Best of the Program | Guest: Jack Fairweather | 8/29/19

Welcome to the podcast.

I want to remind you you can get tickets to the show in Salt Lake City for Christmas.

It's called Christmas Stories with Glenn Beck.

What an appropriate title.

The tickets and information are available at Glenn Beck.com.

It's December 7th in Salt Lake City.

So we have

an interesting show for you today.

First of all, we talk about Alexandria Casio-Cortez, who has new information for you about what you've done wrong in your life

and what your generation has has screwed up and it's always good to hear from her because she

so wise so we do get into a little bit of that today as well as some weird technology news from Apple as they talk about listening to all sorts of private things that they're kind of now apologizing for this is the final episode where we go into a deep dive into the economy where we are what's going on with it that happens in hour two today if you've missed that series you can go back to the podcast and listen to all of it in hour two.

And then hour three, we talked to Jack Fairweather.

He's an author who wrote a book about one of the most amazing stories in the last hundred years.

It is a story from World War II about a guy who intentionally went into Auschwitz to try to break it up,

who tried to escape and succeeded escaping multiple times.

It is one of the most incredible stories you've ever heard.

Please check that out.

It's hour three.

The book is called The Volunteer.

We get into all of that on today's podcast.

You're listening to the best of the Blenbeck program.

Could we start, please, with the AOC video that she just made and released to

all of her followers,

and I mean that word exactly as it sounds, all of her followers on social media.

They're not afraid to have those conversations.

If anything, like I think they're profoundly courageous because they're willing to puncture taboos and conversation and have conversations that, frankly, older generations sometimes struggle to have.

Not everyone.

I don't want to pain everybody with a brand new person.

I think this new generation is connection.

Okay, I think that,

but, anyways, I think this new generation is very profound and very strong and very brave because they're actually willing to go to the streets.

How about that?

Like, how about that?

Previous generations have just assumed that, you know, governments got it.

Let me tell you something.

You are the government.

Like, as a democracy, we the people,

as a voter, you are the government, too.

Oh,

as an older person, I didn't get that.

I've always, a thought that we weren't a democracy we are a republic oh that drives me out of my mind

and what have older generations ever done though glenn to defend freedom i know i know we did nothing nothing we did nothing and you know what they're willing to have those tough conversations in their safe space

As they tell everybody we can't say this word or that word, they're courageous.

They're willing to have those conversations.

No, they're not.

They cry.

You're hurting my feelings.

You're making somebody uncomfortable.

Oh my gosh, she drives me nuts.

Okay, you know,

I don't expect her to really understand this because she's a bartender that didn't pay attention at all to anything until she won a game show to become the candidate.

So let me just explain a couple of things, not to her, because I don't care care about her.

I just saw that on the Blaze news, and I just couldn't take it.

But now that's out of my system, let me just tell you a couple of things.

This week is the ninth anniversary of Restoring Honor.

You know, Restoring Honor, where we had over 500,000 people march to Washington.

You know, that one.

Older generation, they don't don't get it.

They're not willing to stand up to their government.

Oh, by the way,

this September, I think, is the 10th anniversary of the March on Washington on 9-12.

Gee, what was 9-12?

9-12.

Why 9-12?

Oh, oh, that's September 12th.

Oh, that's because...

That's because this audience talked about how September 12th, we all stood together bravely, both Republicans and Democrats in this democracy

and we stood up and we held hands and we prayed together because we weren't going to be bowing to fear after somebody took our World Trade Center down.

That's what that was.

And then when the government got out of control and was just taxing us to death and telling us they wanted socialism, about a million people took to the streets.

But I wouldn't expect to know this, you to know this, AOC, because, you know, what were you?

Eight when that happened?

By the way,

this week also marks the fourth anniversary

of our restoring unity rally in Birmingham.

And, you know, in case AOC just happens to, you know, care at all, that was the largest, not according to me, but according to the city of Birmingham, the largest civil rights march since Martin Luther King.

Remember that one?

Yeah.

Yeah.

Anyway, that kicked off the Nazarene Fund, and I want to give you a quick update on that.

The Nazarene Fund has helped 53,000 people this year alone.

53,000 people.

Now we're into some

good things and some really dicey things yesterday uh there's a uh 12 year old uh 12 year old uh zinal

um

he was a a five-year ISIS slave imagine 12 almost half his life was lived as a slave he was wounded in the battle of I guess it's Bohuz in Syria.

Yesterday,

he finally got some life-saving surgery, and we're going to put some pictures up and I'll tweet them out and Facebook them and put them on Glenbeck.com.

But he needed some surgery and because of you, if you're a Nazarene Fund donor,

he is going to live and

we're grateful.

He is very grateful for you.

This week also, the Nazarene Fund is providing transportation, security, food, and water to volunteers.

We don't even think about this part of it, but the Sinjar massacre, ISIS buried people in a mass grave, and so we are now helping them

dig those mass graves up and identify their loved ones and then put them in a decent grave.

And mark that, we're identifying people with DNA testing, and they'll be buried with honor and reverence and in the name of God

not a false God

also Christians in Iraq and Syria still having a difficult time with both the remnants of ISIS and now we got a new one we have Iran because Iran is backing the militias and they are occupying now the 2,000 year old Christian lands so most people are not returning to their lands we're still moving people out of the area because it is not safe for them Please, if you want to be involved in this, I mean, you know, maybe not, because you're probably, you know, you're probably not from AOC's generation, so you're probably not brave.

You don't know how to stand up.

You don't know how to do anything.

Can you lick a stamp and put a check in the mail, Grandpa?

Because I'm sure you don't know how to use the internet.

But let me just, if you want to help out, you want to be a part of it, maybe you could get somebody like AOC to teach you how to turn on your computer and go to www.now that's D-O-T.

That's not, that's a, it's a period, not D-O-T.

www.period.

We call it a dot.

The Nazarene Fund

dot, that's a period again,

org, as in organization, but you don't have to say it all.

Okay, you just O-R-G.

By the way, next year is the 10th anniversary of Restoring Honor.

And I have,

before I came here, I'm at my ranch this week.

And

before I came up here, I had some meetings with

some amazing, amazing people

and

met with, I don't even know, 10 or 12 people I've led into this circle this week.

We are going to be announcing, hopefully, soon,

another restoring

event.

This one, I think, is

going to be the most important.

Everyone I have brought into the circle has kind of said, oh, you're going to do another restoring event?

And then I tell them what it is.

And all of them have responded, oh, I'm in.

I'm in.

So please keep your calendar open at least for the next month or so before we announce what that will be and where it will be.

But we're going to announce it sooner rather than later because

it has

great significance.

That's coming next year.

All right.

I want to talk to you a little bit about chaos today, and I want to show you where the chaos is coming from.

We're going to talk a little bit about the political race here in America, a little bit about what's happening in Brexit, and then also our new slave masters, Apple and Google and Facebook.

What Apple let out of the bag yesterday.

Yes, it's a cat.

Cats should never be let out of bags.

It wasn't an actual cat?

Okay, all right.

I guess that's just a phrase.

But anyway,

they let something slip and it should disturb every single American.

Will it?

Nah.

This is the best of the Glenn Beck program.

Hey, it's Glenn.

And if you like what you hear on the program, you should check out Pat Gray Unleashed.

His podcast is available wherever you download your favorite podcast.

So all week, we have been discussing the economy, how we got here, where we're headed, what's happening with China and the trade war, the blessing and the curse of a hundred years of credit expansion by the central banks, and how the progressive left and the progressive right

want to return the world to now hyperinflation and hyperspending by global governments with something called MMT, modern monetary theory.

It's toxic.

Today, I want to talk about where we need to go from here,

what we as individuals must realize: the choices that we have in front of us, and the consequences of not making the right choice.

And the consequences, truly, is global destruction.

Make no mistake, as you will understand in the next 20 minutes,

this is up to us.

This is once again, it has been left up to America to step up and save the world from itself.

It's a role that we are familiar with, but usually that means we have to send our military someplace.

This does not include the military.

That is not our source of real power.

But

it should be

you know something we're familiar with.

The world always asks us to step up.

In 76, the British Empire ruled 35% of the world's population.

We were the first colony to break off from its parent stem in the history of the world.

And we set an example that cascaded into a series of independence movements that eventually freed more than 30 nations.

from the British rule.

So, yeah,

we really don't don't like colonialism.

It's why we don't take over parts of the world.

In 1917, the world was tearing itself apart over in Europe, World War I.

The might and industry of the U.S.

that brought peace and ended Imperial Germany and Austria's plans for European conquest

happened because, not because we sent over troops, but because we had industrial might.

Hitler's National Socialists,

the Emperor Hirohito, the Imperial Navy, had rolled over every single nation in their path by 1941 before we got in.

The Allies had known nothing but defeat.

After the U.S.

first attack against Japan, the Allies experienced nothing but victory.

In the aftermath of World War II, the USSR pounced on their neighbors' war fatigue and just rolled over European countries while we gave those countries back to the people.

They beat people into submission until about 1989.

Time after time, generation after generation,

it is the U.S.

that is called to live up to our mission statement.

A mission statement first proclaimed by a group of men.

Yeah, they were all white and they were all men.

They were really really smart.

No one had ever uttered the words that had these men uttered and then put down on paper and announced to the world.

We recognize, protect, and defend individual liberty and freedom.

And you know what?

The world took us at our word for the first 150 years.

We know they did

because they kept asking for us to help them realize that dream.

And to prove it, we defeated despots, kings, fascist sociopaths, totalitarian empires,

Soviet dictatorship of the majority.

Every time we raised our banner, we destroyed the enemy before us, leaving the world more free, more fair, more just than what we found.

And today,

the world is in one very clear voice.

They are calling on America again.

They are asking for our help.

We are already answering this call, but no one is talking about it.

And you don't notice it because you think,

as many politicians do, our might is in our military.

That's not our might.

They're asking us to play our familiar role to ensure the people of Earth do not slip back into slavery that we have fought to escape since the Enlightenment.

Once again, as you will come to understand in the next couple of minutes, America is the last best hope for mankind.

And if we fail this time, the world is swallowed by darkness.

People will say, I have not heard anyone ask.

They are begging for our leadership.

They're asking for America to step in and use their might and ingenuity to guide the world back to sanity.

It is as clear and as bold as any bat signal against the clouds.

Now, I'm not talking about what we hear from their pundits and their politicians.

No diplomatic posts have arrived, no new proposals for an alliance or Churchillian speeches saying, until in God's good time,

a new world with all of its power and its might steps ration of the old.

It's not coming that way.

Instead, if you read that in the headlines, we're the world's pariah.

From Macron in France, Our consumerism is destroying the planet.

Putin in Russia.

We're imperialists bent on world domination.

Z in China.

We're a bully.

Canada's Trudeau.

We're the world's worst polluter.

In the global press, America is a cliché redneck, violent, misogynist, racist, xenophobic.

Public opinion polls of America taken abroad show us to be untrusted, despised, and feared.

We're rich.

We're selfish.

We're pompous.

We're corrupt.

We're uncaring.

We're too male, too white.

We have too many damn guns.

We're destroying the planet one smokestack and tailpipe at a time, and we don't seem to give a crap.

So, where's the disconnect?

Glenn, that's what I hear.

You're telling me they're asking for help?

The world is teetering

right on the precipice of the abyss, and they know it.

Their leaders are all doing the same game.

But just like here in America, the people know it.

No, Putin's tanks aren't rolling into Western Europe yet.

Z hasn't unleashed secretly embedded software hacks crashing global power grids yet.

Iran hasn't sent the Republican Guard racing across the desert to Israel yet.

North Korea isn't nuking Tokyo yet.

The world isn't facing annihilation by a military dictator.

This time, the enemy is more insidious than ever before.

This time,

the enemy

is us.

This time, the enemy is within our gates and within their gates.

This time, the enemy

is

the same power of corruption

from Germany to Japan, Switzerland to Belgium, China to Brazil, Argentina to South Africa, the world is singing fast in quicksand, and that quicksand is of their own making.

And it's the usual suspects.

It's the central banks, it's the politicians, and the signs are everywhere.

We talked about it all week.

The sign is in the data.

Global GDP, the total financial output for all nations, all together, sits at $80 trillion.

That means we take every dime that we've made, we put it in a giant heap, we have $80 trillion.

Global debt, public and private, sits at $190 trillion.

Now, that's not counting China's off-balance sheet of $50 trillion.

190 trillion is our debt.

So global debt to GDP is 190%.

So for new every new dollar created, $1.90 is already owed.

And we hear this all the time.

We hear this all the time.

Now, everybody used to be concerned about debt.

Now, oh no, you know, debt is good.

I know there's a lot of debt, really big numbers, too big to comprehend, really.

So what?

Everything's fine.

No, here's what's new.

And here is where you hear the call for America to stand and rise to the occasion.

I'll tell you about it in one minute.

You know, there are two parts to buying a house, the fun part and the not-so-fun part.

The fun part is seeing the houses, making your plans, designing the look of your future in your head as you walk through the room of a new house.

The not-so-fun part is all the paperwork, the stuff leading up to the actual buy.

That's where the real estate agent usually comes in.

So you don't have to worry much about that part.

But believe me, you want the best person for all of that part, which is why a number of years ago, my wife and I and my brother, Robert, started a real estate company, Real Estate Agents I Trust.

The name pretty much says it all, and it was started as a passion thing, and it has just exploded.

What we did is we took the best practices from the 500 best real estate agents from as

named by the Wall Street Journal and we used that as our template.

We hired a lot of agents since then, thousands of them coming from this audience, but they had to know that template.

They had to have best practices.

So if you want somebody who can help you create the most value for your home, who has a long track record of

success, and can help you find the right home in the right neighborhood go to realestate agents i trust calm that's realestate agents i trust calm 10 seconds station id

Glenn, nobody is calling on the United States to step in.

Nobody's depending on us.

We're so screwed up, we need socialism.

Okay, let me give you some facts that no one is talking about.

As of July 2019,

94%

of global sovereign bond yield paid to investors across the entire planet was paid by the United States.

Let me break that down and what that means.

Global sovereign bond yields.

Those are sovereign bonds.

These are

you can invest in countries, buying debt and everything else.

94%

was paid by the United States to these other countries.

As of 2019, 61%

of all triple-rated corporate bond yields paid investors.

is paid by U.S.

companies.

So again,

out of every $100 earned by investors all over the globe for investing in a government bond,

$94

are paid by the United States.

Six are paid by the rest of the world.

Let me ask you this.

If you knew that stat and you saw that these governments, for instance, I think it's Sweden.

Is it Sweden?

I think it's Sweden.

I just read today.

It's putting a trillion dollars into our bonds and stocks.

A trillion in U.S.

bonds and stocks.

That money has always been parked in Europe.

They've just taken it out of Europe and invested in the United States.

Why?

Because 94%,

94 cents on every dollar invested

is

paid for by the United States investment.

61%

out of all of the corporate stocks across the globe, out of every $100 paid out on corporate stocks and bonds, $61

are paid by U.S.

companies.

This is a world desperate for help.

Remember, they're paying for all these programs too.

They got to make Social Security.

They need investments that are making money.

The world is crying out for our help.

They're just doing it in a different way.

They're just sending trillions of dollars into our economy because we're the only, literally the only ones performing.

That's them sending up the bat signal.

They're asking us to play our role, to fire up the furnace of American industry, invention, finance, technology.

They're not asking us for military, nor should we send military anywhere.

It's not our business.

Our strongest force we have is our ingenuity and invention and industry.

We are literally the world's income.

If the United States goes down for every hundred dollars invested, if we pay zero, they only make six dollars

instead of a hundred

because the United States goes down, they don't have the ninety-four.

They only have six.

And I guarantee you that if the United States goes down, so does the rest of the world.

We are the world's income, the engine of American business, agriculture, manufacturing, e-commerce, banking, finance.

Our output is backstopping the entire world as it did after both world wars.

Let me give you some perspective.

America is only 5% of the world's population.

We're 25% of the world's GDP, but we are 94%

of the payout on sovereign bonds.

That income

that almost every other nation and government is relying on us to stabilize their own economies, to keep their union pensions afloat, to pay for their social security and their defense.

That's the real disconnect between what you see in the press and how they're voting with their wallets.

They can say whatever they want about the United States.

They're sending us trillions of dollars.

China and Russia say we're bullies, but both nations have trillions invested in U.S.

equities and real estate.

To Canada, we're the world's worst polluter, but 35% of their sovereign wealth fund is invested in the U.S.

To the EU, we're brash and uncouth, but their government and citizens are investing trillions in stocks and bonds.

And they have to,

because we're the only engine that's working.

We can talk about all of our problems, but let's talk about us being the last engine on earth that's still turning over and starts.

Most nations now issue government bonds with negative interest rates.

Investing in Germany, Japan, France, Switzerland is a guaranteed loss.

That's not me just making that up.

It's in the paperwork.

Invest in us and you will lose money.

We guarantee it.

Wow.

How does your nation stay afloat?

And what do we have to do?

The best of the Glenbeck program.

Hey, it's Glenn.

And if you like what you hear on the program, you should check out Pat Gray Unleashed.

His podcast is available wherever you download your favorite podcast.

Jack Fairweather is a graduate of Oxford University, correspondent for the Washington Post, Daily Telegraph.

He was the guy who was reporting from Baghdad, and he was their Persian Gulf Bureau Chief.

While While living in Baghdad as the Daily Telegraph's bureau chief,

Jack met his wife to be.

They lived in the house of Saddam Hussein's former perfume supplier alongside

other reporters.

The violence, as it escalated in Iraq, Jack was fortunate to survive a suicide bomb attack, a kidnapping attempt, almost daily mortar attacks around their house.

He was embedded with the Iraqi invasion.

It won him a British press award, which is the equivalent of the Pulitzer Prize.

And then he decided, I think, probably because of all that, you know what,

I think I'm just going to move to Vermont and write some books.

And I am so glad that he did.

He is a tremendous writer, researcher, and he has written my favorite book of the year so far called The Volunteer.

Jack Fairweather, welcome to the program.

Thanks for having me.

Sure.

So, so, Jack,

this story, I want you to take our audience and

introduce them to this one man

you call the volunteer

and why we've never heard this story before.

It's extraordinary, isn't it?

So here is the guy.

He is thirty-eight years old.

He's a farmer in eastern Poland.

But for World War II and the Nazi invasion of his country Poland he probably would have spent his days farming his wife and two kids the Nazis invaded Poland was plunged into this brutal occupation Auschwitz concentration camp is opened June 1940 a few months into the war and the resistance which this guy Pelecki joined needed to find out what was happening in this camp there were rumors coming to Warsaw that it was this brutal, terrible location for the punishment of Polish nationals.

Pilewski's name was put forward to volunteer for this mission, to volunteer for Auschwitz.

And that was a mission that he took in order to tell the world what was happening there.

The

incredible,

I mean, this story is just full of hair-raising moments.

First of all,

I talked to one of the righteous among the nations who saved a lot of Jews, and she said almost exactly

how you described this man.

I asked her, I said, I believe the tree of righteousness

is planted in each of us.

What's the water?

How do we water that tree?

And she said, you misunderstand.

She said, the righteous didn't suddenly become righteous.

They just refused to go over the cliff with the rest of humanity.

So it's just being who you've always been.

This guy was not a heroic figure.

What in God's green earth made him become this hero?

That is

a great question.

And I think it is exactly as

your friend, that survivor, told you.

He had a way of holding to his moral compass when others lost theirs.

He had a deep faith, he was a devout Catholic, but I think some more than that, he had this ability to trust others.

And that was incredibly powerful tool for the resistance, because at that time, the Nazis were trying to destroy the bonds between people.

They were trying to break us down into racial and ethnic and religious categories in order to sort of pick off groups or pit them against each other.

And Paletsky rejected that so deeply, and he found a way to combat it by reaching out to the people around him and saying, I'm going to trust you with the secret of the underground.

I'm going to trust you with my life.

And they responded to that.

They responded to that idea that something greater than themselves could endure both in Warsaw during those first months of the occupation and then, most extraordinarily, in Auschwitz.

So let me, before we get to Auschwitz,

he was not a nationalist, and

there's a pull to nationalism when a country goes through what they were going through.

But when he gets into the underground, he and I can't remember the relationship, but the other guy that was with him was friend at first, wasn't he?

He kind of fell with a with a guy called jan vlodokievich um

and uh jan wanted to take their group in a nationalist direction he

he wanted a political agenda and palewski i mean he was a conservative he was as i mentioned a a catholic a man of sort of traditional values but he saw the dangers in going in that direction.

That was in some ways what the Nazis wanted them to do was to become,

you know, have this narrow ethnic vision of what Poland was.

And he

went behind his friends' back and broke his friendship in order to ensure that his group stayed open to all.

Because they were really starting to say, you know, the Jews kind of deserve it and everything else.

And he didn't feel that way.

So he is kind of trapped on this choice because

they need somebody to go into Auschwitz to volunteer to be rounded up, where the Nazis are rounding people up.

And when they round them up,

you have just as likely of a chance of being shot on the spot as you do going to Auschwitz.

And

he takes his time to decide when they're saying, you know, I think you're the right guy to go,

but you have to volunteer.

And

that must have been an excruciating

uh

decision for him but

he still didn't even know what auschwitz was at the time

that's right i mean he knew enough that walking into a german roundup was

exceedingly dangerous the underground had been tipped off that there would be a number of big roundups in warsaw with the idea of just seizing men and sending them to Auschwitz.

But it was also the case that during these roundups there would be sort of random shootings by the Germans of those they captured.

It was extremely dangerous.

And Palewski

also had to think, of course, about his wife and two kids.

They had escaped from eastern Poland and been seized by the Soviet Union and found safety in a village outside.

If Paletzki was caught, they themselves would be subject to reprisals, arrests, possibly execution.

It was a huge decision, which was why one roundup went by without him doing anything as he dwelt on the risks.

And in the end, that sense of duty, his that sense of patriotism, really that sense, in fact, that he could do something.

He believed in himself, he believed that he could create a resistance cell in Auschwitz,

pushed him into making that decision.

So,

as he gets into Auschwitz, another point of the story that I have never heard anything like, I mean, it almost seems like, what was the name of that show?

Hogan's Heroes, at some point, where they've got a radio and everything else.

I've never heard this.

And the way you describe how they get the radio and how they wire the camp to be able to smuggle information out is insane.

Paletsky is one of the most extraordinary

solution-finding, creative, ingenious, devious men I think I have encountered.

I mean, the underground that he created in Auschwitz, within days, started creating within days of arriving in the camp, they were soon smuggling out reports, stole a radio to create their own station to broadcast news of the Nazi crime.

They were

just we're talking to Jack Fairweather.

He's the author of The Volunteer: One Man, an Underground Army, and the Secret Mission to Destroy Auschwitz.

The main character, this is a true story.

He goes in, he volunteers to be arrested and to go into Auschwitz to try to set up an underground and to smuggle out information on what's going on.

Jack, first, before you get into the radio story, do you think he planned on spending so much time there?

Do you think

he thought he could get in and out a little faster than he did?

He did.

And I think he was stunned by the level of violence that he encountered upon arriving in the camp.

And I think he also realized that telling the story of what was happening there, informing the world, was the most important thing that he could be doing

with his time.

There was nowhere else that he could be that would have greater impact.

So you're a prisoner in Auschwitz.

I mean, I just, I wouldn't know how to judge who you could trust or not, but he's really good, and he gets people to trust him, and he trusts the right people.

And he says, the insane thing, we have to steal a radio and then put a little broadcast tower up so we can get this information out of the camp.

Explain how they did this.

Yeah, it's just an extraordinary

heist.

Palewski and a colleague of his learned that there were spare radio parts in the SS architect's office where the SS men were drawing up their plans for building gas chambers and other such ghastly things.

They had spare radio parts in that building.

So he arranged by paying some bribes to get transferred to that office where some of the inmates worked drafting the maps and designs.

And

one night, Palewski and his friends stole the bits they needed from the radio room.

They

put them through a door,

through the window in the toilet, ran undercover,

you know, with the guards sort of

patrolling on the road outside, ran

at night, ditched the radio, ran back into the room without anyone noticing, and then arranged for one of their friends

to collect the radio and smuggle it back into the camp.

It was possibly one of the most dangerous activities.

Any moment that they were discovered, they would be shot and probably

every other prisoner in that building.

The way you tell this in the book of how they

had to distract one guard who was within eyeshot of the cabinet of the radios and the bathroom door, and how they, one of them, had to keep him busy and distracted,

and then go in and have a reason to keep going into the bathroom.

And at the very end, when they threw it out on the window, there was

some sort of crash or something outside.

I didn't know if it was related to that or not, but all the guards came to

kind of an alert, a state of an alert.

The guard that was being distracted heard it and thought it might be something from

the bathroom, and the guy was outside.

He had to go out of that bathroom window.

He had to clamor back in.

And I mean, it was, I mean, it's the closest call ever.

It is, this is a fantastic fantastic story, Jack.

Those guys had nerves of steel, right?

I mean, how?

Steel.

I imagine

the emotional effect

that most of us would be having to perform such a task.

So, Jack, this was hidden.

They did the sort of thing day in, day out.

This was hidden

from

the world by the Soviet Union.

Did they destroy everything about this, or did they just keep it secret?

They destroyed

some of his writings.

They

locked away in the state archives one of the main reports that Poletsky wrote after escaping from the camp.

Why did they do that?

Why did they do that?

Polesky, at the end of the war, went back to fight against the communist regime that the Soviet Union installed in Poland.

And I think, you know, for a lot of people, you know, 1945, War I,

victory parades, that was not the case in Poland.

It was in fact

marked escalation of violence, millions of people displaced by the by Stalin forces, huge ethnic cleansing.

You know, I tell you,

if you can hang on, I want to talk about the

escape and a little bit of what he went through.

Okay, we're talking to Jack Fairweather.

He is the author of The Volunteer, a new book that came out, I think, last month or a couple months ago.

I read it last month.

You are going to love this.

It's a story you've never heard about a remarkable, heroic, and brave beyond belief volunteer to be arrested and go into Auschwitz

and

get information out to find out what they were doing in there.

Jack, you were saying a little while ago that

he couldn't believe the brutality.

It was beyond description.

And he starts to get this word out and he really thinks that

help is on the way.

At what point do you think he or did he

kind of really lose hope?

Or was he kind of thinking that maybe somehow or another this news is not being transmitted it's not getting to the right people

um after um

two years in the camp a member of the underground headquarters in warsaw is captured and brought to the camp and piletsky tracks him down it's the first time he's had sort of direct contact with with someone from from the headquarters and they tell him that yes they've gotten his reports and no no action is coming.

His pleas to bomb the camp, to send forces to attack it,

had fallen on deaf ears both in Warsaw and London and in DC.

And Paletzki had no doubt suspected this.

He'd been almost two years in the camp by this stage, but it was still a hammer blow to him.

And he responded in that

typically Paletsky-style fashion by deciding I've got to escape this camp no matter how dangerous it is.

And I'm going to go to Warsaw, I'm going to go to the Allies and persuade them in person that they've got to attack and destroy Auschwitz.

And that was the genesis then of his

extraordinary escape attempt.

Okay, so before we get to the escape attempt,

he is

the way you describe the information information that is taken out and how it gets to the Allies and how England says,

We're not going to do this.

We're not going to do this mission.

And a lot of people in England are upset about it,

but they're saying we're not going to do it because,

you know,

that's a long range to get there.

We get lost as it is.

We have to have clear skies and everything else to go exactly right.

And that's a long, long flight that that anything could happen.

And

as you describe it in the, I've always been really pissed at the Allies,

particularly America, for not doing anything about it.

But for the first time reading your book, and maybe this was not your intent, I kind of understood

why they didn't do it.

It kind of made sense to me.

Still felt morally wrong, but I kind of understood.

Did you come away with that feeling?

Yeah,

it was my intention to try and show all sides of the story.

I'm like, yeah, and

let readers sort of reach their own judgment.

I think that was your feelings reflected mine ultimately, that it you know, you understand the rationale for not attacking the camp, but at the same time, you realize that the moral case for doing so, for making every possible effort to destroy auschwitz is is overwhelming and it is an indictment on allied leaders that they allowed their sort of the rationality of the moment to beat that absolute moral imperative to destroy auschwitz that we recognize today

okay so

when he plans his escape first of all how

much of this stuff that he was doing in the camp, I mean, because he was, I mean, he's, in a way, he almost was running the camp.

I mean, he could be transferred anywhere he wanted to be.

I mean,

it was a place to wheel and deal.

How common was that in Auschwitz?

It was fairly uncommon.

Half of the

Polish prisoners who went to the camp died.

99% of Jewish prisoners who went to the camp died.

Paletsky had a small advantage in that he and some of his early recruits were in the camp from the beginning, so they had time to work their way into slightly better jobs that increased their

chance of survival.

But still, you had to be always alert, you had to have remarkable resources of ingeniousness and you had to be lucky.

And Paletsky, I mean, for all of his talents as an underground operative, was also damn lucky

at times.

And

such, you know, he escaped the camp.

Two months later, the camp leadership was

executed by the Germans

in the camp.

So he escaped in the nick of time.

So he had to convince himself.

Take us from

the escape starting at the hospital.

He had to convince somebody, like overnight, he had spent a lot of time convincing the Nazis and the guards that

he had to be in this position.

I have to work here, and that was saving his life.

But he made himself, you know, irreplaceable.

And then almost overnight, he had to convince them, no, I've got to go work on this crew to be able to actually escape.

So take us from like the hospital.

Right.

So

he was working in a job in the camp administration like some of the other prisoners

and he couldn't just sort of switch units from that position.

He had to first of all fake illness to get into the hospital.

And once in the hospital, he then had to reach out to the leader, the head prisoner who was running a detachment that worked in the camp bakery outside the camp.

This was going to be the place that he escaped from.

And he needed to become one of those inmate bakers.

And

he

just decided to go for it.

He checked out of the hospital,

even though that was illegal to do so.

He went to the capo and he had some stolen goodies, some sweet treats and other things to

give the this

head prisoner who ran the squad, and managed to persuade him that yes, he he had permission to join.

He had then less than 24 hours to escape because at the next roll call they would discover that this guy had gone to the hospital and illegally checked himself out and illegally switched work assignment.

So when he left tho the camp gates the for the night night shift with the baker squad,

that was his one shot.

There was no going back.

And he arrived at that at that bakery for the night shift at 6 p.m.

knowing that he had about five or six hours to work out how to escape from from that room.

He had two other

coescapers with him

and they ended up having to force the door and sprint away with the guards shooting after them

at about 2 a.m.

just you know with the clock ticking down and

they made it they made it at least as far as the river but then of course that was just the beginning because he still had to escape from the immediate camp environs he had to then travel across hundred miles of Nazi occupied Poland to reach a safe house and

it took him two weeks of just the most extraordinary

hijinks and

close calls

to finally escape.

I'm sorry to interrupt.

When he escapes,

all three of them, well, I'm not going to wreck the book for you, but

when he escapes, at one point, he goes to the house that has the man whose name he stole.

he was not under his name.

He took that guy's name and was in Auschwitz under his name.

Why did he go to that house?

I would think that that would be one of the first places that they would search.

If that's where, I mean, that's, I mean, he was later arrested.

That guy was later arrested

and they found out, oh, it's a fake name.

It was just an extraordinary coincidence.

when he got to that when he got to the safe house paletsky is a real testament to the man he wasn't didn't put his feet up and try and sort of uh you know rest within an hour of getting to that safe house he was

saying

take me to the local leader we've got to attack the camp right now and he was taken uh taken to see the local commander the local commander was the man whose name he had been using in the camp for the for that two and a half years Just a crazy coincidence.

And Paletsky persuaded him of the need to attack the camp.

And

unfortunately,

the underground in Krakow, the nearest city,

did not believe Pelecki's story.

The real tells you something about that mood of paranoia in the country at the time, all the roundups and betrayals.

And they thought that Paletsky was a German spy.

So that forced Paletsky then to go to Warsaw to continue his efforts to win over the underground and persuade them to attack Auschwitz.

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