Loading summary
Transcript55 lines
- [00:00]
A
Rabbi.
- [00:02]
B
I'm rabbi ami hirsch of the stephen wise free synagogue in new york, and you're listening to in these times.
- [00:11]
A
During my time studying law at the London School of Economics, I picked up the daily habit of reading the Guardian. I still look at it almost every day. And while its coverage of Israel is often highly and relentlessly critical, especially during this war, I think it's healthy to expose myself to perspectives I don't always agree with. Jonathan Friedland is one of the Guardian's most prominent columnists, and he's an incredible and prolific writer. He's penned nine novels, thrillers, under the name Sam Born, and under his own name, he's written a play and four works of nonfiction. His latest is the Traitor Circle, the true story of a secret resistance network in Nazi Germany and the Spy who Betrayed Them. It just came out at the end of October.
- [01:05]
B
Jonathan Friedland, welcome to in these Times.
- [01:08]
C
Very good to be with you, Amy. Thank you.
- [01:10]
B
I've wanted to spend some time with you for a long time. I follow your career with interest, both with respect to your journalist career and your analyst career, as well as you're a novelist. And you document history as well in just an amazing way. So I'm very appreciative that you took the time to share with me and with our audience in the United States.
- [01:37]
C
No, I'm so grateful to be here with you. And I know we have some people in common and there's much, much ground to cover between us. I mean, there's. You know, given what we both do, I think there's a lot here for us to talk about. So thank you for having me.
- [01:49]
B
Now, I must say, you're younger than me. I studied at the London School of Economics back in the early 80s, and I know if we were there together, we would have been fast friends. Now for the last 40, 45 years, you still have some years to catch up on.
- [02:07]
C
Me, not much. So I was a student in the. I started at University in 1986. So you were there the early 80s. There's not much in it, really. I'm just. I'm hot on your heels there. Now, I called you Ami, which may have been a chutzpah. Is it Ammi or a rabbi? Hersh?
- [02:22]
B
Yeah. No, call me Ami. That's how the Brits do it. That's how all my friends do it.
- [02:26]
A
Good.
- [02:26]
C
Okay.
- [02:27]
B
Let me ask you before we get to the books that you write, in particular, the latest book called the Traitor Circle, you're a very well known, prominent journalist in the uk. You Write for the Guardian newspaper. I remember even back when I was a student in London, that the Guardian always had this quite critical view of Israel. I think it's even more so now, and I think, especially since October 7, 2023. What's it like writing for the. You define yourself as a liberal Zionist, I believe so. What's it like writing for a paper and an outlet like the Guardian?
- [03:07]
C
You have a bigger sense of it than a lot of people would have because you go back many decades on this. But the Guardian has a really, you long and quite sort of, I think, surprising history when it comes to Israel and specifically Zionism. So if you go back to the history of Zionism, the newspaper which was the biggest, loudest advocate for Zionism was the Manchester Guardian. When Chaim Weizmann had his fateful and fruitful meetings with Lord Balfour that produced the Balfour Declaration, he wrote to C.P. scott, the legendary, iconic editor of the Guardian, who was editor for 57 years and still, you know, everything in the Guardian is named Scott after him. He wrote him to say, you are one of the handful of people without whom the Balfour Declaration would not have happened. I remember being as a reporter on the paper that on display was the Eretz Yisroel supplement of the Guardian, published in the 1930s. The. The. The Guardian was all in for Zionism when Zionism had few takers in the. In the. In the rest of the British media landscape, in the British press. Then the, the, the. The heartbreak came, as I would, you know, describe it, in 1967, where after the, you know, the war, David became Goliath in the popular British left progressive imagination. And at that point and thereafter, and it was a very gradual process, by the way, there was a disenchantment. In fact, there's a book about the whole Guardian relationship with Israel and that's its title, Disenchantment. And so in a very small nutshell, the Guardian backed Israel, the notion of a Jewish state. It backed Israel up to the point where Israel became an occupier, you know, from 967 onwards. And that matches and sort of maps onto a trajectory for the wider British, maybe even European left. And so that's really been the story. The. And it's definitely true that you can point to articles and so on that have been in the Guardian that we'd make people's hair stand on end. Nevertheless, the other thing that's crucial to know about the Guardian is it has no proprietor, there's no owner, there's no publisher, it's owned by a charitable trust that has no involvement editorially. And it means if you are an economist or opinion, an opinion writer, like I am, I've been doing this. I've been writing my column now since 1997. I have never once been directed to what I can say in that column and never been told that something I have written can't be in it, including places where I have criticized the Guardian. And that is really the exceptional thing. So there is a ton to wind up at this row for far too long. Answer. There are voices in the Guardian that, yes, I wouldn't agree with. You. You wouldn't agree with, but I'm there and I'm able to say whatever I like. And that is a kind of journalistic freedom that is so rare and precious that it feels to me a very, very, you know, cherished thing.
- [06:18]
B
Do you ever feel like you're kind of on an island, on your own, that everybody else is just, you know, I looked at the Guardian. I look at it every day, by the way, partially for nostalgic reasons, because I still read the British press, and partially that's not my worldview, and I like to read what other people are thinking about.
- [06:40]
C
True.
- [06:41]
B
And even today, online, of course, it's just any article about Israel is relentlessly critical. And you're not here in your capacity as defender of the Guardian. I just. My question to you is, do you ever feel lonely at the Guardian?
- [06:59]
C
Well, you know, I know exactly what you're getting at. And it's true that, you know, my particular perspective on it is not the majority perspective. There are a whole lot of colleagues, actually, that are, in some. Some cases, not all are, you know, behind the scenes, in other words, editors and commissioning editors and. And so on, who are pretty in step with how I see things. But you're right, the overall prevailing view is fiercely critical and hostile. But then the question. But you have to complete the sentence to what? Are they fiercely critical and hostile of Israel as an idea? Some are, but are they fiercely critical of this and a whole string of previous Israeli governments? Yes, they are, but so am I. Now, I might do it in a very different tone of voice because I'm within the family and I'm sort of at the feet. You know, I'm at the metaphorical Shabbat table saying, where are we going wrong? I'm not saying, where are they going wrong? So the grammar of it is different, the tone of voice is different. But look, I've been, you know, as long as I've been writing opinion columns, I'VE been writing one way or another against Benjamin Netanyahu. You know, he's been there as long as I have. He was the Prime Minister. I mean, it's incredible because I started writing this column, it was a very, you know, it was quite unusual. I was, was asked to write this opinion column when I was age 30 and he'd already been Prime Minister for a year then. And now, you know, I'm a, the next significant birthday is 60, I'm 58 now. And he's still Prime Minister. You know, it's like the, the he and I are these two fixed points in the unit in the Jewish universe. But no, what I'm saying is that I've always been a, you know, a very trenchant critic of his. And so there are a lot of stuff that, you know, Jewish readers and others don't like in the Guardian. But I sort of often think, look, if this was in an Israeli paper or if it had my name on it rather than someone else's name on it, would you take it differently? And maybe they would. So, you know, I think there's no greater criticism than you hear of successive Israeli governments and from Israelis inside Israel. It is uncomfortable for people reading it in the Guardian. And by the way, I mean, I know you said it's nostalgic and British press, it has become a very different animal now because it truly is a global phenomenon. The Garden has tens of millions of readers around the world, large numbers in the United States where you are. It is no longer just simply what it was when you were a student, which was this British broadsheet newspaper. I think the fourth best selling British broadsheet newspaper. In other words, it wasn't the number one paper. Now it is one of the forces in English language journalism around the world. But it says things that I know people have found uncomfortable. But as I say, I think there's always been room there for my voice. And I think a lot of the things it says about Israeli governments, though uncomfortable, are very often true.
- [09:50]
B
Where do we stand with British Jewry? It just strikes us that there is enormous hostility on the streets of the UK towards the Jewish community and within certain elite power struck liberal elite institutions. Is that exaggerated by distance or do you sense that situation is worse now than it used to be?
- [10:15]
C
It is worse than it used to be, but also it is the kind you just gave is exaggerated by distance. So, you know, partly because you, just as everyone does, by the way, it's not just you, you moved between categories there about hostility to the Jewish Community and then there's anti Israel stuff. And they are different things. Even though sometimes, as we absolutely saw in the most murderous way, that line is more than just blurred, it's crossed and violated in the case of the Manchester synagogue killings. But look, day to day life. So I would just unpack it this way. First, I think important thing to say is the government and both political parties. In fact there are several big political parties. They are all in their public statements avowed, clear, they are with the Jewish community. So I often make a point and my non Jewish friends are often surprised when I tell them that there is security outside every Jewish building. You know, you know this of course as well. Every Jewish school, if you go to a synagogue, there is airport style security. And if anything it's stronger, it's heavier than airport style security. Right. People are shocked by that. But then a lot of Jewish community people draw a veil over the fact that where does the money for this come from? Right. Some of it is donations in the community, but also a large chunk of it is a very substantial grant that comes from the UK government and increases every year even when other things have to be cut. And that it's been given now under the labor government and it was under the Conservative government. It is a matter of bipartisan consensus. The reason I say this is when people, some don't say, oh my word, it's 1938 again, it's Europe. No, there was a really big difference that the governments in that era were against the Jews. Right. And now the governments and the people in charge are very much with the Jewish community. And there are examples, I could give you even just this week of that. That's a really big difference because you were talking about elite institutions. It's true, some universities and you know, liberal media organizations and other things, they give Israel a very rough ride. Does is that the same as they're hostile to the British Jewish community or to the Jewish community? Look, certainly some individuals post things and tweet things that are horrible and I call them out. Other people call them out, definitely, but it's not, it'd be wrong to say there is this overall climate of hostility. And you know, I'm not somebody who wears a kippar out and about in the street, but lots of my friends do and they are, they report that they get remarkably little trouble for it. And I live in the sort of haredi neighborhood here in North London and I see most of the time my neighbors carry on their lives unbothered by other people. There isn't that climate of hostility. Yes. There are weekly marches about chanting Free, Free Palestine. That is, I think you just have to sort of put that into a category that is, is not about hostility to Jewish life in Britain. Even if there are placards and slogans that sometimes shade into that and need to be rooted out and called out. So it's not just, it's not quite a simple.
- [13:31]
B
We believe that most Brits make a distinction between their criticism of Israel, even harsh criticism along the lines of accusing Israel of genocide, which is about the harshest accusation you can make now against a country. Yeah, they can make a distinction and they do. In fact, most people make a distinction between that and anti Jewish sentiment.
- [13:56]
C
I think most do. And I even think there's polling that suggests that. But what's in what, what the, the, the challenge I put to a lot of them when I'm writing the Guardian and I'm addressing that audience is to say, look, you may think this is a very hard and fast distinction and you walk around very content with your own conscience that you are only critical of Israel and you have no problem at all with Jews. But you have to realize that how a Jewish person hears a slogan like from the river to the sea, for example, that they hear that differently from how you, the Guardian reader, might mean it. But the other point I did make after the Manchter killings on Yom Kippur, the immediate point I made there was even if you think the line is very clear, you have to now grapple with the fact that there are people around in this country who do not police that distinction, who do not observe that distinction, on the contrary, their anger and hostility about Israel, they decide to express that by literally killing Jews in Britain. So you yourself, I say to the Israel critical Guardian reader, you now have to be quite vigilant about this. Are you when you're going on that march, really sure. You're not pumping into the air a kind of hostility that other people less vigilant than you. Let's be give the, you know, our interlocutor the benefit of the doubt. People less vigilant than you might take that and blur that distinction. And the other point I do often make is that it's very neat for the anti Zionist to say, oh no, I have no problem with Jews, I just have a big problem with Israel. I often, I've written this in the Guardian several times to say, you know, I get the intellectual distinction, but in the actual day to day reality, A, Israel is the biggest Jewish community in the world, B Most Jews around the world I identify with are bound up with a family who live in Israel. And third, there are plenty of people around you who just think one is the same as the other. For all those reasons. It requires a kind of detachment to think that these things are neatly separate. They're not neatly separate. And therefore, if you are every single day railing against Israel and hurling at it the most extreme criticism, I say to, you know, the people who are reading my stuff, you know, think very, very carefully because these things are not quite as separate as you might need them to be and like them to be.
- [16:42]
B
My last question about the contemporary events. So the Starmer government recently recognized Palestine. Yeah, I'm not sure that even they know what that fully means. But was it well received in the United Kingdom?
- [16:59]
C
It was quite well received, I think, by the general public, but very badly received by the Jewish community. The Jewish community was really angry with it and immediately echoed the line you heard from the Israeli government that this was a reward for terror. I am, and I don't want to mislead your listeners and viewers at all by pretending that the opinion I'm about to voice is anything other than a minority opinion in Britain among the Jewish community. The opinion I'm about to voice, my own view is, and I've based this on my own reporting and having spoken to diplomats and others, I thought first I had no problem with it because I think if you believe in a two state solution, which is so many people are saying is dead and buried and over what you need to do to revive, you needed to do something to revive it. And guess what? It's now back on the agenda. And even though it's not in that language, it's what underpins phase two of the Trump plan, because that's implied there. But the second thing, this is the point about, based on conversations I've had, it seems clear to me that the deal which everyone in Israel, including the Likud benches in the Knesset are celebrating, which brought the hostages back home, that deal, a part of why that was possible was that the Arab states came on board a plan that says Hamas must be out of the picture and must disarm and that condemns October 7th partly because of a sequence of moves which include recognition of a Palestinian state, that so called New York Declaration, Emmanuel Macron and the Saudis brought together the likes of Canada, Australia, France, Britain, others, Portugal, recognizing a Palestinian state. What hardly ever got noticed was it was also signed onto by a huge number of Arab states, big Muslim states, Indonesia and others. What Got them on board. Was that European recognition and sort of G7 level recognition of a Palestinian state. It's one reason why you have not heard major condemnation of it from Donald Trump. It's been very mild, his condemnation of it. And that is because my understanding is because it was one of the. In the choreography that led to that deal, the Europeans quietly were doing their bit, which got the Arab states on board. So I myself am not one of those who denounce the UK government for recognizing Palestinian state. But I don't mind. I don't want to mislead anyone. Most British, Jewish sort of community activists would take a different view from me.
- [19:32]
B
But popular British opinion is behind is supportive of the decision.
- [19:36]
C
Yes, I think it is. I think it is. You know, there's a question mark. Some people say how effective? What difference will it make?
- [19:41]
B
But.
- [19:41]
C
But no, it is pretty supportive. I should look up numbers to put some data on that because I don't have those at my fingertips. But broadly, yes, because people, including people who are very sympathetic to Israel, were just appalled by the sight of this very long war. And I have to tell you, the thing that really broke a lot of people's support for Israel was not the bombing and the artillery and the firefights. It was the cutting off of humanitarian aid. There are defenders of Israel who just could not defend that. And that is what broke the. I know of individuals, but I also know from focus groups and other things that I've been privy to, it's extraordinary how much public opinion was ready to support Israel when it was just a military fight, but could not bear the idea of civilians, including children, being deprived of food or water or medicine. People found it unconscionable. And I have to say on the podcast I Do Unholy, which I co host with Yoni levy of Channel 12 News, I was making that point within weeks of October 7th. You will lose global sympathy because people get fighting Hamas. No one can get their head around making Palestinian civilians suffer for what hamas did on October 7th. And that is what cutting off aid was always going to do. So that's what broke the support here. And that's why when the gesture of Palestinian statehood, people thought, look, whatever it takes by that point.
- [21:12]
B
Yeah, now that's really very interesting and I think that's very true. So Israel's reputation and standing has taken a very big hit in the west and in the UK there are going to be elections in Israel in 2026. They're now thinking about sometime in June of 2026. Do you think that Israel's reputation is salvageable, at least in part. And does that require a new government?
- [21:39]
C
Oh, yeah, it definitely requires a new government. It requires a new wave of political leadership.
- [21:51]
B
Let me get to your books. You've written, I think nine novels, is that right?
- [21:57]
C
I wrote nine novels under the name Sam Bourne. Most of them were under the name Sam Bourne. And then I've written four books of nonfiction.
- [22:05]
B
Yeah. So I wanted to ask you, why do you write your fiction under a pseudonym?
- [22:10]
C
Well, that goes back a long time ago when I first started that, which is actually 20 years ago, which is. I had this idea for a thriller which was based on an. I still even now don't want to give a spoiler because people might read it. It was called the Righteous Men. It turns on a notion which will be utterly familiar to you and most listeners steep in Kabbalah. There is an idea that's deep in Jewish mysticism about what enables, and perhaps particularly who enables the world to continue. And the clue is in the title the Righteous Men. But I don't want to say any more than that, but I did think of an idea thriller. And this was after the Da Vinci Code had come out and people. I'd had the idea for years, by the way, but Da Vinci Code came out and I said to my very old friend and my agent, look, that idea we'd always talked about, people are obviously interested in kind of religious thrillers. What do you think? And he thought about it, he said, yeah, there's definitely something here, but we're going to have to do something about your name. And I said, what's wrong with my name? And he said, well, your name sounds like his words. A pointy headed columnist for a pointy headed newspaper. It doesn't sound like a thriller writer's name. It's not a kind of muscular name. He said, you've got to come up with a pseudonym. And I thought about it and I'd already written a non fiction book about members of my own family that was called Jacob's Gift, which was prompted by the birth of my first son, Jacob. And there was no contest, obviously the pseudonym had to include the name of my second child, also a son, Sam. And then we went back and forth about trying to work out a last name, but the, you know, what was the year that I thought of this idea for a thriller? And it turns out to be the year in which my son Sam was born. And so Sam Bourne. So that's how we sort of got it. There were other elements as well, but thereafter. And the book did, you know, I'm glad to say it was a bestseller. And so suddenly I was. Sam Bourne existed and I couldn't sort of betray him. And so we went on, we did that. You know, I did that for eight books. We did one of them under my own name, but really the. The rest of them were all thrillers under the name Sambal.
- [24:17]
B
I want to get to your latest book, the Traitor's Circle. I mentioned to you this is a particularly intense time for me and for rabbis, and your book is, I guess it's 400 pages here, close to 400 pages with notes. It's more than that. And what I originally wanted to do was kind of skim through it and get enough of it to be able to have a decent conversation with you, but honestly, Jonathan, I just couldn't put it down. I credit you or blame you for sucking up a lot of more hours than you have last week and the week before, but you are an amazing writer and I highly recommend this book to anybody who's interested in writing, let alone the story itself.
- [25:09]
C
Thank you.
- [25:10]
B
Yeah, no, it's completely true. I want to ask you about the Escape Artist too, because I've followed Rudy VRBA quite closely as well. And when you were writing that book, I was writing a long High Holy day sermon about him as well. And I had heard that there's this British author who's doing research on Rudi vrba. Eventually his wife came in to see me. She had watched the sermon I gave. And so I'm really very curious. You've written two books now in the last three, four years on Holocaust. On the Holocaust. And the second book, the Traitor Circle, is not particularly about the Jewish experience. Nonetheless, it overlaps with just the enormity of the fascism and Nazism and the. And the cataclysmic changes that World War II brought in. What brought you to the Traitor's Circle? It's a story. Tell us a little bit about what it's about. It's kind of complicated. A lot of characters in there. And why did you dwell on this story?
- [26:25]
C
Yeah, no, dwell is a really good word to use. So in a nutshell, this is the story of a small group of elite, aristocratic, high society Germans who had in common their own resistance or defiance of the Nazi regime. They're anti Nazi, but they're from the very top drawer of German society. They gathered for a tea party. The story is entirely true. On 10th September 1943, they gathered for an afternoon tea party, partly to Just be in the company of other anti Nazi rebels to be with kindred spirits. What they don't know is that sitting around the table with them is someone who is about to betray all the rest to the Gestapo. We won't say who that is because I want people to read the book. No spoilers. But the idea of the book, and I think, you know, I'm very, very flattered by you saying it was unput downable, but I've tried to write it in the style, in a way, of a whodunit. Everything in it is true, it's documented, there's 50 pages of footnotes. But the structure of it is like a whodunit. As you guess, who of this group of people would betray all the others. And the reason I was drawn to it, that I dwelled on it, to use your very good word, is because I think in writing, and I don't think I understood this at the time, in writing the Escape Artist, I had to spend three years immersed in the story of Auschwitz and Auschwitz Birkenau and the really graphic detail of that and really staring at the very worst of humanity. And I think there was some pull in me to a story that was the very opposite, a kind of antidote to that, because these people who did not need to resist, who could have very easily kept their heads down and their lives would have been fine, nevertheless risked everything with, in many cases, terrible consequences to do the right thing. So this was the best of humanity. And I think on some level I needed that after having been in this very dark world for so long. And so, you know, there's a whodunit kind of mystery in this book. But there's a deeper mystery, one in which it's more your line of work than mine. I mean, it is the almost a spiritual mystery about why do some people do great acts of. Of goodness, which I know a lot of people, a lot of writers are fascinated by evil and horror and serial killers. To me, it's. It's. It's a deep, unfathomable mystery why some people, at great personal cost, do a good thing. And that is what powers this story. These people were all involved as individuals. We can get into what they did, acts of defiance and resistance, but not one of them stood to benefit from doing that. And to me, that's fascinating.
- [29:17]
B
So you must have some insight into this. You spent the last three, four years thinking about this from two separate angles. What do you think? I, of course, think about it all the time, too. It is a deeply religious question. Not Only a religious question, but also a religious question. The nature of good and evil and heroism and betrayal. What would prompt. The way they come across is kind of, you know, a group of well meaning aristocrats. Yeah, right.
- [29:47]
C
They were all, yeah, they were all up across. Some are literally aristocratic, they've got titles and country estates. Others are just really elite people who are diplomats or at the top level of the civil service. So they're either got blue blood in their veins or they've got very top jobs and, or did have before Hitler. So they're from. Yes, absolutely, the upper class.
- [30:05]
B
So what, what, what would, what, what would drive somebody like that? You ask the question and I've been pondering that as well. You know, what drives courage, what drives patriotism? Rudy VRBA when I was doing my research on him, I haven't had a chance to read your book yet, but I will. He talked about how in Auschwitz ideology only played a limited role. When he looked at the guards, the SS people, the soldiers who were actually involved in this monumental evil, he felt that it was more human nature, it was just pedestrian kind of circumstances. They wanted to get ahead. This was good for their careers. So is it that or is there something deep at the core of the human soul that can even overcome the self interest and the day to day circumstances that drive people to act the way they do?
- [31:12]
C
You know, it's fascinating hearing you wrestle with this question because even as you formulate it, because I wrestle with it all the time and have been for this book. So you're right. The Escape Artist, I hope has quite a few insights into why people do act all great evil. And there's huge amounts of work and psychologists are involved and Christopher Browning and his book on ordinary men. The notion of compliance and peer group pressure and camaraderie, there's all kinds of things about that. This question to me is equally mysterious. Why people do good. I think it's a question and this is what partly really made me grab hold of it, that all of us ask at some point or other. So anybody who has looked at the story of the Holocaust or the Second World War has asked ourselves a version of this question. What would I have done? And I think most people I've been doing speaking to audiences all around Britain and I'm coming soon to the United States. And you know, I say to audiences when I'm talking about this book, you know, and I think most of us like to think that we would have resisted. And everyone nods. Right, because when you ask that question, what would I have done, you very quickly supply the answer. I would have hidden Anne Frank. I would have, you know, been the one person in the crowd who didn't do the Hitler salute. That's what we tell ourselves. The statistics, and I use this figure in the book, suggest that hardly any of us would have done that. You know, there is one Allied investigator, an American who went with the liberating Allies into Berlin on 1945. He estimated that some 3 million Germans had been detained or arrested or jailed for crimes of dissent. Sometimes no more than a critical remark. On one level, if you believed, as I, you know, my upbringing with, you know, was told that there were no good Germans, every last German was involved. That 3 million figure is very surprisingly high. But on the other hand, what it actually amounts to, when you look at the size of the German population at the time, it's about 5%. It means 95% complied. So what I often say is it requires a great deal of self confidence, if not arrogance to say, yeah, I would have been one of the 5%. It's, you know, most of us would not. That's what we've got to face. So who of these 5% and my 9 or 10 people in my story are from that group? What is it that they had? I, you know, I came to this sort of tentative conclusion. What they all seem to have in common, the characters in my story, is that they had some kind of belief in an authority higher than the Nazis and Adolf Hitler. Now, for some of them, it was their own aristocratic upbringing that they believed these Nazis were sort of vulgarians who would come and go. My family has been here for a thousand years. This castle has stood for hundreds and hundreds of years. I will outlive you. The Gestapo man knocking on the door. It's a kind of aristocratic self belief that really did enable some of these characters to stand up to the Nazis on the street corners, you know, because they believe they were from an older, deeper, truer Germany. But the others in that group, what was fascinating to me is the higher authority they believed in was God. It was religion. There were several very committed Christians in this group. And so when Adolf Hitler essentially takes over the church and makes himself the head of the church, these people are affronted because their view is the head of the church is Jesus, it's not you. And that enables them to stand up to the Gestapo man who arrest them because they believe I will be judged by an authority higher than you. And that enabled, that equips a person with a kind of inner steel. So it's funny that we're talking, we began this exchange talking about religion. Religion, I think, played a very. It's not the only part. But that confidence that there is an authority higher than the government of the day, it's crucial. And I think it doesn't, it's not just confined to the Nazi German period. I think it has lessons for us even now.
- [35:38]
B
You know, it's uplifting that you mention that because, you know, in fashion to accuse religion of all of kinds of evils in the world. And that's true as well. It does drive a lot of evil. But it also accounts for tremendous good that allows people to rise above even what they assume they're capable of themselves. So I appreciate you saying that this group of. Some of them were aristocrats, others were well meaning people. None of the efforts to overthrow the Nazis and Hitler actually succeeded. The closest was, I guess Stauffenberg, who almost succeeded, succeeded in killing Hitler. And it has an impact on the people that you write about as well when that failed. But. So there were efforts to overthrow Hitler and kill Hitler and the government that were perhaps a little more successful or less successful, but nobody really succeeded. What brought the Nazis down were the Allies and this group especially. Did they do anything? Were they just a bunch of people who wanted to get together and comfort each other, or did they actually make a difference?
- [36:59]
C
No, I think they really did make a difference. And I think that's, you know, in the Jewish world, we've come to expand our definition of resistance, haven't we? Initially, the only thing that classified as resistance was the sort of Warsaw Ghetto uprising. But we came to expand our definition so that the person who remembered that in the cabs that tonight is the first night of Hanukkah and lit a candle, we now say that's a form of resistance. It was, you know, we call it spiritual resistance and so on. I think we should have a similarly expanded notion here. I think we've walked around often, I include myself in this with this notion that the only resistance that counts is either a plot to kill Hitler or, you know, the French Resistance romantic image of planting bombs on railway lines and so on, and planting into blowing up bridges. What did this group do? So there's several of them hid Jews in their homes. You know, that was the highest risk enterprise you could imagine. There is a. There are not just. There's not just one countess in this story, there are two. And both of them, at different points hid Jews in their homes. One of them in the most spectacular fashion, including yeah, I'm going to reveal that, too.
- [38:07]
B
But that was a great, great discovery that you made.
- [38:10]
C
I mean, isn't that unbelievable? Yeah, no, that. That. We won't spoil that story. But the. She was hiding large numbers of Jews. There were others who were using their diplomatic contacts to get visas for people to leave the country, to even secure jobs for them abroad. There were people who were even getting hold of forged papers. They were helping, giving them across the border to Switzerland, spiriting them out of the country. There were a whole range of. And even, you know, you mentioned the failed plot of July 20, 1944. There were other plots earlier. And one of the characters in this story is on the edges of. But, you know, involved in one of those schemes. So there, this group of people, they're not just talking over tea, you know, even though that was the. Proved to be the fateful day for them, they are involved in real things. But here's one moment, which I found out very early in my research for this, which enabled me to think, first of all, that this story I thought would work. But the second countess I mentioned, there are two. She made it her habit to walk around Berlin holding two heavy bags of shopping. Now, why does she do that? She did it so that if someone were to approach her in the street and give her the Hitler salute, she would have no free hand to reciprocate. She'd look at them apologetically. Oh, I'm so sorry. I'm carrying two bags of shop. That's what she did to me. That is an amazing thing. It's a small, literal gesture of defiance. But if everybody did that, what a difference it would have made.
- [39:44]
A
It's.
- [39:44]
C
In a way, I'm going back to the religious notion. You know, we always say to save one life is as if you've saved the whole world. If you are one of those people who hid one Jew, you got forged papers for one Jew to get out of the country. You just made your own little gesture of defiance. You refused to give the Hitler salute. That counts. That's not nothing. I think that's. I feel as if that's part of my own Jewish upbringing. You know, it's why I sort of, you know, recycle plastic bottles. Somebody say, oh, what difference does it make? The whole ocean is filling with plastic. Yes. But each one of us does our own individual thing, and that's what these people did at great risk and great personal cost. I can't feel anything but admiration for that.
- [40:30]
B
And just to look at that period in perspective. So 3 million Germans were arrested for some kind of suspicion. What didn't even mean that they actually were resisting, but they were suspected of resisting.
- [40:49]
C
Yeah.
- [40:50]
B
What are the lessons for us today? There are a lot of challenges facing the west and civilization and freedom. And I ask you, I know you have to run. This will be kind of like to summarize what you've learned and the message that you want to leave the audience that's listening and watching.
- [41:10]
C
I mean, first of all, I would defend the idea that there are lessons, because I do think there are lessons. And I think people, again, a lot of Jewish people are nervous about that because we think. If you're saying there are lessons from this period, you're saying that now is the same as then. I'm absolutely not saying that. Right. It would be, you know, if somebody says Donald Trump is the new Hitler. No, that's facile. It's offensive to the victims of Adolf Hitler. What Hitler did and the Nancy did. Different scale. But is there a trend towards authoritarianism in many Western countries right now? Yes. Is power being concentrated in the center with potential checks and restraints on power being one by one attacked, undermined, or removed? Yes. And you can see that in Viktor Orban's Hungary, you can see it in Maduro's Venezuela, you can see it in Erdogan's Turkey, and you can see it in Donald Trump's usa, where, you know, the targeting of those civil society institutions that might have kept a check on power, whether it's the media or the universities or the courts, the independent bits of the government bureaucracy, those things have a sort of echo. And what they then do is they impose a dilemma or a predicament on the citizens who live with those changes and with that trend. And the one thing I would say that does come out of this story, individual actions matter. They do. They, you know, they. They have value. They have worth. But also, you don't have much time. If you believe that there is a trend where democracy, remember, you know, Germany before 1933 was a democracy. If you believe that this, the democracy is slipping away or is under attack, it happens very, very fast. There isn't really time to say, let's see how this plays out, you know, or, you know, give it. I don't believe all this hyperbole. I just, you know, let things. Let the dust settle a bit. There isn't time for that. That is the lesson, I think, that comes out of this book. I think it recurs down the generations. If you see that trend, it's better to move Very, very fast. And then afterwards go, oh, maybe we overreacted. Better that than to leave it too long and suddenly find rights which to you are obvious and you took for granted, have gone. It's worth remembering Germany, widely regarded as the most civilized country in Europe, if not the world. At the time, the Jewish community there thought they were the most Jewish, most comfortable, settled, secure Jewish community in Jewish history. Things can change very, very fast. And that is, I think it's one of the things that comes through this story in the Traitor Circle.
- [44:06]
B
So the book is the Traitor's Circle. Just a cliffhanger. And it's not even fiction. It's all true, every word. So, Jonathan, keep writing already. When it comes out, I'll do a pre order on your next book. Whatever it is, it doesn't matter to me. And I gotta. I gotta go back and read all the books that I missed over your illustrious career. So thank you very much. Good luck on. You'll be coming to America soon to speak and also promote the book. So good luck on the book tour and we wish you all the best.
- [44:44]
C
Thank you so much, Amy. I'm really grateful. Thank you.
- [44:50]
A
I'm in complete agreement with Jonathan that while most of us would like to believe that if confronted with similar circumstances, we too would resist evildoers, that we too would hide the hunted and ferry people across borders to safety, even at great risk to ourselves and our families, deep down, we know or have enough doubts about ourselves to suspect that we would not rise to the moral challenge. It's an established fact that only a small percentage of us would. So the really interesting question, the central moral dilemma, is what motivates those select few to do the right thing? I was struck by Jonathan's observations that religion motivated many in the circle of resistance. And for the rest, if it wasn't God, it was a fierce loyalty to a higher cause and higher values that compelled them to resist. Religion often gets a bad rap in contemporary culture. Much of it is well deserved. CS Lewis wrote, of all bad men, religious bad men are the worst. They're the worst because when they commit transgressions, they validate immorality in the eyes of others. Instead of cleansing our impurities, they whitewash them. An act of violence becomes a righteous crusade. A murder becomes a noble jihad. The world is turned upside down through an unholy inversion of values. Cruel is kind, killing is compassion, and sin is salvation. The horrible becomes honorable. Our highest aspirations are manipulated to excuse our basest impulses. But there is the other side as well. At Its best. Religion is a source of inspiration, not intimidation. Religion is sublime when it animates us, awakening the better angels of our nature. We seek to instill a sense of right, goodness and decency that is so overwhelming that any inconsistent thought or deed is rendered reprehensible in our eyes. Those who resisted the Nazis were so motivated. They refused to surrender their self respect and their commitment to righteousness. They understood in the deepest, most inner recesses of their being that religion is for life. The key insight of religion is the insistence upon the distinctiveness of the human creature. All were created by God. We alone were created in the image of God. Every religious principle flows from this axiom. If both you and I were created in God's image, we have equal sanctity, equal worth and equal dignity. Reverence for life is religion's primary preoccupation and central principle. Every life is precious, Every life is sacred. The Talmud states that to save a person's life is akin to saving the world entirely, and to destroy a life is akin to destroying the world. Religion yearns for peace and emphasizes the power of the spirit more than the power of the sword. Not by might nor by power, but by my spirit, said the Lord of Hosts. Religion seeks to convince, not coerce. Spiritual understanding comes through reflection, not rage. Religion seeks gentleness. Its ways are ways of pleasantness, and all its paths are peace. Religion seeks mercy and forgiveness. Mercy and truth are met together, wrote the psalmist. Righteousness and peace Kiss I love the final words of George Eliot's masterpiece Middlemarch. The growing good of the world is partly dependent on unhistoric acts. And that things are not so ill with you and me as they might have been is half owing to the number who lived faithfully a hidden life and rest in unvisited tombs. We owe our lives to those who lived faithfully and now sleep in the dust. Many of them are unknown to us. But the growing good of the world depends on these people. The world is not yet all that bad as long as there are people like those courageous and righteous souls in the circle of German resisters that Jonathan Friedland memorializes. Until next time. This is in these times.