cursed. Some fictional characters are so iconic that they almost feel real. Think about Michael Scott from the Office or Walter White in Breaking Bad. I'm not embarrassed to admit that I can quote those guys verbatim, and I

know their personalities like the back of my hand. The best characters are able to take on a life of their own, and some of them are even based on real people. In fact, one twentieth century writer created a character that became so popular he has since been the subject of a number of books and movies, and rumor has it he's based on an actual person whose story is as interesting as the fictional tales he inspired. Let

me set the scenario for you. It was June of nineteen forty four, right in the midst of World War Two, and our real life hero was in Germany trapped at the Nazi run Bukenwald concentration camp. He was there to be executed. You see, he had been charged with terrorism. Most Nazi officers knew his background too. They even had a nickname for him, the White Rabbit. For the last year and a half, the White Rabbit had worked with

the British Air Intelligence Agency. He parachuted into Nazi occupied France three different times and set up a central resistance quarters in Paris. When his work was discovered, the Gestapo put a bounty on his head, and he spent the next eight weeks on the run before escaping back to his home country of England. As soon as he crossed the border, he met with British Prime Minister Winston Churchill

to request more weapons for French resistance fighters. In February of nineteen forty four, four months before he landed in Buchenwald, he re entered France to supervise those weapons shipments, but things didn't go as planned. Someone betrayed him, and three weeks later he was captured by the Gestapo. The Nazi police hoped to get some valuable information out of the spy, but his lips were sealed. They spent the next four months subjecting him to every kind of torture you can imagine,

but he never cracked. Frustrated, the Gestapo shipped him off to a concentration camp to die, but the White Rabbit didn't go down without a fight. He managed to befriend and probably bribe a German guard. Together they came up with an idea to save our hero's life give him a brand new identity, which was actually easy than you might think. The German guard pretended to execute him, then gave him an ID card that belonged to a Frenchman who had already been killed at Buchenwald, and just like that,

the White Rabbit had a new name, Maurice Chaquette. Still, Maurice hadn't really saved himself. He'd only bought some time. Less than a year later, in April of nineteen forty five, he was shoved onto a train filled with other prisoners from Buchenwald. They were bound for an extermination camp in Nazi occupied Czechoslovakia. At one point, the train had to make a stop, and the White Rabbit jumped. On his chance to escape, He and a small group of other

prisoners fled into the surrounding woods. Many were killed immediately, but the White Rabbit spent the next eight days hiding in the woods before being recaptured. Still going by the name Maurice Chaquette, he was placed in a camp for French prisoners of war near the Czech border. He was only there for two days before hatching another escape plan. He managed to make a convincing disguise and broke out of the camp. But if if you can believe it, he still wasn't free. He had to make it across

a literal minefield to reach the American Army. Only at that point, after months of torture and two daring escapes, was the White Rabbit finally going to be safe. Now, this is just one of the stories of the White Rabbit's incredible exploits. After World War II, he was awarded thirteen Medals of Honor for his various contributions to Allied intelligence, and in nineteen forty five, an author received a copy of a letter the White Rabbit had written while in Buchenwald.

This letter contained the spy's real name, Forrest Jo Thomas. I won't fault you if you've never heard that name before, but I'm sure you would recognize the name of the author, Ian Fleming and the character that he created after reading this letter. The name was Bond, James Bond. I hope you've enjoyed today's guided tour of the Cabinet of Curiosities. Subscribe for free on Apple Podcasts, or learn more about

the show by visiting Curiosities podcast dot com. The show was created by me, Aaron Mankey in partnership with how Stuff Works. I make another award winning show called Lore, which is a podcast, book series, and television show and you can learn all about it over at the Worldoflore dot com. And until next time, stay curious.