Lions Led By Donkeys Podcast - Episode 227 - Witold Pilecki, The Auschwitz Volunteer Part 1

Episode Date: September 26, 2022

Witold Pilecki was a Polish Freedom Fighter who volunteered to get thrown into Auschwitz in order to let the world know what was happening there. The world didn't listen. Support the show: https://www.patreon.com/lionsledbydonkeys Sources: Witold Pilecki. Auschwitz Volunteer: Beyond Bravery Adam Koch. A Captain's Portrait: Witold Pilecki - Martyr for Truth Jack Fairweather. The Volunteer

Hey everybody, Joe here from the Lions Led by Donkeys podcast. If you enjoy what we do here on the show and you think it's worth your hard-earned money, you can support the show via Patreon. Just a $1 donation gets you access to bonus episodes, our Discord, and regular episodes before everybody else. If you donate at an elevated level, you get even more bonus content. A digital copy of my book, The Hooligans of Kandahar, and a sticker from our Teespring store. Our show will always be ad-free and is totally supporter-driven. We use that money to pay our bills, buy research materials that make this show possible, and support charities

like the Kurdish Red Crescent, the Flint Water Fund, and the Halo Trust. Consider joining the Legion of the Old Crow today. And now, back to the lines led by donkeys podcast i'm joe and i've still almost forgot the name of my own show and with me is liam hello liam hi joe how are you doing today bud i'm doing well man uh you know i'm i just unpacked a bunch of shit like we were talking about pre-pre-show and uh it's 10 p.m for me here well it's 5 51 and it's what is it 5 51 a.m for you it sure is the the the amount of logistics it's now required to make the show is sometimes baffling to me especially when like we record bonus episodes like we do the rome cast and it's me shocks and francis and so it's armenia boston and uh missouri uh it's the

the miracles of modern technology dude yeah the the thousands of years of development uh all to create the dumbest fucking show i've ever made in my life uh it's it's a lot of money many dick jokes now we've spent the last couple weeks kind of chilling uh when it as far as um when it comes to lines up by donkeys in my opinion we haven't we haven't talked about anything truly horrific uh when again when it comes to our show um that's that's that's gonna change liam i'm sorry it's you know it's fine i just i'm just i i'm just here to take psychic damage you know show me on the jewish man uh man where you took the most psychic damage. No, I will say, I think this is the best way to talk about Auschwitz. What a fucking sentence.

The reason why. Bear with me. Yes, yes, yes. The screams of anguish of my ancestors. Let's hear it, Joe. The reason why is we talk about a lot of bad people on the show, and we will be talking about bad people during this series. I know. Big shocker.

Though, admittedly, sometimes some of these people, the worst ones are indescribably hilarious. Like Baron Ungern von Sternberg is still legitimately one of the funniest people I think we've ever talked about, despite the fact he might be one of the worst human beings to ever walk the earth. And then we get people who aren't absolutely evil, but completely nuts. I don't think we've ever legitimately talked about a good person. No, most people aren't good, man. Yeah, I mean, yeah, exactly. Prior to this, the closest i think would be john rob the nazi batman of nan king but he was still a fucking nazi yeah i i remember learning about him on this

show and just like you telling me that and just being like if i have to root for the goddamn fucking nazi like the things that screams of the ancestors, baby. So even our quote good people come with the old Barry Bonds asterisk next to it. So today and for the next three weeks, we're going to talk about someone who will absolutely break that mold, though it's still a morally gray area because we're talking about a real person um and that is the polish freedom fighter who literally broke into auschwitz in order to get word of atrocities going on there v told palecki have you ever heard of you told palecki in passing but i don't know his story i will say it's not as it's not as heroic as people think more balls than i got i'll tell you that yeah like legitimately he should be um considered righteous among the nations but he's not um and we'll there's

probably a very good explanation as to why and we will get there hey are we going to be reciting uh communist lines or whatever it was we were doing in the last episode. Communist talking points. Communist talking points from Wikipedia. Yeah. That's because we will be talking heavily about Poland during World War II. Strap in, folks. I'm going to say that there's not going to be a lot of people happy with how I'm putting any of this.

Can't wait to be criticized on the left because we made a i don't know we're gonna criticize the molotov ribbon drop act and just be accused of being like nazi sympathizers or some shit you know as i sit here in my uh apartment in the former soviet union i'll simply wait for those people to graduate from middle school before i accept their criticism. Now, before we start, there's going to be a lot of fair criticism about the Polish Home Army. And I have to address this. Most of which, I'm going to say, is 100% valid. However, this is not an exhaustive series on the Polish Home Army's history,

their part in World War II, or the occupation of Poland. Instead of to make this listenable in any way makes sense, so I don't have to make a 10-part series to simply talk about one guy, we're only going to talk about the Home Army as it impacts Vitold and vice versa. Kind of like when we talked about Leo Major, we didn't discuss the entire history of Canada or Canadian military forces in World War II. Like, give us enough time and we'll do it. Yeah. Now, our sources for this series are Vito Pilecki's own book made up of, I believe it's made out of his diary.

It's called The Auschwitz Volunteer Beyond Bravery. bravery. It's also Adam Coaches, A Captain's Portrait, and hands down the best book regarding the subject, The Volunteer by Jack Fairweather. I recommend all three of those. The Volunteer is definitely the best. So The Volunteer also goes into quite a bit that was absolutely not usable for this, which is why I recommend people read it like it's like a like a james bond spy novel how palecki got some of this shit out of poland like it involves a spy called napoleon dressing up as like a diplomat you must you must have been thrilled it was it was great and i really wanted to write about and i realized like this doesn't really work here like this is a different story uh again that is the

story of the polish home army not plecky so i had to leave it out now vitold plecky was born may 13th 1901 in the town of olenskarelia in the russian empire he was uh the long-gone descendant of polish lithuanian nobility uh who were called the schlachcia, which yes, I assure you I pronounced that correctly. Oh, I'm not doing it. Every Polish guy listening to this is jumping through their phone attempting to murder me. Oh yeah. Here's a warning.

Lots of Polish words. I'm not going to pronounce anything correctly. Not good pronunciation. Wrong side of communist occupation. I'm in the Caucasus, not Eastern Europe. Not my specialty. Yeah, it's like 1,900 miles that way. I'll never forget when the

war in Ukraine started. Someone asked if I was okay. Before I moved here permanently, I was here in Yerevan. And I was like, have you ever glanced at a map? I'm fine, guy. It's like when the US invades Iraq, you text your cousin in

Kansas City like, you good, bro? His family had been exiled in the Kerala after they had taken part in the January 1863 uprising, which what had once been the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth decided this

whole being part of the Russian Empire thing kind of fucking sucks. Now, this was led by a disenfranchised nobility like his family, but there's also a lot of peasants involved. The whole thing may have actually succeeded. How'd that work out? Well, it didn't. There's a reason why there's no Poland-Lithuania

anymore. A country doomed to never work from the start. Ah, Jews. Sometimes also Catholics. anymore uh a country doomed to never work from the start uh jews sometimes also catholics now it may have actually worked if they picked a different time to do it um sorry what year did you say this was it was uh 1863 okay so we're talking after the summer of revolution sure after the summer revolution after the napoleonic wars before world war one it was like that one sixth month to a year period in europe at the time where nobody was trying to murder one another so that meant that nobody was going to come to their aid and in fact nobody wanted to put any skin in the game. And more actually more likely, Prussia actually helped them suppress the polls, which thankfully would never happen again.

Right. No, never again. Don't worry about that. Now, people in Plekki's social people, like his family and their social like people that also have their social standing were the majority of the leadership of the uprising. And many of them ended up at the end of a rope. But the ones who didn't were exiled out of Poland. A lot of them ended up in Ukraine, in Russia, various other imperial territories. Which we cannot say it again, are not especially near each other.

No, they are not. Some of them ended up here uh which yeah sure they must have been very confused when they showed up though that didn't mean this is specifically a rich guy conflict uh it it was also a concept it was like it was a conflict that was slowly forming national identity which was still kind of new for a lot of people at the time uh which as you might aware the russian empire the soviet union and the russian federation really are not a fan of and they try to kill and make everybody russian what no dude no you know better than that joe empire is good when it's not the united states

joe oh yeah my bad yeah that's how it works, obviously. Different empires have different safety rules, and that's okay. It's the people's empire. It's fine. Suck my fucking dick. Social and cultural colonialism is fine when you have to learn how to speak Russian, not English. I'm not doing that. Just because they have a different alphabet. Yeah, it's fine because it's confusing. I still can't read Cyrillic. Nor do I ever plan to.

I don't live in Russia. I shouldn't have to. Britain can, I think. I mean, from my understanding, it's easier than Armenian, but I'm having a hard enough time with one language. Do you know how to read Cyrillic? Cyrillic? Cyrillic, yeah.

So, I know how to pronounce it. I can pronounce the words, but know how to pronounce it. No. I can pronounce the words, but I don't understand what they mean. Oh, that's me in Hebrew. Yeah, I can do that. I know what the letters sound like. I don't know Ukrainian. Okay, thank you.

So, our Cyrillic expert's out the fucking window. Our Cyrillic expert has to take her makeup off, so she's gone. But, you know, this wasn't only rich people. In a famous case, a bunch of untrained peasants grabbed their farm tools to stand up to a charging army of Russian hussars. That sounds like an unpleasant way to go, man. It didn't end well, but they tried. Of course, this uprising didn't go great leading to the plecky family and a lot of the plecky family not all of them of course because vitold still alive

and he was able to be born uh but around 70 000 other people were exiled many of them went to where serbia oh oh okay uh now serfs were freed uh but then all the land was taken from the elite and the peasants and sold back to them by the state with a 50% markup with the added rule that the shlatka couldn't purchase the land. So this did do one important thing for the Russian Empire, which was ruin the Polish nobility. If there were no serfs, you have no power, they have no land, etc. They're no longer nobles, which of course is their goal. And not to say that they got rid of feudalism, nobility, or slavery. They simply didn't let the Polish people do it anymore. And with new land rules in place, they completely disenfranchised it so there wasn't another

uprising. The nobility had no power, had no reach, no influence anymore. And really, all they did is lateral transfer the nobility titles and land over to Russians because they just wanted the nobility to be Russian. So that's how a Polish noble kid was born in the middle of Russia to a pretty poor poor family despite the fact he came from fantastic wealth only about two generations before um they stayed long after the yeah shit sucks now eventually the poles were allowed to move back uh but plecky's dad julian had gotten a job as a forester uh and that was how he was able to feed his family so they didn't want to move back he had five kids were you a forester and that was how he was able to feed his family so they didn't want to move back. He had five kids in total. Weren't you a forester at one point?

It depends on what you call a forester. I was never a forestry person. I was a wildland firefighter which according to the US government, the actual title of that is forestry technician which sounds a lot like... A technician?

Yeah. A lot of tech going into spray painting trees during the off-season for log harvesting. It sounds like custodial engineer, you know? Like, you need to church it up. They had five kids in total. And once per year, they were all sent back to Poland because Julian, his dad, thought it was pretty important that his kids spoke Polish. They knew about Poland.

They knew about Polish culture and etc. Because the goal is that they always want to go back. Though eventually, the family was sent to Vilnius for a better life while dad stayed behind to work and send money to them.

Karelia, apparently, not a great place to live. Plek, he went to school. It's known that he went into trade school, but I can't really figure out what kind. According to the Polish government biography of him, these were known as commercial junior high schools. It's like in Germany and a few other places,

school can be called gymnasium. I'm not entirely sure what a commercial junior high school is. It also notes that he got involved in... It sounds like in Germany and a few other places, like schools. School can be called gymnasium. I'm not entirely sure what a commercial junior high school is. It also notes that he got involved in... It sounds like a trade school. Yeah. He got involved in, quote, illegal scouting, which sounds like black market Boy Scout shit. I kind of like that. This idea of foraging where you shouldn't be.

Yeah. Cooking up highly illegal merit badges in the bathtub. Eventually, he, like all of us at one point, went to art school and dropped out. And around 1914, right after Europe set itself on fire with World War I. However, Pleky was too young to fight in the war.

And even though he wanted to, he was going to go volunteer anyway. He was set away from the front line by his mother. So he didn't fight in World War I exactly. However, World War I ends, of course. And in 1918, the First Polish Republic declares independence from Russia. And they find themselves being immediately invaded by the Red Army in 1919. Things go swimmingly from there. Right.

Yeah. being immediately invaded by the Red Army in 1919. Things go swimmingly from there. Right. Yeah. Plekia moved back to Vilnius and was attending gymnasium, which is Europe talk for secondary school or prep school for university. I'm sure someone's still going to correct me on that. I'm sorry.

I just know American schools leave me alone. Previously, this had been interrupted by this whole World War I thing and he wanted to finish. I noted paying the ass for your studies. you know, the world exploding in your backyard. However, now being invaded by Soviet soldiers, he volunteered to serve as a scout in a local self-defense unit. Despite Pilecki and others fighting street to street, house to house, villainous eventually fell. He escaped, though most of his unit was destroyed, and he ended up joining a Lancer's unit i.e cavalry uh in the defense of warsaw and then joined the polish volunteer army as they retook

vilnius during this period there's an outbreak of anti-semitic violence in the city of vilnius and uh yeah as uh now many in the in the many people within the Polish military saw the same thing that the Nazis eventually saw, which was communism was inherently Jewish. And that meant Jews in general were a tool of communism. Thanks, Alex. That old hat of classic anti-Semitism and conspiracy theory. and conspiracy theory. Now, this pogrom that happened in Vilnius was strictly forbidden by the Polish volunteer command, but very little discipline was held over from their commanders to soldiers and soldiers went ahead and did anyway. However, there's no evidence to suggest that Pleki took part in any of this. And judging by his future actions, it would seem completely

out of character for him to do so. And since we're at this point, we should probably talk a little bit about what he thought about Jewish people. Because remember, he was a Pole who was descended from nobility who grew up in Russia. So those are three strikes against him and how he probably saw Jewish people. In The Volunteer, Fairweather notes, quote, he likely held paternal views towards local Polish and Belarusian peasants sharing the prevailing anti-Semitic views though never practice any. So it's kind of like a white person that grows up in the suburbs. It's going to be sad, but

I take what I can get, you know? Yeah, I mean, it's the early 1900s and someone who's effectively Russian nobility, Polish nobility, they're not going to have egalitarian views of Jewish people. It's like, I think we've talked about before, it's like this weird baseline anti-Semitism that existed at the time

and arguably still does now in the same areas. Still does, yeah. Yeah. It was super common in Eastern Europe and really most of the world at this point in history. I'm not saying there's an excuse. However, it seems his anti-Semitic views, if you want to call them that, I think they are, were very internalized somewhat as when anti-Semitic pogroms and discrimination became

common, he spoke out against them. He never took part in any of them. He actively tried to stop them. So the best way I could find it explained is that people are complicated. He considered himself a Polish patriot, and he thought anybody who considered themselves a pole was a pole regardless of religion and that includes jewish people and at that point especially certain parts that would eventually become the polish free army in world war ii and that was not the case a lot of people considered you had to be a catholic polish uh man to be considered polish and jewish people could never be polish he did not believe that. Even though he was Catholic, he was, I guess you'd call him a cafeteria Catholic or whatever. He never really did anything.

But he stayed out of it. He never worked in politics or anything. Sure. But by his own diary, and especially by his dispatches from Auschwitz, he clearly grew up. This is in 1919 at this point um i think when he sees what the the a lot of people in polish society and what the nazis do to jews he grows up a bit sure but at this point he's he's a very normal person which means a bad person right yeah yeah i mean that that makes sense and like i've said i mean you you can't really blame the camera for

the picture it takes and i say this is a jewish person like i obviously know antisemitism i know that a lot for a lot of people you it's not it's it's a weird kind of thing because i think a lot of people don't know like that they're antisemitic until someone sort of calls them on it yeah it's it's it's a lot like growing up in like a white suburb and swearing up and down you're not racist but like you don't go like we can't go to that part of town right exactly yeah exactly right um and like i've already had to make peace with a nazi on this show like you know i can't get through anything really like like i said i think at this point of his life we wouldn't have liked him um he grows up really like anyone

though yeah but so by 1921 the polish soviet war was over uh or what is more realistic they hit a pause button uh because as we all know it happens again um plecky didn't really feel like going back to school as his father got old and sick and he eventually took over the family estate which does make them sound like fancy but it was mostly a dilapidated shithole and a money sink which nobody had the money for. Sure. He started working with a local union developed a milk cooperative

and founded the local army reserve cavalry unit. A milk cooperative. Yeah. He moved to fucking Portland. Now by the early 1930s he was married and had a kid like he was settled down most people probably didn't assume in nine years their world was gonna fucking end but then it did but then it did in september 1939 the nazis invaded uh plecky at this point those germans and russians really don't leave fucking poland alone

uh plecky at this point was the commander of the local reserve unit and quickly mustered everybody together the polish military could only supply them with ammo and their doctrine at the time was to uh supply themselves off civilians which by that meant they stole from that sounds like looting yeah okay yeah yeah i was like that seems like a fancy way to say looting. Good old-fashioned foraging at gunpoint, as some would say. Yes. A lot of drive-by horse theft going on. As Plucky left, he told his family that, don't worry, this would only last two weeks.

Oh, good night. They would effectively never see him again. Yeah, they would almost never see him again. Yeah, they would almost never see him again. Now, the Nazi army was two times larger than Poland's. They had 10 times as many planes, 2,000 more tanks. Things weren't looking good. And this is only against the Nazis. His men and his horses were loaded into a freight train, which I thought was funny.

I just see them parking their horses nose loaded into a freight train which I thought was funny like I just see them like parking their horses like nose to ass in a train and sent towards Warsaw what's the problem you guys never parked a horse get a parallel park that horse come on Klip Klop come on Klip Klop

his name is like Klip Klopski or something. Klip Klop. They were shipped several hundred miles away, and they got to their position to guard the main road leading to Warsaw in western Poland. Now, it was there that Polecki may have gotten the hint that his commanders were not exactly up to the task of defending their country from the Nazis. For example, his commander ordered their men to the front, but made sure to tell them, hey, travel by road. It will be faster than going through the forest. Now, that sounds like it makes a lot of sense if you were just, say, going for a walk.

But when you travel on the roads yeah like well it's uh the day the german tanks aren't there yet but you know famously germany has the luff waffa yeah yeah i hadn't thought of that all right yeah fair enough when you travel over main arteries of traffic in the open you just keep the shit bombed out of you because it's that's the first thing any Air Force is going to do. Right, of course. They got pretty fucked up. Pilecki's still alive. But after that, while on a scouting mission, he discovered

something horrible. His lately armed scouting unit had been positioned directly in front of the Nazi 1st and 4th Panzer Divisions. Over 600 tanks that had already smashed through the Polish defenses and advanced 60 miles in the first day of the war not a great time to be sitting on a on the back of a horse i like that

fellas we're gonna need a whole lot of horse meat to stop these tanks hey you guys want to go work for burger king these uh these nazi tanks are going to harvest so much horse meat that the fucking uh uh, what, what was the, what was the, uh, the, the British, um, the supermarket that was quote unquote,

accidentally selling people horse meat, horse meat, Tesco probably. Yeah. It's gotta be Tesco. Yeah. 29% of horse and your Tesco come from. Yeah.

Hey, little did you know that all came from Poland? It was a hundred percent of the mate. Oh wow. Oh, before long, czechoslovakia come from yeah hey little did you know they all came from poland which is 100 of the mate oh wow before long the polish army was in such a fast retreat that it created traffic jams which were caught on a bridge outside of the town of volborz uh another town i'm sure i named perfectly uh the the nazi tanks did not slow down, it was remaining in horse meat. Same thing. Come on, man. Horses know no borders.

You don't know borders, no nations, my anti-flag. It's just horses galloping along to that for some reason. That's right. And the Nazi tanks tore this retreating column apart. Pleki was almost killed. His horse was killed and he was thrown headfirst into a ditch. And he lay there under a pile of dead people and horses, helpless as most of his unit was massacred. Fuck my ass.

It only took a few minutes. And when the shooting stopped, he snuck away in the middle of the night. He found a few survivors and with them, they had horses and they escaped into the woods. They decided it would be best if they pulled everything back to Warsaw to defend the capital as the Nazis rapidly closed in on all fronts. Now, remember, they're still only fighting the Nazis. That's about to change. When he got there, he found the Polish government was already running.

The British embassy was preparing too and panicking soldiers and civilians looted the Polish government liquor cabinets, which, sure. Understandable. The British government, for their part, took their time to load their entire five-ton wine collection into a truck before fleeing.

Magnificent. No, they did not help anybody on the way out. No, they're Britishish man now um even before you know the world war ii and german occupation and soviet occupation there's a pretty large german-speaking minority within poland so like plecky was wandering through the streets obviously in uniform and he grabbed some local man and asked him in Polish, like what the fuck is going on? And the man turned and smiled to him in German, uh,

uh, and then said something to him in German, Pleky beat the ever living dog shit out of him with the hilt of his officer saber. Yeah. All right. No, it's clear that the,

to everybody at this point, the fall of Poland is happening. Uh, it's happening so quickly. Nobody had any time for the defense of Warsaw. Yeah, you don't load five tons of wine. Speak for yourself, baby. That's what I'm doing after this. If there was a plan for defending Warsaw, the fall had happened so quick that it happened before there's any possible way to carry out those plans the the entire overall command of the army wasn't even in the city it was in lukov so plucky's like i need to figure out what the fuck is going on he jumps on a horse um and runs to lukov only to find

it had been bombed to shit but like it's it's nothing but like uh wreckage so he realized then it's still totally hopeless it seemed him every everybody had already given up the fight and were planning their escape which plecky refused to do uh like a lot of the polish army simply escaped over the border um and were you know became the polish free army um working working with the allies and conventional military operations through most of the war ple Pleki was like, nah, I'm not about that life. I'm fighting in Poland. He met up with one of his friends from the last war, Major Jan

Volkardowicz. I'm calling him Jan. Yeah. Volkardowicz. Volkardowicz. Volkardowicz. Fucking great. Justin Rosniak.

Next. Now, they wanted to form their own plans, and seemingly nobody else had one. They would make for the woods and conduct hit and run attacks against the Nazis as they picked up more army stragglers fleeing from the destruction of their various units. And they began to do this. They achieved limited success because, you know, small unit, you only can do so much until the end of September. Remember, this is all the same month. Poland did not last very long.

And there's a good reason for that because the Soviet Union invaded after that. Wow. I can't believe they would do that. So trustworthy, Predator, this. Previous to this, the Soviets had signed the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, which was a non-aggression pact. But more importantly, it also divided northern and eastern Europe into spheres of influence should a war kick off, which war kicked off when Germany invaded Poland. As Polish forces waited for their promised French and British support that never came, the Soviets invaded. Using the excuse that the Polish government was

virtually defeated and therefore unable to govern itself, they argued that this created a security hazard to nearby Soviet territories. Of course, this is all bullshit, as the Soviets had actually been preparing for this invasion since the Nazis had started theirs. And also that rush job

on planning also shows how bad the invasion went. If the Poles were able to put up more of a fight, the Soviets would have been hurting. But already being invaded by Nazis, not a lot of fight left in them. Now, by the point of the Soviet invasion, a full evacuation of the uniformed Polish army across the Romanian bridgehead was ordered so they could continue the fight from somewhere else. It was clear to everybody that Poland was not going to hold out, and they wanted to preserve whatever fighting force they could for later. However, this order really couldn't be given out due to all the chaos and ongoing fighting against Nazis. Many border units retreated while others fought in lieu of orders. In one case,

General Ruckerman, which I'm sure you can tell from his last name, was ethnically German, stationed on the East, received no orders whatsoever. So, you know, when the Soviets came storming over the border, he's like, well, my last orders were to shoot anybody who invaded the country, so I might as well do that. So I guess we're going to do that. All right, that's my day plan. Let's do this.

And he fought on the border. And eventually his unit had to melt into the woods where they were anti-Soviet and anti-Nazi partisans until the end of the war. Warsaw surrendered on September 28th. The city had been bombed to hell on Hitler's personal orders because it held out longer than anybody thought it would. At this point, Pleky was still in the woods with Jan as it began to snow. thought it would. At this point, Pleki was still in the woods with Jan as it began to snow. They decided that they wouldn't be surrendering to anybody because they didn't trust the Soviets having both already fought them or the Germans because they're Nazis. They're Germans, right. Yeah.

Pleki decided that if they were going to liberate Poland, the liberation would start in Warsaw. So that's where they went, which is now a firmly inter-Nazi occupation. They didn't really have any plans, though. They knew at some point, and soon, the British and French were going to come storming through Europe,

and he needed to plan an uprising that would coincide with that coming Allied offensive and, ooh, poor sweet summer childhood. It's still the 30s. Yeah, I feel so bad. Yeah. That's going to continue coming up. He's like, well, the French and the Britishs. I feel so bad. Yeah.

That's going to continue coming up. He's like, well, the French and the British are coming. Everybody knows that. They're not doing that, actually. Yeah. Yeah. Hindsight's a motherfucker in situations like these. At this point, in the German-occupied portion of Poland, part of it was annexed to be part of the German Reich, and the other part became a colony.

Around 5 million people were ordered exiled, and the Nazi racial system was put into place on whatever remained. Ethnic Germans were put in charge, while ethnic Poles were laborers, at best, for now. We know where this story eventually goes. Meanwhile, the death squads of the Einsatzgruppen began to murder the educated and professional classes of Poles, while on the other side of the divide, the Soviet Union did much of the same thing. So far, the killing stage of the Holocaust had not started, but the systemic and legal repression of the Nuremberg laws against the Jews had been exported to Poland, which was being administered by Hitler's former lawyer and future war crimes wind chime, Hans Frank. by Hitler's former lawyer and future war crimes wind chime, Hans Frank. I'll do my best here to point out that all of the horrible Nazis died because it's like the only bright spot that we have for a long time. Hans Frank swung from a rope because that's what the piece of shit deserved.

Actually, he deserved worse, but whatever. We'll take it. Yeah, we'll take it. Hans Frank was a bloodthirsty lunatic, and his decrees had been posted all over Warsaw with plecky seeing resistance stickers placed over them that said, Hans Frank was a bloodthirsty lunatic, and his decrees had been posted all over Warsaw, with Pleki seeing resistance stickers placed over them that said, we don't give a damn, or the direct Polish idiom of, quote, we have you deep in our asses, which, outstanding. I love idioms like that. By November, Pleki and Jan were trying to make contact with these guys, the Polish resistance who were,

you know, bombing posters effectively. They eventually did. And they had their first meeting of Pilecki's sister in law, sisters in law house, which doesn't exactly seem like the best kind of operational security. It's kind of funny though. It's just like,

it's just like 20 dudes all with like submachine guns just packed into some poor Polish woman's house just bumping around like do you have tea even funnier is I think it was like a small apartment like all these guys notice us don't be suspicious don't be suspicious if the Nazis

come asking we are simply trying to change a light bulb it's fine all of us together it was and it wasn't like because like palecki had this idea like you know if we're gonna fight if we're gonna we're gonna resist we need to find all of the guys who bailed out of the army when like the the war was going badly because they know how to fight like they're soldiers and instead it was pretty much just Jan and him and a whole bunch of college students. Which is like, well, there's some dudes.

Yeah, there's some dudes. I should point out, it wasn't only just dudes, actually. Because Jan was a hardcore Catholic, so it's actually kind of surprising that he was willing to work with women partisans. Plekian friends. Plekian co. plucky and friends i said um now jan was our great catholic and he believed that they needed to harness that catholic identity to fight against a double occupation uh which is what the the situation in poland was gonna be like the weird mormon designer who worked on doom and when people criticized him because he was a

religious man making a violent video game he pointed out that what you were doing was sending demons back to hell so what was the fucking problem i mean yeah it's like you know murder is a sin however shooting nazis is fine yeah god god will sort it out don't worry about this well he believed in order to build a popular resistance, he needed to rally people around their Polish identity, which, sure, but also he believed that Polish identity was inextricably linked to Catholicism. Yeah, of course it is. Fuck it is. And Polecki strongly disagreed. Polecki was like, what?

No. He pointed out that becoming a theological insurgency would really alienate a lot of the Polish population. And by the end of the meeting, they agreed that they wouldn't do that when they formed the Tania Armapolska, or the Polish Secret Army, with Jan in command and Pilecki as their main recruiter. And by December, they had recruited around 100 people, the vast majority of whom were weird college activists in the occasional escaped conscript. But at the time, they agreed that we're not a Catholic insurgent group. That's not what we're doing. It's like when Christian metal bands

are like, no, we're not a Christian band. We're a band made of Christians. Yeah, we're not a Christian metal band. We're a metal band that happens to be Christian, but also all of our songs in like very obviously christian that said i like norma jean sue me it's normally jean christian yep i had no idea yep i mean to be fair i'm kind of an idiot when it comes to these things like my brother pointed out the

like pod was a christian band and i was like, well, that makes a lot more sense now. Did you ever listen to Skillet, Joe? I haven't. You don't. Okay. Now, by the winter, mass deportations from Western Poland into Warsaw had already begun, which, yeah, they're forming the Warsaw Ghetto.

Right. Hundreds of thousands of people have been dumped into the street with no preparation. While many of these people were Jews, they weren't quite there yet. These were simply Polish people. Because not being Jewish, but being Polish was not going to save you. Governor Frank ordered food rationing down to 500 calories a day, which you're thinking, wow, Joe, wouldn't that just kill you? Which, yes, that was the point. Ethnic Germans were allocated 2,500 calories. A survivable ration. Must have been nice. Yeah. Jan and Pilecki began to have arguments over the fact that

Jan was... turned out to be a huge anti-Semite. Ah, come on, man. Yeah. And Pilecki was not a big fan of that. He started writing uh army newsletters that parroted a lot of the same shit that nazis did just from a different angle uh and palecki uh was not a huge fan of this he's like this is not what i signed up for and but he but you know jan was in charge he had to outmaneuver him he couldn't just be like hey quit being a fucking nazi um

plecky and his not insane allies within the secret army decided that they needed to team up against jan uh when jan began flirting with the idea of joining forces with nationalists who had already kind of collaborated with the nazis um so like he's like we we have to outmaneuver this guy so he reached out to the union of armed struggle which was another resistance group which was backed officially by the polish government exile uh and he proposed joining forces you know this would cancel out jan's right wing and sandy for the officialdom of the government its commander stepcki, was noted as being a massive Sherlock Holmes nerd. He was much more normal.

He was Pilecki's kind of weird, but shared a lot of egalitarian ideas. And with Pilecki, Roecki was quite worried about the safety of Poland's Jewish population. With the German discrimination laws coming into effect, a lot of partisans being like Jan. It's like nobody is going to be able to defend these people. Right. Now, Roecki knew that their power to directly fight the Nazis was close to zero at the time. So he had settled into effectively becoming a vast network of intelligence gathering people. He had a ton of spies, a ton of messengers that stretched across Europe. And their goal was to spread evidence of Nazi war

crimes to the Allies. Now, they also tried to tell the Allies about war crimes that the Soviets were carrying out. And then they quickly realized that the Allies didn't really like that because they're Allies of the Soviets. So they focused on the Germans. Sure. They were hoping to guilt trip them into actually doing something. Right. And this actually did embarrass Germany in the short term. Not that that really matters.

No. Nazis aren't so good at feeling shame as it turns out and also in may of 1940 when german forces were steamrolling through france yeah at that point there really is nothing to be embarrassed about anymore like what are you gonna do stop us right exactly yeah and you know you know what they they should have tried a little something i call the circle game now hear me out i'm listening i'm all ears you know what? They should have tried a little something I call the circle game. Now, hear me out. I'm listening.

I'm all ears. They wanted to embarrass the Nazis. You simply hold a circle just below their waist. And when Hitler looks, you get to hit him. And then he's going to flinch. So you get two for flinching. Now he's embarrassed. I'm going to fly to Erwan.

And I'm going to beat your ass. I'm giving you simple but effective international relations fixes. I know you're taller than me. You're not taller than me by much. Yeah, I've got much on you. We might be the tallest podcast and not counting people who play for the NBA.

I don't know. I know Nick is as tall as I am, but i don't know how tall nate is he's close okay yeah i always pictured nick is like i always pictured dick is like i'd like on i'm gonna be honest with you like 6 10 like squeezing himself into a chair to podcast nick's dead by the way he's never coming back to that one guy who won't stop fucking complaining. Now, the immediate aftermath of the Western European invasion came a massive crackdown against resistance groups. However, that didn't stop word getting back to the resistance in June that the Germans had been building a large camp at an old Polish army base about 50 miles southwest of Krakow named Auschwitz now this is not the auschwitz of of infamy yet at this point the campus for polish political prisoners and polish people in general now this was uh you know political prisoners we're gonna get there yeah we will um it the term political prisoner was quite fluid. It could have been someone who was communist, someone who was simply, uh, considered a partisan. You could have been gay. Uh, like it was something they actually did back then. The resistance also

knew that if you went in, there was a very good chance you were not coming out. It's a weird thing here because they all assumed if they were captured, they would be tortured and executed because they're partisans. They know that's what happens to partisans when you're fighting.

That's the game. The idea that all these people were being sent to this camp and all of them were dying is like, well, that's new. That seems different. Jan had since agreed to join forces

with Roecki in his Union of Arms struggle. They called a meeting after the secret army's chief of staff, Vyadaslav Cermeki, got vanished by some Gestapo goons. And everybody was pretty sure he ended up in Auschwitz

because that's where everybody ended up. Though, to be fair, a lot of partisans got shot in the head before they made it that far. You know, being captured by the Nazis, not great. Roecki pointed out that if they're passing war crimes info to the

Allies to make public, we need to get an account of what's happening in that camp. Which, sure. Right. Of course, at first, someone was like, why don't we simply talk to people who had survived the camp? Then they quickly realized that nobody had done that yet. Nobody had escaped alive at

this point. Then there was a parole system that would eventually put in. There's this weird area between when it was a Polish political prisoner camp and a Soviet POW camp and then a death camp where people could get parole. And it's very weird, but that hadn't started yet. But in order to get news from the camp, that meant they had to infiltrate the camp and gain as much intel as they could. And, you know, best case scenario, maybe raise a resistance cell, organize a breakout, or burn the fucking thing

to the ground. Sure. Jan, to the absolute no surprise of anybody, probably, said that he knew one guy who could do this. V told Pilecki. Pilecki knew immediately that he was being punished for torpedoing Jan's shitty

nationalist union idea and his Catholic nationalism like it's often have fun in Auschwitz yeah like he was sending him to die I remember like this is a camp that nobody had survived yet and like it's often played

that plecky volunteered like the book is called the volunteer and neo-tech sure technically he did but he was it was a voluntold situation he was he saw himself as a soldier and he was being ordered to do this thing by someone who was he saw as his superior officer like you know in in palecki's position you do as you're ordered um however he knew he was doing it to as a political punishment effectively um you know in this case the the orders he was being given were to break into fucking auschwitz um you know i think i maybe wouldn't have done that, but I'm not a good soldier. No, I would have shit and piss my pants. Yeah. Shitting and vomiting simultaneously as I'm arrested by the Gestapo.

Jan said, well, because you couldn't just like show up at the police station, but I'm a I'm a partisan. Please arrest me like that's suspicious. So a Polish police informant tipped them off that the Gestapo was doing a roundup of... They're just trying to arrest pretty much every military-aged male, assuming that they are all involved in some kind of partisan activity. So he went and plopped his ass down to get arrested. On September 18th, he packed a bag and went to go hang out at his sister-in-law's apartment, knowing at this point that this location had been uh sold out and he would eventually be like they're just going to the apartment and arresting everybody that was a

man of a certain age but he didn't want to get arrested as vito plecky he had to have an assumed name and fake id prepared for him and sure sure and somewhat hilariously not that this happens often and you know auschwitz something funny did happen yes famous for its mirth yeah yeah a place with no fucking yucks he picked the uh the identity of his friend from the school who he ended up running into in the fucking camp uh oh hey guy and the germans had somehow not noticed that they had processed two people with the same identity. They're like,

he's like, shut your fucking mouth. Don't call me if you told me. We're all the same here. The next day, that's exactly what happened. German soldiers and cops went door to door, grabbing every man that they found. Anyone that was concerned an essential worker was allowed to go because they saw these people as labor.

Anyone of military age and considered unemployed and therefore probably filling their off times with resistance activity was thrown in the back of a waiting truck. It was eventually brought to a horse barn. Everybody there was robbed blind. This is before they truly had the shit down to a science. There was no assembly line of human misery yet. There was no assembly line of human misery yet, but they were robbed blind, forced to lay in the dirt with thousands of other people, packed into a train with no food or water or toilet and shipped towards Auschwitz. Right. That night, the train arrived. And as soon as the door opened, SS men began beating the shit out of everybody as they were ordered off the train. The SS men were smoking and laughing as the scene unfolded and people began to be picked out at random to be

shot in front of everybody else to set an example. This is just random people. Now, after this, they were turned over to the kapos, which the term kapo, which anybody who's listened to Liam before knows, generally notes a Jewish inmate

there forced to collaborate with the nazi guards but that was not the case yet most capos were just hardened criminals um who were known for their violence and given that job for that purpose they they would have worn a green camp badge like anyone who's listened to liam goddamn dude hey it's not wrong but god damn dude uh i've we've had this conversation yes we have and you know the the the story of the worst insult i got for ben shapiro and i'm gonna use it and you know the the the story of the term capo for for jewish people of course i'm never gonna correct liam for saying it is complicated it is but i'm still gonna do it baby i'm gonna say for these people with the green camp badge uh who were hardened criminals it is not

complicated these people were fucking psychopaths right like these guys were all transferred from regular prisons to become ss functionaries according to heinrich heinrich himmler this is a cost-saving measure because the more assholes at the clubs you have standing around, the fewer SS guards you have to deploy and spend money on. And not to mention, they would do things that even the SS considered intolerable.

Despicable? Yeah. Sure. Now, each prisoner was asked what their job was and one man said he was a judge. The Kapos beat him to death on the spot. Then came doctors, lawyers, and any Jews. Now, some Jews did survive this process, of course, because they probably quickly learned, like, I'm Catholic. Well, if I could. Yeah.

Catholic. Hail Mary. Full of grace. Let's do this. Yep. And also, sometimes the Kapos just wouldn't beat them to death because those weren't their orders at the time yet. As this is Auschwitz I, this is not the death camp yet. They're not murdering everybody.

Their goal is labor, which the labor would eventually lead to death as well, which we'll talk about. But they want something from these prisoners most of the time. Though they're killing people they think might be smart enough to become a camp leader. That's why people who they knew to be officers in the Polish military, high-ranking officers, they got the club too, because they didn't want anybody to be able to organize anybody. Now, the survivors were told, quote, Let none of you imagine you will ever leave this place alive. The rations have been calculated, so you'll only survive six weeks. Now, that order was given by Obersturmfuhrer Fritz Seidler, who was described during his time

working at Mauthausen, which is a different concentration camp. Quote, he loved to hit, kill, and injure people, particularly favoring a punch to the face to break the victim's jaw. Seidler was executed by the US Army in 1945 under, sorry, killed by the u.s army in 1945 under uh sorry killed by the u.s army in 1945 under uh unclear circumstances but i'm sure it hurt uh it was one of those situations it won the few situations because it's often said that this happened at a large scale where the u.s army saw what was happening in the camp and just went hog wild killing ss men it was one of those that did happen occasionally yeah like famously there's there was more than one for us to get criticized for this but like yeah as a jewish man uh sometimes you look the other way you know

oh the army looked the other way in quite a few occasions um famously they armed camp survivors and like turned them loose on their own guards yeah see that's fair that way that's that's not violating the geneva convention but we're doing it there's another occasion when um it was a pretty young soldier saw what happened in one of the camps that the that the army liberated and he went he immediately walked back over to where like the guards were standing and like picked up a machine gun and waxed a couple of them yeah that's fair. Yeah, of course it's going to happen. I know it's a war

crime. I'm going to look the other way for this one, folks. Sorry. Get mad at me in the comments, I guess. My hot take is sometimes two rungs do equal, right? I'm taking that one. I'm with Joe. To quote Sogamon Tetlerian, I have killed a man, but I'm not a murderer. Now, the surviving

prisoners that survived this process, of course. Oh, another officer, just so people know how early this was happening, pointed to the smokestacks of the camp and said, quote, the chimney is your only way to freedom. That was already happening. Yeah, they already had the incinerators running. Now, the surviving prisoners that made it this far were shaved and deloused there were no gas chambers yet uh but there were delousing chambers which is i'm gonna have to do another episode of holocaust denial at some point because the other one is already out of date but uh what a sentence yeah i mean it was a long time ago i'm better at it now maybe we need to do an update uh now

at this i'm jewish yeah have Jewish. Have me on my own podcast. Yeah, exactly. I don't know. We'll have to do a job interview. Question number one, are you Jewish? Now, at this point, they were given a uniform and political prisoners wore the red triangle. angle. And Pilecki became Auschwitz prisoner 48-59. Which, you know, they took pretty...

That's why I don't understand people who deny shit like this happening, because all of our records come from the Nazis. It's wild. The Nazis kept incredibly good records. After this, each group of prisoners was split up into groups of 100 and backed into a single barracks room of 300 square feet where they pretty much slept on top of one another. Daily life in the camp at this point was just violence from the capos or the guards pretty much constantly and around the clock.

When they weren't working, they would randomly have to do military formations and stuff, march and sing songs. There was an Auschwitz camp song. Jesus fucking Christ. If you've ever seen the incredibly grim documentary called Showa, which I can't recommend anybody watch, quite honestly.

It's awful. And I don't mean awful as in quality. I mean, it will scar you as a person. Yeah, no, watch it. Watch it. I had to for Sunday school. You should suffer like I did. There's a scene where the guy interviews a Treblinka camp guard and he sings the Treblinka

camp song and jokes. He's like, I'm the only person that can still sing this song. It's wild to think that death camps had songs that prisoners were forced to sing. But they did. And if they did it incorrectly, they would get the shit beat out of them.

Nazis, not good people. Yeah, who would have thought? Not really people. Sorry. Yeah, I'm turning on the Jewish rage here. Like that scene from Inglourious Bastards. I would like this. Inventing a kind of guy who's upset that you're mad at Nazis. I'm sure someone's going to be mad. They do that.

I mean, if you are one of those people and you listen to the show, I hope you stop. Below me. There was a series of rules put in place at the camp that made breaking them part of everyday camp life. Things like running without appropriate athletic pros was against the law. I don't even know what that is. I will say, the Jewish

people are not known for athleticism, but even so... Do you run funny? That's a clubbing. They were designed so at any given moment the prisoner was in violation of a regulation. Now, a pretty large part of Pilecki's notes at this period are dedicated kind of hilariously

to how dumb the fucking capos are. They were picked for their capacity for violence, not brains. And Pilecki and a few others end up volunteering for work duty because it was better than this bullshit military formation singing shit that everybody... Because they would keep you busy

from sunrise to sunset regardless. And the best way for prisoners to try to survive this was to make it as least bad as possible for themselves. And that's why they wanted to volunteer to work in the woodshop. It was out of the elements. It was inside. It was away from capos generally. But they didn't... There was no on-the-job training. It was a job for carpenters. They only wanted skilled tradespeople to do this and plucky absolutely was not but they simply lied um and like no no i'm totally a carpenter so like when him and this other guy built this like fucked up looking table that just fell over and collapsed like the the cop was like you said you're a tradesman he's like i am and he blamed it on the quality of the nails and the wood.

And the Kapos were like, yeah, that checks out. You built a three-legged table. That sucks you're a hog, guy. The prisoners starving and being constantly beaten were also at each other's throats, which is a part of the Holocaust. Which is what they want.

It's generally not talked about. This was not just political prisoners. This happened when Jews started populating the camps as well. People were stealing from each other. They were murdering one another because they effectively were turned into wild animals

trying to survive. That was their goal. Not to mention, like you said, Nazis' goal. If you're at each other's throat, you can't organize against us. At the point that some inmates formed gangs, they preyed upon new inmates to steal what they

had, try to survive. And Pilecki had no idea how he was going to build a resistance cell out of this. How the fuck do you organize these people? They turn into human predators. At the absolute lowest they're ever going to be. Not to mention the entire camp function around snitching either uh like to get like because you were a war operated and lived a little longer right you'd get food and people were literally starving to death like the daily currency was ratting so like you know whether it

be like i'm gonna beat the shit out of you unless you tell me this or that, or I'll give you this hunk of bread. There's a lot of people that sounded really good. And you can hardly blame them. It was their life. Eventually, Plecky did begin recruiting because he's like, well, I can at least look for people who are in the Polish army. Then we have something in common. This included the work foreman who had once been a Polish army captain and was trusted enough to lead outside work details. He was this weird gray zone. He wasn't an inmate, but the Germans fucking hated him, mostly because he's Polish.

But he was put in charge of remodeling the garden for Camp Commandant Rudolf Hoss. Another future wind chime, by the way yeah i'm not gonna go too far into us because this isn't about him but he was literally the reason the deadliest camp in human history existed i wish it was his idea uh like he was a fucking monster beyond all human comprehension uh he was considered such an important cog in the death machine that him himmler would eventually uh tell him about the so-called final solution personally which only maybe a handful of people were told that not even like there's arguably arguably that not even hitler knew that much like right um very few people uh knew about the great length in detail of the final solution. And he was one of them.

So he was legitimately one of the worst human beings to ever be born. He was also the person who came up with gas chambers. He tested them. And the technique to use Zyklon B was his idea. Conservatively, he was blamed directly for 3.5 million deaths, which if you notice is over half of the holocaust it's fucking insane and these guys are remodeling his garden right um though it was all this physical labor and a horrible starvation diet but they were like the capos weren't allowed around

haas's house because the capos were fucking gross violent criminals and he was a nazi officer he's like keep those people away from me right um so they were allowed to speak freely largely as they worked on this garden which they purposely did incredibly slowly so they could continue going out there for a long time longer um like it was it was pretty good and they had enough time while working on this garden. I don't know how the fuck you remodel a garden this long. But they were alone for so long, they could effectively interrogate people before allowing them into the resistance cell. All while working on, again, one of the most evil man on the planet's gardens. However, he quickly found that in the violence of the camp, anyone could be a Gestapo or a Capo snitch. So he eventually developed another metric for recruitment, simply selflessness. He needed to

build solidarity amongst a group of prisoners that would act as an alternative power structure to Capo violence. In order to do that, he had to find people who would look out for their fellow man rather than try to fuck them over. So if he saw someone who wasn't stealing or would share their food or would stand up for someone who was being picked on, they became recruited. This wasn't a perfect solution, but it worked. And once they were in, he had certain rules. So every room in the camp had a room supervisor at the time. That would eventually go away as well, but in the political prisoner

camp and in camp one. He was in charge of his room. Pilecki eventually became in charge of his room. He ordered food to be given out equally and the weakest among them to eat first with their commanders to eat last. If anybody had a problem with that, they're immediately ejected.

It wasn't a perfect solution, but it worked. It did teach him that some people were... Hashtag team better than nothing. Yeah, exactly. It also did teach him a valuable lesson that some people were so far gone, like they'd become feral, that they could not be saved or recruited. They'd become human sharks preying on the weak. And he refused to work with them or protect them in any way.

And he ordered people within his resistance cell that if they saw another inmate being attacked, they needed to defend them. Now, this did not count for capos or guards because it's a death sentence. If you're getting your ass rolled up by a capo, you just have to accept the beating. But if it was another inmate, like Palaikidon, you will defend people, you will kill another prisoner if you have to. However, this system kind of failed as the shop died of pneumonia because again, he's working in this awful camp as well. of pneumonia because, again, he's working in this awful camp as well. The workload continued to increase as

the camp rapidly expanded as hundreds and then thousands of new prisoners arrived every single day. Pleki himself eventually caught a lung infection that caused a rapid fever and it almost killed him. Pleki and his small force

had eventually managed to get a message out to the Polish Home Army. Through a verbal message memorized by a paroled former army officer before his release, Worecki finally learned about the realities of Auschwitz, and soon he'd start spreading it. And Auschwitz itself would continue to spread. And that is where we'll pick up next time. Next time, it's going to get pretty dark. Yeah, no, Auschwitz, famously light. And that is where we'll pick up next time. Next time, it's going to get pretty dark. Yeah.

No, Auschwitz, famously light. Well, it's not often you have a firsthand account of someone watching the Holocaust start. Right, right. Because Pleky watched as they built Camp 2. He watched as they built gas chambers. But it's also kind of aggravating because like occasionally you're like the lack of of you know they call it what lack of imagination sometimes yeah because um like the first people that executed nauschwitz weren't jews they were actually soviet pws that's who they test the gas and he watched it happen and he was like

wonder why they're doing that like what are they doing? And they must be testing chemical weapons for war. Who would think, oh, they're simply going to murder every Jew on the planet? Nobody's going to think that. So when you're reading it with hindsight being a motherfucker, you're like, VTOL, you stupid motherfucker. But that's VTOL Pleky part one. How do you feel so far about our boy V told so far? Uh, I mean,

I don't know, man. Uh, you know, being a Jewish person, you got to accept antiheroes. Yeah. I've just made my peace with it at this point.

Yeah. And like, like I said, when it, when it comes to something like this, like I, I had to root for a fucking Nazi during the nine King episode. I could do anything at this point for this fucking podcast i will say at least he's not a nazi

we can say that with comfortability yeah like i know that when it comes to the the the ghost uh institution of the lines led by donkey's podcast someone's simply not being a nazi does put you above about 50 episodes like a lot of people actually now uh that is part one uh liam plug your shows hey uh listen to well there's your problem listen to 10 000 losses listen to see you to screw it listen yeah that's it that's all i got uh and uh thank you everybody for listening if you like what we do here consider supporting the show uh you get bonus stuff it helps keep the show running and all that um and if if you don't uh leave a review it's it's free it helps us uh and we enjoy looking at them because it lets us know that you're enjoying what what we do here um because sometimes we're literally just speaking into a microphone we

have no idea how our episodes are received. Well, most of the time, if you, if I serve you, it's all good. Yeah. To be fair, if people hate it,

they're very, very free letting us know. But everybody, thank you again so much. And we'll talk to you next week. Vito Pleki part two.