Part One: Gay Resistance to Nazis

done is so awkward. I'm Sharin. That's actually something that I really appreciate about podcasts. It makes me feel like, um, I'm doing okay. Yeah, that's why I to reassure, to reassure everybody. But if I can do what you could do, it probably better. Um. We've also got our producers, Sophie listening on like the voice of God or maybe like one of the three norns weaving the fate of the rest of us mortals. How are you doing to Sophie, that's my favorite intro you've done. I'm great, you know,

surviving kind of exited for this script. It's a good one. Thanks. Thanks cutting some threads. Um, that is a great image, and Sophie is like that. I guess that was great. Okay. So I figured today we should do something like really lighthearted, easy breezy and talk about Nazism. I figure no one ever, no one ever talks about these guys, right, Like, when

was the last time anyone talked about Nazis? So we figured we should talk about But more specifically, I want to talk about how during the early twentieth century there was this like queer accepting culture that was blooming all across Europe, which the Nazis tried to crush. But it turns out the it didn't it didn't actually work out that way in the end, that the Nazis actually spoil our alert get crushed. Um, And they took out a lot of queer people along the way, but a lot

of queer people fucked up the Nazis too. So that's what we're gonna talk about today. I like that. I like a good like I don't know, revenge, Uh yeah, yeah, no, this is good. I think you might like some of this story. Then obviously not all of this story, unfortunately. Okay, So I don't know if you knew this, but there's actually not one way to be to be gay. Um, a very different yeah. No, I was shocked to learn this as well, there's one straight way to be gay.

Thank you for laughing so much. Uh yeah, the like, every culture has had different conceptions of homosexuality and transnis and all of these different things, and like to be to be clear, like, guys have been fucking guys since the beginning of time, girls have been sucking girls, and wherever there's been gender, there's been people transgressing gender roles.

But since Western civilization is like trying it, so I almost feel like guilty focusing on this particular conception of of gayness and how we developed to our current Western conception of gayness. But since Western civilization is trying its hardest to be like the one single culture over the entire world, I feel like it's worth knowing it's history

of queerness, or at least some of it. And kind of oddly, a lot of the history we have about gayness in our culture doesn't come from like the ladies who liked scissorin, but instead the the priests and the governments that tried to stop us from doing that. Instead, So I want to start with this Book of Monsters. Hell, yeah, yeah, lever Month Storum, this is this, it's the It's a series of three volumes that was written in Old English around the turn of the eighth century, and it's got

like cyclopses and centaurs and ship in it. But it's not just like a collection in alphabetical order. It was written in kind of a specific like they picked who to put first and who to put at the end, and yeah, exactly exactly. It's a monster lay list that this guy is writing to try and impress someone, probably, which makes it perfect actually, because the very first monster in the very first book of Monsters in English is

a trans woman um or possibly an intersex person. Those concepts were very blurry all throughout history, and so to quote liber Month Storem from a translation by Andy Orchard, indeed, I bear witness at the beginning of the work that I have known a person of both sexes, who, although they appeared more masculine than feminine from their face and chest, and were thought male by those who did not know yet, loved feminine occupations and deceived the ignorant among men in

the manner of a whore. But this is said to have happened often amongst the human race. Oh so is the person writing this pretending they're not human? Or no? No, I think he's It's just like just the way the old English works sounds strange, Okay, yeah, sickly. Uh So, the very first monster in all of English history is a fucking it's me. Um. So that rules. Um but I kind of projecting they're they're projecting if that's the very first playlist or song in the playlist they chose, Hey,

look inwards. That's a that's a very good point. Um. And the same book also describes, uh it specifically quotes like Ethiopians also as monsters and it it's it's not exactly a a tome I would like to see live

on in the modern world in any appreciable degree. Um But okay, So fast forward a couple hundred years and in the tenth century the Church of England, they were passing around these manuals of recommended penance for sinners based on their different sins or whatever, right, and one of the passages refers to a third gender of person, which is the baid ling or maybe bad ling. I don't actually know how to pronounce Old English. Um. I'm gonna

go with bad ling. And and we know that they meant it as a third sex because the specific rule is that any man who quote has sex with a bad ling or with another male or with a beast ought to fast for ten years and penance well. And so this is probably again the same concept. This is a concept of someone who is either intersects or trends and it's um and it's related to all these other effeminate words that they had at the time, or words for effeminine men that they had at the time, including

battle and baden or badden. There's a lot of arguments. People like to argue about the ship endlessly on the Internet. I don't know if you've met the internet, um, but it likes to argue about ship like this. There's a chance that the word bad comes from this, which I will also happily take. I'm like totally down to be the origin of monsters and bad. I mean bad, that's that's badass. Like I don't even mean that. That's a pun,

but I think that's really cool. Yeah, and different people have tried to reclaim these words in different ways to various degrees. But um, okay, fast forward even more, and you've got two important pieces of legislation. Who's bigotry has echoed throughout the world thanks to colonialism the Holy Roman Empire, which stretched from northern Italy up to modern day Germany. In in fifteen thirty two, it passed something called the I don't pronounced load, even though I took three years

of it, Constitutio criminalist Carolina. And one of the laws in this set of laws is when a human commits fornication with a beast, a man with a man, a woman with a woman, they have also forfeited life and they should be, according to the common custom, banished by fire from life into death Jesus. Yeah. Um, So they weren't like huge fans of homosexuality, not really. It seems

like they just kind of hate hate us. Yeah yeah. Um. The very next year, it must have been like sweeping the Europe at the time, because the very next year, Henry the Eighth of England, in fifteen thirty three, he passed the Buggery Act, which made anal sex and beast reality punishable by death. Um. And it's just so disgusting to me that those are always coupled together, like and I say this as someone that used to have a friend like five years ago that was arguing that point,

and I'm not I'm not a friend anymore. But like I can't. I could not believe someone my age would be able to still have any any thought about that, and it blew my mind. So I'm very I just hate that's just is beyond the upsetting and disgusting to me, I just yeah whatever, like yeah, no, no, It's like, I don't know. It just makes me really mad that

humans are like that. But also like, okay, I studied our history in college and the Roman Empire or whatever the all a lot of their artworks involved all genders everywhere, and their gods are intersects and all this stuff. So it's just so ironic to me that they're also birdening people alive. I honestly, like the best I can figure out, and I'm not sure, but the best I can figure out from like all this research I'm doing for this

episode is that like, not only have there. It's like it's not like everyone was just like hiding in the closet and afraid of the witch hunters the whole time.

It seems like it like cycled people would be like, oh, being gay rules, and the people like, yeah, it does rule, and then I would just have like a whole culture of people being like this rules, and then someone would get into a moral panic and then murder us all and drive the rest of us back into the closet um, which is a really cool pattern that we are hopefully not in the middle of right now. Well, that makes me very nervous the way you said that, But we'll

keep thinking this story. Stop thinking about that at all, okay, do you all? Right? So, so England's law get exported all over the world because they are fucking colonialist scum, and the Holy Roman Empire's law becomes Prussian law, which becomes German law, and then becomes Nazi law and then actually stays the law after the Nazis go away too. But we'll get to that. So the Nazis didn't invent the prosecution of gay people, the persecution of gay people,

They just turned it up to a lemon Uh. In contrast at all, during all this time France when they did their whole revolution thing, uh in the legalized homosexuality, And that's pretty incredible. I didn't know that. No, I didn't either, honestly, And then I hate that. I'm about to say something positive about a Napoleon. But um, then when he went around and conquered Europe, he he brought the French law with him and eradicated anti gay laws everywhere.

He went. Wow, short King, I know, sure read Hey, that's that's pretty freaking cool. Yeah. And so it's like so so so Prussia becomes Germany by bringing in Bavaria and some other regions, and Bavaria actually had legalized homosexuality,

but Prussia did not. So in eighteen seventy one, when when Prussia becomes Germany, the whole country suddenly as an anti gay log and and it's a law called paragraph one seventy five, and and it was the law in Germany from fucking eighteen seventy one until do you want to guess what decade they got rid of paragraph eighteen seventy one? What I don't know, I'm genuinely gonna say like nineteen sixty or something. No, no, no, it's gonna say. I was gonna say you were alive, you were alive.

Oh my god. I just thought like after fucking I don't know, NATO one, maybe they were like in a good mood and the sixties stuck, I think about it, but that is that is very unfortunate and sad. And they did, like they actually they did reform the laws in the late sixties and early seventies and like, and I think what they did. I don't have the notes in front of me, but I think what they ended up doing was making it so that there was just a higher age of consent for for gayness than for

straight no us or whatever. Um So, like straight kids were allowed to funk at fourteen, but gay kids weren't allowed to funk until they're twenty one or something, which is like progress, but in the weirdest, most horrible way, you know. Um So, this this, this law paragraph one seven five is unnatural fornication, whether between persons of the male sex or humans with beasts, is punished with imprisonment, with the further punishment of prompt loss of civil rights.

Well and okay, so like most of these laws are just about men, right the Holy Roman Emperor one managed to include lesbians as well, but so Germany. They actually tried to extend it to include lesbians a couple of times, but they couldn't reach consensus on exactly like how women would go about sucking each other and so like exactly what would be illegal, And that's so funny. It's like straight guys making lesbian port or something, you know what

I mean, They're just like is this what they do? Yeah? Totally. I just like to imagine that there's like this room full of dudes and like powdered wigs or maybe like hats with spits on them, and they're like trying to mimic exactly what they thought. Maybe like one of them puts their fingers with some scissors by accident or something, you know. Um. So, and in England they tried to expand the law to women as well, the English law, but they got afraid that if they did, it might

give women ideas. So the the earl of I don't pronounced English names, well, I mean like women can't have ideas though, Margaret, like that's so dangerous is yeah? Well, I mean this actually ties into my I mean, like I think the reason that men hate lesbians is that they realized that, um, if women can enjoy each other,

then the men have no purpose. Um. And I actually think this is why they even hate trans women especially or also is because like because they could hold on too like, well, at least the human race wouldn't continue, and yeah, sorry, we're gonna sunk that one up for you too. Well, no, I think you're correct, that is why. So okay, so the earl of desert, I'm just gonna call the desert desert. I don't know if I could desert. I think desert. Okay, they colonized like half the fucking world.

They can get their names wrong. How many people does one suppose really are so vile, so unbalanced, so neurotic, so decadent as to do this. You may say there are a number of them, but would be like, at most an extremely small minority. And you're going to tell the whole world that there is such an offense, to bring it to the notice of women who have never heard of it, never thought of it, never dreamed of it. I think that is a very great mischief. I love that.

I love the performance. Um, but I was just thinking about it, like annihilating the human race, or not annihilating, but slowly killing us off. That would be have you seen us? Have you seen this planet? Like that's the way to save the world lesbians and women? Yeah, the man that wrote the men that wrote that, uh, just

probably so gay. Yeah, yeah, I mean that's the other thing we're gonna like there's a lot of different conceptions that come up about, like, you know, whether sexuality is in it or whether it's like socially contagious and like. So that wasn't even part of the question yet. It was more just like the act Oh yeah, yeah no, I was saying that later in the script, we're gonna talk about yeah no no. So they didn't they didn't expand the law to include women because they couldn't, you know,

they didn't want to give any women ideas. Um. But Okay, despite the fact that there's all these anti gay laws on the books, nineteen twenties and nineteen thirties, Germany was like fucking unbelievably gay through and through, left wing, right wing center gay people everywhere, and and of course a lot of these people were fighting for their rights, which

brings us to the Institute for Sexual Research. Uh. From nineteen nine to nineteen thirty three, there was a place in Berlin called the Institute for Sexual Research, which was opened by three Jewish sexologists. The most famous of these is a guy named Magnus Hirschfeld. And this place, I don't know. As far as I get tell, A ruled right. Twenty thousand people visited every year from around the world. There was this Museum of Sex, there was a massive

research archive. UM. They offered consulting on matters of sex to gay and straight people, Like if you're confused about your sexuality, you could just like show up at the institute and someone would um set you straight or gay. That I wish I had that now, I know how that's so ahead of its time, I know. And they did endless scientific research in the homosexuality. Uh, some of

it seems like really weird today. Like at one point they spent a while trying to and this is all voluntary, but they tried to transplant testicles from straight men into gay men to see if it would cure the gay men of their gay um. But they and again this wasn't a forced conversion therapy. This was like people being

like I want to do this or whatever. Um. But they kind of dropped anything like conversion therapy pretty quickly, and then they moved apparently all their focus to helping people navigate homophobic society rather than you know, trying to fucking cure them or whatever. They they coined the words both transvestite and transsexual. I know transvestite isn't invoke now, but like it actually was a word that meant a lot to me as something when I was younger before

identified it as as transgender because I prefer women's cloth. Yeah, exactly, words changed and they involved in their meaning and I had no idea that's wherely were coined from. That's what an amazing little institute. Oh yeah, no, this place is just like there's so much cool ship. Um, they pioneered

this idea. I mean, I'm sure other people came up with this idea too, but they pioneered this idea is like a scientific thing that if you just let trans people exist and you let us like go through society the way that we know we should belong in society, that we're happier and society is happier and we don't like kill ourselves as much. Um, because like you know, homopope, society is drive an awful lot of people to hurt themselves.

And the government hears then they're like, no, we have to keep them miserable or also need us to keep them scared and miserable and sad. That's actually the truth yeah, I genuinely believe that. Um, they're like, I'm miserable, so you have to be visible, you know, Okay. And they also they performed probably the first gender confirmation surgery in history, or at least the one that's known about in Western records or whatever. I have a feeling some people tried

and did this a long time ago too. But this woman named Dora Richter in thirty was the first person to in in our understanding, to to undergo full like gender confirmation surgery. And she actually worked at the institute. She was a maid basically, Um, it was one of the only places in Germany where trans people could get jobs. But I honestly, I don't know how well they were treated.

It sounded like they all got kind of ship jobs, like this woman was a maid, um, and Hirschfeld was like traveling around staying in luxury hotels and show it's always a negative side, I'm sure everybody. Yeah. And they also tied were tied in with the first Western pro homosexual advocacy group in history, which was the Scientific Humanitarian Committee, which was founded in and they treated homosexuality as gender.

So this is getting to the there's a lot of different conceptions about gayness arguing at the time, and the Institute's theory was that homosexuality and gender exists in the body and are essentially determined at birth rather than being conscious choices, um, which led them down to some strange paths. They presented this idea that homosexuals were sort of a third sex, halfway between men and women, which implied that like, all lesbians are a bit masculine and all gay men

are like a bit feminine. Um. They did, however, separate out transpeople from all of this to not be exactly the same as gay people. Um. So it's like progress and and they got away with a lot of this gayness because even a one seventy five paragraph one seventy five was technically a law in the books. The local government basically told the police, like, now, I don't enforce this, because the local government was like far more progressive. That's

something at least. But I mean, it's also interesting, this guy, Magnus Archfield wasn't out as gay. He was very very clearly gay, but he wasn't out, um, And like lived with this partner and was active in the gay scene. And I don't love everything that this guy did. For one thing, um as part of the coalition to abolish paragraph on the law that they advocated instead would have legalized homosexual prostitution. And he was and Magnus was like, no, no, no, no,

take that part out. Not because he hated sex work, but because he um, it would be like too controversial. It would like, you know, and I don't know, sex workers get thrown under the bus fucking constantly, and and it also kind of throws on working class gay folks under the bus more right, if you do that, yeah, exactly. And he was also super fucking assimilationist. I'm not trying to like rag on this guy, but I feel like

you can't understand him. You know, if you had stopped like three minutes ago, like he started institution whatever, like that's great, but this is an example of like, don't meet your heroes, right, If I would have just kept him as like at this heroic figure, if you just stopped there, it's good to know everything, it's good to be so at one point he was like when he was trying to convince everyone that that gays were cool, he would like bring cops to gay bars and to

be like, look, we're just like everyone else. And like, I like to imagine being in that bar and trying to be like, okay, we're we're what, we're like everyone else all right, yeah yeah, yeah, totally everyone put on your everyone else yeah totally like quick stop sucking in public. Um And and they asked, okay, so they weren't the only game in town either. Um. The there was this

anarchist named Adolph Brand who started the world's first game magazine. Again, whenever I say like the world's first or whatever, I want to like really heavily disclose that, like all of these history books are going to call it the first whatever and they mean the Western world and you know whatever, Still fucking cool. At least started this game magazine in the nineteenth century, um in eight nine six, And the

name of the magazine translates to the unique. And he was really fucking out, Like he kept getting arrested for being gay and they be like, are you gay, and he'd be like, funck, I'm gay, fuck you, and and he but he also and I don't love this guy either. I'm gonna get to that, but um, he didn't funk around with this, like gayness is a feminine thing to him.

Male homosexuality was like the epitome of masculinity UM, often bordering on or falling into outright misogyny, right because it's like men who only need men, and which we've all run across, you know, I mean both Yeah, with women and with men. I would say that happens totally, totally. And then the activism that came out of his circle was called the Path Over Corpses and which is really metal but not actually very cool. And what they did is they outed high profile gay men um often often

leading to those people to kill themselves. And they just didn't care. And that's why I was called the Path Over Corpses did canceled culture culture culture. We don't even Twitter anymore. Yeah, well, well that's one way to go about it, but like not, that's not a great way. Yeah, And I I usually root for the anarchists and anything,

but like I actually not this time, Okay. And then there's this this third conception that I think was floating around a bit the Western world, but actually, as far as I can tell in my limited reading, was far more common in like Southwest Asia and northern Africa, which was this um and and gay men from the West would go visit Southwest Asia to go be a bit

more free for a while. And it was this conception that sexuality and gender weren't things that you are, but instead there are things that you do interesting and and all of those are going to come up through the different characters that we're going to get to. It's part

of what I'm trying to lay the scene. It's very interesting. Um, but you know what else is wholesome besides sexuality is I've decided that the show will only be sponsored by incredibly wholesome things, the most wholesome things we can think of. And so today, so we can we just be sponsored by tap water, like the concept of tap water. I mean, but what about the potatoes. That's true, I do really like potatoes. Okay, tap water and potatoes two things that

are very I mean, that seems fair. We do need more than one sponsor. I'm okay with that. Protect the potato, yeah, okay, So we're sponsored by those things and then maybe these other things and we'll be right back. Okay, and we are back and uh, of all of these different, you know, types of things that are happening, it seems like Hirshfeld and the Institute had the longest and most widespread impact on the Western world, and the Nazis didn't like that

at all. It turns out, do you know that famous photo of Nazis burning books are like, if you imagine Nazis burning books, ye, the image popped in my head. Yeah yeah, um so, and everyone's like, oh, look, the Nazis are bad. They burned books. And what usually goes on said is that the books they were burning was the research library of the Institute of Sexual Research, and these photos, Wow, why don't they mention that they should? They should at least mention that the caption somewhere what

the huge pile of books on fire? Yeah, than just Nazis naziing Yeah, well, I mean definitely gonna help that they were Jewish either, right, yeah, exactly. Yeah. Honestly, I think the reason it isn't mentioned is because I think that most of polite Western society was secretly fucking glad

that all those fucking books got burned. And like, you know, we're erased from history in a lot of different ways, and the Nazis liked to racing us more actively than the sort of like liberal democracies, but they like try and fucking too Um, it's dark but true and unfortunately, Yeah, on May sixty three, the Nazis showed up and they burned like two books, destroying endless amounts of research into homosexuality,

trans sexuality, cross dressing, everything. Joseph Goebels, I don't pronounced Gobel's name, which I should, because he's like one of the famous people in history. Um, he's the chief propagandist of the Nazis, and he gives a speech to forty people during this fucking book burning. And Dora Richter, the first trans woman to undergo gender confirmation surgery, probably was killed in this attack. Um, it's possible that she was

arrested and died in prison shortly after. There are a couple rumors that people that don't have as much evidence to back them up that she got out, and I like to think she got out, but she probably didn't. Um. Meanwhile, Magnus hirsch Felt he sees the writing on the wall, like before all this happens, and so he's off on a world tour basically trying to figure out where the funk to get his gay Jewish asked too, because he's like, this is not going to fucking work. I can't stay

where there's Nazis. But he didn't destroy his own wreck birds and lists of names before he left. Oh so the Nazis got those, and those are like the one things they didn't burn was the list of like all the fucking gay people in Germany. Um not clearly, not all of them, you know. But but that's a ship. I can't wait to hear what happen his xt. Yeah, I mean, okay, So the Nazis get those, they use

them in a campaign to eradicate the homosexual blight. Because the Nazis minus the gay Nazis I'll talk about in a second, um or later, they turned and see homosexuality is like something inherent and natural. They saw it as a plague that needed to be destroyed. Let it infest everything or whatever. Um So Magnus Hirschfeld. He never comes back to Germany. He goes into exile in France, and he dies of a heart attack on his sixty seven birthday on May. Adolf Brand the anarchist who path over

corpses guys. He was super brave before the Nazis, and then when the Nazis come over, he retires from active a marries a woman to try and like play straight, and then he just like shut the funk up and tried to survive the war. Uh. And he didn't because an Allied bomb fell on his house in Berlin. Died at the age of seventy. The Nazis then expanded paragraph one, like substantially. It used to be a gay men can't funk, but then it became gay men can't try to excite

the sexuality of other men. And so that's where the plague right like mentality comes in. Like yeah, you know, like if I get if this gig even comes near me, like yeah, maybe I'll Yeah, I keep thinking about dick. Yeah, many people do. It's a natural thought. Okay. So, like something like a hundred thousand men who are accused of homosexuality are arrested, and a lot of them are like this is often like a it's a really easy way to blackmail people. It's very similar to like witch hunting.

You know, like you're mad at some one, just say he came onto you and you can get someone arrested. Um, So a hundred thousand men are arrested, half of those did prison time, ten thousand of them or so. Everyone argues about numbers. Uh, were sent to concentration camps, where they were forced to wear the inverted pink triangle badges, which is where the pink triangles a symbol comes from. UM. In the camps, at least by everything I read, they were treated socially like kind of the worst. It was

like them and Jews at the bottom of everything. And then gay Jews had to wear like an inverted it was both a pink triangle and a yellow star of David over top of each other. And they had it the worst. I read really gnarly accounts of what they suffered, and I'm not going to tell you about it. Thank you for that. Thank you so much. My imagination is enough. Yeah, and about them survive, so sixty of them die and

there's no law on the books against lesbianism. But the Nazis didn't like gay women any better, and so what they did is they basically found excuse has to send as many of them as possible to the camps uh non Aryan ones in particular, and then arian ones would get forced to have babies, which again we will leave there um. And those who resisted were arrested on imaginary charges, like two women were arrested for disrupting their workplace by

sleeping with women from work. Um. Interesting. So Nazis didn't like gay people, but fortunately for history, a lot of gay people didn't like Nazis either, and they decided to do something about it, which brings us to one of the best places in LGBT history, Amsterdam. I fucking love Amsterdam. I still got to go there. I want to go there. Let's go one of my top places I want to visit. It's yeah, I remember, like sitting on a triangle memorial is like a dock into one of the canals. It's

like a triangle memorial. When I was like a baby, I barely even knew I was queer, like travel in squatters, staying there, Um, it must have been powerful, I can imagine. Yeah. Okay, So one of the most iconic acts of gay resistance to the Nazis is in Amsterdam after the occupation. It's a story that weaves together some of like my favorite people I've learned run across in history, at least judging

by their actions. I actually don't know much about them as people, but you know, like they did fucking cool ship. And we're gonna start with Willem Arandeis. He was born in Amsterdam into a theater family. His parents were costume designers. Originally they support he's an artist, right and they support him in his art, of his writing and painting. But then he came out when he was seventeen is gay, and they kicked him out of the house. Um, homosexuality

was legal in the Netherlands. But um, you know, no one liked it. I mean lots of people liked it, but you know, society like to frown upon it. So he develops his art. He starts taking on commercial art jobs. He paints ads, stamps, that kind of ship. He did some like tapestries and coats of arms for some cities, at least one of which is still around. He did a mural for the Rotterdam town hall. And you can

look up his art. Actually it's really good. Um, anyone listening you should look it up because well, because I think you should get tattoos of it because the rules. But um, it's like more designery than fine art, and which I think is cool and so. And some of his art is on display it at the met and at the reichs Museum in Amsterdam. But he wasn't really

well known at the time to be real. This is he's a commercial artist, not something like yeah, I mean everyone every most not every most artists are not really well known or famous until after they pass. Yeah, totally. And if you want to be a famous artist, UM, you should do stuff like Willem goes on to do. That's my recommendation to Okay. So he spends years of his life partnered with a man named Jan Tison, and he supports the two of them barely on his art

and from on the royalties. From a biography he writes about a painter named Matthias Marris who had fought in the Paris Commune. UM. But Willem is dirt poor, largely unknown. He shifts to novels in five and he publishes novels with the names like The Owl House, The Tragedy of the Dream, and then this is my favorite because it's the most Dutch gay title I've ever heard in my life and I love it. In the blossoming Winter radish, Oh my gosh, perfect, no no notes, you know, I

want to read it. Um. And the Nazis take over in nineteen forty and they start off kind of trying to be nice to some of the Dutch people. Clearly not all of the Dutch people, but homosexuality have been legal in the Netherlands for more than a century, and so William is one of the first people to go off and join the Dutch resistance, which was actually more non violent in character than elsewhere in Europe, but they

weren't slouchers. By the autumn of ninety four, the resistance was hiding or had hidden three hundred thousand people, and somewhere between sixty to two hundred thousand people were doing that hiding, and over a million people were actively letting all of that happen just by like knowing their neighbor is hiding somebody and not fucking saying anything about it. Yeah, like allies. Yeah, Yeah, that's a big number. I wasn't

expecting to hi have a number where that's pretty incredible. Yeah, and like gives me a little bit of hope whenever I want to drag hope out of this kind of thing. Oh, that's the point of this podcast, right, Um, there's over a thousand, one hundred separate resistance newspapers which reach a readership of over a hundred thousand people during the occupation.

But but William's partner can't handle all the heat in Amsterdam, and he he fox off and moves back to a small small town somewhere else, and Willem stays in Amsterdam and he keeps going. In two, he starts an underground newspaper called brendars be Brief, which means letter of insignia.

In three, emerges with another paper called I'm just gonna say the English translations called The Free Artist, which was edited by a man named Garrett von der Veen, who's another one of today's here is actually but I believe tragically heterosexual. No one's perfect exactly exactly, and he doesn't get as much screen time in the story. So I want to tell you a little bit about our man Garrett,

he who's I could be mispronouncing his name. I'm actually I'm actually sorry, Dutch listeners, but I can pronounce the name Schward, which is gonna come a little later anyway. Okay, So he starts off his career as a mechanical engineer, but he really just wants to be a sculptor. And then one day before the Nazi invasion and ship, he's standing on the shore when a fully loaded oil tanker catches fire, so he the crew flees and gets away, but he dives into the water, swims out to the ship,

extinguishes the fire in the engine room. Whoa, I know. Yeah, he's just like this guy on the shore. He's like, oh, ship a fire, I'm gonna go put it out. It's like it's like Keanu Reeves helping what's her face when someone's car breaks down and helps that person and then but no one had, no one has evidence of this, and that just my guy just did it. Yeah, need

to paparazzi to capture it. Yeah, totally totally a good person. Yeah, and so those so the sailors, Um, they're so grateful that they buy him a ticket to Amsterdam and pay for a year's tuition for him to go to art school or like an allowance for him to become a sculptor, because that's what he wants to do, is he wants to go become a sculptor. So he does. He becomes a sculptor because he's performed this heroic deed and and his ship is really good, like looking at photos of

and stuff, a lot of it's still around. But after the invasion, Um and I believe he's of Aaryan ancestry, but I'm not sure. And they asked him to sign a paper saying sign this paper to say you are of Aaryan ancestry, and he's like, no, funk, no, I'm not going to do that, um, because he's a good person. So instead he goes underground. He starts a newspaper, and most importantly to our story, he starts forging I das for for Jews and other people who are hiding from

the Nazis. So William joins vonder vonder Vine's crew and it's made up of like art and dancers and poets and ship a lot of them are openly gay, and they just start cranking out fake I d s just all over the place. Uh. They made more than eighty thousand fake I d s. And because everyone over the age of fifteen was required by the Nazis to carry an I D and Jewish names were like Jewish ones

were marked with a big J on them. The counterfeiters called their services Personal's Proof Central, and they sold the ideas but at a sliding scale. So basically, if you're rich, you pay a lot of money, and then if you're poor, you would pay no money. I love that. Yeah, yeah, how they financed the whole thing, you know, and I to the world should be to be honest. But yeah,

totally okay. And so then there's a problem. They're making all these ideas, but there there's records on everyone being stored in a storehouse, so curious Nazis and collaborators, which I guess you could just call them Nazis, honestly, that's the word for Nazi collaborator, I think. So they just they just go and go and double check the ideas against the records stored in the warehouse and then bust

people later. And so but the Dutch resistance had people everywhere, including in these records keeping storehouses or whatever, and so they're working as fast as they can to falsify documents. I think they're basically saying, like, okay, we did this, following I D change the records, and they're like okay, and they go and they change the records, but it's not fast enough. And by the start of they all get this sense that like really bad shit is coming

and so they need to step this up. Um, so they come up with a plan and okay, So the problem is that there's a bunch of records, right, and the records are stored in a building. Right. But but buildings are notoriously vulnerable to explosions and like the game of paper rock scissors, you know, um dynamite or the kryptonite of buildings. One might say, I like when Sophie laughs at my scripted jokes. Hey, a lot from Sophie is so affirming. I agree it. It's funny and writing.

And when he said it, thanks, what can I say? So? Okay, So, so a lot of this crew are Pacifists. Um, not all of them, We'll get to that later, but some of them were so. Not only so they devise a plan to not only destroy hundreds of thousands of Nazi records and and blow up a building, but to do it without killing or seriously injuring anyone. Um, which is my argument is that these people invented the heist movie. Yeah, yeah,

that's funny, to be honest. To be honest, it takes a lot for me to laugh out loud, Like when I'm watching comedy or whatever, I'm usually just silent and I feel like a piece of ship. But I find thinks funny. I just don't react it's fine. It's fine, I say, you thought that was funny. So it's this is not a small plot. In the end, fifteen people get arrested for it, and there's so many more people involved than that. Um. But to tell it like a heist movie, I'm to start with the action on march

Arndeus and the whole crew of of other people. They dress up as like army captains and ship um police captains. Actually, I think they march over to the record storehouse and they're like hey, they say to the guards, because the guards are on you know, they're like, something's up. We're gonna be really careful. And so they show up and they're like, hey, we we think that there's people trying to blow up this building, so we're here to sweep

the building and check for explosives. Um. Well, I love this. I love this. Where's this movie? And so the guards believe them and let them in. Uh. And then medical students who are with them pull out syringes full of sedatives and inject the guards, rendering them unconscious. They drag them over to the zoo next door because this buildings next to the zoo, and just like leave them unconscious in the zoo. Okay, zoo twist, not expecting that last

thing I thought were gonna say was zoo. It's incredible. I love that dish into their plan. They could have just left them there, but they put them in right now exactly because they didn't want to hurt anybody. So they pull all the records they can find, They pile them up in the center of the room. They pour benzene on them as an accelerant. They place bombs, They grab all the blank I d s and all the money that they can find, and they get the funk

out and the building goes boom. Successful heist movie. Yeah it wasn't so it wasn't completely destroyed. But the building is soon on fire. So the fire department comes and they show up kind of late, and then they kind of take their sweet time putting out the fire. And then when the fire is out, they just keep pouring water on the building, just keep going because because they're trying to destroy all the records. Because the fire department got tipped off saying hey, hey, can you help us

destroy this building. You can always count okay, the fire department, You can always count on them. Like you know, there's there's cops, then there's firemen, and there's always a good guy. And yeah, it comes for history obviously. The way that my dad put it once is that no one becomes a firefighter because they enjoy having power over other people. Yeah, I love that. I've never put heard it in those words,

but yes, yes, and opposite for cops, yeah, exactly. Um So in the end, they destroyed about eight hundred thousand records on people, uh, which and it gets painted as this failure because that was only about of the total that were stored in the building. Um. But they also they make it out with six d blanc ideas and fifty thou guilders. And I could not, for the life of me figure out how much fifty thousand guilders is in today's money. And U S dollars. I tried, I promise,

I tried someone. I'm gonna say it's a lot. Yeah, it's more money than I currently have. I'm willing to bet. And yeah, it's like okay, So sometimes like history is like, oh and they kind of failed. I'm like, okay, they didn't like single handedly save everyone in Amsterdam all at once, but they fucking destroyed eight hundred thousand records and like saved thou pens of lives, you know, they put guards in zeus. What I would say, it's mostly a success.

I mean obviously not like stupendously. I don't know. Yeah, okay, so there was a trader in their midst, and unfortunately for the heist movie and for them and for us, we do actually we actually don't know who the trader was Judas. Yeah, and they get sold out and one by one the conspirators get arrested. William when he's arrested, they grab his journal and use it to catch a

bunch more of the people. And like, just I'm really not trying to shame anybody, but if you're going to blow up a Nazi warehouse, you should burn all the evidence at your earliest convenience. So keep that in mind. Yeah, exactly, And okay, so fifteen of them are rounded up, William Arandeus. His defense in court is basically like I did literally all of it. Blame it all on me, No one

else had anything to do with it. And it's not the first time that doing research for this podcast, I've run across people using this defense and court um because it's it's a cool thing. That cool people sometimes do, and it it saves two of his codefendants lives. Two of the medical students are like just given like fifteen years in prison or whatever, which fortunately means they're given a couple of years in prison and then you know,

the Allies liberate the Netherlands. Um. But he didn't save everyone. Along with twelve others, he was marched out to the dunes and executed. Um. His last communication was through his lawyer, who was also a badass. I'm gona talk about her in a little bit, and he said to her, And this gets translated a thousand different ways in every retellion of it, but he said to her basically, never let them say that homosexuals are cowards. Well, yeah, that is beautiful.

What a life, what a good guy? I know? That is I like this show. Thanks, I do too, Um any the thing I I mean, like, I was, like I cried so many times when I was like researching this episode, because mean, this guy just wanted to fucking like paint and write novels and like funck his boyfriend. And then instead Nazis took over his fucking country and he did what he had to do, and like and

the other guy that's like a sculptor. Yeah, it's you're not allowed to express yourself creativity or like as an artist, you're you're like you're forced into activism almost because to survive, if that makes sense. Totally forced, but you're by default totally. But yeah, it's Wow. I'm glad to know about these people. That is cool. I'm gonna tell you about more of them. Yeah, more cool people that do cool things. Okay, I'm gonna

tell you about his boyfriend next. Um, not the one who like fucked off because she got too hot, but the one that um he dated later and was dating during at all. His name was Schward Baker. And um, that's the name you can say. Yeah, yeah, totally because one of my best friends in Amsterdam his name is short. Um and I actually am still not saying it correctly. Um, but you know, yeah, everyone i'm short knows. Um. Hopefully

my friend short is listening to this and forgives me. Okay, so, uh, he's a tailor, not my friend my friends owns a pizza shop, but this guy is as a tailor and short bocker. He sewed the counterfeit police uniforms that they all wore into the office, and because he was William's partner, the defense tried a strategy of like basically be like go easy on him. He only did it because he

was in love with willem Um. And then short was like, oh fuck no, like no, I fucking did it and I would do it again, like fuck that love so again not cowards. But that's like, you know what, that's amazing. He could have just saved his ass and then instead and this is the gayest part of all and the part that I love. Um, right before he dies, he's offered one last request and I don't see what you say.

It is about choking up. He asks for his pretty pink shirt, and so he puts on his pretty pink shirt. And that's a pretty pink shirt is a translation some machine translate shan I you know, but but he asked for his pretty pink shirt. Um. He gets marched out to the dunes and he gets executed alongside his lover. And it was his shirt, his pink shirt, that helped people identify the bodies of all the people who got executed. Um, that's I. My eyes are kind of water so sweet

and sad, you know. And then his his his brother and his uncle kept fighting and they also died later in the resistance. Um. But then you got someone who survives, Frieda Belafonte who's a part Jewish, lesbian celliston conductor, and she's the first woman in the world to serve as the permanent conductor for a professional orchestra. But that that comes later because she survives. And it's not very often that you get to say the lesbian survives in a

story like this. You know, Um, she was this promising cellist, she won a conducting competition against entirely men, and then Nazis takeover, and as someone whose father but not mother was Jewish, she was allowed to apply for a special dispensation to keep working professionally under the under the Nazi regime,

at least at the start. But she was like, no, fuck you, I'm not going to fucking do that, And so she puts down her music career, puts it on hold, and she goes underground and starts forging fake I d s Um. And after the bombing, she goes underground again and she dresses as a man, as she often did to avoid detection or for whatever reason that she felt like dressing like man. Um, probably being part of an expert.

Fake ID ring helps when you're trying to go underground, you know, Um, I would imagine that's a good asset to have. I was just thinking like, how all these badass people they consciously like every opportunity that was presented to them as like you can save yourself, like you can have an easier life if you just like, kind of what's the word, like, um, I know, I can't think of the word either, but if you just roll over and just go along with it, not consolid but

there's a word that I'm thinking of. That's not the word, but it's really cool. But with every opportunity that was presented to them, they're still like, no, this is who I am. I'm not a coward. Yeah, it's it's not even I don't even think the kind of I would go on record saying like they didn't even think of it that way, you know what I mean, just basically did it because that's the right thing to do, and they're good people. Totally. Yeah, I think that there was

like that that's not an option, like why would I exactly? Um, But but what is an option is buying fake I d s from our sponsor Fake I d ring dot is it net or calm Sophie, I think it's it's yeah, it's definitely dot org okay, nonprofit. Yeah. And so for our next wholesome sponsor is the concept of fake I d s as well as whatever other ads come after I say this and then stop talking. But mostly but

mostly fake ideas. Yeah, and potatoes, m okay, and we are back so free to um So resistance folks smuggle her first to Belgium to France, and then she has to get across the Alps into Switzerland. But it's a winter, so she crosses on foot. She crosses the fucking Alps on foot in winter. Holy ship, that is yeah. Yeah, it's like not something I'm trying to do. You know. No, I already thought she was a badass, like before the break,

but now it's like, oh yeah, yeah, confirmed, yeah. Uh. So she makes it to Switzerland and she starts a choir in the refugee camp. Um of course she does love her and then uh and then she becomes local to you all. After the war, she moves to Orange County, California. I actually don't know Orange County is I think we don't know? Ship? Okay, it's I mean, like technically, like if you're looking at a map, sure, but we don't we don't. We don't clip. Los Angeles does not clip

Orange County. Okay, maybe maybe back then it was more like, oh, this is all this hot desert so Cal. We're all the same. But at this point, Orange County is like a red red, very red, very vaccine anti mask situation in Anaheim. Anaheim is part of Orange County and I was born there. Well, shout out to Anaheim for doing something right. Yeah, just me, just given a strain. Literally, all I know about Orange County is that someone I went to high school with was an actor on the

O C. That's that's. That's as much as you should know, honestly. Yeah, you're The theme song just went bursting into my head. Actually, wait, I know people from Anaheim going to be like mad at me for even saying that. So I had to look it up. Oh no, it is the second largest city in Orange County. Okay, great because that's also where Disney is. So I was like, is it Angeles or Orange County? Okay, sorry, anyone out there, uh please don't add me, thanks, okay, Okay, Um, So now everyone knows

that I don't know anything about California. I'm a fucking Appalachian girl at the moment. Okay, that's that's that's what we're here for. Yeah, honestly, I wish I wish I did not know anything about this place. I wish I was catapulted into out of space. I don't want to be here. I don't want to know anything, said good to know. Um, Freida wanted to be there, not l A, but Orange County. So she goes to Orange County and

she starts. She organized the Philharmonic Orchestra and does it as a nonprofit and all their concerts are free to the public, and she she runs the orchestra for about fifteen years, and now she's the aforementioned first permanent conductor of an orchestra or whatever. Um, a woman conductor of an orchestra. And then one day, after like fifteen years, someone's like, and I'm paraphrasing here is and making this exact way it goes up whatever, making this part of

but not the thing that happens, just the words. Okay, So one day someone's like, oh, ship, we're letting a woman run an orchestra, and so they start talking about firing her right because like whoops, we accele woman. But then they're going back and forth about it. They're like, ah, yeah, but she's like really good, like maybe we should let her keep doing it. And then someone's like wait, wait wait, but she's also a lesbian, so she gets fired cause

that person. Yeah, And I feel like it's like worth pointing out that, like you know, like like a lot of World War two is like the bad guys and then the so so guys, you know, like, um, it's not like everyone fucking like it's not like Brittain was like, man, we're so and not a whatever. Britain's really anti Semitic too, is what I'm trying to say. But there's still like a scale, you know. I agree, it's there is no

It's like it's not black and white thinking. There's no good and evil, like you know what I mean, Like again what you said earlier, people that support Nazis are Nazis, you know what I mean, People that are like even a little bit homophobic or like whatever. It is like it's just like I don't know that makes sense. I guess that partly black and white thinking, but I think you know what I mean, And I'm going to shut up.

Let you continue. It's black and gray thinking. There's the evil, and then there's the slightly less evil, and then there's the I know, and then the good. Are the individuals who are doing this kind of ship you know, yes, yes, And so the Kanu read yeah of our race, Yeah exactly, And I'm I'm like trying to picture counter Reeves playing her in the movie. Um, but I know that it's not allowed. Okay anyway, um okay. So she gets fired and she but she keeps working with music the rest

of her life. And one of her whole things that she ends up having to do is that the whole story that I'm telling you, this whole bombing plot, people took the gay angle out of it. In history, Like even though William's last fucking words were like never let never let them say that homosexuals are cowards. People were just like, look at these great resistance fighters and like, never talk about their sexuality. And so it wasn't until

the nine like history. History is all made up and made up by mostly straight white man Yeah, Trust history books, the Trust history books. Um ah no, no, no, I mean. And so it's in the nineties when she is able to like tell them like, no, the fucking the fact that we are like gay is fucking part of this um and needs to be part of the legacy. Um. And she dies. She's a good fucking run of it. Another guy, Karl Groger, He was part Jewish, although he'd

been baptized Catholic. He had been born in Austria as father was a lawyer and his father was like defended the people who later became Nazis. Um. But young Carl, he was a social democrat and he was a medical student, and he gets the funck to Amsterdam as soon as he can to get away from the Nazis. But then the Nazis come after, of course, and he gets conscripted into the German Army, and then they quickly figured out that he's part Jewish and kick him out, so he

joins the resistance. He works on a newspaper called ratten Kreutz or something rat Poison, which is a fucking punk rock name for goddamnpaper. Super metal. Yeah, and he's um. I think he's one of the medical students who sedates the guards, and I think he's the only one of the medical students who gets executed. But I'm not hundreds and sort of about that. Um. But his last letter to his parents includes the line I believe that with this one action, I brought more boon to humanity than

an entire life as as a physician would have done. Um. And he's probably right. No, I think so too. It's he's I don't know, it's like, what what will what will shift the thinking of humanity versus what you know what I mean, like totally, the fact that he had even like a nudge of that arrow is so much more helpful than versus like, I don't know, I was gonna say, oh my god, I was going to say,

delivering a babe. Maybe I should not see that. I mean, like, doctors could do lots and lots of good stuff and I'm entirely but he like, but he definitely saves more literal, just immediate lives just by fucking burning eight hundred thousand records, and he like, yeah, and you're right. He also just shows that people can stand up for ship, you know. Okay,

So then another one. You've got another Willam William Sandberg and he's a He was a typographer, which is seems like a good skill set if you're gonna become a counterfeiter, and he he helped plan the whole thing. And then he actually he goes underground and he survives. He's hidden by a dentist friend after the bombing, and he keeps

up his typographic work. He like keeps doing his art while he's underground, and he releases nineteen experimental typographic pamphlets because he's a fucking artist, um, while he's on the run. And I kind of love that too, like he said, asides art a little bit. But then he was like, oh, but now I have all this time to work on my art because I'm hiding from that. I gotta express myself. I'm an artist. Yeah, And and he designs the plaque for all of his dead friends, um that hangs on

the building where the attack happen. And he goes on to direct one of the more important museums in Amsterdam, the stead Lick, where he he constantly runs into trouble for trying to present art that involves sexuality, because Nazis aren't the only shitty prudes around. Um. Then there's a Rudy Bloomgarten who's a very nonpacifist Jewish resistance member. Before before the bombing. He tried to assassinate a high up Nazi collaborator after the bombing. When they came to arrest him,

he shot the arresting officer and got the funk away. Um. He was caught later in a nearby city. He didn't survive the war, but like, fuck it. He blew up a Nazi warehouse and shot a Nazi And I don't what more can anyone else? Yeah, like, yes, thank you for that. You gave us a good life. Okay. Another nonpacifist was Johann Brauer. And almost everyone else is like artists and students and ship right, But Johann was a bank robber, uh, at least in that but and more

than that. So he's a bank robber in the twenties. And then he murders a guy who's blackmailing him about the bank robbery, and then he goes to prison for murdering the guy's blackmailing about the bank robbery. And then he gets out, and then he gets his PhD and like Spanish mysticism, uh, and he converts to Catholicism and then he fights in the Spanish Civil War on the Republican side, which is like not what most Catholics are doing.

Most Catholics are specifically on the fascist side of that one. And then he comes back from the Spanish Civil War and becomes a professor and the Nazis to come take over the country. They fire him because they figure he was a murderer and he probably shouldn't be teaching kids, which I actually think he should be teaching kids, because so he up himself the blackmailed. Come on, come on, yeah,

that's a well rounded guy. He could teach kid Yeah, exactly. Um, And so he blows up their records and I think he gets executed. I wish I want to find out more about this guy, because he's sucking. Yeah, he sounds really fast, and I know I want to be friends with him. He's a complete wing nut who always throws down when you need when you need it, you know, Yes, I love that, love it. Love the con Yeah. I

love a good scam. Yeah, totally. The guy who helped them figure out where to place the explosives was named Martinists Knight Kniehoff. He was a World War One vet who fought against the German invasion as part of a regiment of bicycle infantry. I was not aware that bicycle infantry was a thing until I I read about this man. Um, but yeah, me either. The more you say it, the more I'm like, can I am I managing? Just like an army of bicyclists in their little spio outfits. That's

that's what I imagine. A bicyclist is a little like skin tight, you know what. I like the brand? Yeah, no, yeah, yeah, not like whatever shrine. As much as a man in uniform was very handsome, I think a man spito is more handsome. I'm fully okay with the great thank you this version of Yeah. And so he's like the explosives guy for him. Uh, he looks up the he gets the blueprints of the building from an architect who's one of them, and he suggests, okay, here's where you should

place the bombs. And he wasn't caught. I don't think he actually went on the actual raid. He just told them where to place the bombs. And after the war they had a hunger winter, which is never a good time when you're when your country is a hunger winter where twenty Dutch people starved to death or frozen to death. Um, because I've never heard that term before. Yeah, I didn't even heard about the Hunger Winner until reading about this guy. Um. And then he because war has all kinds of unintended

consequences um or intended consequences, I guess sometimes. And so he he hangs out at his house and hands out all of his food to two kids until his supplies are exhausted. Um, and he survives, and he's mostly remembered. First poetry. So I like that the speedo wearing um explosive sky from the heist movie. I'm talking about these like real people as if they're whatever anyway, Um, they aren't.

I mean, no, he's a poem. And as I mean, a good heist movie is like there are real heists in the world, we just call it a heist, you know what I mean. But in a highst movie, there are a bunch of different characters with a bunch of different like backgrounds of qualifications. So this just makes sense to me. There's a poet, there's a bank robber, there's

a sculpture, there's an art I can keep going. Okay, another guy who was named CNIG and after the bombing, he just like goes back to school his medical school, like nothing happened. But then He just gets arrested while he's staking his medical exam and he he's one of the people who gets saved by by Willem by his admission, and he goes to a concentration company. He's freed when the Netherlands ise liberated. And then you got your noble because you need a random noble in all of this too,

write you need a rich guy. You need so Edwards Samuel Adrian von Moossen Broke Broke uh moose Chin broke. He was. He was basically nobility. He also didn't like the Nazis, and so he fights against the German invasion. And then the Dutch army capitulates, and you know, the Netherlands gives up. So he he and his friend drive off to join the British army and then he joins and fights with the British Army as far as France before he's captured by the Germans. He escapes the Germans,

he makes his way back to Amsterdam. He joins the resistance, helps blow up the records. Then he goes into hiding, but he was tracked down, arrested and executed um and he spent three months in prison with his arms chained above his head in a cell and his his father was also sentenced to five was since to five years in prison because he had sent a postcard to his kid that was like good luck and its like was

probably good luck blowing up the Nazis. But um sad yeah, Um okay, then you have a double agent cop, because you needed a double agent cop, the only good kind of cop. I would say that. I agree, Um. Cornelius Ruse. He's supposed to be policing the Jewish quarter, but instead he's actively helping Jews escape, including at least in one case, high ding them in his house. And he's the one who steals the police the two police uniforms that he

then gives to short in order to have them copied. Um. And he also uh after the attack, he's passing along all the police information about how they're trying to catch everyone. Um. But unfortunately, because he's passing along those documents, when one of the people is caught, they find the documents, they trace it back to him. Um, and he's executed alongside

his comrades. Every time you introduced someone like, I'm just so curious where it's going to end up, like and then they were executed or and then they got what you know what I mean totally um good another another good person uh, Henry Hobart Hobbard stat Uh. He arranged the explosive heist in the first places. They needed to

steal the explosives to blow up the other place, right. Um. And so one of his relatives was a cop, and he gets the relative cop double agent to sneak out the explosives to him, which he then used personally on some like railway lines to to funk up with the just sunk up the Germans. But then he um, he gives bombs to the the bombing plot and he gets executed for that. Uh. And then there's Garrett Vonderveen who I was talking about earlier, the sculptor Um. Before the bombing,

he actually wants set fire sculptor. This is the guy with the ship. Yes, I've been curious about the guy. Okay, So before the bombing, he actually set fire to an employment office for the same purpose, but he didn't do a very good job of it, so it didn't really do much damage. Then he had the more successful bombing, right, and then he goes on underground. He stays on the run for two years, and he gets it gets increasingly desperate.

At one point, he and two others carry out another raid that scores them like ten thousand blank ideas instead of like the six d they grabbed the time before. But more and more of his friends are winding up in prison and so he can't have that right, so he tries to raid the prison to set them free. Six times, um. Six times he tries, and six times he fails, like he just won't sing quit attacking the prison. And then the last time he attacks the prison is

on May one. He and twenty eight others were let in by a friendly guard but they I know, But they get attacked by a guard dog and Vondervin shoots the dog um, which everyone hears, and so a firefight breaks out. Vondervin gets shot in the back and paralyzed from the waist down and somehow still escapes. Uh Like, maybe he's carried away by a comrade. That's like the

more likely thing, but I don't know. This guy just like doesn't know how a fucking quit, So it's like kind of easy to imagine him just like crawling away, yes exactly, And a friendly doctor treats him and they are all caught a couple of weeks later, and he was tried and executed another The ending is always the one that was like, where's it gonna go? Okay, one more? One more? No, no, no, no, I love really only wrote one more. Um, that's fine. Okay. So so even

their fucking lawyer is cool. Okay. The woman Yeah, yeah, okay, So Lao Mazarel, I'm listening. Yeah, no, no, no, I think you are. Solo is down for the struggle before the Nazis, during the Nazis, and after the Nazis. She represents immigrants and refugees and queers and Romani folks. Before the Nazi invasion, she tried and failed to get the Dutch government and the synagogues to destroy all the records about who's Jewish. Basically, she's like, this ship is gonna happen.

Have you seen Germany? You should get rid of your lists, and they're like yeah, we like lists, you know. And then it happens that she's like seen, yeah, I told you yeah, and her her smart lady, I know her, her Jewish husband goes on the run with her her kids, who are so because their kids are part Jewish or whatever. Get get in trouble too, and uh, they actually I have the war two. And she frees people like legally

when she can and illegally when she passed to. One time, she like literally jumps on a train to drag Jewish kids off of them, basically being like, you can't kill them, They're like under my legal protection or whatever. Yeah, oh my god, I love these people. And she was originally gonna go with everyone on the night of the bombing and helped do the bombing, but in the end she decided not to go because she was too short to

realistically pass as a cop um. So as soon as I read this, I like message my my lawyer friend and was like I found you in history um and uh. And then after, you know, after the Nazi thing is over or whatever, she becomes In addition to fighting for all these other things, she also becomes an anti census activist because she's like, I've seen what happens when governments keep lists of people. You know what, yes, yes, I've always you know, the census always drives me the wrong way.

I don't understand it. This woman she does what's that They also never seem to do it right in America. Yeah, no, what's the whatever. But I do like that because she was the one that Willem I hope that's his name, that he told her that. I just don't let anyone say gays aren't counts, right, or homosexuals or whatever the word he so if because she was the one, the

only person that was told that. She probably is the one that kind of like wrote like or helped write what happened in the history and stuff, right, That's that's what I would assume. I think, so m she also no, I just was gonna say, that makes her really cool

to me. Like in nineteen forty six, I just didn't even make it into my script, but like in ninety six she um forms or helps form one of the like main gay rights organizations, um, and just like she's like, yeah, okay, Like I think she's probably as a straight too, I don't know whatever, she's married as kids, that doesn't make her straight, but you know, she's just like, I'm gonna fucking absolutely get involved in LGBT ship as soon as this happens a true ally yeah, like in an actual

sense of the word, like allies and like the two of us are invading a country together, you know, like mm hmmm, mm hmm. Yeah, no, totally. Um, I like her, like all these people. I like all I like all these people. This is you know, before I hopped on Happy the best day, you know what I mean. But you know, I'm pleasantly surprised these people are. So I want to look up all these people when we're done

with this and just excuse me. I mean, I'm a very cynical person and I don't have faith and humanity. I think we are terrible. Um, and I unfortunately think the bad at weighs the good because bad usually wins.

But this kind of stuff really gives me hope that like actual good people will keep doing good things, you know, and there's a reason like jumping in the ocean and helping a ship not be on fire, like you know what I mean, There's always going to be that I don't know what I'm saying, But there's always a point, Yes, there's always a point in every podcast where I start to philosophize. So this is the point where is the

right time I'm here for? But um, but no, I think I think, especially in the culture that we are in now, which I don't like, how there's like you're being observed at all times. There's cameras everywhere or like you, and when you're not being observed, you want to be the observer and like record something or take a photo or there's all these outside forces that influence your accents,

your actions. Unfortunately, um, even subconsciously. I think that happens, whether it's like posting something or you want to share, especially as artists. If you want to share something, there's going to be a reaction and you have to be on line to even feel relevant in all this stuff. So I think if we just dial all that back in, like I don't know, doing good things just to do them versus like like I hate when celebrities are like I fit the homeless today, just like go through the homeless,

you know what I mean, go do any money. You don't have to tell us about it, you know what I mean. If they're actually good, they would just do it and not say a word. How would they get how would they get compliments on the Twitter? And so performative But that's just prus it's performative, you know what I mean. Um, But maybe one day the good my way the bad. But the current trajectory, I don't know. Man, Yeah,

I don't know. It's ah, I don't know. We'll see what happens, but I like this kind of show to give me hope. I'm I'm glad. Uh yeah, I don't know. I I One of the things I like about how all of them are artists and stuff is that they're not doing it for cloud. You know, they're just doing it because they're like, well, I'm an artist, but I also gotta I gotta do this ship now, like exactly like some of them, you got to use their skill sets, like the typographer or whatever. But the cellist isn't like

I'm playing cello for the revolution. The cellis is like, I guess I'm making fake ideas now, you know. Yeah, these are very talented people in their own rend because they're notable in whatever they're doing. Yeah, not that it

matters to be notable, but you know what. And then okay, so the the this whole plot I've been calling it like the Amsterdam plot and all my notes, it doesn't have a cool name in history that I've able to been able to find, like even the group of them, they don't get called like, I don't know, the cool gay artists who blew up Nazis or whatever blew up Nazis warehouses. They just get called the Garrett Vonderveien Group because there's a strike guy there who like helps run

some of it. Um, I don't know, do you have any do you have any name ideas for them? Like what do we call the you know, the gay bombers of Amsterdam or you know, um not to about you on the spot very literally, I mean, this is this is so the first thing I thought it was bad. It's not good. I thought of glam Squad just on the g G train, you know what I mean. I

was on that. I was on that word. Um. I think squad can be a badass edition, but I also think it's like predictable and maybe you should just be some random word like I don't know the I'm trying to come by, Like just find a word that's like bombers, but like the person of that, like that's just that's not what I want. Well that's what they did, though. They showed up and they were like, hey, we're the bomb Squad. We're here to check for bombs. That's pretty

Actually they're the original. They're the very first bomb squad that you should ever know what they are. They're the O G Bomb Squad. That's what they are. Bombs. I'm glad we came up. That's not the greatest, not the greatest, but I will finish there. So that's it for today. When we come back on Wednesday, we're gonna keep talking about this stuff. We're gonna talk. We're gonna move back over to Germany, and we're gonna learn more about cool gays who did cool gay stuff like fight Nazis. Yeah,

thanks for having me. Thanks. Do you have any uh plugs fresh your shoe? Oh? Yeah, that again about being observed and needed to stay relevant. Um. If you want to follow me on the internet, you're allowed to. I'm on Twitter at Shiro Hero six six six um and on Instagram is just Shiro hero. And if you want to know anything about me, you can just Google me and find it there. It's fine. I don't don't. I feel very jaded at this point. I have a podcast, I have a poetry book. It's all of the internet

somewhere I don't know find it. Yeah, if you really care, you would dig for the information. Any any plugs for you at the moment. Uh? Well, I still like plugging my new podcast Cool People Who Did Cool Stuff that you often listen. I like you plugging that too, Yeah, I just don't know where they can listen to it. No, I'm not sure either. I think you actually can't find podcasts anywhere, um but legally Yeah, totally so hard to find. Or if you're willing to go underground to the to

find it everywhere you listen to podcasts, you can do that. Yeah, good show, I like it. See you all, Weinstein. Cool People Who Did Cool Stuff is a production of cool Zone Media. Or more podcasts on cool Zone Media, visit our website cool zone media dot com, or check us out on the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts