00:04:08:10 – 00:04:26:20
Dan LeFebvre
We have a few movies to talk about today, but before we do that, let’s start by flipping things around a little bit. Normally here on the podcast, we talk about things that filmmakers change from the true story. But I know you’ve been working to get your book called Not a Real Enemy About Your Father urban story told into a movie.

00:04:26:22 – 00:04:43:03
Dan LeFebvre
Of course, we can’t predict the future to know when or if that will happen soon, but let’s hope for the best and say it is turned into a movie. So what’s one key thing that you want to make sure the filmmakers don’t change from the true story in the film adaptation?

00:04:43:06 – 00:05:01:18
Robert Wolf
Well, hopefully all of it, of course. But, that’s the easy answer. My dad’s for escapes or what? For example, my dad was a four time escape artist, and he missed an escape, too. He was fortunate, and he sports enough to go to the wrong train station under communist Hungary. And everybody made that train got arrested, including his, medical school classmate.

00:05:01:18 – 00:05:08:07
Robert Wolf
So all of that. I’d like to be, as accurate as possible as, cinematography. Cinematography.

00:05:08:10 – 00:05:09:02
Dan LeFebvre
Cinematography.

00:05:09:04 – 00:05:29:27
Robert Wolf
Yeah, yeah, as close as possible. Color movie, color in color. Obviously, a lot of the older movies are black and white, like Schindler’s List, which I hope we talk about a little bit more. That movie I just saw the movie and a resonates very, very much so with the story that I’m that we’re telling here. And then his upbringing, you know, it doesn’t have to be a long part of his upbringing.

00:05:30:00 – 00:05:49:23
Robert Wolf
And if I could cast a movie, it’d be Tom Hanks playing my dad and Tom, or that Tom Hanks Tom cruise. Tom Hanks plays one of the nicer, guards in the labor camp, a forced labor camp. A lot of the movie should cover the forced labor camp, the beatings, getting urinated on, getting shot at by Russian planes, all that kind of thing.

00:05:49:23 – 00:06:09:12
Robert Wolf
So there’s a lot of content. And, you know, of course, we wanted as close as possible, but any good producer writer screenplay would, would switch it up a little. I just hope they keep the, you know, as they keep the fidelity as much as possible. I mean obviously you got to make changes to capture an audience and hopefully that would be the case.

00:06:09:16 – 00:06:29:04
Robert Wolf
And you know the other thing is some people say could be a feature film. Some people say a documentary docu drama series. I wouldn’t care as long as they did a good job with it. There’s 40 chapters in our book, so, you could. I don’t think it’d be a 40, 40, show series, but certainly 10 or 15 would be, you know, one season’s worth at least.

00:06:29:04 – 00:06:45:15
Robert Wolf
So it’s always up to the producer, or whoever gets a hold of, the story. The it’s not in a screen stand in a screenplay yet, but, I, I leave that to the I leave that to Hollywood or whatever, discovers whatever we’re doing here. And if they do so it’s a, it’s a wing and a prayer.

00:06:45:15 – 00:07:02:01
Robert Wolf
And I know it’s a such a long shot. It’s easier to get into medical school, which I’m a position. I’m a radiologist, recently retired. It’s easier to get into medical school than to sell a New York Times bestseller. A bigger story and a movie, as we well know, nobody knew Schindler was, you know, 20, 30 years ago and nobody knew who.

00:07:02:01 – 00:07:18:29
Robert Wolf
And Frank was way back in the day. And, the, Life is Beautiful story I never wanted I mean, I never even think about, Italy and the Holocaust until I saw that movie and both of them the second time. Both great movies. And we could talk about those details and how they resonate with what we’re doing.

00:07:19:01 – 00:07:29:01
Robert Wolf
And I’m glad I saw them after I wrote a book regarding the Holocaust and beforehand to what a what a different viewpoint or what a, what a difference that makes.

00:07:29:01 – 00:07:48:26
Dan LeFebvre
Certainly we’re going to we’re going to talk about those for sure. But as we shift into some of the movies that that have been made, there are a lot of movies that are set before and during World War Two. So what I’d love to do is to get your take on some of those and how they compare to your family’s experiences that you talk about in your book.

00:07:48:28 – 00:08:06:05
Dan LeFebvre
And the first movie that I’d like to start with is a classic film, The Sound of Music, and it tells the story of how life changes for the von Trapp family as Nazi Germany annexes Austria in 1938. And as we watch a movie like Sound of Music, it’s possible to see the warning signs when we watch the movie now.

00:08:06:05 – 00:08:26:00
Dan LeFebvre
But of course, anytime we’re watching a movie like that, we’re also looking at it through a historical lens because we already know what’s going to happen from history instead of being there in the moment. And correct me if I’m wrong, but Austria is like less than 100km from where your father grew up in Hungary, so he wasn’t that far from where the annexation unfolded.

00:08:26:03 – 00:08:30:24
Dan LeFebvre
What were things like in that region as Germany annexed Austria?

00:08:30:27 – 00:08:57:20
Robert Wolf
Well, as you know, the fact the rise of fascism almost simultaneously with the Great Depression, the Roaring 20s, were okay in Hungary and throughout the world. We think the war was over. Things were doing well. And meantime, of course, Hitler was it was a building, the military machine that he was, because Germany’s economy was, it was, that’s how they that’s that was their economy was the military, of course, 33 is where fascism was on a rise in 38, 1938.

00:08:57:20 – 00:09:17:28
Robert Wolf
And in Hungary, there were anti-Jewish laws were initiated. So you couldn’t on the radio, you could only go out at certain times. There was, no Jews or dog signs up, of course, Kristallnacht. If, I’m not mistaken, in Germany, Austria was 1938, a very big event. That’s where they started taking force.

00:09:17:28 – 00:09:39:06
Robert Wolf
Laborers, the men, the young men that were wealthy, they started to take them away to forced labor camps and, really didn’t affect Hungary. I mean, the anti-Jewish laws were there. So they were persecuted and shunned, if you will. But the the killings and the, the the the most of it didn’t really, happened in Hungary till 1943, 1944.

00:09:39:09 – 00:10:03:00
Robert Wolf
My dad ended up going to after his first forced labor camp in 1943 and October, and then his parents were taken away to Auschwitz, in 1944. So Poland got hit first, obviously in 1939, Kristallnacht before that, 1938. And then Hungary, a little bit later, what I’m told. And from when I’ve read Hungary had the fastest, the fastest pace of homicide, of genocide of any of them.

00:10:03:00 – 00:10:33:07
Robert Wolf
So, that includes Ukraine and Russia, which they were brutalized and the Polish, 1939 of the refugees went to Hungary. And, the Hungarian government sent the refugees back, unfortunately. And, and it really badly for them. And so this resonates with Poland, with the, with the Schindler idea too, because, a lot of similarities between that and what happened to Hungary, although we’re talking about 1941 versus 1943 and 1944, but it could be the same, the same idea that, you know, a little bit, a little bit different background, different scenario.

00:10:33:07 – 00:10:36:09
Robert Wolf
But, a lot of the common, a lot of common themes.

00:10:36:13 – 00:10:59:15
Dan LeFebvre
Since you mentioned it didn’t really touch Hungary, but it’s touching all these countries around. And I’ve, I’ve never visited Hungary, but I can imagine that the proximity isn’t that far. I mean, there’s borders, you know, it’s technically a different country, but there’s these atrocities that are happening. What was it like for your your father as a child and your your grandparents?

00:10:59:15 – 00:11:04:12
Dan LeFebvre
And when they’re, when they’re seeing, I mean, they had been seeing in the news what’s going on where they.

00:11:04:15 – 00:11:30:29
Robert Wolf
Well, what a great question. Well, you say seeing in the news, we realize that my dad in Hungary and his parents never own a car. They never owned a TV. You bring up a great point. Jews were not allowed to have radios. So. And so they had a radio. He, his dad had enough courage to hide a radio, and they would quietly listen to the BBC, during the uprise of the uprising, with a lot of hope and a lot of prayer that that it end soon and relevant to that.

00:11:31:01 – 00:11:50:08
Robert Wolf
During my dad’s first escape toward. They thought it was the end of Lord, they don’t get much news that the forced labor camp, but they’re in the middle of nowhere, about near the Austria Hungary border. And even though they escaped, the Jews first of four, which some are remarkable, they didn’t know whether to flee to Budapest or stay in Hungary or go to Austria because they didn’t know who’s going to win the war.

00:11:50:11 – 00:12:04:24
Robert Wolf
And, you know, the Nazis won the war and they end up in Austria. They’re dead men. And if there’s a chance in Hungary, not Hungary proper, but the West, turns out it’s not the West. It was Soviet Union. If they win the war, maybe they’re better off in Hungary. It turns out either way, you know, you’re a Jew.

00:12:04:24 – 00:12:28:23
Robert Wolf
You’re screwed. I mean, those men, only 5% of the forced labor survived, in the in that process, including my dad, because he was on the run and hiding at the time. He wasn’t the. The rest of them that survived were treated as prisoners of war. Unfortunately. So 5% of forced labor, they had death marches. And that’s why my my dad and his friend Frank decided to, escape the first time because they thought they were on a death march.

00:12:28:28 – 00:12:59:27
Robert Wolf
And nobody knows about death marches in Europe. They don’t. I mean, historians might know. We all know about Okinawa and, the Pacific, but not a lot of people know. So when they thought you weren’t useful anymore, they killed you. So. And that was true at the Danube, very end of the war. Unlike Schindler, where the guards just go home, I, I’d like to talk about that for a few minutes, too, but, it’s a fantasy that these people, because the, guardians were treated and my mom and dad said that, that, the the Arrow Cross, for example, was like a Hungarian Gestapo and the the White Terror or the Red

00:12:59:27 – 00:13:17:14
Robert Wolf
terror or the the Nazis. The communists, they didn’t treat if you felt like if you’re Jewish, you were still scared of whoever was in charge. And, the Hungarians, the police and the military treated the Jewish people worse than the Nazis themselves. And that’s another thing that resonates with some of these movies, too. Women versus men.

00:13:17:14 – 00:13:26:27
Robert Wolf
Women guards versus Benghazi, pets. A lot of the, you know, a lot of things, humiliation. There are a lot of compare, a lot of things to talk about that are that resonate, big time.

00:13:27:00 – 00:13:48:21
Dan LeFebvre
I love that you mentioned the the radio and the communications there, because that’s something that I think I kind of like what I mentioned before, you know, when we watch a movie, we’re looking at it with a historical lens. So we think of, oh yeah, you can get news from all around there. And in my question I ask, you know, seeing things, but there’s that there has to be that almost added level of fear.

00:13:48:21 – 00:14:06:13
Dan LeFebvre
I would imagine, of not knowing, like, you know, that there’s some bad things going on, but you don’t know the full extent of it. And you then there’s that fear of just not knowing, because then your mind would start to go make things up that, I mean, there were some horrible things, but I, I mean, and it’s something I have a hard time wrap my head around.

00:14:06:14 – 00:14:12:26
Dan LeFebvre
What, like put yourself in the historical context of what that must have been like. It had to have been just terrifying for your for your father.

00:14:12:28 – 00:14:31:13
Robert Wolf
Well, part of the reason. Yeah. No intervention for many, many years, after the war started, it, because the United States had the, for example, had the, had the, the duty to protect its own citizens. So getting involved with the war, it was, was tough communications. I couldn’t say it better. You know, the real cell phones there, no lawyers or no courtrooms.

00:14:31:15 – 00:14:50:23
Robert Wolf
The cops and the. And the military pointing guns. It. Yeah. And fortunately, in this country, we. That’s not happened yet. So there’s one thing. No communication, just the radio, which was illegal. It probably would’ve been shot and killed if they got caught with it. And, and forced labor camps out in the middle of nowhere, even less communication than we had a regular camp in the US growing up, you know?

00:14:50:23 – 00:15:11:04
Robert Wolf
So, word of mouth. So things got a little easier for the men? Not much. But as the their guards got bribed, dental treat, free dental treatments. But, yes, there was a dentist. Obvious, obvious threat to society, killed at Auschwitz and his mom as well. And Deb didn’t find out about two months afterwards. Another miracle, from an eyewitness.

00:15:11:06 – 00:15:29:04
Robert Wolf
And, that’s another point that, the witnesses besides no cell phones, no video, a lot of photographs taken, as we know, the Nazis took many, many photographs. So denying the Holocaust and even communist Hungary just. There’s no way you can’t sell that. But the witness, the witness was the next victim is how it turned out.

00:15:29:04 – 00:15:46:14
Robert Wolf
Like at the Danube walk and death marches. Or as we’ve seen, these mass burial, sites, in Ukraine for example, or in the concentration camps. So the witnesses were literally the next victim. So very, very hard to, to wrap my arms around that. And like you said, very hard to get information again.

00:15:46:20 – 00:16:07:03
Dan LeFebvre
I it’s it’s hard to wrap your head around, but but putting yourself in that context of what that must have been like, I, I love the like in your book when you’re when you’re telling that story, it, it it does a really good job of, of helping to put the, the reader in that place of what that must have been like in there.

00:16:07:07 – 00:16:23:18
Dan LeFebvre
And I’m curious because there are a lot of details of your, your father’s earlier life were those things that he that he told you specifically or were they things that you had to research after the fact? Or how did that part kind of come together for that story as you’re putting all these pieces together?

00:16:23:21 – 00:16:41:21
Robert Wolf
A little bit of both. I can’t imagine the boredom in living in quarters like that packed when with people or even hiding out in your own home, with, you know, yellow stars, yellow armbands, the anxiety, the depression, the fear. I can’t imagine that. And but like you say, you can feel it, like during my dad’s first escape.

00:16:41:21 – 00:17:00:02
Robert Wolf
So, Yeah, my dad. Mom wrote an autobiography. They wrote the his story, from World War one. The of World War one to the end of the Hungarian Revolution. So literally 1916, 19 1718 to the end of the Revolution, 1956. They wrote the story in the 1970s. They they wrote it as though it happened the previous day.

00:17:00:09 – 00:17:17:04
Robert Wolf
Sharp. Chris. And I turned into a biography many, many years later. Growing up, the first half of my life, not so much as I went to college and medical school at a career as a radiologist, family, all of that things. So I didn’t, but I did read the it went from paper and pencil to typewriter to computer to disk.

00:17:17:06 – 00:17:36:04
Robert Wolf
And, when it was a manuscript maybe 30 years ago, I read it once and didn’t think much of it and didn’t remember much except my dad’s first escape. But then when I reread it after my my dad passed and fortunately my mom, a historian friend, handed me the story on the disk, and I turned his autobiography to biography and, just doing that alone.

00:17:36:07 – 00:17:52:25
Robert Wolf
Long story short, I went back to radiology, and that brought me to the book. And, long story short, the stories were so amazing. At least 20 miracles in my dad’s life and hungry for escapes and 20 miracles. I couldn’t leave it on a computer. I couldn’t leave it on a disk. I wanted to share it with the world and,

00:17:52:27 – 00:18:07:18
Robert Wolf
And so I did. And that’s been my that’s been my charge. That’s been my mission the last 6 or 7 years. The book’s been out a little while now, but, that doesn’t stop me from trying to fight antisemitism. So, this is my main thing, the why I’m doing this, and, but, yeah, it’s my own little corner.

00:18:07:18 – 00:18:23:07
Robert Wolf
I need help with that, obviously, but, no, my my mom and dad, they did this as though they knew I would like if you know me, six years ago, and my mom was a Holocaust educator, by the way. My dad, too, but he was an ObGyn, by the way, deliver 10,000 babies in the Detroit area, which is so a form of redemption.

00:18:23:10 – 00:18:41:06
Robert Wolf
That’s the punch line. It doesn’t bring back 6 million and doesn’t beat back 50 million that died in World War two. But at least he brought some life back in jovial and jolly. No PTSD. My mom to they they educated. They were well-rounded people. And the stories like I said, they were crisp and and then they had a lot of friends in the unlike what’s going on in the world now.

00:18:41:06 – 00:19:00:00
Robert Wolf
They had a lot of friends where I grew up in Michigan and throughout the world, from continental Africa, Asia had Indian friends, a muslim, Christian, Jewish, fellow Holocaust survivors. They shared the stories and, and I, I bought into it. I got a little burnout from it. And then, I brought it back to life, at least in my own legacy towards my family.

00:19:00:00 – 00:19:15:00
Robert Wolf
So, I got this app, you know, Superman’s Kryptonite. You just sort of called out to me, you know? It’s summoned me back in me. So. And so I’m doing it, and I. I couldn’t leave this on a disc. I couldn’t leave it on computer. And so that’s why we’re sharing it. But, very well done by my mom and dad, you know.

00:19:15:00 – 00:19:16:09
Robert Wolf
So.

00:19:16:11 – 00:19:43:12
Dan LeFebvre
Yeah, well, I’m glad that you are telling that story to to because the world does need to know. And the part that kind of made me think that was when you talking about the the photos and things like the Nazis and the Soviets took. But again, putting yourself in that perspective, a difference from watching a movie today versus versus being there when you like the people that took the photographs to document a lot of that, those wouldn’t be photographs that you’re parents and grandparents would have had access to because they were taken by the people doing a lot of it.

00:19:43:12 – 00:19:53:06
Dan LeFebvre
So it’s not something that they’re going to show. So I was very curious how that story then survives despite trying to be suppressed.

00:19:53:09 – 00:20:12:02
Robert Wolf
Yeah. No, you’re right. I mean, but very, very little, belongings left over, from my dad’s side of the family. My mom saved a lot of photographs, and somehow they were preserved, by my mom. So it was a little less harrowing. My mom was in hiding, you know, with her mom, grandma, uncle, grandfather who’s different, you know, on farms and sometimes in Budapest.

00:20:12:02 – 00:20:35:14
Robert Wolf
So she was able to preserve more things. And as a and she also was into genealogy. And I wish I followed it a little bit more, but I do at least have back to World War one. I can’t go back there beyond that. But no, it’s unimaginable. The fear that my mom must add in hiding to and and the fear my dad must have had every day competing and starving and and doing forced labor for hours from, you know, dawn to dusk.

00:20:35:16 – 00:20:52:07
Robert Wolf
Can’t. I can’t imagine it. So, the reality and also photographs. So the Nazis were they took a lot of photographs. They, they sent them home to their families, let them know what they’re doing. And I have a collection of about 18,000 photos on my phone, and some of them are exceptionally disturbing. The last guy surviving in Vilna.

00:20:52:09 – 00:21:18:00
Robert Wolf
They’re about to kill him, and he’s surrounded by, mostly Nazi, officers. And there’s a gun pointed aside, and he knows he’s next. Reminds a little Schindler to you, but he’s the last survivor. They’re a very disturbing photo. I haven’t shared it because they’ll probably kick me out of X and meta and LinkedIn. If I were, were to, the, you know, the burning synagogue is another one, the smashed in homes, the burning homes, one disturbing one.

00:21:18:05 – 00:21:40:09
Robert Wolf
Well, they’re marching off the Jewish people. And I’m thinking, well, who’s taken a picture of all of this and not helping? You know, and these people lived in fear, of course. Another, disturbing photo. I’ve got some from juror. My dad’s home town. Very, very few, very few available. Another one is Kristallnacht. Whether the business, the glass is all broken up and the lady’s walking by the business smiling, I mean, I.

00:21:40:10 – 00:22:00:02
Robert Wolf
How do you smile when she got what? Are you, Jewish? You’re not smiling. If you’re Christian, you smiling, then, Well, I, I guess I know what party you’re in. You’re in the Nazi party or the Christmas party are very sadistic. Some and Christians were afraid for their lives, too. So the ones that helped the Jewish people or the gays, you know, almost sexual, LGBTQ, disabled, they’re there to be loud.

00:22:00:02 – 00:22:15:03
Robert Wolf
It, including guys like Schindler and Raoul Wallenberg is another one that comes to mind. So a lot going on. I can’t imagine being so remote and, and, secluded from the truth, let alone the news.

00:22:15:06 – 00:22:50:28
Dan LeFebvre
If we shift back to the movies you mentioned life is beautiful, and that’s another movie I want to talk about. That one starts in 1939, just after the annexation of Austria. And it follows the story of how life changes around a Jewish man named Guido before and during the rise of fascism in Italy. And the movie, it starts off with everyday life, but one of the key differences between life is Beautiful and the Sound of Music that we talked about before is that Life Is Beautiful shows how life changes for the main character because he’s an Italian Jewish man, whereas the Von Trapp family in the sound of Music, they’re not so well.

00:22:50:28 – 00:23:12:22
Dan LeFebvre
I, I we see little signs here and there and Sound of Music. We can see the signs in life and beautiful. Life is beautiful. Those signs are clearly the rise of anti-Semitism. They’re going on in Italy now. In particular, there was a scene where Guido pretended to be an inspector of Rome teaching children in school how they are pure Aryan, the superior race.

00:23:12:25 – 00:23:34:00
Dan LeFebvre
He doesn’t have very comical way in the movie, similar to later in the movie, when Guido’s young son just reads a sign in business window that says no Jews or dogs, and Guido makes a joke about there’s just saying. There’s also a drug store nearby saying that I’m not going to let Chinese in with kangaroo. Right. And he’s making a joke out of out of this very serious situation.

00:23:34:03 – 00:23:49:21
Dan LeFebvre
And that storyline in like Life Is Beautiful is a fictional one. Guido is not a real person, but how old do you think life is beautiful? Did showing signs of anti-Semitism slowly growing in everyday life before the outbreak of World War two?

00:23:49:24 – 00:24:06:05
Robert Wolf
Great question. I mean, that’s an our answer, but fantastic movie. Beautifully done. The cinematography is outstanding. I’m glad you mentioned that scene, because to me, that’s the turning point in the movie. The better part of the first half of the movie is about It’s a Beautiful Life. It’s a wonder it’s not It’s a Wonderful Life.

00:24:06:05 – 00:24:27:20
Robert Wolf
That’s a different, fantastic movie, too. But life is beautiful there. He falls in love with this lady. He’s on the bicycle. It’s a lot of humor. I mean, a lot of humor in that movie. Even to the end. And, you know, it’s admirable how he hides the truth from his son throughout, but, yeah, that’s the turning point in the movies when he’s up there talking about the the perfect race or our rewards it.

00:24:27:27 – 00:24:45:01
Robert Wolf
And then the poor, his relatives horse getting painted, I think was green and purple. I forget the color. Maybe green. That’s good. And. Yeah. And and that’s the turning point there. And then all of a sudden, boom, they’re, they’re in prison and they’re going off to, to concentration camps, different some different things.

00:24:45:09 – 00:25:04:29
Robert Wolf
Some of the similarities with my, my parent, they don’t talk about women that much, but both that movie and similar, the, the women, the women guards, especially at Auschwitz and then in these concentration camps were to me more sadistic and more brutal to the prisoners than, than otherwise. Interestingly, a lot of Nazis, the people that were guarding them were the Germans, the Nazis.

00:25:04:29 – 00:25:22:27
Robert Wolf
So where were the Italians? That’s that’s a little bit different than Hungary, I think, because the Hungarians were the ones who keep an eye on the force. Laborers, and child, my dad’s parents were taken from their home. That was, that was a Nazi. Blue striped pajamas. Interesting. It’s a, you know, we don’t know what color stripes they have in general because black and white movie, but it’s blue stripes.

00:25:22:27 – 00:25:39:21
Robert Wolf
But we all know that, you know, outfits in other places, they were, red stripes. So that was, another thing that, that was those was a familiar, but, or different, I should say. I thought, one thing similar with the both of those movies is the language was a little fast for me. It’s in subtitles.

00:25:39:24 – 00:25:56:13
Robert Wolf
Well, I think they just talked a little bit faster. Was a little. Because, you know, we can read fast, but it just won’t have the pace or the how they talk. Maybe at the very beginning, speed it up because it makes the humor, the humor scenes a little more humorous, so to say, so to speak. But, yeah, they kind of slow that down a little bit, too.

00:25:56:15 – 00:26:12:21
Robert Wolf
What else are we? Yeah. I mean, that’s, just a fact. The met the end was unbelievable. The way the they say, do they want or try? They’re playing in a game to win a tank and they won. You know, the kid survives, but he doesn’t. The mom survives. Was a Dora. And, you know, of course you gets shot.

00:26:12:23 – 00:26:31:18
Robert Wolf
He gets shot for warning. The ladies, including his wife, as are being hauled away in a truck. So another thing that may not be realistic is the son and the father in the same bunk. Because the kids were separated, like in Auschwitz and other places, and like a and Schindler, you know, the kids are all the way, in bundles.

00:26:31:18 – 00:26:52:14
Robert Wolf
And boy, are the parents freaking. They’re all running towards the fences and trying to follow the trucks and talk about learned helplessness and senior kids being all the way to who knows where. So that part may not have been as realistic. But yeah, it was such a well-done movie. And, and I don’t know that much about the Italian history in, in World War Two, so that’s that.

00:26:52:14 – 00:27:11:10
Robert Wolf
But comparing what you to the other movie and to what I’ve read and done, and learned about pretty realistic, I mean, in their own way. Obviously not every concentration camps will be the same. Not a forced labor camps going to be the same. The different guards, different, food supply, who knows? Different amounts of sadism.

00:27:11:12 – 00:27:21:00
Robert Wolf
It’s people to take orders and people that delight in torturing others. And that’s so hard to put your arms around to. It’s just. I don’t know how people could be like that at all.

00:27:21:02 – 00:27:41:21
Dan LeFebvre
But you mentioned Schindler’s List, and whenever we think of movies that depict the Holocaust, that’s probably the first one that does come to mind. In that movie, we see what life is like in the Jewish ghetto. Of course, Schindler’s List depicts the ghetto in Krakow, Poland, but your grandparents were forced to move to another Nazi controlled Jewish ghetto in your Hungary.

00:27:41:23 – 00:27:44:15
Dan LeFebvre
I’m probably mispronouncing that, but.

00:27:44:18 – 00:27:49:18
Robert Wolf
My Hungarians not so. They never taught me, so I. It’s fine. That was their shooting around which.

00:27:49:20 – 00:27:57:21
Dan LeFebvre
But based on the research that you did for your book, were there similarities to what we see in Schindler’s List and in the ghetto there, and what your grandparents dealt with?

00:27:57:24 – 00:28:19:27
Robert Wolf
Many, many, many. First, I want to talk about, so many. I mean, unfortunately, the movie was in black and white, but the cinematography in that movie is unbelievable. Like I said, they talk a little fast, especially when they’re talking about people’s names a little fast for me, some of the conversation, but, amazing. Some overlap when when they’re taken to Auschwitz, we don’t know if it’s accidentally or if it’s on purpose.

00:28:20:04 – 00:28:37:05
Robert Wolf
And they put them in the chamber and they think that that’s it. The gas chamber and the relief showers. I can picture my mom, my my grandmother, in the in the gas chamber. And, of course, when they’re on trains, when I visit Holocaust museums, when I do book talks, book lectures, I can’t even go into the I.

00:28:37:05 – 00:29:01:10
Robert Wolf
It’s hard to even look in the train, let alone go in the train just because. Just because that imagery. So, so that resonates. The dramatic irony. I guess I can get that, in a minute, but, the random shooting. Okay, so dramatic irony. I’m going to mention the three things where I well, first of all, the turning point is when they’re horseback riding and they’re randomly shooting all the people in the ghetto, the people that stayed, the people that that tried to hide very, very sad scene.

00:29:01:10 – 00:29:18:21
Robert Wolf
Because every. And you know, another thing that’s not talked about is pets. You know, how many did the pets get left behind and the pets get killed. And we know in, life is beautiful. There’s a little kitten, is strolling around the, the clothes that were stolen. Another thing. And I’m going to go back to the dramatic irony, another thing that resonates.

00:29:18:24 – 00:29:35:21
Robert Wolf
With all of it is the stolen luggage. They bring your goods, leave them here, and they’ll come. They will arrive. Big deception. And when my dad’s parents were all to Auschwitz, it was to be they were going to go to forest or farm, plant flowers, trees. Do you know, do, work on the foliage? That’s what.

00:29:35:21 – 00:29:53:15
Robert Wolf
That’s how they were to see. And they end up going to Auschwitz. So. So three points of dramatic irony, not necessarily related to my, my dad, but one is actually. So when, the, engineer they’re building the they’re constructing the building and the engineer comes up to, I think it’s almond goes, I don’t know if I’m pronouncing or I’m on both.

00:29:53:15 – 00:30:09:27
Robert Wolf
He’s the I think he’s a lieutenant, but he’s the most sadistic guy around. And, she says to me now, the structure is not sound, and we need to do this and maybe even start again. And, what does he say? We are not going to argue with these people. And and then he asks the guy shooter, shooter.

00:30:09:27 – 00:30:28:01
Robert Wolf
And it’s one of the few scenes where somebody gets shot and it’s not him doing it. So amazingly enough. And then the irony is that he decides to he changes his mind and, and decides to, to take it down and start all over again. Another irony was, the the lady that comes to Schindler, I don’t know if that was Helen Hirsch.

00:30:28:04 – 00:30:50:13
Robert Wolf
Helen, her hair, shoes, how to pronounce it. I don’t know if it’s her or the other one, but she comes to Schindler and says, can you get my parents into this? Into the factory here? And he says, you know, he’s practically screaming at her, saying, no, I can’t save everybody this and that and that. And then the guy escapes from the camp and, and just, randomly shoots 25 guys and then just Clarkston.

00:30:50:13 – 00:31:23:23
Robert Wolf
If I’m pronouncing Sharon I love, they really did their best trying to do the correct pronunciation and I think an accurate job. But stern tells Schindler that, you know, 25 people died. So Schindler, goes out of his way to bring in, the lady’s parents, which is which is pretty cool, too. I mean, and, so the other irony and oh, that resonates with my dad in the forced labor camp where, an officer would get drunk and some, some little piece of malfeasance, like somebody chirping a word or or moving in the line, and the guy gets past and he’s,

00:31:23:25 – 00:31:40:18
Robert Wolf
And he’s got the he’s got the gun. And, you threatened to shoot every tense man, in his drunk, in his drunk, state, and, in the end, doesn’t. But imagine the fear. You know, you dad, it can seem like that. And everybody else counting 1 to 1 through ten, you know, every 10th man they’re going to kill.

00:31:40:20 – 00:31:58:01
Robert Wolf
And, And the guy does that, too. He’s got the whole line of the men, and he shoots the guy with the, with the, I don’t remember. It’s a gun shot. I think it was a, shotgun. And then they shoot him in the head and and that, like, that scene is so vivid. The way that was bleeding, it would’ve been even more so in color.

00:31:58:04 – 00:32:16:22
Robert Wolf
But the irony there is the same thing. Just like when he randomly shoots the 25 men and, also the one person, and then he says, who’s, you know, who’s next? And then the kid smart enough to step forward and said, you know, you who did this? Who’s the one who created the malfeasance? And the kid points at the dead guy and probably saved a lot of lives, just by doing that.

00:32:16:22 – 00:32:36:01
Robert Wolf
So that’s more irony. And then and, and comparable with my dad had to go through, you know, random threaten to be killed randomly and thank God, they, they didn’t carry that out. The other piece of irony, which is almost redemption itself, is when, the I think it was the rabbi, was one of the older men making the parts, and his productivity was on the low side that compared it.

00:32:36:01 – 00:32:52:17
Robert Wolf
You know, it took some a minute to make the part, which is where you got so few partially take him out to shoot him and his gun jams and, you know, his backup gun jams, and he gets a gun from his, mother, the fellow officers and or soldiers, I don’t remember. It was an officer. And that gun jams and there’s 15 or 20 clicks.

00:32:52:19 – 00:33:08:03
Robert Wolf
We shoot this guy, and the poor guy’s got his neck going down. He knows he’s going to die any second. It reminds me of that, the Vilna, the Vilna photograph. And then he ends up just sitting with the butt of the gun and and lets him live. Imagine going through that kind of trauma and not having PTSD.

00:33:08:05 – 00:33:23:13
Robert Wolf
It’s amazing. But the irony is, when they hang golf, they have a trouble date. They’ve got him by the rope, but they have trouble checking out those. The step stool underneath him, it takes some at least like a half a minute. They can’t do it in the guy. So that’s a little bit of redemption too. But, more dramatic irony.

00:33:23:13 – 00:33:42:17
Robert Wolf
So I it’s a fantastically bad movie. And and so, so similar in in his point, you know, the trains and the, or the, forced labor and, you know, we see forced labor, of course, in concentration camps to sometimes women, sometimes men. We don’t talk about much about forced labor in, with women in our story.

00:33:42:17 – 00:33:48:08
Robert Wolf
But lately I’ve been taught and enlightened about that part, that part of it as well.

00:33:48:10 – 00:34:06:19
Dan LeFebvre
Something that we don’t see in Schindler’s List much is, is how others in the city reacted to the ghetto being set up and the Nazis moving the Jews into it. How did the civilians in and around Europe react to the Jewish ghetto being established for when your your grandparents were there?

00:34:06:21 – 00:34:23:12
Robert Wolf
Well, once they were in the ghetto, they had no access to the outside world. They had limited food, limited medical supplies and my dad, being a dentist, brought what he had. But it wasn’t enough. And ultimately it was to carry him off to Auschwitz to kill them. Most of them immediately, unfortunately. So I don’t think they had much time to even think about it.

00:34:23:12 – 00:34:48:26
Robert Wolf
But during, I’ll say this, that, but they were shunned. No doubt it was hard to go out shopping without being, bullied or picked on or even mugged. We talk about that in the or the fear of it. And also when my, my dad and his friend Frank were out on leave or whatever it was in town, or in that they were on camp, for one thing they didn’t have, then my dad needed a haircut.

00:34:48:26 – 00:35:06:12
Robert Wolf
And if you remember that scene, the anti-Semitic barber. But, they had the yellow bands was ridiculous hats that they had to wear and yellow bit unarmed paramilitary. And yeah, a couple what beautiful women walk by and they, they, they won’t even look at them. And believe me, the matter, they’re dying to meet A and B with a a warm blooded girl.

00:35:06:12 – 00:35:26:18
Robert Wolf
And it just didn’t happen. You were shunned. So, in its learned helplessness. I mean, people feared for their lives, for sure. And, they did what they were told, and and it’s scary stuff. So, and then. Oh, that remind me of another scene where in Schindler, the young girl, is yelling out, Goodbye Jews, goodbye Jews!

00:35:26:18 – 00:35:44:17
Robert Wolf
And, it’s awful to see that, because I think it reminds me of, what we just talked about. The Christians turning on the Jews. It also reminds me of what’s going on in Gaza at the, these children are being educated to hate Jewish people, hate Israel, hate Americans. And it’s that’s got to stop. That really has to stop.

00:35:44:20 – 00:36:03:18
Dan LeFebvre
There is a scene in in Schindler’s List where we see the Nazis going in there clearing everyone out of the ghetto, to take them to the concentration camps. You talked a little bit about that in the movie. The camps they take them to first is off, and then later in the movie we see Auschwitz, which you mentioned, and we’ll talk about Auschwitz in a moment, because I know your grandparents were there.

00:36:03:18 – 00:36:22:07
Dan LeFebvre
But according to Schindler’s List, seeing the brutality of the Nazi soldiers during the liquidation of the ghetto, that’s what leads Liam Neeson’s version of Oskar Schindler to start working with one of his employees. You mentioned him earlier. Is Doc Stern, Ben Kingsley’s character, to hire more and more Jews to help save them from being murdered by the Nazis.

00:36:22:09 – 00:36:36:13
Dan LeFebvre
Were there any transformational points like this for the civilians in Darfur in Hungary, where they started to change their minds about what they’re seeing? But the brutality of the Nazis, like, we kind of start seeing it happening in Schindler’s List with Oskar Schindler.

00:36:36:16 – 00:36:52:09
Robert Wolf
Well, great point. You know, that’s the turning point of that movie. If I haven’t already mentioned, when they’re horseback riding. Yeah, they’re looking down at that. One thing that resonates, too, is, the humiliation, the the general, the the men, the rabbis, you know, religious with the pious ain’t undercutting it. And they’re cutting their hair and laughing.

00:36:52:15 – 00:37:11:18
Robert Wolf
So that kind of humiliation, was there so humiliation we don’t talk about, as much. I think the Aryans were. And Hungary gets mentioned later that they were bringing in Hungarians, to one of the camps late, later in the movie. And that was true later in time, during at least a couple of years later. But that humiliation really, really resonates.

00:37:11:18 – 00:37:30:24
Robert Wolf
Well, what else is it? Yeah. The marching, the other humiliation is that, Gough has his own personal woman slave that he ends up abusing y’all. She’s. She goes the food and probably sex. Well, there is there is a sex scene or two in there. And of course, at the end he beats her up and but she survives.

00:37:30:27 – 00:37:46:29
Robert Wolf
But he beats her up and it’s drunk or whatever. It’s the wine cellar. I basically remember that scene, but, humiliation is a big thing about it. So, and then, of course, starvation is another one thing that resonates people to didn’t have food to eat. There was no there was no trade. There was nothing coming in. So shunned is the best word.

00:37:46:29 – 00:38:08:15
Robert Wolf
And like we said before, the the witness, the witness was the next victim. I also remember, golf shooting randomly at people that were sitting down and taking a break. So, Oh, and know the dramatic irony. He has a kid cleaning out his bathtub, and he’s trying to put the saddle on his horse. I don’t know if it’s the same kid, but, the guy that the kid that can’t put the kettle on the horse properly.

00:38:08:17 – 00:38:25:12
Robert Wolf
It’s right after Schindler talks about power and the power of the power, if you can forgive. And he remembers that for a while. So he forgives the kid, for the for the saddle. But then when he screws up using the wrong material to clean his bathtub, he ends up shooting him. And, it’s just, What a sadistic guy.

00:38:25:12 – 00:38:40:24
Robert Wolf
I mean, I was a guy who deserved to be executed without, without trial. I mean, so many witnesses. So, Yeah, that whole process, of course, it’s never going to be the same at every camp, but what? People running around in fear that they might get shot or killed, or if they take a break, they’re going to get killed.

00:38:41:02 – 00:38:48:14
Robert Wolf
You can’t. It’s just, some furthermore that what people had to think in their minds and stay strong while they’re doing it.

00:38:48:17 – 00:39:11:18
Dan LeFebvre
That those, those types of things are, like you said, unfathomable. Like it’s I, it’s what I’m trying to unravel. A lot of this. But, you know, in our discussion here, but also there are just some things like we there’s only so much that we can do as we’re talking here in this conversation that just it’s not. It will never be enough.

00:39:11:18 – 00:39:20:03
Dan LeFebvre
I mean, there’s to to to tell the true story of it. I mean, it’s yeah, I’ve tried to have words, but yeah, I can’t even do that.

00:39:20:10 – 00:39:42:08
Robert Wolf
Well, it was talk about Christians. You know, if we had Hamas, we had Hamas tanks and armored armored cars, guns, tanks, then that horrible flag, you know, marched in the streets here and, and, Florida or where you’re from, Oklahoma. God bless, the heartland. We would be thinking different then, it would affect us more then we would have.

00:39:42:10 – 00:40:03:26
Robert Wolf
We’d have a lot more fear. Yeah, but it’s it’s patchy areas. It’s Canada, Australia, parts of the U.S anti-Semitic. So it’s not it’s not directly in our face. But that’s why I’m doing this is so that it doesn’t happen. I mean, that’s why, 99% of us are good people. 99% of us believe in work, family, occasional vacation, religion, and if possible, whatever the freedom to vote, freedom speech.

00:40:03:29 – 00:40:26:01
Robert Wolf
Is that 1% or less that the ruins are for everybody and not just Hamas, you know, Osama bin laden and Saddam Hussein? Hitler, Pol Pot, the list goes on and on. We can counteract with better names Jesus, Moses, Noah, MLK, Gandhi, that. So there’s a nice there’s a balance there. But, we’re still talking about hate and war rather than these other guys.

00:40:26:01 – 00:40:41:27
Robert Wolf
I mean, unless you’re a staunch Christian or Jewish or Muslim, I don’t think a lot I meant for this to happen. Where? I don’t know, I don’t know much about the Muslim religion, but I do have Muslim friends, and they’re peaceful, and, So what’s going. I mean, I can’t get my arms around it. And, the thing about this book.

00:40:42:01 – 00:40:59:15
Robert Wolf
Yeah. And the story is my parents knew that it would be necessary to share it because they didn’t think that the hate and the Jewish scapegoating issue would go away. And each year they’re right, 60, 80 on our years. And the disturbing part is people find different ways to maim and torture, punish, kill each other. And it’s really sad.

00:40:59:15 – 00:41:16:27
Robert Wolf
And I just I can’t feel it because as a radiologist, we’re into preservation of life. The beauty of the human body, the beauty of the anatomy, the cell and all this training to go through it. There’s no room for racism or prejudice in my field. But these people would just. They would think nothing about chopping your head off or killing somebody instantly.

00:41:17:00 – 00:41:37:07
Robert Wolf
No respect for human life. And I can’t wrap my my hands around that. It’s just not that. It’s not what I was built for. And so we educate, we try to spread the word. We do podcasts, we do, book talks, book presentations, TV interviews, in some cases radio. And, we get the point across while sharing good stories, amazing stories throughout.

00:41:37:07 – 00:42:05:13
Dan LeFebvre
A lot of if you go back to Schindler’s List throughout a lot of that movie, it it does recreate the I mentioned your passion and and Auschwitz and where there were hundreds of thousands of people that were murdered. And unfortunately, that number also includes your grandparents, which is a very moving story told in the book. I think a lot of people base their knowledge of concentration camps today on what we see in movies like Schindler’s List.

00:42:05:15 – 00:42:23:23
Dan LeFebvre
But I remember the story of like The Latrine. And in your book, we don’t ever see in the movie Schindler’s List at all. So there’s obviously other things there that we don’t we’re not going to see in the movie. But based on what you know of your grandparents experience, how well do you think Schindler’s List does capturing the horrors of Auschwitz?

00:42:23:26 – 00:42:44:19
Robert Wolf
I think it’s amazing. Like I said, the cinematography is amazing. The storyline and the brutality. We’ll go back to the women guards that were were tougher than one thing that resonates. So, I mean, I don’t like spoiling too meaning, but my my dad’s a miracle. And my dad found out what happened to his parents. An eyewitness who happened to survive Auschwitz and meet, meet up with him in his hometown of Jura.

00:42:44:19 – 00:43:06:28
Robert Wolf
I mean, all of those. That’s a miracle after miracle that that happened. But, Yeah, being in the train reminded me of, my my my grandmother, the grandparents I never met, but my grandmother, was an orphan, a little girl orphan. And they went straight to the chamber. So, and actually, when I did that, when I first did this project, turning it from autobiography to biography, I had to walk away from from the book.

00:43:06:28 – 00:43:25:24
Robert Wolf
I had to walk away from the story for at least a week, ten days, because it profoundly affected me. So, so. And, you know, I hate to say this, but fortunately, she didn’t have to it. Her life didn’t have to linger on for months, months at a time. And where you’re starving and you’re trapped and you were on your forced labor, and you don’t know when your last day is going to be, Schindler.

00:43:25:24 – 00:43:40:00
Robert Wolf
I think they capture all of that pretty well. I mean, everybody’s going to have a different story. But it didn’t go well. And then another thing that resonates is my my grandfather, who was a dentist who told the the, the intake people at the intake that he was a dentist was a doctor, and he might be useful.

00:43:40:06 – 00:43:55:27
Robert Wolf
So they assign him to cleaning latrines, and we don’t see that in Schindler. But we sure see all these kids hiding in Auschwitz, including the one that you get shut out by every other letter, every other kid. And then he’s up, he ends up diving into the feces and he hides in the latrine or whatever you want.

00:43:56:04 – 00:44:07:07
Robert Wolf
It’s disgusting. I mean, I can’t imagine what was the movie with the kid from India who does the same thing. He ends up diving into the, into the feces, and it just, the. Joe, remember that movie?

00:44:07:07 – 00:44:07:24
Dan LeFebvre
Yes.

00:44:07:29 – 00:44:10:07
Robert Wolf
And he’s on jeopardy or something like.

00:44:10:09 – 00:44:11:14
Dan LeFebvre
Slumdog Millionaire.

00:44:11:16 – 00:44:15:27
Robert Wolf
Yes. Very good. Thank you. I knew you were. No, you got a brilliant memory. I can.

00:44:15:27 – 00:44:17:01
Dan LeFebvre
Go on.

00:44:17:03 – 00:44:35:10
Robert Wolf
And that’s the. Yeah. That’s good. I mean, I need more people like you helped me with the message. This is why we’re doing this, too. But, talking about great movies and and a story that could be a movie. At least some people say that, so, so that resonate. Yeah. And then. So these were I went by at least my, my dad’s parents, didn’t have to endure all that.

00:44:35:12 – 00:44:51:20
Robert Wolf
I mean, if you’ve ever fasted just one day without food, it’s tough enough. I can’t imagine week after week, we would bury little food. And, you know, you’ve seen the pictures of the people that are skin and bones. Those that were lucky enough to survive. But, what a what a terrible life. They must have adapted and they had to live then.

00:44:51:22 – 00:44:56:13
Dan LeFebvre
Yeah, it goes back to the words don’t really do it justice to to.

00:44:56:15 – 00:45:13:09
Robert Wolf
Not only that that personal. It’s the light. The light. So. So my dad’s father died probably of cholera week from the feces, you know. So that was, but there’s tuberculosis. There’s lice. My dad had a foot infection, when he was in, when he was forced labor camp, and he had lice a couple times. He had hepatitis.

00:45:13:09 – 00:45:30:10
Robert Wolf
He had a bad back. He had a lot going on. And then. And then recently talking about women in forced labor camps. There’s this guy in England, super nice and super dedicated to what we’re doing. He’s turning black and white photos into color photos, and he’s doing a good job, and he’s trying to get financial support for that.

00:45:30:12 – 00:45:48:13
Robert Wolf
But he did a, it was a short it was a short little documentary, maybe 2 or 3 minutes, maybe five, with conversion from black and white to color. And it was the forced labor. The women forced laborers from Hungary. And a lot of them had gangrene. They had gangrenous legs and gangrenous feet. And they actually, they depicted, what their skin look like.

00:45:48:13 – 00:46:12:14
Robert Wolf
And it’s brutal that. So, you know, you’d never think of gangrene. I mean, so a lot of health issues besides the starvation and lack of water to, of course, dehydration and, you know, electrolytes going to be off and, and, muscle mass goes and eventually you die because you’re, you’re malnourished. So I’m sure many, many people died from, I don’t know the exact numbers, but malnourishment, I’m sure, was not just getting shot or put in the gas chambers.

00:46:12:14 – 00:46:33:06
Robert Wolf
Just. Or other sickness, malnourishment, sickness. It’s just too much. It’s too much to think about. It’s 200. It is. And that need doesn’t need to happen. And it also resonates with Gaza. It with what’s the prisoners that are still there? I can’t imagine even if they released them today, the ones that are still alive, just talk about PTSD, talk about trying to overcome that kind of trauma, not knowing when your last day is.

00:46:33:06 – 00:46:38:03
Robert Wolf
Mostly that’s that’s the big thing, the wait and the boredom and, horror fun.

00:46:38:05 – 00:46:49:06
Dan LeFebvre
If we shift back to the movie, there’s, we’re talking about Schindler’s List, and that’s going to be the most popular movie about someone saving Jewish lives during the Holocaust. But it’s not the.

00:46:49:08 – 00:46:56:08
Robert Wolf
The Ten Commandments. Well, I gotta say, that’s a fantastic movie, too. But, I don’t mean. Sorry to interrupt. Yes.

00:46:56:09 – 00:47:01:15
Dan LeFebvre
No no no no no, that’s a that’s a classic a little bit outside the time frame that we’re talking about now.

00:47:01:15 – 00:47:07:18
Robert Wolf
And I’m kidding then Fiddler on the roof was another one. But it was a Rorschach. But, you know, that was a lot of anti-Semitism there too. But go ahead. I’m sorry.

00:47:07:18 – 00:47:41:02
Dan LeFebvre
I know you’re there’s another movie, called walking with the enemy about a Hungarian Jew named Ella Cohen, who he dresses up in an SS uniform to help rescue other Jews. Now, Ella Cohen is another fictional character, but he is based on a real person. Again, with with pronunciation. I believe it’s, Pincus Rosenbaum. He was disguised. He disguised himself in uniforms of the SS, the Hungarian Arrow Cross, which you mentioned earlier, the the Hungarian Lavant and the with the purpose of of saving, I believe hundreds of Jews.

00:47:41:04 – 00:47:51:15
Dan LeFebvre
During your research, did you come across other stories like Oskar Schindler or like Rosenbaum, of people who risked their lives to save the lives of others?

00:47:51:18 – 00:48:11:04
Robert Wolf
Raoul Wallenberg, my my, my dad and his friend Frank had those, passes, those forged papers. And he did, I don’t know, hundreds, thousands of them to help save people. Wallenberg was from Sweden, if I’m not mistaken. And I believe he was Jewish, but fantastic what he did. You going back to Schindler real quick is the way he laments.

00:48:11:04 – 00:48:26:23
Robert Wolf
You know this. Amongst all the murders he did no lamentation. You know. No. No sense of, of of, of mortality, no sense of, what’s the word I’m looking for? It just does. It doesn’t bother. And it doesn’t affect you.

00:48:26:25 – 00:48:29:21
Dan LeFebvre
No sense of decency. I mean, humanity, like Mr..

00:48:29:25 – 00:48:49:17
Robert Wolf
Schindler saving all these people. And he’s still got his car and he’s still got, like, enough jewelry or whatever. Yet on on him, he used his rings and he still your e remorse about. That’s the what I was and will remark you remorse is he elements about how he could have saved another eight or 10 or 12 Jewish people and and they had to console him because of that.

00:48:49:17 – 00:49:19:28
Robert Wolf
He cries, he breaks down. It’s a real it’s a real irony too. So, Yeah, but, but so he helps. So like Wallenberg, probably countless, Christian people, the Christians out, my dad, I mean, he wouldn’t survive without a lot of Christian help. Now, these aren’t famous stories, but being able to go to a casino, and hide in a casino, hide in a, a nunnery or, nursing home, with demented people and and, where else did he, his friend, hiding in a haberdashery and a hatbox, that kind of thing.

00:49:19:28 – 00:49:36:08
Robert Wolf
A lot of Christians help them. And then even after that, during communist Hungary, my my dad was getting, a few shekels sent, from Israel, from my mother’s mother and stepfather at this point, who was a Marky Mark in Israel, a consulate to Hungary. So they’d sneak them a few shekels, to, to this place in Budapest.

00:49:36:08 – 00:49:53:03
Robert Wolf
And my dad, it was a cloak and dagger story, the way my dad had to weave in and out of buildings to sneak to get that money, because he could have been in prison for that, too. So, a lot of people helped Jewish and Christian. Those that could a lot didn’t, again, fear for their lives. Not a lot of famous, well, here’s one actually.

00:49:53:03 – 00:50:14:15
Robert Wolf
Sorry. In communist Hungary, though, it’s not. My parents had an illegal Jewish wedding in 1953. My mom’s uncle, what? He sponsored that in his home. And like I say, it was illegal, and KGB was there, so, and my parents, when my parents, were on their honeymoon, the. He got arrested. He was a surgeon, chief of surgery in a Budapest hospital.

00:50:14:18 – 00:50:30:28
Robert Wolf
And they Waldemar for 13 months tortured him and, try to get him to confess to the to the murder. I think it was Wallenberg, if I’m not mistaken. So. And he wouldn’t he wouldn’t do it. And he was he came back a broken man, and obviously. And then they put him out in some rural clinic or something.

00:50:31:00 – 00:50:55:22
Robert Wolf
He ended up, ironically, in Sweden, where he had a successful career, and, solo daughter Susie, who was the last survivor in my book and just died in Jerusalem. Couple that soon after the attacks. 12 or 7. So she was comatose at the time and long standing on. And so as bad as that was, and it was great busier the year before, at least enough to know, about what was happening in Gaza and Israel.

00:50:55:22 – 00:51:22:01
Robert Wolf
So, all of them rest in peace. But yeah, so there’s famous and there’s not so famous in the autobiography. My dad mentions Mengele, that that is that Mengele greeted his father. But, the research that we this was a lot of research in our book, multiple people, historians, but, Berenbaum, Michael Berenbaum, who was one of the professors who wrote a tremendous, testimonial to other professors, did too.

00:51:22:02 – 00:51:38:06
Robert Wolf
They’re all good. But he mentions that don’t mix up where we’re talking about an Auschwitz because he had been there. He knows the history. And so we we took out Mengele. But, it may well be. And this is speculation that my dad’s father met Mengele, and he was the one that appealed since he was a doctor, too.

00:51:38:08 – 00:51:54:27
Robert Wolf
He was brutal himself, right? I mean, taking our feelings and using, humans as, for experiments and all that. But, if it was him or whoever it was, I guess I can’t call it nice, but got him a week’s worth. Two weeks worth of life, even though that week was miserable. So there are people that,

00:51:54:29 – 00:52:04:00
Robert Wolf
Yeah, the circles there are overlapping circles, for sure. And, as soon as we are done, I’ll probably think a couple more or two, but, you never know. And that’s a great question.

00:52:04:02 – 00:52:23:15
Dan LeFebvre
I think it’s great to know that. I mean, there are the famous one. Oskar Schindler obviously is famous, but he’s famous because of the movie and and the book and the as well. But he wasn’t doing it for fame. And there’s, you know, a lot of these stories, like you’re talking about the they’re not well known now, but that’s not why they were doing it.

00:52:23:15 – 00:52:54:21
Dan LeFebvre
They were doing it to help fellow humans. And I think that’s that in and of itself is a little bit of a light in, you know, in this dark time of history where there’s all this going on. But there are some people that will help. And I I’m happy to hear that. Yes, there were others that even though we might not know their names and whoever’s listening to this may not know their names, but they were still hoping because it was the right thing to do, not because they wanted to get their name, you know, a movie made about them.

00:52:54:26 – 00:53:00:16
Dan LeFebvre
So that we’d be talking about them on a podcast later. But, you know, it’s just the right thing to do.

00:53:00:18 – 00:53:20:26
Robert Wolf
Yeah. No, it’s it’s very palpable. And, you know, you really identify with Schindler and you always have the it’s another ironic thing. You have the swastika. Yeah. The little swastika on a super all the time. But it was, it was this guys, you know, that was it. But you’re right. He just did it out of, the love for human beings and and that that goes for Moses and that goes for Jesus and Gandhi and all these other former leaders.

00:53:20:26 – 00:53:35:03
Robert Wolf
And, of course they got some recognition, of course. But, and another one that comes to mind is Captain Khomeini. If you remember his, he’s the one who got them the forged papers. And, and I believe if I did my memory short, I’m going through my book again. You have to. Every so often. There’s never all the details.

00:53:35:11 – 00:53:54:17
Robert Wolf
But, he might have been Jewish, but since he was a big guy in the military, he had, privileges. So he helped my dad out to more than once, too. So that was another one. You may have been Christian, maybe Jewish, but, I’m glad that my parents didn’t know more famous people because. Or my grandparents, I should say, because, that to me, been more apt to be killed.

00:53:54:19 – 00:54:10:25
Robert Wolf
It didn’t matter anyway. But, if they lived in the out in the middle of nowhere, which Jer was, and it was a, pretty, very populated, industrial town. So, and that was it. They were they were in Transylvania first. And Albert. Julia, if I’m not pronouncing that right, might be I mean, if it was Spanish would be Albert.

00:54:10:27 – 00:54:42:04
Robert Wolf
Julia, I guess, or Julia it might be, but. Albert. Julia. So they they loved Mother Hungary, as do my parents. And, they decided to go back to George. So instead of living Transylvania. So. And that might have been an ill fated decision to my mom and dad. Love mother Hungary, too, by the way, and would have probably stayed if the Americans had taken over rather than the Soviets, because they had had enough with the two wars and, and and countless persecution, illegal weddings, torture, deaths and, deception.

00:54:42:04 – 00:54:58:18
Robert Wolf
You know, their, their colleagues and friends and fellow doctors were trying to get them to convert to the communist ideal. And my parents wouldn’t buy into that. And, and that state, the the Soviets, in their arrogance, called my dad not a real enemy. And that’s what they really were. They love Mother Hungary, but they weren’t going to stay.

00:54:58:21 – 00:55:13:17
Robert Wolf
My mom was a med school, by the way, to winning them. So. And dad was already in okay. And and he had to double down as a trauma surgeon during a revolution. So they’re both frontliners. And after that they said and they were closing the borders and people were leaving in droves. But they managed to get out.

00:55:13:21 – 00:55:19:13
Robert Wolf
That’s my dad’s fourth escape, which is they’re all harrowing, but, memorable for sure.

00:55:19:15 – 00:55:42:17
Dan LeFebvre
Right. Mentioning Hungary and, earlier I mentioned Ben Kingsley and Schindler’s List and that how that movie started in 1939. But Ben Kingsley is in another movie called walking with the enemy, and he plays another person that you mentioned, Regent Horthy, the Hungarian leader. That movie takes place in 1944, when the Germans finally occupy Hungary. And Regent Horthy doesn’t want to let the Nazis take the Jews.

00:55:42:17 – 00:55:58:02
Dan LeFebvre
So he’s trying to sign a deal with the Soviet Union to get the Nazis out of Hungary. But then in a group called Arrow Cross, which you had also mentioned earlier, takes control of Hungary up until the Red Army pushes the Nazis out of the during the siege of Budapest. This is all as far as the movie is concerned.

00:55:58:02 – 00:56:03:09
Dan LeFebvre
But what really happened with Hungarian, Polish artists during World War Two?

00:56:03:11 – 00:56:20:21
Robert Wolf
Oh well, that’s you. And you kind of said it yourself. I mean, you needed a guide. You needed it literally. So Horthy takes over after he was an admirable admiral in World War One. He takes over Hungary again. The Jews feel like he’s he’s not, friendly to the Jews, even though what if what you say is true, that might be the opposite.

00:56:20:21 – 00:56:23:24
Robert Wolf
But, kudos to him for for trying to prevent that.

00:56:23:26 – 00:56:26:25
Dan LeFebvre
Well, I was in the movie. I don’t know if it’s true or not, but that’s the way the movie presents.

00:56:26:25 – 00:56:40:06
Robert Wolf
Oh, yeah. Got to see the movie in and review the book and compare notes. There’s not a lot in the book about there’s a lot of history, but it’s it’s history light. I call it my coauthor, Janice. If it weren’t for her, I wouldn’t be here. She’s a fantastic writer, but helped me turn the book and something really special.

00:56:40:06 – 00:56:56:26
Robert Wolf
But, if you were a junior school, they had the red chair. There’s a white chair. You know, you didn’t have communism. It was in then. They’re trying to say communism is no good. They’re beating up people. They’re going door to door. And then, of course, the rise of fascism, the Nazis entering, the, entering Hungary.

00:56:56:26 – 00:57:27:26
Robert Wolf
So the political climate then was you did what the Nazis said or you’re screwed. You know, that was Hungary trying to fight Germany. It was horse horses versus tanks, you know. How does that let me know how that goes for you. Right. And then, finally 1944 or 45, you Arrow cross, tremendously anti-Semitic. In my, I, maybe like a Gestapo or KGB type thing, they were worse to the Jews and they went out of their way opposite of Schindler, where, you know, the last day of the war and all the guards you only day, that’s all the guards.

00:57:27:26 – 00:57:42:24
Robert Wolf
And, in with the, prisoners, the laborers, and, he openly invites them to, to do what they want with them. Kill them or not. Or you can go home to your families, he says, and they all even go, well, that’s not what it was like in Hungary that at the end of the war, they went out of their way to kill as many Hungarians as they could.

00:57:42:27 – 00:58:07:09
Robert Wolf
And we all know about this. The Danube River, 21,000 Jewish people were shot to death, in cold blood, without their clothes on in the winter. December 43rd, January 44th. And, so that’s, it’s complete. Opposite of Schindler and it’s very set. So that’s the politics then. And of course, communism takes over. And, you know, we get the Stalin years and, and they wouldn’t go away.

00:58:07:09 – 00:58:25:20
Robert Wolf
And the irony is, like if the Americans had one or the West, the allies, then I probably wouldn’t be here. And I’d probably been born and raised in Hungary and maybe got lucky enough to go to med school. But they they left for the U.S., so. And then obviously, the Soviet, the Red Army and Soviet stayed on for forever and ever and ever.

00:58:25:23 – 00:58:45:13
Robert Wolf
Maybe now it’s a little bit of a democracy, but I don’t know much about recent Hungarian politics. But what I’ve seen and heard, the, Orban is, is Putin’s puppet. And, I could see him doing land for people. Deal, without dropping out. And let’s listen on. Jared’s never got a break for 80, 100 years, the most the majority of the 20th century was.

00:58:45:20 – 00:59:03:23
Robert Wolf
And the sad thing is, Hungarian Jews were. Well, if we’re going to flash, flash back to before World War one, 1890s, you know, the gay 90s and all that, Hungarian Jews and Jews in Europe were well treated. They were well respected. And and that boy that that climate turned, between world War one, World War two and and beyond with the Communist.

00:59:03:23 – 00:59:21:27
Robert Wolf
So, so Stalin dies in 53. That was good news. Hungarian, because he was really brutal, and I and Hungary in 56, they have their revolution. And, it goes badly for them. And then the hard liners became even more so because they were clamping down on the citizens. They didn’t want people to revolt.

00:59:21:27 – 00:59:37:12
Robert Wolf
And and they almost they didn’t almost win, but they almost got the Soviets out of there. And then just something changed about it. But instead of less, it became more with all the tanks coming in. And, that’s something that my dad said to the were that the men that were driving the tanks were from the Far East.

00:59:37:12 – 00:59:55:04
Robert Wolf
They were from, I don’t think it was Malaysia, maybe Burma. But they thought they were in Egypt. They thought they were in the Sinai, the Sinai War in 56. But they weren’t. They were. They were in Hungary fighting. So, that’s that was an interesting little tidbit. So it’s kind of like, oh, sorry, the North Koreans, you know, going to fight with the Russians kind of sounds like that, right?

00:59:55:04 – 01:00:01:08
Robert Wolf
They, they, you know, they recruit, they recruit people from other countries. Well, World War II was all about that, too.

01:00:01:08 – 01:00:26:05
Dan LeFebvre
But you you mentioned World War One and even before World War One, and that lead right into the last movie that I want to talk to you about, today’s, 1999 film, epic film called sunshine. I know up until now we’ve mostly talked about World War Two, but sunshine focuses on three generations of characters, all played by Ray finds across generations of a family called the Sun Shines, a, Hungarian Jewish family.

01:00:26:11 – 01:00:44:23
Dan LeFebvre
And the movie goes from the end of the 19th century with Hungarian nationalism through World War One, World War Two, and then into the Hungarian Revolution in 1956. And the first generation of the movie we see refines version of ignite, Sun and Shine. He wants to be a judge, but to do that he has to change his last name to something.

01:00:44:23 – 01:01:03:18
Dan LeFebvre
According to the movie is more Hungarian, so he changes it to show where there pressure even before the rise of fascism. Because in the movie this is happening, you know, before World War one and 19th century, was there pressure for Hungarians to hide their Jewish heritage?

01:01:03:20 – 01:01:18:12
Robert Wolf
Yeah. I’m thank you for reminding me of that movie, because I’ve heard of it recently and I didn’t remember the title. So if you don’t mind, please email me that, because that’s something that sounds like. But it’s totally, it’s encountered distinction too. Oh, he was in Schindler. I mean, that that kind of, that kind of wants to be a judge.

01:01:18:18 – 01:01:37:27
Robert Wolf
And he’s an excellent actor, don’t get me wrong. But, and so is the guy that played Schindler, you know, Liam, Liam Neeson, and we back to Ben Kingsley. But yeah, my dad’s parents converted. They converted to Christianity, reluctantly, but they did. And, it was so he could practice dentistry and hide his heritage. And my dad’s mother hated it, and.

01:01:37:27 – 01:01:55:00
Robert Wolf
But they did. So, and I’m sure a lot of other Hungarian Jews did. I mean, I’ve read about it and heard that other Hungarian used it in it, and of course, hiding certain valuables, hiding radios, hiding your religion. That was a part of your heritage. And it’s horrible thing. Now, they weren’t that religious, but for the Orthodox Jew either.

01:01:55:00 – 01:02:14:14
Robert Wolf
Good luck having that up. And, until they got to Auschwitz and you weren’t allowed to practice religion or do anything, they shaved off all your hair, humiliated you, killed you, clowns too. Not just the religious were clowns. But they were fortunate enough to convert back. My. I’m a mr. Cronenberg. My dad’s father’s, his cousin, just turns up.

01:02:14:14 – 01:02:30:21
Robert Wolf
I forget how the circumstances of how they meet, but he’s he’s wealthy, and he helps him open up a private practice, and they’re in their home and, lends the money or whatever. Maybe if ghost money and we don’t really talk about how it’s returned, if at all. But he has to convert. They have to convert back to Judaism.

01:02:30:21 – 01:02:45:13
Robert Wolf
And as soon as they get that news, my dad’s mom’s taking the cross off the wall. And, not that they didn’t like Christians because most of their friends were Christians, no doubt. Because they didn’t always share in with the Jewish people, especially the Orthodox. So, and so they converted back. So it was a big sacrifice for them.

01:02:45:18 – 01:03:02:19
Robert Wolf
I can’t imagine converting to Christianity. I love Christianity, I think it’s great religion and theory. I think, that Christians have had a hard time over the last, you know, thousand, 2000 years in certain cases. The Bible talks about the Spanish Inquisition. We talk about the Crusades. So all of that, both at both ends of it. Right.

01:03:02:19 – 01:03:23:06
Robert Wolf
And also Muslims and Jews as well, too. So, yeah, a lot of sacrifices they had to make, to finally get a life going, finally having my dad, who grows up, not wealthy, but, you know, upper middle, grows up as a spoiled kid, ironically ends up forced labor and gets through that. But, so the 20s were kind of easy on them.

01:03:23:09 – 01:03:37:02
Robert Wolf
But, in between where during, during certain times they had to convert at the either. And then of course, you couldn’t if you didn’t wear your yellow star or a yellow band. In my dad’s case, in the forced labor, you’d be punished or shot for sure. You’ll.

01:03:37:05 – 01:04:00:04
Dan LeFebvre
Well, you might have already answered my my next question on that one, because in sunshine, the next generation is very finds plays the same. He, he plays different characters in each generation. So in the first generation refines, character is ignites, and he’s trying to become a judge. And then the next generation, once the child grows up, they have a younger, you know, different actor playing the younger version, and he grows up.

01:04:00:04 – 01:04:18:27
Dan LeFebvre
And it’s also a great find, you know? But this time he’s Adam Shaw. And in Adam’s timeline, this is during World War two, and he has to convert. He converts to Roman Catholicism because Jews aren’t allowed to join the fencing club, which is what he wants to do. But then in the movie, obviously that doesn’t work. They find out about his Jewish ancestry.

01:04:18:27 – 01:04:31:29
Dan LeFebvre
And so you can’t just convert. It doesn’t doesn’t really work. So would it be with the movie’s concept there be correct that switching religions wouldn’t work as far as the brutality of the Nazis to escape that?

01:04:32:02 – 01:04:51:13
Robert Wolf
Probably not. I mean, I don’t even know how people know who’s Jewish and who is. And I mean, I have no idea what’s happened once the traumas, on the door. I mean, I, you know, I don’t know how they, how they could masterfully and systematically find them all and exterminate them. But, you bring up a good point, because my dad, my dad’s father, was Jewish.

01:04:51:13 – 01:05:13:02
Robert Wolf
He lost a government job as a dentist. They he had to be, first of all, let them do part time. And then they laid him off and they said, you know, no pension, no benefits. And then ultimately laid off. We talked about the sign. No Jews or dogs. That was out there in Hungary, too. So you weren’t allowed to fencing, you know, certain, bars, restaurants, places of worship, places of business.

01:05:13:02 – 01:05:27:14
Robert Wolf
So Jews weren’t allowed to go to. So and that same sign that we, we talk about in, life was beautiful and, also my dad was not allowed to be on the swim team because he was Jewish. And, my dad loved to swim. I was a pretty good swimmer in high school. I guess I got that from my dad.

01:05:27:14 – 01:05:44:23
Robert Wolf
I swam for four years, and, he did breaststroke, me butterfly and freestyle. But anyway, he had he was kicked off the swim team because he was Jewish. So, yeah, ramifications were there. And, very sad. And it’s too bad because his coach liked him and and his friends like them. And they were very sad for him, but there was nothing they could do,

01:05:44:25 – 01:06:02:03
Dan LeFebvre
Those sort of things. Again, it’s hard to wrap my head around because. So what does that have to do with swimming? Like it? Like you’re swimming in a pool in water. I mean, you’re competing in not to not to take away from how serious it can be for competitions and stuff, but it’s it’s still a sport and it’s similar.

01:06:02:03 – 01:06:21:02
Dan LeFebvre
We see the similar sort of thing in, in the movie with sunshine, except it’s fencing. He’s, you know, he’s fencing. He’s like, that’s part of the reason why he ends up he converts is because he’s like, this doesn’t really it doesn’t affect my how good I am at fencing and with my practicing. And I imagine a similar thing for, for swimming like it does, it doesn’t affect that.

01:06:21:02 – 01:06:29:17
Dan LeFebvre
And so it’s, it’s, it goes back to that concept of what as we’re talking about, it, there’s so much more that, you know, it’s just it’s hard to wrap your head around.

01:06:29:18 – 01:06:48:00
Robert Wolf
And so it’s awful now, you know, ironically, the Olympics came up in a recent podcast too, and y can every day be like the Olympics? Yeah. Why can’t we do peace negotiations and tear off negotiations in the hot tub, or over find a nice table with a tablecloth and, you know, nice silverware? The the Olympics, exemplifies that.

01:06:48:00 – 01:07:06:14
Robert Wolf
It’s the one time where for the 2 or 3 weeks that the all these countries get together, they compete, they put all the bibs, all the politics, all the disagreements off you know, back. They leave it on the field or behind them and they compete. And it’s great sportsmanship. And why can’t, why can’t our politicians, why can’t our leaders, do that?

01:07:06:14 – 01:07:24:14
Robert Wolf
I mean, it’s such a such a great lesson. So I love the Olympics, not only because I love sports, but also just that concept of, worldwide, a worldwide peace and, the amicable feeling that you got, and I just love it. I mean, third place, person congratulating the first on the gold medal winner, that kind of thing.

01:07:24:17 – 01:07:44:16
Robert Wolf
Arm in arm in arm, holding our flags. Just the fact, you know, we’re talking about kneeling and and, during, it’s not a big thing lightly, thank God. But kneeling or not respecting the national anthem, my mom and dad would spit in those people. They would be. How dare you? You know, we we were barely allowed to practice what we want in a free country.

01:07:44:16 – 01:08:04:15
Robert Wolf
How dare you do that in this country? And they would, think. I mean, they got to their dad, but they. I got the narrative experience, the the the people kneeling and and not respecting the flag, multi-millionaires, people that are privileged, privileged enough and talented enough, and marketable enough to to be in sports and make lots of money, be very popular.

01:08:04:15 – 01:08:24:06
Robert Wolf
And when they do that, it’s it just doesn’t hurt the snarling. And so those kind of things, that’s what we’re battling here. You know, we got to respect our country and our freedoms, and our luck and realize that what happened to my dad could happen to any one of us. Could be a bad neighbor. Bad local government, federal government, foreign government, natural disaster, bad business deal.

01:08:24:06 – 01:08:39:07
Robert Wolf
Whatever it is could happen to us where we’re on the run not knowing where your next meal is. So not only are we going to sleep, not not knowing if you’re going to get a job or where you will, and you still you’re still, you don’t know. You can’t meet people. You can’t be around people that that spot you and say, oh, there’s a Jew.

01:08:39:07 – 01:08:47:24
Robert Wolf
There’s, Because you hear that. So there’s we talk about the light at the end of the tunnel. Even during escapes, there was no such thing.

01:08:47:27 – 01:09:11:23
Dan LeFebvre
If we go back to sunshine, the last generation in that movie is Adam, son Ivan. And he survives World War two. But then he joins the communists because they seem to be the liberators of the brutality of the Nazis had inflicted in Hungary. But then, as the Hungarian Revolution breaks out in 1956, in the movie we see Ivan, he realizes the communists are brutal and corrupt also.

01:09:12:00 – 01:09:38:14
Dan LeFebvre
And then at the very end of that movie, Ivan learns from an old letter from his great grandfather, who was at the very beginning of the movie. It’s it’s a long movie. But he finds out that in this letter, it’s the goal is not to be accepted by others. And in this letter, as you reads it, Ivan then has the inspiration to change his name from shores back to sunshine to embrace his Jewish ancestry.

01:09:38:16 – 01:09:58:14
Dan LeFebvre
And like a lot of the movie characters that we’ve talked about today, the Shine is high. Family from the movie sunshine are fictional. They’re not real. But of course, the unimaginable hardships that they faced in the movie were real events that generations of of your family faced as well. So just like Ivan took lessons from his family’s past at the end of the movie and build a better life for himself.

01:09:58:14 – 01:10:09:04
Dan LeFebvre
As we kind of start to wrap up our discussion today, if you took a look at your family’s history, what’s one lesson that you’ve learned that people today can apply to create a better future?

01:10:09:06 – 01:10:26:04
Robert Wolf
I have to see that movie sunshine. It sounds. I mean, it sounds like they stole my stole my own story. Now, would you remind me? Because I do want to, but yeah, my, my mom’s uncle, Zoltan was she. He converted. He was a communist because he wanted to. He wanted to survive. And, my mom probably hated it, but he was.

01:10:26:04 – 01:10:43:18
Robert Wolf
It helped him. He was a he was a monkey in the government and in the economic the economic plan after World War two. And, I read some of the notes, those turned up and I it was really and I don’t mean to get off the subject, but it was really poignant and depressing actually saying, well, what what do we do with our, our Jews?

01:10:43:25 – 01:11:03:10
Robert Wolf
And they are mostly farms and factories. I’m not going to talk about military. I’m talking about the civilian Jews because they couldn’t work. They couldn’t be educated. Finally, they let my dad get into medical school, 10%, quota, which is 10% quota, which is amazing that he even got in. But, so but he was a communist, so he, you know, resonates really, really well with whatever.

01:11:03:10 – 01:11:23:24
Robert Wolf
My mom and dad wouldn’t buy into it as we already mentioned, that, like I said, this country is amazing. Accountability is an important. It’s an important message. Don’t point at people. It just, you know, after 911, we had Islamophobia. After the coronavirus epidemic. We had the Asian eight. Now tober seventh. That’s the Jewish people.

01:11:23:24 – 01:11:39:12
Robert Wolf
Well, what do I have to do with Gaza? And October 7th, I support Israel, I support peace, and, that that that unnecessary. You know, you’re wasting your time, with these protests, these kids in Colombia, you don’t know how good you have it. You know, I, I think people would tell the end of Harvard or Columbia or privilege.

01:11:39:12 – 01:12:03:24
Robert Wolf
They would be. And, people that are doing this and and protesting and calling for the death of Israel and America, it’s just there’s no room for it. Not for me, not for you, and not in this country. And so I identify with the peaceful people, try to get a handle around, at least. Finally, they’re curtailing funding for universities everywhere I could in there, I’d be showing them and and suing them and suing them and and doing more talks in the area.

01:12:03:24 – 01:12:20:28
Robert Wolf
I mean, believe me, that’s all I’m doing anyway, but we need to, appreciate what we have. Accountability. And if you’re bored with what you have, you got if you’re complaining, change vectors. If you don’t like your job, change jobs, work part time, write a book. Everybody’s got a story. Write a poem, write an opera. Go to the library.

01:12:20:28 – 01:12:37:28
Robert Wolf
Go to the museum. Spend more time with your family. Give back to the community. It’s not just about food, shelter, clothing. Unlike for my mom and dad and, all the victims, it’s all food, shelter and clothing. But for now, for us, I put a little more into your life, put a more pot, and, love your neighbor, you know, and I don’t I don’t mean to be corny.

01:12:37:28 – 01:12:57:02
Robert Wolf
Bring a neighbor some macaroons or whatever. Invite them for the Seder. Just get to know them better and embrace them. And things. And things. Well, it all starts. Leadership starts from within. You know, you’re not going to be a leader if you’re not a good person. If you’re not. And I don’t mean no Hitler leader because he just led by charisma and, and, all his, his garbage is, propaganda.

01:12:57:04 – 01:13:14:01
Robert Wolf
But, you can lead by example, and it’s never too late to do the right thing. There’s no substitute for experience. I got a lot of, you know, the trend is your friend, you can learn something from every case, as we say in radiology. But as now, I’ve been on both sides of the needle. You can learn something from every person you know.

01:13:14:01 – 01:13:30:13
Robert Wolf
You can learn from every situation. And don’t forget that, don’t be that. That dead shark swim in the water. Just keep on moving. And if you don’t like what you’re doing and don’t don’t watch and complain, do something else. Life is short here. It’s our only commodity. It’s. You know, time is. Our time is our only commodity.

01:13:30:13 – 01:13:41:24
Robert Wolf
It’s not gold or silver stocks, real estate. It’s time. So use it. Use it wisely. Like my dad used to say. Enjoy every moment. And now I understand why.

01:13:41:26 – 01:14:02:10
Dan LeFebvre
Yeah, I love that I love that, and that’s one thing as we’ve talked about you just looking back to some of the movies we talked about, the concept that I get is a lot of the things that led to like the atrocities Auschwitz that we talked about. It didn’t jump right to that. It was there were steps that they got there.

01:14:02:13 – 01:14:26:01
Dan LeFebvre
And although we’ve we talked mostly about historical events that took place around World War Two today, a lot of people have compared the current climate here in the United States as I’m recording this, similar to the rise of fascism that resulted in Nazi Germany. And I’m just curious, from your perspective, do you think there’s any truth to those comparisons, or is that kind of overblown just, extremism?

01:14:26:03 – 01:14:44:26
Robert Wolf
That’s such a great question. It’s hard to know. I hope not. That’s why there’s people like me trying to prevent that from happening. Call Congress, call you local government. What are you guys doing about anti-Semitism? I’m still doing it. I hate getting ghosted. That’s a big part of it being rejected. I don’t mind getting rejected like people that are apathetic, but too much apathy is going to be the danger to us.

01:14:44:26 – 01:15:04:25
Robert Wolf
And if the Jewish population doesn’t survive, you know, the LGBTQ, the criticize the Jewish and African-Americans, if you guys are next and and those those that glorify Hitler, you guys were next. You just don’t even realize it. So, now in some ways, yeah, in some countries worse than here. But even in America, in World War two, there was the rise of anti-Semitism.

01:15:04:25 – 01:15:23:16
Robert Wolf
And, fortunately not fascism. But until the guns are pointed at me, I feel relief. As long as the government and the local police are protecting us, then I feel safe. Whatever. If it starts to turn. And we talked about the your armored trucks and tanks going down the streets with the flags. If it ever comes to that, then I’d say, well, no, we’re doomed.

01:15:23:16 – 01:15:45:23
Robert Wolf
But, at least for the short term. But, hopefully that never happens. I can’t see that happening. But you never know. I mean, Australia and Canada, Europe, it’s still going on. So it’s up to the government, the people that are supposed to protect others. As Reagan said, that’s what government’s job is not to and not to, to to take from others or its or to use the people.

01:15:45:23 – 01:15:52:00
Robert Wolf
It’s, it’s I’m paraphrasing, but a government’s job is to protect us. Jewish. Christian doesn’t matter. Muslim.

01:15:52:03 – 01:15:58:26
Dan LeFebvre
We’re all human. We’re all. We’re all. What is it? The JFK quotes, we all share this planet together or something. Something along.

01:15:58:26 – 01:16:17:23
Robert Wolf
Those lines. Exactly. No. It’s true, it’s true. And we’re we’re getting beyond that. Why are the Soviets and the Americans get along in space stations and the moon or whatever, but they can’t get along and Mother Earth, right? I mean, so that’s, it’s another thing like the Olympics. Yeah. It doesn’t even make sense to me. And probably Antarctica and Greenland and everybody is going to set up whatever.

01:16:17:25 – 01:16:33:08
Robert Wolf
And that works for me. You know, it’s so how about annexing Canada? What about that kind of concept? I, you know, people are thinking out of the box lately and maybe I like it, maybe I don’t, but it’s worth a look because things have to change. Canada needs a security alternative to the US. On and on and on.

01:16:33:13 – 01:16:55:13
Robert Wolf
And maybe it’s good economically too, unless it’s come up. And I don’t know that it would be so complicated. And I know our resistance. The natives would be, Mexico. Maybe not so much, but that would be scary for me because I think it’s a it’s got it’s violent areas and etc.. But interestingly, a Jewish woman is the new president of Mexico, so and a Jewish lady is, is the new mayor of Beverly Hills.

01:16:55:13 – 01:17:15:18
Robert Wolf
So, that gives me hope. I think that’s great. I mean, I love California, and if it weren’t so expensive, I maybe I would live there instead of Florida. But, with who knows? And it’s one of the liberal for me, too. But, you know, it’s a great state and, many, many people. So it’s good to see that some people that are in leadership positions are going to be on the side of peace, not just because they’re Jewish.

01:17:15:18 – 01:17:29:03
Robert Wolf
That’s the side of peace. So they get it. They care. That’s another lesson. It’s good to care. It’s important to care if you, you’re doomed if you don’t. So whatever is your own life or the life of others? It’s important.

01:17:29:05 – 01:17:44:00
Dan LeFebvre
Well, thank you so much for coming on the show to chat about all these various movies. I know we’ve mentioned your book called Not a Real Enemy The True Story of the Hungarian Jewish Man’s Fight for freedom. We’ve mentioned a few times throughout our discussion today, but there’s so many things in the book that we didn’t even get a chance to talk about.

01:17:44:00 – 01:18:01:06
Dan LeFebvre
I’m going to add a link to it in the show notes, so anyone watching or listening to this right now can pick up their own copy. As I was reading your book, it really read like a movie and I can’t wait until it is turned into one. And since all movies have teasers and trailers before I let you go, can you share a teaser of your book for everyone watching this?

01:18:01:06 – 01:18:03:06
Dan LeFebvre
Now?

01:18:03:09 – 01:18:23:14
Robert Wolf
Wow. Yeah, yeah, from your mouth to God’s ears. Because, we we’ve been trying to clear some producers. Like I mentioned earlier, it’s a long shot, but a teaser. A man who escapes four times, I can’t imagine one escape. I mean, I’ve been reading books, guys escaping, and they’re not even Jewish. They’re. They’re prisoners of war from Poland or whatever, escaping from thousands of miles away.

01:18:23:16 – 01:18:40:12
Robert Wolf
And that’s like a one big, huge escape. But for escapes, 20 miracles in this book, like you as you know it. Or the way my dad got into medical school, cloak and dagger stories, arguing with armors and soldiers. That’s a scene I’d like to see, and winning the argument, but bluffing his way through it.

01:18:40:15 – 01:19:03:19
Robert Wolf
Of course, his first and last escape. But I think all of them would need to be included. Split second timing. The luck of God. What else? I mean, the fact that my dad was spoiled, but he was also beaten as a kid. It’s another interesting, interesting tidbit. Tidbit? So many, the way the table set, the way the way that you went from, being an upper middle says to starving and how life could change on a dime.

01:19:03:21 – 01:19:24:18
Robert Wolf
So many messages. Resilience, determination, hope, integrity, and ultimately redemption. So it’s it’s loaded. It’s packed with it’s history. It’s an adventure. It’s a biography. And, trials and tribulations. My dad and family and, must read and hopefully, more and more people read it. This is all I do is my charge is fighting anti-Semitism. You help me with that.

01:19:24:18 – 01:19:48:24
Robert Wolf
10% of my, I’m on socials across the board, so please, finally, Robert J. Wolfe, MD, or Google not relented me 10% of my proceeds henceforth and even when I’m gone and my trust are going to the Holocaust Museum in DC. So not only I’m educating in my own little corner, but I’m also contributing. And people that buy the book are contributing to education through the, to the mothership, as I call it, the U.S. Holocaust Museum in DC.

01:19:48:27 – 01:20:06:02
Robert Wolf
I’ve been fortunate enough to be there twice or two to the book signings. I could do that every day, educating kids and families about what’s going on now and then, genocide, etc.. So, it’s a must read. And, I hope that you do enjoy it and reach out to me. I do podcasts and and presentations programs.

01:20:06:02 – 01:20:09:03
Robert Wolf
Please help me fight antisemitism. Can’t do it alone.

01:20:09:05 – 01:20:16:27
Dan LeFebvre
I love education is is the key. Thank you so much for everything you do for educating. Thank you for for coming on the show. I really appreciate it.

01:20:17:00 – 01:20:24:22
Robert Wolf
Pleasure. I learned a lot today to.

October 8, 1967. Bolivia.

To kick off this week’s events from the movies, we’ll go back to the 1969 film called Che! to find an event that happened 57 years ago on Tuesday this week.

About an hour and 21 minutes into the movie, we’re inside a room with a shirtless man’s body lying on a table. A group of men, some in suits and others in military uniforms, are crowded around. One of them points to a bullet wound on body, saying this was the fatal shot less than 24 hours ago.

The camera pans over to the corner of the room where we can see the man in the three-star beret breaking the fourth wall as he talks to the camera. I guess we can give him a name…that’s Albert Paulsen’s character, Captain Vasquez. He explains that the raid on Alto Saco was the beginning of the end for Guevara. Vasquez says they ambushed his rear guard in La Higueras and encircled him in the Churro Ravine.

We’re no longer in the room with the dead body, now, as the scene shifts to what Vasquez is explaining. Rebel soldiers are being shot at by the Rangers in rocks surrounding the ravine. It’s not just rifles, but the Rangers have mortars as well. One of the rebels is killed. Then another. They’re firing back, and some of the Rangers are shot, too.

The intense fighting continues for a few more moments until we can see Omar Sharif’s version of Che Guevara climbing to get out of the ravine. The rebel machine gun is captured, silencing most of the firing. Che and another man seem to be the only two left, and Che is obviously in a lot of pain.

The Rangers close in as the two rebel soldiers fire back from the cover of rocks. The other man is shot and killed. Che, too, is shot, although he’s not killed. Wounded, he lies back and the shooting stops. The Rangers stand up, walking slowly to where Che is lying on the ground.

Che is still breathing as Captain Vasquez reaches him. Pulling out a photo, Vasquez looks at it and then back down at Che. Then, over the radio, Vasquez announces: Puma to Lancer. Puma to Lancer. We’ve got Papa. Alive. Repeat, we’ve got Papa.

The true story behind that scene in the movie Che!

Transitioning into our fact-check of the 1969 film Che!, I’ll first point out that we did a deep dive into the full movie that I’ll link to in the show notes. For this week’s historical event, though, it got the basic gist correct even if it did change a lot of the details from the true story.

For example, remember the guy leading the Rangers in the movie? We talked about him earlier; he’s the guy with the three stars on his beret. The actor playing him Albert Paulsen, and in the movie it’s a character named Captain Vasquez.

In the true story, the leader of the Bolivian Army’s 2^nd Ranger Battalion was Gary Prado Salmón, who was later promoted to General and a national hero in Bolivia for Che’s capture.

The 2^nd Ranger Battalion was trained especially to target the guerilla fighters. While we didn’t cover it in our movie segment this week, a bit earlier in the film Captain Vasquez tells the camera that the CIA was not involved in any way.

Well, most sources that I found say that even though the 2^nd Rangers were from the Bolivian Army, they did get help from the CIA, as well training from the 8^th Special Forces Group from the U.S. Army. I’ll add a link to the show notes for this episode with a fascinating article by Marco Margaritoff over on the website All That’s Interesting that gives a nice overview of a man named Félix Rodríguez, who was the CIA agent tasked with helping in the capture of Che Guevara.

Something else the movie changes from the real story is the number of soldiers involved. In the movie, it looks like Captain Vasquez has maybe a dozen or so Rangers with him. Granted, they’re often among the rocks and moving around the terrain so it’s hard to track down an exact number.

With that said, though, the 2^nd Ranger Battalion had 650 soldiers in it and about 180 to 200 of them were involved in the capture of Che Guevara on October 8^th, 1967. So, there were a lot more soldiers involved than we see in the movie.

In the true story, the Rangers received word during the early morning hours of October 8^th of a little over a dozen men who had walked through a local farmer’s field the night before. They were going toward a canyon area nearby, so that’s where the Rangers went.

The movie was right to show mortars being used, though, as they used mortars and machine guns along with sections, or platoons, of soldiers set up at different areas in the canyon to help seal off the entrances and exits to the canyon while other soldiers in the Battalion closed in on their targets.

It was a tactic that worked, as before long the Rangers pushed back the guerrillas to where they had nowhere else to go. As for Che Guevara himself, somehow his rifle was destroyed—or at least, rendered unusable, and he was shot in the leg. It was in his right calf, so not a mortal wound but between that and not having a weapon, he was forced to surrender when the Rangers came upon him.

Although this, too, seems to have happened differently than what we see in the movie. I say that because in the movie we see the Captain Vasquez character look down at Che and pull a photo out of his pocket to verify that’s who it is. In the true story, though, one of the Rangers, a Sergeant, later told Che’s biographer that Che was the one to identify himself to them.

Either way, Che Guevara was captured on October 8^th, 1967. The next day, the President of Bolivia ordered Che be put to death. And so, on October 9^th, 1967, the revolutionary Che Guevara was executed at the age of 39.

As a last little side note, when the movie shows Che’s body, we can see a bullet wound in his chest that one of the bystanders mentions as being the fatal shot. Even though Che was executed, that sort of shot would still be accurate because according to some sources, it was the CIA agent Félix Rodríguez who suggested they don’t shoot Che in the head to make it obvious he was executed, but rather to shoot him in a way that would look like he’d been a casualty of a run-in with the Bolivian Army.

If you want to watch the event that happened this week in history, check out the 1969 movie called Che! That’s not to be confused with the 2008 two-part series from Steven Soderbergh that’s also called Che. While that’s another good one to watch this week, the movie we talked about today is the 1969 film with an exclamation point at the end: Che!

And don’t forget we’ve got a deep dive in the show notes that you can queue up right now to hear more about the true story of the entire movie!

October 9, 1919. Chicago, Illinois.

Our next historical event falls on Wednesday this week, and we’ll find a re-enactment of it at about an hour and 22 minutes into the movie called Eight Men Out.

Hitting play on the movie, and we’re at a baseball game.

The crowd seems to be getting ready for the game to start. On the mound for the Chicago White Sox is Lefty Williams. He’s played by James Read in the movie.

<whew> Williams exhales.

There’s text on the screen in the movie saying this is game #8.

Then, Williams winds and offers the first pitch. The batter swings, sending a fly ball into right field. We don’t see how far the ball goes, but what we can see is the reaction from many of the White Sox players who don’t seem happy. Williams returns to the mound with a stern look on his face. He looks into the batter’s box where another hitter steps to the plate.

The camera is just behind the catcher now. We can see Williams wind, and pitch. The batter swings, another hit.

Again, we don’t see where it goes, but we can see a baserunner make it to second base. That must be the guy who got the first hit. Two back-to-back hits, it seems.

In the crowd, Lefty Williams’ wife looks sad.

Back on the mound, Williams is ready for another hitter. He looks at the runner on second. The pitch. Way outside. The catcher has to reach to stop it, but he does. No runners advance. The next pitch.

The batter swings, and Williams’ head snaps around to watch what we can assume is a high fly ball to right field. Again, we can’t see how far it goes, but we can see the catcher throwing his mitt down as a runner crosses the plate to score. The crowd is jeering at Williams, who seems to be starting the game off on a rocky note.

But, the game goes on, and Williams settles in to face the next hitter.

The pitch.

Another high fly ball, this time to left field. It hits the outfield wall, and we can see another runner score as he crosses home plate. Again, the catcher throws his mitt to the ground in disgust. As he does, another runner crosses home plate. Three runs scored so far, and there’s a runner on second.

John Mahoney’s character, Kid Gleason, runs from the White Sox dugout. As he does, he yells, “James, you’re in!”

When he reaches the pitcher’s mound he takes the ball from Williams, ending his day.

The true story behind that scene in the movie Eight Men Out

That sequence comes from the 1988 movie directed by John Sayles called Eight Men Out. The event it’s depicting is the final game of the 16^th World Series, which happened this week in history on October 9^th, 1919.

The movie is historically accurate to show Lefty Williams starting that day for what was game eight of the Series. And it’s also correct to show him giving up a number of hits, but in the movie, it looks like all but one of the hits are going to right field—they weren’t all hit there, but then again, we don’t see where the ball goes in the movie. All we can see are the actor’s reactions to the hits, so maybe that’s nitpicking a little too much.

Here’s the true story.

The first hitter to face Lefty Williams in game eight of the 1919 World Series was the Cincinnati Reds’ second baseman, Morrie Rath. He popped out to start the game. The second hitter was the Reds first baseman Jake Daubert. He hit a single to center field. Next up was Heinie Groh, the third baseman. He smacked another single, this one to right field a lot like we see in the movie. It also allowed Daubert to advance from first to second, just like we see in the movie.

Next up for the Reds was their cleanup hitter, the center fielder Edd Roush. He smashed a double to right field, allowing Daubert to score and Groh moved to third base.

I couldn’t find anything in my research to suggest the White Sox catcher got so fed up by the pitcher Williams giving up these hits that he threw his mitt on the ground like we see happening in the movie. But the movie was correct to show that catcher for the White Sox being Ray Schalk. He’s played by Gordon Clapp in the movie.

The next batter for the Reds was their left fielder, Pat Duncan. He hit a double to left field, driving in Groh from third and Roush from second. At this point, the Reds were up 3-0 with one out in the first inning.

The White Sox manager had seen enough. Just like we see him doing in the movie, Kid Gleason took out his starter and put in the right-handed reliever Bill James.

To establish a bit of context that we don’t see in the movie, the 26-year-old Lefty Williams was the White Sox #2 starter. His real name, by the way, is Claude. “Lefty” was just a nickname. And yes, he was a left-handed pitcher.

In 1919, Lefty had a stellar record of 23 wins to 11 losses with an ERA of 2.64. That’s spread across 297 innings. In fact, Williams not only led the White Sox with 125 strikeouts, he led the majors that season with 40 games started and he tied the White Sox #1 starter, Eddie Cicotte, with five shutouts.

So, Williams had a fantastic season in 1919.

His playoff record wasn’t so great, as he went 0-3 giving up 12 earned runs across 16.1 innings pitched for an ERA of 6.61. And while we didn’t talk about what happened the night before the game, there are a lot of people who believe Lefty Williams was given an ultimatum.

What really happened is one of those moments behind closed doors that we’ll just never know for sure.

As the story goes, Williams was visited by an associate of the bookie and gambler who had offered cash to the White Sox players in exchange for them throwing games. That same story suggests this unnamed associate told Williams that either he purposely lose his next start or else his wife and child would pay the consequences.

And so, as we know from what happened publicly, Lefty Williams had a terrible game. He gave up three runs and couldn’t even get through the first inning before being pulled. The Reds would go on to win the game 10-5, and by extension, the World Series overall, five games to three.

The allegations of throwing the Series hit the White Sox almost immediately, earning the team the nickname “Black Sox” for the scandal. It also changed Major League Baseball as the owners gave over control to establish the position of the Commissioner of Baseball, a position that still exists today, in an attempt to give public trust in the sport again. It’d also end up with eight players from the White Sox being permanently banned from Major League Baseball—hence the title of the movie, Eight Men Out.

One of those players who was permanently banned was Lefty Williams.

So, if you’re feeling like a sports movie to watch this week, check out the 1988 film called Eight Men Out!

And if you want to learn more about the true story, after you watch the movie, we compared that with history back on episode #132 of Based on a True Story. Or, if you want to take a super deep dive, the entire second season of another fantastic podcast called Infamous America is dedicated to the Black Sox Scandal of 1919. You can find a link to that in the show notes for this episode.

October 12, 1492. The Bahamas.

From the baseball field in the last movie, to the Bahamas, our next movie is the 1992 movie called 1492: Conquest of Paradise. About 54 minutes into the movie, we’ll find this week’s event as we can see two large ships. There’s one in the foreground and another a little distance away, and they’re not moving at all. In fact, the night before in the movie, we saw the anchors land in the water.

Today, we’re seeing smaller boats departing the large ships and heading toward the land we can see in the distance. Lush, green trees and sandy beaches make this scene look like what you’d expect for sailors on ships in the 1400s to be making landfall on an island in the Caribbean.

Because of the camera angles in the movie, it’s hard to see exactly how many boats are leaving the larger ships but I counted at least five in a single frame. Each boat is filled with men, and each boat is carrying flags of orange, yellow, purple, and many bright colors.

The camera focuses on one of the men as he jumps off the boat into the water. The movie goes into slow motion, capturing the moment as he splashes into the waist-deep water. He continues to walk in slow motion, each footstep splashing into the water.

He falls to his knees just beyond the waves in a gesture of appreciation. The camera cuts to other men jumping off the boats now. Some are running onto the land, others are falling onto the sandy beach—overall, it’s a scene that makes it obvious they haven’t seen land for quite some time. Dry land is a welcome sight.

Then, the movie gives us the location and the date. Guanahani Island. 12^th of October 1492.

The man who was on his knees gets up now. He’s approached by a colorfully dressed man.

“Don Christopher,” he says, as he unravels a scroll. Christopher signs something on the scroll. Then he speaks, “By the grace of God, in the name of their gracious Majesties of Castilla and Aragon…”

He pauses for a moment to turn around to the men who are all lined up on the beach now.

“…by all the powers vested in me, I claim this island and name it San Salvador.”

Then, the camera backs up to show the line of men as they start walking inland.

The true story behind that scene in the movie 1942: Conquest of Paradise!

That is a sequence from the 1992 movie called 1492: Conquest of Paradise. The event it’s depicting is Christopher Columbus making his first landing after the long trip across the ocean from Europe.

That happened this week in history, on October 12^th, 1492, right away let’s clarify the ships themselves. In the sequence we talked about today, we could only see two ships at any one time in the movie. In the true story, Columbus sailed with three ships: Nina, Pinta, and Santa Maria.

That we only saw two in the sequence we talked about today isn’t really a point against the movie for historical accuracy—we do see three ships at different points in the movie. It’s just the sequence for October 12^th doesn’t really show all three ships at one time.

With that said, there has been a lot of debate among historians about exactly where Columbus landed.

According to Columbus himself, it was on an island called Guanahani. That’s the name we see mentioned in the movie.

The name, Guanahani, is the Taino name for the island. Just like we see in the movie, Columbus named the island San Salvador upon his arrival. I’m not sure if he did it the moment he landed on the beach like we see in the movie, but then again, Columbus thought he landed in East Asia at first. He didn’t know he actually landed in a chain of islands we now know as the Bahamas.

The name he gave the island is derived from the Spanish “Isla San Salvador” or, in English, “Island of the Holy Savior.”

As a little side note, the name “Guanahani” means “Small Land in the Upper Waters” in the Taino language. The Taino language, in turn, used to be the most popular language in the Caribbean at the time of Columbus’ landing…but that language is extinct now. Also, in the 17^th century, the island was called Waitlings Island after an Englishman who landed there. In 1925, the island was officially renamed to San Salvador.

In 1971, Columbus Day became an officially recognized Federal holiday in the United States—but that recognition has changed in recent years. The observance of the holiday doesn’t always land on October 12^th, but at least now you know a little more about the history behind the event that happened this week in history.

If you want to dig further into the story, of course you can watch the movie called 1492: Conquest of Paradise.

Even that title is a bit controversial when you consider how Columbus landed on lands owned by people who already lived there and conquered them.

Remember when I mentioned the Taino language is extinct now? Well, that’s just one example of something lost to history since Columbus’ landing. There has been a lot of controversy over his and other colonists’ actions.

As a result, in 1992, Berkeley, California became the first city in the United States to celebrate Indigenous Peoples’ Day instead of Columbus Day. Cities like Austin, Seattle, and Philadelphia, or states like Maine, South Dakota, and Alaska, among many others have dropped Columbus Day in favor of Indigenous Peoples’ Day. Here in Oklahoma where I’m recording this from right now, many here celebrate Native American Day instead.

So, if you’re looking for something to watch this week, the movie we talked about in this segment is called 1492: Conquest of Paradise. The landing sequence happens at about 54 minutes into the movie. If you watch the movie, or even if you just want to dig deeper into the history, scroll back to episode #186 of Based on a True Story where we covered that movie and the true story behind it.

Historical birthdays from the movies

Let’s move onto our next segment now, where we learn about historical figures from the movies that were born this week in history.

On October 9^th, 1895, Eugene Bullard was born in Columbus, Georgia. He is considered to be the first African American military pilot to fly in combat. And even though he was born in the United States, he flew for the French during WWI—he was rejected by the U.S. military. He’s one of those historical figures that I wish there was a biopic about his life, but if you want to see a movie in his honor this week, then I’d recommend the 2012 movie called Red Tails. Now, right up front, I’ll let you know that movie is not about Eugene Bullard. It’s about the Tuskegee Airmen during World War II, but the filmmakers honored Bullard’s memory by having the commander in the movie be named Col. A.J. Bullard. He’s played by Terrence Howard in the movie.

On October 11, 1884, Anna Eleanor Roosevelt was born in New York City, New York. She’s better known by her middle name: Eleanor Roosevelt, and as the First Lady of the United States during World War II while her husband, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, or just FDR as he’s called, was president. And yes, I did a double-check on that too…Eleanor Roosevelt’s maiden name was Roosevelt, and she married Franklin Roosevelt so both her maiden and married name was Roosevelt. Eleanor and Franklin were fifth cousins once removed. This week’s recommendation portraying Eleanor on screen is called The First Lady, the 2022 series from Showtime. Eleanor Roosevelt is played by Gillian Anderson.

On October 13^th, 1537, Jane Grey was born in Bradgate, England. At least, that’s the date often given for her birthdate—hers is one of those birthdays in history that we’re not 100% sure of. She’s often known as Lady Jane Grey, or sometimes as the Nine Days’ Queen, because she was Queen of England for only nine days. Her name earned more fame when Mark Twain used her as a character in his novel from 1882 called The Prince and the Pauper. So, most movie adaptations of that will have someone playing Lady Jane. My recommendation this week, though, is the 2022 series from Starz called Becoming Elizabeth. As you can tell from the title, it’s more about Queen Elizabeth I, but Lady Jane is played by Bella Ramsey in that series. So, if you’re a fan of The Last of Us, maybe you’ll enjoy seeing Bella star in another series.

‘Based on a True Story’ movie that released this week

This week’s movie premiere from history is the film directed by Paul Greengrass called Captain Phillips, which was released in the U.S. 11 years ago this week on October 11^th, 2013.

In the movie, Tom Hanks portrays the lead role of Captain Richard Phillips, who takes command of the cargo ship called the Maersk Alabama. Despite the name, the Maersk Alabama’s home port according to the movie is the Port of Salalah in Oman.

When he’s given orders to take the vessel to Mombasa, Kenya, that takes him past the Horn of Africa where there has been some known pirate activity. So, along with the help of the first officer, Michael Chernus’ version of Shane Murphy, as they get underway, they go through their security protocols.

That’s when they notice a couple small boats following their massive ship.

Fearing they’re pirates, Captain Phillips calls for aid from a nearby warship. Of course, there’s not really a warship, but the pirates don’t know that. And Captain Phillips knows the pirates don’t know that, but he also knows they’re listening to the radio, so he thinks maybe if they think the military is nearby that’ll scare them off.

And it sort of works. One of the two skiffs turns around, while the other loses power in the wake of the huge cargo ship.

But they’re not in the clear yet, because the next day, one of the skiffs filled with pirates returns to the chase. Since their boat is much smaller, it’s also faster, and before long the armed pirates manage to attach their ladder to the Maersk Alabama and climb aboard despite the best efforts of the cargo ship’s crew to stop them. Then, the pirates seize control of the ship at gunpoint, and very soon it becomes clear to Captain Phillips that the pirates intend to ransom off the crew and ship for the insurance money.

The leader of the pirates is a guy named Abduwali Muse, who is played by Barkhad Abdi in the movie.

Meanwhile, it doesn’t take long for the U.S. military to actually find out the Maersk Alabama has been taken over by the pirates. After all, they’re wanting the insurance money, so the pirates aren’t trying to hide the fact that they took over the ship. So, the U.S. Navy launches a destroyer called USS Bainbridge under the command of Frank Castellano. He’s played by Yul Vazquez in the movie.

Things descend into a fight between the mostly unarmed crew and very well-armed pirates aboard the cargo ship. I say “mostly” unarmed, because we do see things like the crew using a knife to try and hold Muse hostage and force all the pirates to leave in a lifeboat. But, they won’t do that unless Captain Phillips goes with them. Trying not to make matters worse, Phillips goes along with the pirates in exchange for them leaving the rest of the crew on the Maersk Alabama.

Meanwhile, on the lifeboat, the pirates beat and blindfold Captain Phillips in what has now become a kidnapping situation as well. We see Bainbridge enter the picture and try to get to a peaceful solution. As part of that process, they hook up the lifeboat to Bainbridge so it’s being towed by the destroyer while inviting the pirate leader, Muse, to Bainbridge to negotiate. He agrees, and in the movie, we also see SEAL Team Six from the U.S. Navy setting up snipers to try and take out the pirates.

Near the climax at the end of the movie, the U.S. Navy pulls off a perfectly timed maneuver that involves stopping their tow of the lifeboat to throw the pirates off balance just as three snipers from the destroyer take three simultaneous shots and kill three of the pirates at the exact same moment.

The movie ends with Muse being the only pirate left alive. He’s arrested and taken into custody as Captain Phillips is rescued from the lifeboat and treated for his injuries.

The true story behind Captain Phillips

Before we compare the true story with the movie, I do want to point out that we did a deep dive into the full movie back on episode #28 of Based on a True Story so I’ll link that in the show notes if you want to give that a listen as well.

For today’s purposes, though, let’s start with the overview of the people in the story.

The character Tom Hanks is playing in the movie, Captain Phillips, is a real person. As of this recording, he’s still alive. Actually, it’s his book that the movie is based on. That book is called A Captain’s Duty: Somali Pirates, Navy SEALS, and Dangerous Days at Sea. I’ll throw a link to that in the show notes, too.

The pirate leader, Abduwali Muse, is also a real person who is also still alive as of this recording—he’s currently serving a 33-year prison sentence in Terre Haute, Indiana, which means unless something changes between now and then, Muse will be released in 2038, by which time he’ll be 48 years old.

That’s right, Muse was just 18 years old when all this happened in April of 2009. Or…maybe he was 19, but we’ll get to that in a moment.

Some of the other characters in the movie are real people, too, like USS Bainbridge’s Commander Frank Castellano, and some other more background crew in the movie are based on real people but with some fictionalization thrown in to help tell the story.

But, of course, there’s always more to the true story that we don’t see in the movie.

So, let’s go back to April 8^th, 2009, because that’s when our true story starts.

Maersk Alabama really is the name of the ship that was hijacked by pirates that day. The name comes from the Danish shipping company headquartered out of Copenhagen called Maersk. They’re a massive company who has been around since 1928, although it’s worth mentioning that Maersk Alabama was registered under a U.S. flag.

That’s because technically Maersk Alabama in 2009 was run by Maersk Line, a division of Maersk that’s based out of Norfolk, Virginia, in the United States. As a little side note, after the timeline of the movie, Maersk Alabama was sold to another company and renamed to MV Tygra. As of this recording, she’s still in operation on the seas.

While I didn’t notice the movie mentioning this, in the true story when she was hijacked that marked the first time a ship bearing the U.S. flag was seized by pirates since the 1800s.

With that said, though, the movie is correct to show the crew on Maersk Alabama preparing for a possible pirate attack because Maersk Alabama was actually the sixth ship to be attacked by pirates just that week! The other ships just weren’t bearing a U.S. flag, but everyone was aware of how dangerous the waters were.

The movie is correct to show that she was heading from Salalah, Oman, to Mombasa, Kenya. On board, she was carrying 401 containers of primarily food aid for refugees in countries like Kenya, Rwanda, Uganda, Somalia, etc.

Any training the crew had done prior turned into reality when the true story behind the movie began on April 8^th, 2009. Just like we see in the movie, that’s when four pirates attacked the ship armed with AK-47s. We learned that Muse was just 18 or 19 years old at the time of the attack, and that actually became an issue in the subsequent trial because at first there were questions about whether or not he could even be tried as an adult.

According to Robert Gates, who was the U.S. Secretary of Defense at the time, the four pirates were between 17 and 19 years old, although Muse’s own mother said he was only 16 at the time. At the time, some suggested perhaps she said that so Muse wouldn’t be tried as an adult, but regardless, for our purposes today it’s safe to say all the pirates who boarded Maersk Alabama that day were teenagers.

The movie is also correct to show the purpose for the pirates was to get the insurance money for Maersk Alabama. As we just learned, there were a lot of other ships captured at the time—actually, even the fishing vessel the pirates used as their own “mother ship,” so to speak, was one they hijacked. That was the FV Win Far 161, which was a 700-tonnes Taiwanese ship that Somali pirates captured on April 6^th, 2009, and then used to launch the smaller skiffs to hijack even more ships.

We don’t see any of that in the movie since it’s mostly focused on Maersk Alabama, but FV Win Far 161 was eventually released by pirates in early 2010.

Back to the true story aboard Maersk Alabama, though, after being boarded by the pirates, the ship’s Chief Engineer and First Assistant Engineer, Mike Perry and Matt Fisher, respectively, worked to remove steering and engine control from the bridge, and shut down the ship’s systems. In other words, the ship went dead in the water.

Just like we see in the movie, the pirates boarded the ship and went right to the bridge. That’s where they captured Captain Phillips along with other crew, and they also found out they weren’t able to control the ship thanks to what Perry and Fisher did down below. And as we just learned, the pirates were very young and they were not highly trained engineers like Perry and Fisher so couldn’t really do anything about it themselves without help from Maersk Alabama’s crew—which, obviously, they weren’t inclined to do!

Of course, that doesn’t mean the pirates didn’t try to convince the ship’s crew to get it going again. While they held Captain Phillips in the bridge, Muse went in search of the rest of the cargo ship’s crew to do exactly that. And as you can probably guess, that was something the pirates intended to do at gunpoint.

But here’s where the movie shows the Maersk Alabama crew start fighting back, because for all they knew the pirates were going to sail the ship back to Somalia if they got it moving again…and that wouldn’t bode well for them.

Before I mentioned Mike Perry, the Chief Engineer; he’s played by David Warshofsky in the movie. While I didn’t mention this earlier, while the pirates were boarding the ship and trying to figure out why the controls didn’t work in the bridge, the rest of the Maersk Alabama’s crew hid in a secure hold in the ship. Remember, they had prepared for a possible pirate attack, so kind of like you have a plan for where you’ll go in case of emergency—so did they.

Mike Perry, though, hid himself outside of the secure room. His plan was to try and capture one of the pirates so he could trade the pirate for Captain Phillips. Basically, a prisoner exchange. So, when Muse walked by looking for crew, Perry jumped him with a knife and managed to subdue the teenager. Then, they offered the exchange to the pirates in the bridge. The movie gets that pretty accurate, too, because the offer was for the pirates to get their leader back, Muse, as well as all the cash they had on the ship—there was $30,000 in the ship’s safe, and then they also offered the pirates the use of the Maersk Alabama’s lifeboat for them to get off the ship.

Keeping in mind, again, that the pirates were teenagers who no doubt were feeling a little overwhelmed and unable to move the massive ship, they agreed to the deal. So, the crew released Muse with the cash and expected the pirates to hold up their end of the bargain.

But, things didn’t go according to plan. Instead, the pirates took Captain Phillips into the 28-foot lifeboat with them. So, now, the four pirates are off the Maersk Alabama, but now it’s also a hostage situation.

In the movie, we see the U.S. Navy destroyer USS Bainbridge get called into the picture around this time, and that is true. But, in the true story, the USS Bainbridge was not the only U.S. Navy ship involved—because, as we learned earlier—the Maersk Alabama was also not the only ship that had been hijacked by Somali pirates recently. So, there was a U.S. Navy presence in the area. There was another frigate, USS Halyburton, who was sent to deal with the hostage situation alongside Bainbridge.

And something else we don’t see in the movie is that the pirates’ ships also started to converge on the situation. Remember when we talked about the Taiwanese fishing vessel the pirates used as a “mother ship” of sorts? Well, as the Navy arrived on scene, so, too, did about four other ships all under pirate control. On those four ships were the crew held hostage by the pirates, so over 50 hostages from countries around the world.

Since Maersk Alabama was the only U.S. ship hijacked, though, and Captain Phillips was the captain of said ship…that’s why the movie’s story focuses more on the U.S.-centric version of the story. Also, because it’s based on Captain Phillips’ book, of course.

So, if you recall, the pirates boarded Maersk Alabama on April 8^th. On April 9^th, the Bainbridge and Halyburton arrived on scene and stayed just outside of the range of fire from the pirates. Instead, they used UAVs to get intelligence on the lifeboat and the situation as a whole.

By the way, the lifeboat is a covered lifeboat. The movie shows it pretty well, but if you’re like me and you think of the Titanic lifeboats—well, this happened in 2009 and not 1912, so obviously the lifeboat is a little different haha! Before long, the Navy made contact with the lifeboat and started to try negotiating with the pirates for Captain Phillips’ release—as well as the 54 other hostages on the other pirate-held boats.

On April 10^th, another Navy ship, the Wasp-class amphibious assault ship USS Boxer arrived at the scene, and negotiations continued with the pirates. The next day, everything changed when the pirates fired on USS Halyburton. No one was hurt, and Halyburton didn’t shoot back—no doubt not wanting to make things worse. I mean, Halyburton isn’t the world’s largest military ship, but it’s still a 453-foot-long battle-ready military ship with an array of armaments that could easily take out the 28-foot lifeboat if they really wanted to.

With Captain Phillips still held hostage on the lifeboat, though, Halyburton held their fire.

We don’t really see this in the movie, but in the true story’s timeline, April 11^th was also when Maersk Alabama finally arrived in Mombasa, Kenya, with the rest of the ship’s crew who had gotten it back underway after the pirates made their escape in the lifeboat. The U.S. Navy was involved in that, too, and escorted Maersk Alabama the rest of the way to ensure no other pirates would try to capture her again.

Meanwhile, back in the hostage situation, when the pirates fired on Halyburton, the U.S. Navy’s position changed from attempting to negotiate a release, to arranging a rescue. To help with that, they managed to convince Muse to come aboard Bainbridge for the negotiations the following day, April 12^th.

And so, the end of the movie is quite accurate to the end of the true story.

With Muse aboard Bainbridge, three SEAL Team Six snipers coordinated to simultaneously shoot the remaining three pirates on the lifeboat at the same time. Then, the Navy swooped in to rescue Captain Phillips, and with no more hostage to negotiate, Muse was arrested aboard Bainbridge. They never did find the $30,000, although some conspiracies have arisen that perhaps members of the SEAL Team Six took it before anyone else noticed—that’s never been proven one way or the other, though.

After the situation was handled at sea, Muse was taken back to the United States where he stood trial. Despite what his mother said about him being 16, Muse himself said he was 18, so he was tried as an adult. A few weeks later, in May of 2009, Captain Phillips sold his story to be told in what would become both the 2010 memoir from Phillips as well as the 2013 Paul Greengrass-directed movie we’ve learned about today.

September 24^th, 1780. New York.

At 36 minutes into the third season, episode 9 of AMC’s Turn: Washington’s Spies, we’ll find an event that happened exactly 244 years ago today during the American Revolutionary War.

Hitting play on the series, we’re in a wooded encampment of American soldiers. In the foreground is a cannon, with horses and a tent in the background. On the right side, everything is gathered around a rustic, wooden building. Off in the distance, behind the building, a uniformed officer in blue and white can be seen riding a horse into the encampment. Taking off his helmet, he tells one of the soldiers he’s looking for Colonel Jameson. They point him to the building. Handing the soldier his helmet, he walks to the building and enters.

Once inside, we can see another uniformed man sitting behind a desk. That must be Colonel Jameson, although there’s no one with that name cast in the series. But we can tell the man walking into the building who just entered the encampment is Seth Numrich’s character, Benjamin Tallmadge.

Tallmadge addresses Jameson inside the building, and we can see another man there playing a game of checkers across from the Colonel. The other man isn’t wearing a uniform at all, and when Tallmadge introduces himself as Major Benjamin Tallmadge from General Washington’s staff, the other man seems to noticeably shy away a bit.

Tallmadge tells the Colonel he was sent to find out what happened last night.

Now the three men are all facing each other, and Tallmadge makes no indication of recognizing the non-uniformed man. Colonel Jameson goes on, saying an enemy ship got a little rowdy, but she turned tail after a few shots. Oh, and this man was caught by some Skinners a few hours ago. They said he’s a spy, but he has a letter of pass from General Arnold that they couldn’t read.

Tallmadge looks directly at the other man, who we know from the actor is JJ Feild’s character, Major John Andre. He smiles at Tallmadge saying it was a simple misunderstanding. Tallmadge makes no indication of recognizing Andre.

“Yes, of course,” he says. Then, he asks Jameson for a word between just the two men, and they leave the building together. Once outside, Tallmadge asks Jameson to confirm Andre’s story. Then, Tallmadge asks Jameson if he had any shoes on. Jameson pauses for a moment.

No, he didn’t have any.

You didn’t think that was odd?

Then, turning to look at one of the Skinners standing there, Tallmadge continues to talk to Jameson.

“Or, you didn’t think it was odd that one of the Skinners is wearing a pair of royal officer’s boots?”

We can see one of the men standing there is wearing a nice pair of boots. Tallmadge asks what the man’s name is inside. Jameson thinks for a moment, then he says, “John Anderson.”

Tallmadge thinks for a moment, seemingly racking his brain for that name.

Then, Colonel Jameson continues to speak, saying that he should add that he did have plans for West Point on his person. But we didn’t think anything of it because they were in General Arnold’s handwriting. Tallmadge is in disbelief, “Wait a minute, what? And you just thought to tell me this now?”

Jameson stands a little taller now, “Of course not. It’s all in my report to General Arnold.”

Tallmadge pauses for a moment, as the realization starts to set in across his face before rushing away.

The true story behind this week’s event in the movie Turn: Washington’s Spies

Let’s start our fact-checking of this week’s event by clarifying the timeline, because the series doesn’t give us any indication of dates or anything. But, if I had to guess, I’d say this segment from the movie happened on September 24^th, 1780, because of a line in the series where Colonel Jameson talks about “John Anderson” being caught the night before.

And we know from history that the real Major John Andre was captured on September 23^rd, 1780—so, the night before the meeting we see in the series.

The TV show is correct to mention the name John Anderson, too, because that was the name John Andre used undercover. And it’s also correct to suggest Benjamin Tallmadge was involved as part of Washington’s Spies—as to borrow from the title of the series.

So, in the true story, Major General Benedict Arnold was in the inner circle for the Commander-in-Chief of the Continental Army, General George Washington. But, Arnold grew disillusioned with his position in the Army because, quite simply, he was going broke and the Continental Army wasn’t paying him what he felt he deserved. So, he offered to turn over the fort at West Point in exchange for about £20,000 and a position in the British Army. While it’s hard to convert British pounds of 1780 to today’s U.S. dollars, a rough ballpark would be about $42 million today.

After nearly a year of communicating in secret, Major Andre took a British ship called Vulture to meet face-to-face with General Arnold of the Continental Army. They met in the evening hours of September 21^st, 1780, and talked all night until the sun started to come up on September 22^nd. Even as the sun came up, Major Andre decided to keep the conversation with Arnold going, so instead of going back to Vulture, he and Arnold decided to go to a nearby house. It was owned by a man named Joshua Hett Smith at the time—he’s not in the TV series at all. Today, though, Smith’s house has another name: The Treason House. That’s thanks to the meeting between Andre and Arnold that took place there. At least, that was a nickname it had before it was demolished. I’ll throw a link in the show notes of a photo of what the house looked like in case you want to see.

So, at Smith’s house on September 22^nd is where Andre and Arnold continued their conversations. Meanwhile, though, the presence of a British ship on the river drew the gunfire of some Continental soldiers. That’s what the TV series is talking about when we hear Colonel Jameson telling Tallmadge about a ship that turned tail after a few shots.

They couldn’t have known it at the time, but that’s a nice little historical level of detail there because the ship they’re talking about is Vulture, which had delivered Andre to the meeting with Arnold and then once it shot at, Vulture was forced to retreat, leaving Andre stranded.

When it was finally time to leave, Arnold convinced Andre that he’d be safer going undercover on land instead of trying to sneak back to the British ship that was long gone by now.

So, that’s why we see Major John Andre in the series without a British uniform on—because he took it off to try and sneak past the American lines. He tried to do that in the early morning hours of September 23^rd, and I say “tried” for a reason. He was not successful.

If you remember from the TV series, Colonel Jameson tells Tallmadge that Andre had a passport from General Arnold that the Skinners couldn’t read.

The term “Skinners” we hear in the series are referring to slang term used in American-held territory for fighters loyal to the British Crown. That was a real term, but it’s how Colonel Jameson says the Skinners couldn’t read the pass that’s a change from what really happened.

In the true story, the men who captured John Andre were named John Paulding, David Williams, and Isaac Van Wart. Those were the three Americans who stopped Andre on the morning of September 23^rd, 1780. They didn’t have to read any passport from Andre, because he told them exactly who he was. You see, one of those men, John Paulding, just happened to be wearing a captured Hessian uniform.

Hessians were Germans who were serving in the British army.

So, Hessians were loyal to the British Crown. When Andre saw the Hessian uniform, he assumed the three men were British soldiers. He asked if they belonged to the “lower party” referring to the British camp to the south of them. They said they do, so John Andre told them he was a British officer who was on important business. It must’ve been quite a shock to Andre when the three men replied with, “We’re Americans” and arrested him.

Only then did Andre change his story, telling the men he was actually an American. That’s when he showed them the passport that General Arnold gave him, but again the men didn’t even need to read it like we see in the series because at that point they already were suspicious of this man.

Just like we see in the series, it is true that John Andre was taken to a nearby camp run by Lt. Colonel John Jameson. And Jameson had no idea of Andre’s true intentions, but he was aware of the passport from General Arnold. Of course, Jameson also had no idea of Arnold’s true intentions, either, so Jameson was going to send Andre directly to Arnold!

Very very similar to what we see happening in the TV show, Major Benjamin Tallmadge arrived at Jameson’s camp while Andre was there. He was suspicious of Andre, and instead of sending Andre to General Arnold, he convinced Jameson to send Andre and the letters from Arnold that Andre was carrying to General Washington.

As fate would have it, though, Jameson knew what all this implied. But he still wasn’t sure about Arnold’s guilt. And remember, as far as he’s concerned, General Arnold is still Colonel Jameson’s superior officer at this point—because, technically, he still was. If for any reason General Arnold was found not guilty, you can bet General Arnold’s retaliation would fall on Colonel Jameson.

So, Col. Jameson sent Andre to General Washington, and also sent a letter to General Arnold telling him of Andre’s arrest. That gave Arnold enough time to escape, which he did—also this week in history—on September 25^th, 1780.

And while John Andre’s capture and Benedict Arnold’s betrayal was a major moment during the American Revolution, of course, it’s just one small part of the overall story of the spy ring that’s told in AMC’s Turn: Washington’s Spies.

So, if you want to learn more about the true story, I’ve got a deep-dive episode all about Turn linked in the show notes—that’s episode #139 of Based on a True Story.

September 25^th, 1944. Arnhem, Netherlands.

Our next event happened on the 25^th, so Wednesday this week, and back during World War II. To see how it’s shown in the movies, we’re at about two hours and 42 minutes into the 1977 film A Bridge Too Far.

Picking up a piece of paper, Sean Connery’s character, Maj. Gen. Urquhart, reads it with an air of disgust in his voice. “Withdraw!?”

He turns around, speaking to no one in particular, although we can see some other soldiers in the background.

“Two days, they said, and we’ve been here nine,” he mutters under his breath as he paces across the floor. Again, in disgust, he mutters something about how you’d think we could accomplish one bloody mile. Then, General Urquhart’s demeanor seems to change slightly as he turns to another man in the room. As if finally accepting the piece of paper, he says they have their marching orders.

In the next shot, we see General Urquhart addressing his men. Referring to George Innes’ character, he says MacDonald will stay behind with the radio to give the Germans something to listen to while the rest of the men sneak away. On top of that, some of the medical staff have volunteered to stay behind with the wounded who are too bad to move. Those wounded will replace the men firing, to allow them to escape.

By the time the Germans find out what’s happening, we should all be safely across the river.

And then, under the cover of a rainy night, we see what looks like General Urquhart’s British soldiers making their escape. It’s so dark and the rain is heavy enough that it’s very difficult to see just how many there are, but we can see a line of soldiers all walking along a rope, using it like a guiding line. They stop when they can hear the sound of German voices over the rain.

After a moment, the voices seem to die down, and the line starts moving again. One of the soldiers turns to Urquhart and says something to the effect of how he’s finally starting to believe they’ll make it. And, in the next few scenes, there are more and more soldiers in the cover of night who are walking the same direction toward a large river. General Urquhart watches for a moment before getting into a small boat with a few other soldiers and making his way across the river, too.

The true story behind this week’s event in the movie A Bridge Too Far

That event we’re seeing is the end of the military operation known as Market Garden—a disastrous failure for the Allies during World War II that many historians believe prolonged the war instead of ending it early.

So, let’s start our fact-check with Sean Connery’s character, Major General Urquhart.

He was a real person, and he really was the man in charge of the 1^st Airborne Division for the Battle of Arnhem. That battle was just part of the overall Operation Market Garden, but the movie is correct to show Arnhem as being the last major part of the overall Market Garden that ended in the retreat of Allied forces.

In a nutshell, the way Operation Market Garden worked was the Allies dropped paratroopers at strategic locations just a few miles away from the bridges they were tasked with taking out. That’s why Sean Connery’s version of General Urquhart says something to the effect of going a “bloody mile” or something.

The airborne part of the operation commenced on September 17^th, 1944, and the plan was for the troops to hold the bridges until the land forces could meet them. That’s where the name comes from, because the “Market” part of the plan were the paratroopers, to be relieved by the “Garden” part of the operation—the ground troops.

If you remember, in the movie we hear Sean Connery’s version of General Urquhart mention how it was supposed to be two days, and it’s been nine.

Well, it is true that they were supposed to be relieved within 48 hours.

It’s also true that didn’t really go according to plan, though, because there were a lot more Germans in the area than the Allies anticipated. Somewhere around 100,000 Germans were in the area, compared to a little over 41,000 Allied troops. Of course, that’s for the overall operation, for the part of the true story we’re seeing in the movie with General Urquhart, there were about 10,000 of the British 1^st Airborne Division.

But, it’s still important to know the overall military operation, because all that fighting slowed down the reinforcements that were supposed to make it to them. The British paratroopers who had managed to make it to the bridge, there were only about 800 or so that made it to the bridge at Arnhem only to find themselves surrounded and alone. Despite that, and in spite of constant artillery bombardments and ground assaults from the Germans, the British held their positions for four days.

By the time the 21^st of September rolled around, the British at the bridge were being forced to surrender. The Germans continued their heavy assaults on the Allied troops. Still, they held out for a few more days. Finally, it was this week in history during the late-night hours of the 25^th or early morning hours of the 26^th that General Urquhart ordered a withdrawal.

So, that’s the scene in the movie A Bridge Too Far—the Battle of Arnhem, and also the bridge at Arnhem proved to be too much for the Allied troops. And although the scene from the movie we watched today made it hard to see how many soldiers managed to escape, only 2,000 of the 10,000 troops who were dropped managed to get out.

Oh, and just to clarify about the name of the movie. The name “A Bridge Too Far” comes from the book by Cornelius Ryan about Operation Market Garden. That’s the book the movie is based on, and the term “a bridge too far” is referring to the bridge at Arnhem where General Urquhart’s men were at, since it overstretched the Allies and led to the eventual withdrawal.

Would Operation Market Garden have been successful had they not tried to capture the one bridge at Arnhem? Despite that being something the book and movie title implies, in the true story, Operation Market Garden is debated among military historians to this day because as you might imagine, the true story is a lot more complicated.

But, if you want to watch the disastrous end of the operation that happened this week in history, hop in the show notes for where you can watch the movie A Bridge Too Far!

September 28^th, 1978. The Vatican.

At about two and a half hours into the film Godfather 3, we’ll find our next event from Saturday this week as two men dressed in black clergy robes walk down a dimly-lit hallway. The walls are a dark red color, with a huge painting in an ornate frame hanging on the wall, as well as fancy, old chairs and wooden furniture set along the wall. One of the two men is carrying a small tray with a saucer and cup.

As the movie plays, they walk down the marble-floored hallway and around the corner. After a pause, there’s a slight knock at the door. As the door opens, we can only hear someone saying, “Tea, Your Holiness? It will help you sleep” and the man with the steaming hot cup of tea on the saucer walks into the room.

The door closes behind him as the movie shifts to another scene of what looks like a mob hit as the character on the bed is smothered by two other men holding a pillow. Another cut in the movie, and we can see a sequence of even more dead men—apparently others taken out by the mob.

In the luxury box of a play, someone comes up to Al Pacino’s character, Michale Corleone, and whispers something in his ear. It must be something important, because he gets up and leaves with the man. In the dark hallway of the theater, we can hear what sounds like Andy Garcia’s version of Vincent Mancini telling Michael that their man inside the Vatican says something will happen to the Pope.

He’ll have a heart attack?

This is serious.

Michael says this Pope has powerful enemies, we might not be in time to save him. Then, they decide to go back into the play so no one notices them missing.

Back in the room we saw the man enter with the tea cup earlier, now it’s a nun knocking on the same door. She doesn’t wait very long for an answer before she opens the door herself, saying something as she walks into the room. There’s no reply, so she walks further into the room. On the nightstand, she picks up the saucer with what seems to be a now-empty teacup.

The nun is still trying to get the attention of whomever is lying on the bed.

The camera cuts to the man, smiling as if calmly sleeping in the bed. She nudges him. He doesn’t move. She nudges a little harder, making the reading glasses fall off his nose. He still doesn’t get up. The nun gasps, and rushes out of the room. We can hear the sound of the teacup shattering on the ground as she runs out of the room screaming, “The Holy Father is dead!”

The true story behind this week’s event in the movie Godfather III

Let’s kick off our fact-checking segment by stating the obvious: This is an example of a movie using a very real historical event as part of its fictional story. That real event is the death of Pope John Paul I.

And you guessed it, this week in history is when the real Pope John Paul I died.

Was he poisoned by a cup of tea like we see in the movie?

Well, that’s where the fictional part of the story comes into play…and not necessarily because the movie is wrong, but more that we just don’t know everything about the true story.

And here’s where this part of the story ventures into the land of conspiracies, because if you’ve ever done any research into the Catholic Church, you’ll know they’re not really known for being forthcoming with all the intricate details about how a Pope dies. Oh, sure, there’s the official version…but is that what really happened to Pope John Paul I?

Like any good conspiracy theory, let’s just lay out what we do know about the true story so you can decide what you believe.

We didn’t talk about this part of the movie, but if you’ve seen Godfather III, then you’ll know that earlier in the movie we see Pope John Paul I being elected to the papacy.

In the true story, that happened on August 26^th, 1978, and if you got the impression from the movie that perhaps he wasn’t 100% on board with the papacy, you’d be correct. We know this because of an interview that Father Diego Lorenzi did to honor the former pope. Lorenzi had worked with Pope John Paul I before he was Pope John Paul I, back when he was the Patriarch of Venice.

As a side note, his name before being Pope John Paul I was Albino Luciani. He picked Pope John Paul I because Pope Paul VI was his papal predecessor who had named him a cardinal, and the pope before that was Pope John XXIII, who had named him a bishop. So, that’s how he got the name.

So, anyway, as the true story goes, Luciani had said before going to the College of Cardinals where they vote for the pope, that if they voted for him—he would turn them down. But, in the end, he must’ve changed his mind…because when he was voted in, he said “yes” just like we see in the movie.

Well, I guess in the movie he says, “I accept,” but you know what I mean.

Pope John Paul I was only the Pope for 33 days, though.

He died on September 26^th, 1978. That falls on Thursday this week.

To say his death was a surprise is an understatement. He was the shortest-reigning pope since Pope Leo XI died of a cold just 27 days after being elected—back in the year 1605.

According to the official version of the story, Pope John Paul I died very similar to the way we see in the movie: Peacefully and in bed. The bedside lamp was still lit…and while the movie shows him smiling as if he’s just sleeping with a happy dream, we don’t really know if he had a smile on his face when he was found.

With that said, though, it is a little nod of the hat from the filmmakers to the real history because Pope John Paul I had the nickname “The Smiling Pope” because, well, he smiled a lot.

The official version of the true story is that Pope John Paul I most likely had a heart attack at some point during the night.

As you can imagine from such a short papacy, there are a lot of conspiracy theories surrounding his death. And one of them is very much in line with what we see in the Godfather III that it surrounded something to do with the Vatican Bank and maybe even the Mafia. Check out the show notes for a link to David Yallop’s 1984 book called In God’s Name where he lays out that conspiracy in more detail.

Historical birthdays from the movies

Time now for some birthdays from historical figures in the movies that were born this week in history.

On September 25^th, 1764, Fletcher Christian was born in Cumberland, England. He’s best known as the master’s mate on the Royal Navy ship HMS Bounty under the command of Lieutenant William Bligh. It was Christian who led the mutiny on the Bounty in 1789. That story has been told in multiple movies, including the 1962 movie simply called Mutiny on the Bounty where Fletcher Christian is played by Marlon Brando. And we did a deep dive into the historical accuracy of that movie back on episode #156 of Based on a True Story.

On September 26^th, 1888, Thomas Stearns Eliot was born in St. Louis, Missouri. He was better known as T.S. Eliot, who is now considered one of the 20^th century’s greatest poets. He was played by Willem Dafoe in the 1994 biopic about his early life called Tom & Viv.

On September 27^th, 1389, Cosimo di Giovanni de’ Medici was born in the Republic of Florence, in modern-day Italy. Cosimo was best known as the Italian banker whose immense riches allowed him to establish his family as one of the most powerful families during the Italian Renaissance. He was played by Richard Madden in the Netflix series simply called Medici.

‘Based on a True Story’ movie that released this week

This Sunday is the anniversary of the Denzel Washington movie called Remember the Titans! The movie was directed by Boaz Yakin and when it opened 24-years ago this week, it earned back almost everything it took to make the movie. With a budget of $30 million, Remember the Titans opened with about $21 million on its way to over $130 million worldwide.

Released in 2000 and set mostly in 1971, Remember the Titans gives us the “Based on a True Story” text about 45 seconds into the movie as it goes on to tell the tale of the T.C. Williams High School football team from Alexandria, Virginia. That football team goes by the Titans—hence the name of the movie.

According to the movie, T.C. Williams High School are newly integrating Black and white players, as well as coaches. That’s where Denzel Washington’s character, Herman Boone, comes into the movie as he’s appointed the head coach of the football team, replacing the former head coach Bill Yoast—he’s played by Will Patton in the movie.

And that’s where the first racial tensions arise in the movie, because Coach Yoast doesn’t appreciate being replaced. Then again, in the movie, Coach Boone doesn’t like that he’s been appointed the new head coach despite Coach Yoast having a fantastic career. He almost doesn’t accept the position, but he eventually does, and similarly Coach Yoast decides to stick around as Coach Boone’s defensive coordinator.

In the movie, we see Coach Boone taking the team to a rather rigorous training camp in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania in an attempt to unite the team. Using the history of the Battle of Gettysburg to emphasize the importance of unity and overcoming racial divides, the team gradually begins to bond. The movie really focuses on two key players and team captains, Gerry Bertier, who is white, and Julius Campbell, who is Black, and as those two start to develop a close friendship so, too, does the rest of the team.

Gerry is played by Ryan Hurst while Wood Harris plays Julius Campbell in the movie.

When the team returns to Alexandria, there’s still the societal pressures and ongoing racial tensions they have to face. But the Titans go on to have an extraordinary season, remaining undefeated and eventually making it to the state championship—no thanks to a scheme by the school board to have Coach Yoast reinstated by having the refs make bad calls against the Titans. But, Coach Yoast is onto the scheme and calls out the ref in the middle of the game, so things go back to the Titan’s way once the refs go back to making fair calls.

As they’re celebrating their trip to the state championship, tragedy strikes when Gerry Bertier is driving his car when a truck side-swipes him, leaving him in the hospital for the big game. Despite this, the Titans still manage to win the state championship…and then, we find out at the very end that Gerry died ten years later, bringing everyone back together for his funeral.

The true story behind Remember the Titans

Shifting to the fact-checking segment, and let’s start with what is probably the biggest historical inaccuracy: Gerry Bertier was not in a car accident that left him handicapped before the state championship game.

With that said, though, it is true that he was in a car crash…but, it wasn’t like what we see in the movie.

In the true story, this was after Titans’ 1971 season when they had a banquet to honor Gerry. Afterward, he was driving some of his friends home in his mother’s new Camero when he lost control of the car, it crashed and resulted in Gerry being paralyzed.

Speaking of their 1971 season, the rest of the key plot points in the movie are basically correct.

T.C. Williams High School in the movie was a real place. That name comes from Thomas Chambliss Williams, who was a former superintendent of the school system from the 1930s to the 1960s. Today, it’s the Alexandria City High School.

During the movie’s timeline, though, T.C. Williams High School was pretty new, having first opened its doors in 1965. That same year, the city of Alexandria integrated all their schools, and T.C. Williams High School received all the 11^th and 12^th graders in the city.

So, the movie is correct to show the racial tensions and prejudices throughout the team, and the school overall. On the football field, though, the Titans had an amazing year. Earlier I mentioned Gerry Bertier, so he was a real person. So, too, was Julius Campbell.

In the true story, they were both team captains whose friendship helped bond the team despite the racial tensions outside. And on top of that, helped the Titans become simply a great team as well. After all, they had players from three different schools coming together at T.C. Williams for the first time that year.

And they ended up going 13-0, and not by a close margin. Gerry Bertier alone had 142 tackles and 42 sacks! What about Julius Campbell? He had 34 sacks of his own. That’s 76 sacks for just two players—in 13 games! So, it’s no wonder the Titans outscored their opponents 338-38.

Then, as we talked about before, Bertier’s car crash left him paralyzed. Oh, to give you a better idea of how the movie’s timeline compressed that part, the Titans’ final game in 1971 was on December 4^th. The car crash that left Bertier paralyzed was on December 11^th.

The movie skipping ahead to 1981 for his death is, sadly, also true.

Gerry Bertier was on his way home in Charlottesville, Virginia, when a car going the opposite way on the highway crossed the center lane and smashed into him. He died at the hospital later. Gerry Bertier was 27 years old.

August 19th, 1692. Salem, Massachusetts.

For our first movie, we’re traveling back to the time of the Salem Witch Trials from The Crucible, that 1996 film with Daniel Day-Lewis and Winona Ryder. To find the event from this week in history in the film, we’ll need to start at about an hour and 50 minutes into the movie.

“Now, Mr. Proctor. Did you bind yourself to the devil’s service?”

Daniel Day-Lewis’s character, John Proctor, is standing there across from Paul Scofield’s character, Judge Thomas Danforth.

Judge Danforth tells John that he must write it down so they can put it on the church door as a good example to bring them to God.

There are two women in a cart behind Judge Danforth, but he’s not looking at them. He looks at John and Elizabeth Proctor standing in front of him. Danforth is only talking to John, though.

He asks the question again.

“Did you bind yourself to the devil’s service?”

John pauses for a moment. Then he offers his reply, “I did.”

Judge Danforth turns to the women in the cart now, saying there’s no point in keeping the conspiracy. Confess with him!

Elizabeth Lawrence’s version of Rebecca Nurse is tied to the cart behind Judge Danforth. She bursts out, “It is a lie!”

Judge Danforth asks if John Proctor saw anyone else with the devil—Rebecca Nurse, Mary Easty, Giles Corey, Martha Corey?

John says no, he did not.

Anyone?

John: No, I did not.

Others around Judge Danforth tell him to let John sign and be done with it!

A moment’s pause. Then, a quill is handed to John Proctor. He looks at a piece of paper…and signs his name.

The true story behind this week’s event depicted in the movie The Crucible

That’s just the start of the whole sequence that that continues on—but it’s showing something that happened this week in history when five people were hung in what we now know as the Salem Witch Trials.

Although the movie’s portrayal of events are highly dramatized, it is correct to show that John Proctor—Daniel Day-Lewis’ character—was someone who was killed by hanging this week in history on August 19^th, 1692.

He was one of 19 total people who were executed by hanging throughout the duration of the witch trials that took place between February of 1692 and May of 1693.

Almost all of the accusations were circumstantial at best, and nothing that would hold up in a court of law today. There are a lot of people who think the true motivation started off small and innocent before spreading into landowners realizing they could take advantage of it to legally take the land and possessions of their neighbors.

Is that what really happened? Well, I guess that’s something that keeps the Salem Witch Trials at the forefront of our curiosities because there are so many debates about the true causes and motivations behind what happened.

Regardless of any of the circumstantial evidence, the baseless accusations or the religious fever that gripped the region—at the end of the day, there were over 200 people accused of witchcraft. 30 were found guilty. 19 people were executed by hanging, five people died in jail as a result and one man, Giles Corey, was tortured to death by being pressed—the slow process of adding stones on top of him until he was killed.

This all happened in the United States thanks to religious people who were so set in their ways that they were okay with killing their own neighbors simply because someone accused them of witchcraft.

When, in reality, those accusations have been analyzed over the centuries and there have been numerous explanations—and no matter what outcome you believe, at the end of the day, everyone can agree that there was no valid reason for the hysteria to kill their neighbors.

If you want to see the event that happened this week in history, though, look in the show notes for links to where you can watch The Crucible as well as listen to our deep dive into the historical accuracy of that movie back on episode #143 of Based on a True Story.

August 21st, 1961. Nashville, Tennessee.

For our next movie, we’re in the 1985 biopic called Sweet Dreams to see how it portrays Patsy Cline recording her now-famous song called “Crazy” in the studio. At about an hour and 21 minutes into the movie, we’re in the recording studio with four men and one woman. Almost immediately, there’s an oddity as the woman is holding herself up with a crutch.

No one is playing their instruments, but we can hear music playing…it must be something playing over the speakers in the studio. She hobbles over to the pianist, who is busy jotting down some notes.

She rests her crutch on the piano as the man keeps singing the song in the background, “I’m crazy for feeling so blue…”

She waves to the guys in the sound booth to cut the song.

She shakes her head.

“I don’t care how many times you play that; I can’t sing this man’s song.”

One of the men in the sound booth replies that no one wants her to—take it away from him. The pianist closest to her reaffirms this. To hell with the demo, steal it!

Cigarette in hand, she shakes her head again. “How am I supposed to do this song?”

The man in the studio replies, “Just like you always do, Patsy—your way!”

The true story behind this week’s event depicted in the movie Sweet Dreams

I’ll be the first to admit the movie’s version may not make a lot of sense without watching the rest of it, but that short segment is how 1985’s Sweet Dreams depicts when Patsy Cline recorded her now-famous song “Crazy” in the studio.

That man on the demo? Another singer who was famous in his own right: Willie Nelson.

Of course, at the time, Nelson wasn’t famous. Quite the opposite. According to Nelson’s autobiography, part of the idea that inspired him to write the song “Crazy” had to do with how he felt during a time of his life when he was trying to support his family with unstable work.

In the movie, while Jessica Lange’s version of Patsy Cline is recording the song we hear her talking to one of the men in the control room named Bradley.

He’s played by Jerry Haynes in the movie, and there is a level of historical accuracy there because Owen Bradley really was Patsy Cline’s producer. In fact, it was Bradley who suggested the song for Patsy Cline after he heard it from one of Willie Nelson’s friends and colleagues, another song writer named Hank Cochran.

He’s not in the movie at all, but then again neither is Willie Nelson.

Patsy Cline recorded her version of “Crazy” starting on August 24^th, 1961, and the recording process took about a month: It wrapped up on September 15^th. Then, it was released in October of the same year, and it was an immediate hit.

Since Patsy Cline had just released another hit single earlier in the year called “I Fall Into Pieces,” after “Crazy” was released to such success, Billboard named Patsy Cline their Favorite Female Country Artist of 1961.

If you want to watch the recording process as it’s portrayed in the movie, check out the 1985 biopic about Patsy Cline’s life called Sweet Dreams. The recording of “Crazy” starts at about an hour and 21 minutes into the film.

And if you want to dig into Patsy’s life and tragic death just two years after the recording of “Crazy”, we covered that movie back in episode #95 which you’ll find linked in the show notes.

August 24th, 79 CE. Italy.

Our third event comes from ancient history, and a ten-year-old movie that’s named after the city it takes place in: Pompeii. We’ll start about an hour and six minutes into the movie as two men are sword fighting in an arena. While this part of the movie doesn’t tell us who they are, we can tell from the actors that the two men are played by Sasha Roiz’s character, Proculus, and Kit Harington’s character, Milo.

The sword fighting intensifies and every so often we can hear the crowd cheering as one of the two men gets a hit in on the other.

The camera cuts to Kiefer Sutherland’s character, Corvus, as he’s watching…all of a sudden, the building starts to rumble. Corvus looks around, trying to figure out what’s going on.

In the arena, Proculus knocks Milo down to the ground before he realizes everything is shaking. The cheers of the crowd change into screams as people start looking around at each other. We can hear the sound of cracking, although there doesn’t seem to be any visual damage yet.

Oh wait, I spoke too soon.

The camera pans up from the ground level of the arena and we can see pieces of the whole building start to collapse into piles of dust and debris. People are fleeing for the exits. The camera keeps panning up and in the distance behind the arena is a massive mountain. At the top of the mountain, there’s a burst as scores of smoke and ash spew into the sky.

The true story behind this week’s event depicted in the movie Pompeii

Shifting to our fact-checking portion of the segment, it is true that Mount Vesuvius erupted on August 24^th in the year 79 CE.

Well, maybe.

And the movie’s version of the story isn’t anything like what happened. For example, the characters are fictional, so of course their storyline is going to be fictional. But, the true story is one that we still don’t know fully, so the movie isn’t really trying to be more than transporting us to Pompeii to see how things might have happened for people who were there.

Because the truth is that we don’t know exactly what it was like. After all, it was almost 2,000 years ago.

1,945 years, as of this recording in 2024.

With that said, although the movie’s timeline focuses on the eruption in 79 CE, that’s not really where the true story begins.

There was a massive earthquake about 16 years earlier, in 63 CE, that caused a lot of damage to many of the buildings near Vesuvius. Today, most scientists and historians believe the earthquake was a bit of a warning sign. But, it’s not likely the local residents knew it to be a warning sign of something worse to come, and Romans loved the beautiful views along the shores of the Bay of Naples that Pompeii provided.

By the time the year 79 CE rolled around, there was around 20,000 people who lived in Pompeii. And while it doesn’t get as much attention, there was another town nearby called Herculaneum.

As a fun little fact, Herculaneum was actually rediscovered before Pompeii—in 1709, while Pompeii was discovered decades later in 1748.

Herculaneum was a smaller town with only about 5,000 residents at the time of the eruption, but most believe it was a vacation town for Roman elites and, by extension, a wealthier town than Pompeii.

Perhaps that’s why we’ve heard of Pompeii more, because there were a lot less human remains found in Herculaneum than Pompeii. Is that simply because there were fewer people in Herculaneum? Maybe.

Or maybe it’s because, even today, most of Herculaneum has yet to be uncovered—you see, part of the city lies underneath the modern-day city of Ercolano.

Or maybe it’s because Herculaneum consisted of more Roman elites than Pompeii, so they were able to flee while leaving less fortunate people behind.

Those are all speculations that people have had over the centuries but, of course, they’re purely speculation.

What’s not speculation is that Vesuvius’ eruption killed about 16,000 people in the region, with 2,000 of them being in Pompeii. And I’m sure you’ve seen photos of Pompeii—the manner in which many people who were killed by the ash tells a unique story in history, even if the destruction of an erupting volcano is not.

I’ll add a link to some in the show notes for this episode if you want to see them.

Men, women, and children were preserved the way they were that day—clutching valuables or arms wrapped around their loved ones.

The way the ash preserved the city is almost as if it was frozen in time. Approximately 2,000 of Pompeii’s residents never left, only to be rediscovered in 1748.

But, since we’re talking about the movie, there is one vitally important thing the filmmakers got wrong that you should know whenever you watch it.

And, to be fair, it’s not their fault they got it wrong.

You see, for almost that entire time, historians believed the date of the eruption took place this week in history. That’s because one of the people who survived was Pliny the Younger. He was only 17 at the time of the eruption, and although the uncle he lived with, Pliny the Elder, was one of the people killed at Pompeii, Pliny the Younger would go on to be an author whose writings have given us a lot of knowledge about what Roman life was like back then.

So, when Pliny gave us the date of the eruption as being August 24^th and 25^th. Since there was no archaeological finds to dispute that, there was no reason to question it.

That was true for centuries throughout history even up through the time of the movie because it wasn’t until 2018 that an archaeological find at Pompeii changed all of that.

It was a date.

Someone found the date of October 17^th inscribed at Pompeii.

Even more archaeological evidence found in 2018 included some fruits still on branches from autumn-bearing fruits. Of course, the movie was released in 2014, so the filmmakers were still operating under the belief that the eruption of Mount Vesuvius took place this week in history.

So, that’s why I thought this would still be a great movie to cover this week because if nothing else, the 2014 movie Pompeii is just another great example of how we’re always learning new things about history every day.

Or, to quote Italy’s culture minister, Alberto Bonisoli, after the date in October was found, and the fruits from autumn seemed to back up the evidence that Pompeii was still around in the beginning of October, he said: “Today, with much humility, perhaps we will rewrite the history books because we date the eruption to the second half of October.”

Dan LeFebvre  04:30

Black Sails is a prequel to Robert Louis Stevenson’s novel from 1883 called Treasure island. That means we have multiple layers of fiction to unravel from both the novel it based on as well as the mere fact that it’s a dramatized TV series with its own fictional elements. But of course, pirates really did exist. And I know you mentioned this series was better than you expected it to be before watching it. So before we get into some of the details, just to get an overall sense of how well it captured the essence of the Golden Age of Piracy, if you were to give Black Sails a letter grade for its historical accuracy, what would it get?

Colin Woodard  05:16

If I’m not framing it around the fact that it’s a work of fiction and drama. I’d say, you know, like a B plus, and maybe an A minus, if you’re taking into account that it’s a work of fiction and asked to have the drama and all the rest of it down. Yet, the broad, you know, they have four seasons of action and the broad narrative in in big strokes is fairly accurate. You know, the beginning of a Pirate Republic, it’s, you know, the Spanish gold in the in a REX treasure fleet and its role in the, the increase of the prestige of the Republic and the states and the infuriating the Spanish. And eventually the efforts of the empire and forces of order to try to receive the place and the tensions between all of those things. They are mixing in real people who were there at the time, and the characters in their younger form from Robert Louis Stevenson’s Treasure Island. The math and timing works out pretty well for that. So sure that that, okay. And of course, because it’s dramatized a lot of events are conflated characters shifted around a number of characters who are important to the historic pirate Republican NetSol were eliminated to make space for some of the Robert Louis Stevenson characters. So in the details of the plot, are kinda all over the place, but the broad story is the same. And what really intrigued me was, and gives me a gift has been giving them relatively high grade is, whenever they had a situation where they needed a specific detail, it was surprising how often they went out of their way to make it accurate. The ships being named right, the you know, minor characters you never meet, we’re always off screen, being given the proper names, you know, the, at one point, Jack Rackham is, you know, sitting on, you know, taking the crap, and he’s reading a newspaper, and he is in fact, reading the Jamaica weekly current. And it’s the I’ve read those on microfilm, there’s not that many that have survived, but it’s the actual, you know, fled from the Jamaica weekly current the masthead is all the same, you know, they, they could have, you know, cut corners and all of that, but didn’t. So I was surprised at the degree to which they went down into the details to be as accurate as possible in the in some of the fine tuning and livery over the over the script,

Dan LeFebvre  07:55

you don’t get that a lot of details, they just kind of make that up. And nobody’s going to notice that kind of thing. Anyway. So a lot, a lot of shows overlook that. So I’m glad that they they stuck to that.

Colin Woodard  08:05

I was impressed with that. So yeah, so basically, you know, really big shapes are accurate, really small things are very accurate. The middle range is where they, you know, played with and adapted the actual historical storyline and created their own wallets. But that, you know, they they inserted all of their plots in a in a broad story that thematically was fairly accurate to history.

Dan LeFebvre  08:28

Sure show you mentioned some of the characters, I want to ask about that kind of, again, looking overall, because there are four seasons. And so there’s a lot of characters, and a lot of TV shows do make up fictional characters. And then of course, we have the characters from Treasure Island. So I kind of broke them down into three different categories. There’s the real pirates, there’s the characters from Treasure Island, and then I’m assuming anybody that doesn’t fit into those is just kind of made up for Black Sails. So just to give a brief overview of those I would say I think the real pirates are Edward Teach Charles Vane, Jack Rackham and Barney Benjamin Hornet gold would Rogers and Israel Hans characters from Treasure Island, James Flint, also known as James McGraw, Billy Bones Long John Silver, and then I’m assuming the rest are kind of made up for Black Sails at Guthrie family, most notably in this series Eleanor and Richard Max, Mr. Scott, Lord Thomas Hamilton, Miranda, Hamilton those characters is that pretty good summary of the categories for the characters in the series?

Colin Woodard  09:32

Yeah, correct. That’s exactly right. And I’d add a fourth category of major figures from the actual history who were removed you know, you’re missing Stede Bonnet. Black Sam Bellamy, although he’s mentioned and Henry Jennings is barely in there at all even though he played a critical role in the end the actual events but yeah, that’s that’s pretty much it.

Dan LeFebvre  09:51

Yeah, I’m glad you added those that were removed because I didn’t see those industries

Colin Woodard  09:55

weren’t really need and bodies partner in crime is also Have entirely eliminated from this. This universe

Dan LeFebvre  10:03

is in this series. She’s kind of with Jack Rackham. It was that not necessarily the case then she was with somebody else. She

Colin Woodard  10:11

was with Jack Rackham. But she was she, Jack Rackham. And Mary Reed all went off into piracy together. So in the sort of great, you know, myths of piracy have Mary Reed and Bonnie along with Calico Jack going off and doing their piracy. He just removed Mary read from it altogether, which is fine, but given what a large profile, perhaps wrongly the very read and Barney story as with the general public, I was surprised that they didn’t sort of at least mentioned why she was off stage or, or, or wasn’t there.

Dan LeFebvre  10:44

Okay, okay. Yeah, they actually do at the very end of the last episode, we’ll get to that day. They do bring her in at the very end. But we’ll get to that. Now that we’ve kind of established some of the people I want to start digging into some of the details of Black Sails, showing how it sets up the time and place in history. And this is according to the very first episode first season and it talks about the year 1715, Pirates of New Providence Island threatened maritime trade in the region of Bahamas, the laws of civilized nations declare them enemies, and so in return, the pirates adhere to their own war against the world. And then later in the second season, we find out a little bit through flashbacks that it all started when a man named Henry Avery sailed into the port of Nassau and New Providence Island. Once he was there, he bribed the colonial governor to overlook his breaking of the law and allow his men to camp on the beach. And that’s basically how the show sets up that the pirates got their foothold in the region. Is that a pretty accurate summary of how piracy actually started in the Bahamas? Oh, pretty

Colin Woodard  11:37

close. So Henry Avery was real. He had made an incredible capture in the Indian Ocean with great brutality of a treasure of Galleon belonging to the grand mogul of India. And there was a global manhunt for him because his piracy had complicated relations for the British East India Company were in their trade monopoly in India that grand mogul was arresting their agents and furious Englishmen everywhere for this outrage. And so there was an All Points Bulletin for this Henry Avery guy like the world’s first global manhunt, everyone was trying to find him. And he skedaddled sort of around the world to where he thought you’d be least expected, which was to this, you know, backwater colony, the Bahamas, in 1696. And indeed, he went to the governor it was very obvious that he was a pirate but he claimed as to found the ship he was on hold treasure and ivory tusks. So at a time when everyone including the governors of the you know, the English governors everywhere were tasked with fighting this man at all costs. The governor of the Bahamas was looking the other way, taking all this gold and ivory and was given the grand mogul ship as his personal prize. In exchange, some small vessels and Henry Avery sort of he didn’t stay there and start a Pirate Republic. Instead, he basically fenced a bunch of his goods to the governor. And then he and his men slowly trickled down into small vessels and made their way up the eastern seaboard. And most of them back through the back door back to Ireland and England. And Henry Avery was last seen before he disappeared into the mists of history at a crossroads on his way towards the west country where he was born, known to be in the company of a man, a woman he was not married to and was married to another, and another man’s wife and and a large amount of treasure. So he didn’t found the Republic. But when Henry Avery disappeared into the night, it started this legend and lore. When these pirates were over the the the show is accurate in saying that, the Pirate Republic kind of got underway in 1715 or so. But this is by the next generation of sailors who became pirates who were inspired by Henry Avery as they had been growing growing up. There had been plays and novels and sonnets, and you know, all of the multimedia entertainment apparatus of the day, was taking the Avery story and embellishing it, and the myth was that this guy had gotten away with it. In some versions of the story, he’d gone to Madagascar in the Indian Ocean and started a you know, a magical Pirate Republic where pirates can be kings in the streets are paved with gold and you know, you know, living living the good life, right? What’s that? You know, in the hobos in the Great Depression, they had that something Candy Mountain, you know, the sort of utopia that the hobos imagined in their songs. This is kind of like a phobia for sailors and, and seamen, and so he was, yeah, the sort of at a multi media phenomenon of this story of the pirate who’d gotten away and become a pirate king, and Henry Avery had gotten into piracy. He had been a upstanding sailor, but he and his fellow sailors were basically cheated and screwed over by the owners of their ship, and they ended up you know, with their lives in danger and having been completely cheated by some of the most powerful men in England, they rose up in a mutiny and captured the ship and went off onto their own account. And that is that story was the sort of inspiration and template for the pirates who came a generation later and started accumulating in the failed English colony of the Bahamas and taking over and starting their own Pirate Republic. So Avery, in a sense, started the Republic but not literally He provided the the myth and and, and storyline and narrative that inspired a future generation was started up.

Dan LeFebvre  15:42

It’s almost like fiction created the fact that that myth and then people just wanting to buy into that and with this must be a great life.

Colin Woodard  15:53

with humans. It’s all about narrative, right? We’re storytelling species in a good story can transform the world.

Dan LeFebvre  15:59

Yeah, yeah. Well, you’re talking about the ship that he found, found with the treasure and and one of the key plot points in Black Sails, revolves around the ship called the Orca dilemma. And according to the series, she’s the largest Spanish treasure Galleon in the Americas with a total cargo in excess of $5 million. And the storyline for the Orca carries throughout pretty much the entire series. But near the end of season one Captain Flynn’s crew hunts down the Orca. And that leads into Season Two when other pilots start to catch wind of the earth and gold, and it becomes this bargaining chip for most of the things that we see all the way up to the end. Not to get too far ahead of our story. We’ve already talked about how it’s a prequel to Treasure Island. So you have to have treasure on that island. And the treasure is the one that’s taken from the aurka. Is there any historical truth to the aurka, dilema story that we see in Black Sails? Yeah, I

Colin Woodard  16:47

probably should have checked this before. I’m pretty sure that that is the the actual name of one of the Spanish treasure galleons that went down when the 1715 treasure fleet had a calamity on the coast of Florida. So Spain was by far and away the most powerful and wealthy of the transatlantic or global maritime empire is based in Europe, in that time period, and is being controlled, you know, everything you know, from Mexico on South and the entire hemisphere, pretty much. And they had possessions in the Philippines and Guam, and in an Asia and all of the unlike the English, you know, showing up in New England and Virginia and the French showing up in Quebec, the Spanish when they’d come had discovered literally mountains of silver and the Aztecs with their gold and just incredible, you know, comic book kind of riches, which they extract with terrible brutality, and you know, slaving people and slaughtering people, but all of that treasure, and all the stuff that they were trading for in Asia, all had to somehow get back to Spain. And the way it worked with, you know, back in those days, square rig, large ocean going vessels couldn’t sail into the wind very well the other sails kind of flap and you had to turn off the wind until the sails would catch. And in those days, you could be sailing 70 degrees off the wind and you add some wind against your hole and you had some waves and you’re not going anywhere. So my point is that ocean going ships were pretty much compelled to follow established sea routes guided by the prevailing winds. And this compelled Spain to move all of their treasures from Asia across the Pacific to the Americas, in a annual massive, you know, Deathstar. Like treasure Galleon, the Manila Galleon that started in the Philippines, stocked up all the treasure and sailed across the Pacific. We get to Acapulco and unload and then under guard, these mule trains are taken over Mexico to better cruise and loaded into galleons and come to book to Havana their, their central base of their maritime part of their empire in the Americas. And then separately, all of that inconsolable and Aztec gold and all the other stuff that they were, you know, extracting bleeding and stealing was all loaded onto vessels that also converged in Havana. And then once every year or two, it was all put onto the incredibly well guarded treasure fleet, often known as the plate flee plate was the word for silver backbone. And it would the prevailing winds from Havana to get back to Spain required that you sail you kind of be carried by the Gulf Stream up between Florida and the Bahama Islands before you can catch the prevailing winds to Iberia to Spain. And so everybody knew this and but the the treasurer fleet was incredibly well guarded. And I can’t remember seven or nine vessels of which I’m 99% Certain Erica De Lima was the name of the flagship, but in any case, they were sailing through the Straits of Florida in 1715. They’ve been delayed trying to load by late arriving shipments and stuff. And it was bumper size treasure load because there’d been a war going on the war of Spanish the session had ended the year but For so all the groups like several years worth of treasure accumulating on this one bumper treasure fleet. And then our hurricane struck as they were sailing up the Straits of Florida, and blew them and destroyed the fleet up against the then on colonized Florida coast, in a whole stretch of sand now known as the Treasure Coast. And when all those ships were wrecked there with a gazillion pounds worth of treasure and valuables, word got out rapidly dull or quarters right of the Americas. And everybody was converging on to see if they couldn’t get some right by diving by salvaging including the Spanish who send an entire you know, they’re survivors of their crew had set up a camp on the beach, and then they were sort of backed up by more soldiers and sailors and salvage operations. But yeah, the pirates would start laying siege to it and all the rest. So yeah, in the end, a pirate named Henry Jennings had charged in and attack the Spanish camp, and Romans just in time of peace to but he did it anyway and got a massive cache of treasure, which is essentially the treasure that in Black Sails, they’re talking about the Erica gold, the gold, the Orca, silver is the stand in for the treasure from the Spanish treasure fleet of which Henry Jennings got a large quantity. And then being sort of a a person on the run, he sailed to the sort of beginnings of this pirate Republican Nasaan arrived with all this treasure, which sort of transformed the status of the island of the pirate community there overnight. So yes, that part is true. And there was indeed a giant parcel of Spanish treasure that was injected into the early Pirate Republic and, you know, brought it a new level of fame and an attraction to anyone who was looking to, you know, maybe go onto the account.

Dan LeFebvre  21:49

Well, that’s exactly what I was thinking was you were talking about how with Henry Avery and and there was just the lower to this, this lifestyle that was set forth in a lot of the fiction of the day. What do you throw that you throw that gold in there, and that just had to be a new rush of people that were starting to feel, you know, maybe adhering to the law is not what I want to do with my life. Let’s go get some of this treasure.

Colin Woodard  22:14

Yeah, exactly. And be up people from all fields, all up and down the colonies. All showed up there and the Spanish were there to win, right there was a, you know, battles and do people diving and people getting whatever they could, but remember, this is all happening right on the Florida coast, just across the streets from the Bahamas, which were a failed English colony. during that war. I mentioned that it just ended in 1714, the war of Spanish secession The Bahamas has always been a, you know, backwater sort of colony, but it was sacked and destroyed by the French and Spanish, you know, at least twice. And, essentially, you know, the surviving English settlers were living in, you know, heights in the jungle kind of thing. And it’s the pirates who started showing up there as early as 1714 and small little gangs using these dugout oceangoing canoes, these petty aguas are starting to arrive and operate out of there. And ultimately, it’s those folks who shored up the forts and put guns in it again. And we established order they got there before the British Empire bothered to get there and took it for themselves. And it’s that pirate nests that Pirate Republic that makes possible a outbreak of piracy that was so effective that we’re still talking about it today. Wow.

Dan LeFebvre  23:32

Wow. Yeah, that’s, I can understand why they they left a lot of that out and just simplified it to here’s the kicker golden that’s the pirate treasure because that could be a whole series in and of itself. Just just telling that story. Near the end of season two and Black Sails there’s a pivotal sequence of events where we see Captain Flint being taken captive by the governor of the Carolinas Lord Peter ash. And it turns out that Peter was a longtime friend of Flint and Flint companion Miranda Hamilton back before Flint was even a pirates he went by his real name James McGraw. But Captain Flint is now a pirate Lord Ash is known in the areas according to the series, as you know, the toughest governor on pirates. So this sequence culminates in a trial for Captain Flint in Charlestown. What they don’t realize is that Charles Vane has sailed up from NASA and at the last moment he and his crew attacked Charles Town to rescue Captain Flint and kill Lord ash in the process. And this series is always referred to as Charlestown in the Carolinas visually, we can see it’s just off the coast, which plays into the sequence with veins attack on the town as the ship bombards from the coast. So I’m assuming that this is present day city of Charleston, South Carolina. Did pirates really attack Charleston like we see happening in the series there?

Colin Woodard  24:48

Yeah, so originally, it was Charles Town. It got turned to Charleston after the American Revolution because it’s named for a King Charles we were doing a lot of D royal lysing of things right. Church of England became the Episcopalian Church and so on and so forth. So yes, it was it was originally Charlestown and the Carolinas were known as Carolina in the West Indies, and they were later split into two colonies, South Carolina, Charlestown, and then a much poorer backwater, sort of new and troubled colony North Carolina further north, between Charleston and Virginia, which the Virginia is looked down upon to the Charlestonians looked down upon, but Charlestown was founded by English planters from the island of Barbados, so slave lords, who had run out of land back in Barbados, and Barbados was, he was the original like slave plantation colony in the English empire. And it was a brutal Manichaean struggle between the people who first arrived there in the early 1600s. And by the time we get to the 1670s, when Charlestown was founded, and the Carolina colony was starting to be colonized. A few families had one that Manichaean struggle, and had perfected sort of, you know, brutal, you know, lives for sugar slave system and become so rich in the process that when these people who were not you know, pedigreed or from great families returned to England, they were they were the nouveau riche. You could buy everything, you know, like the Russians coming and you know, buying up Kensington these days, these folks were showing up and offending all of the established families by being able to buy all their estates and all the rest. And we’re considered to have terrible manners and all of that, but they were incredibly rich. While they’re when they ran out of land. They, on this tiny island, they turn to this new colony in the subtropical woodlands of the North American mainland, and set up a new West Indies style slave plantation society there, which is where you get the legacy culture of what became the cotton South comes from transposing this model directly by the barber in planters themselves. So yes, that place existed and was very much tied into the West Indies, it was considered part of the West Indies not separate from it. And so as the port most intimately involved in the trade with the Pirate Republic in the Bahamas, through intermediaries, and many of the people in the Bahamas had ties or connections in one way or another to Charlestown. Well, the scene you’re describing where Flint you know, comes a shorter parlay with the governor there and then ends up you know, there ends up being him being captured and there ends up being Charles Vane showing up to liberate him. That’s all keyed off a real historical events, which was one of the pirates they dropped from this Stede Bonnet was indeed captured and brought to Charlestown where he was trying to be home. And there was some sort of uprising popular uprising to storm the, you know, the seat of power that almost succeeded and would have resulted in the overthrowing of the leadership of the South Carolina colony and liberation of Stede Bonnet are ultimately the uprising actually failed, and Steve Monroe was hanging there. But something like that did indeed happen, which is what they’re, they’re keying off. It didn’t involve Charles Vane. But the Attorney General there in South Carolina wrote letters about, you know, something terrible that they had just dodged the details, or kind of never discussed too much. But it’s clear that his government almost fell out when this uprising happened. They

Dan LeFebvre  28:29

probably weren’t too keen on planning that out.

Colin Woodard  28:31

Yeah. And I would love to somebody to dredge up more details about what happened there. But they’re not in the they’re not where they shouldn’t be in the in the British National Archives. Yeah,

Dan LeFebvre  28:41

it was probably Yeah, it’s probably a little embarrassing for them, that that kind of thing.

Colin Woodard  28:47

Right, because there’s a popular uprising by many of their own people and pirate sympathizers too, which is not something they want to broadcast. In

Dan LeFebvre  28:54

season three, we see another character was Rodgers arriving in NASA as the he’s the English Governor tasked with kicking out the pirates and turning New Providence island into, as the show puts it, a civilized English colony. In his first act there is to offer a pardon to anyone who are tuned from piracy, no questions asked. And a lot of people take the offer a lot don’t most notably in the series, Charles Vane, Jack Rackham, and we’re teach team up to try to defend the harbor against Rogers. And the only person who Rogers offered does not extend to is the guy who was behind the attack in Charlestown in this series, at least Captain Charles Vane and then we see vein getting captured publicly hang by Rogers and NASA which ends up turning into a spark for the pirate resistance against would Rogers, but how accurate was the show’s portrayal of what happened between Woods Rogers and Charles Vane?

Colin Woodard  29:45

The part with the pardon and they and woods Rogers taking control of Nassau is almost completely as it really happens. It was Woods Rogers idea to have the king issue a pardon and he had been lobbying for some time, he believed that through that you could have a divide and conquer strategy. So which which Rogers had been the greatest hero of that war that I mentioned that ended in 1714, the war of Spanish secession, he’d been a privateer, and at a time when most private tears just went out into the English Channel and captured a French, you know, sloop and then went back into port and divided up the plunder and called it good. He built from scratch to frigate size warships, man them with hundreds of men and circumnavigated the planet at a time when very few people had done so to read the Spanish shipping in the Pacific, which nobody had to go around the Tierra del Fuego and through the circumpolar storms going around Antarctica. It took him a couple of years, but he was seeking to capture one of those Manila galleons. And he did it and he in fact, got a musket ball in the jaw and his brother was killed just like the show says happened. And he eventually brought it through all kinds of trials and tribulations back all the way around the world backwards, around Africa and back up and anchored in the Thames and he was the hero of the war. And he used that political capital from having done that and, and writing a best selling book that they refer to in Black Sails as well. To to lobby the king to issue this part and they said, you know, you issue the pardon and back my private, you know, mercenary fleet with some royal navy vessels, and I can go and take Nassau in the Bahamas, you will make me governor, that was kind of the deal. You know, I can be governor, you can be governor which Rogers if you can take and hold this pirate nest. And so that was a deal worked out and he didn’t do come ashore. Charles Vane was not excluded from the list. But Charles Vane refused to participate. He was one of the diehards, right? The idea was divide and conquer and a lot of pirates including Orta, gold and Jennings and many others sign, you know, took the pardon, at least provisionally. And, and and some didn’t. Some are like no way we’re not, you know, we’re committed to piracy. We hate England and all that. And Charles Vane was very much in the latter camp. And so when which Rogers fleet arrives, Charles Vane is the you know, the one who puts together this fire ship, he sets a ship on fire and sends it sailing straight towards the, the, the, the fleet, the English leap, it’s arrived, just like you’re shown in Black Sails, that he then escapes out the back, there’s the bomb. NASA has a you have NASA on Providence Island, you have a sandbar like Island, that’s now Paradise Island, that was then Hogg islands. And they almost meet together and forms the harbor a big long slit like harbor. But if you’re in a really small vessel, you can actually instead of going out the ocean side of the harbor, you can go to the head of the harbor, and navigate around the shoals and go out the back entrance. If you’re really small, he did that he escaped out the back and there was at large for some time. So the Charles Vane defies the pardon. You know, and causes all kinds of trouble part is correct, even if some of the details have been shifted around for dramatic purposes.

Dan LeFebvre  33:14

Yeah, no, it’s that’s that’s impressive that, you know, they they stuck to a lot of the historic detail even I like that, you know, the, the background of was Rogers and that, you know, getting shot and because you see him with scars in this series, and he kind of explains that, and yeah, it’s impressive.

Colin Woodard  33:31

This brother is pulled by the mask on the musket ball, and I was amazed at the point where there’s would have the scene in Black Sails where Woods Rogers and his fleet, his mercenary vessels and real Navy detachment are sailing with him. And like the name of every vessel and the size of it all Exactly, right. They added one more vessel, you know, that was going to be the one that was going to take Mrs. Guthrie back to be in prison, but all the other vessels are exactly right. And even the Commodore the fleet was the real Commodore so I mean, at Chamberlain, so yeah, the they would always zoom in and when they had a chance to use the accurate details they did, it was kind of fun for me to see a CGI of all the ships done well, right. So I’ve been read about them in the documents and you know, assembling what his fleet was like from all the documents where I was writing Republican pirates and then see somebody you know, take that and recreate it was fun in the

Dan LeFebvre  34:25

show, after the news of Charles Vane dies and that news reaches his old mentor Edward Teach, that causes teach to then return to NASA and we find out that another pirate captain Benjamin Hornet gold has aligned himself with what Rogers in the British so on one side, you have the British led by Rogers and corn and gold, along with a bunch of British soldiers who came with Rogers. And then on the other side, you have the pirates led by captains teach Flint Rackham and John Silver. And the pirates have their own crews but they also find an ally of their own and what the show calls the Maroons. They are marooned slaves. Who set up their own village in secret and away from anybody else? The pirates convinced them to help in trying to overthrow the British. And at least as as of the end of season three, it kind of works the the pirates managed to force the British to retreat from the island. Did any of this battle between pirates and England actually happen?

Colin Woodard  35:18

Yeah, in the sense I mean, Woods Rogers came ashore, he split the pirates he occupied the fort for the gold and Jennings both joined him, Jennings actually became a pirate Hunter trying to hunt down Charles Vane. So you know, all of that is pretty true to form. Roger Rogers governorship and re imposition of, you know, organized colonial rule was in jeopardy though for a years thereafter, as the show is kind of suggesting disease didn’t did in fact break out among his people that the locals were, you know, not as susceptible to and so a lot of his soldiers were dead or incapacitated. there was danger of renewed war with Spain, which the black trails touches on as well. He was in a very precarious spot and Charles Vane and some of the other diehards, later Calico Jack Rackham, married named Bonnie take a small vessel and reading things to their they’re all at large. Before Rogers showed up, Vane came ashore and kind of reestablished piracy. There was a pardon came before what’s Rogers did word of the part. And it was brought to them by another ship and other governors. So the pirates, many of them before Woods Rogers arrived, and already gone off to other colonial governors and gotten pardons and come back. So a lot of them had their pardons and which Rodgers took other pardons. But during this interval between when many of the pirates would decide, Oh, I’ll take the part and that’ll be great. And before woods, Rogers arrived, Charles Vane showed up there and like, came down and kicked but you know, like said, No, we’re gonna be pirates again and shook it all up again. And then when Rogers shows up, Vane has that that fire ship incident that covers his escape, and then he’s spending all his time reading all the merchant shipping, trying to come in and out of Nassau to basically make a mess of the finances and the commerce which is really complicating what’s Rogers life. But there’s no point where there’s actually a siege by the pirates, reestablish order once Rogers is there, he is fearful of it. I mean, that’s something he’s he’s watching his back the whole time, but it doesn’t quite materialize in the same dramatic way it does in Black Sails, however, their whole idea. I mean, I love the idea that they took the potential plot lines of an alliance between the Maroons, the enslaved people who’d escaped and had set up longtime, like maroon settlements, they call them deep in the interior, the famous one was deep in the Blue Mountains of Jamaica, there was a whole society there have escaped slaves who they had their own matriarchal Queen leader, just like Black Sails suggests. The governors in the real history surrounding the Bahamas, we’re all terrified by the Bahamas, because the pirates let people of African descent join their cruise and become rouse up to become captains and, you know, the word that you could be treated as a human got around, and a lot of slaves were ready to the governor of Bermuda said that the rumor was that the pirates are going to come invade Bermuda and that the slaves knew this. And we’re gonna rise up with them to take Bermuda and turn it into another pirate nests like NASA. So all of that was a real concern. It never actually materialized in, in our in our own history. But it absolutely could have and if you’re going to expand out and dramatize and elongate the Pirate Republic. Yeah, if I were a show director, I would have totally gone to that material to it’s mentioned in Republican pirates, and it’s all out there. But I liked that they decided to take that and the tensions that the genuine distrust that the maroon communities would have of the pirates, the pirates were also, you know, yes. people of African descent were fellow humans, if they were apparently appears to be from the evidence that if you were a fellow like born in the Americas person, that didn’t matter what race you were, you could all join the pirate cruise. But when they would capture a slave ship with, you know, people chained in the hole coming straight from Africa, who’s speaking weird languages, strange customs, right? They’re not Americanized, that Eretz would often just treat them as things right. Seldom is cargo and all the rest, just like the slaveholder. So it seems like it was from the evidence that parents attitudes were defined not by race, but by cultural foreignness. Right. The people were from Africa where they would other and treat His things, but the fellow sailors and people in the new The world seemed to be treated as fellow sailors and people in Pirates. So you know, it’s a mixed bag there. But

Dan LeFebvre  40:07

yeah, and it makes, I mean, the pirates. So there’s that level of trust that yeah, I don’t know that I would have that there, too. But I’ll also when you have some of the pirates that are that are taking the pardon? And basically switching sides, it sounds like like, I mean, do you know that this person who was a pirate before Are they are they still? Or have they turned to the law? And then, you know, gonna turn you in? Like, I mean,

Colin Woodard  40:32

what’s what’s lose? I mean, you’re literally to the pirates get the pardon, but they could be absolved of all their prior acts of piracy. And they could keep their stuff the loot. So why wouldn’t should do it? It’s just like, you gotta, you know, you just gotta absolve for all the piracy you’ve done so far. Are you gonna do more wait and see, but you know, at least I’ve cleared the slate. So it took real diehard types who were, you know, especially furious at England and organized society to not be tempted by the party. But some of the you know, people like Horta, golden Jennings, you know, took the party and never looked back and became, you know, sort of right hand lieutenants to the historical Woods Rodgers in his effort to consolidate control and bring civilization back. In

Dan LeFebvre  41:17

the final season of this series. It’s pretty clear that would Rogers is not going to stay away from long he gets, as I mentioned, pushed out for a little bit comes back, but his fleet manages to track down and reteach his ship, and after boarding it, they overpower the pirates they and reteach and Bonnie Jack Rackham, are captured by wood Rogers. And he wants to make an example of ever teach Blackbeard. So in episode three, season four, he calls for really the most horrendous tortures, they put a bag over his head, tie his hands and legs, tie a rope to his feet, hanging them upside down over the side of the ship. And then using a rope connected to his hands, they pull him under the water from one side of the ship scraping his body against the bottom, that ship comes back. He’s a bloody mess when it comes back up. But teach survives the torture three different times each time more flesh is ripped open by the saltwater in the end, he’s barely recognizable. Everybody is just surprised he’s not dead each time. And then Rogers ends up shooting him in the in the head after the third time. Is that really how Blackbird died.

Colin Woodard  42:22

I mean, that’s called keel hauling. And that was a punishment the Royal Navy would mete out to sailors in the Royal Navy who had been bad, usually not done until it was fatal. But yeah, tear up your back against the barnacles. And which Rodgers in Black Sails is seeking to basically to use this as a method of execution by repeating it until the guy’s dead, which is, you know, to terrorize the the the other pirate captives and show that he means business. The real Woods Rogers was a mixed bag, but he didn’t have the same sort of like sadistic and intensity that the Black Sails, Woods Rogers had. He also never laid eyes on Blackbeard at any point. So When word of the pardons started arriving in the Americas, remember, there was no radio or TV. So once the king had issued a pardon, it had to be sent out on ships and physically in pieces of paper, and word literally had to get around right communication is only as fast as transportation back then. And so it took a while, you know, it’d be delays or weeks or even a month or two between when each column your court knew about this. And Blackbeard was out cruising with his fleet when word started coming around. We know the moment pretty much when he learned of the pardon, he learns it from a vessel he’s captured in the US He’s working his way up the up the Leeward Islands. And he goes off to try to make a final score in the Gulf of Mexico. So he’s off in the Gulf of Mexico theater, and eventually will comes around to take a pardon. From a corrupt governor in the poorest colony of the mall, North Carolina I remember I mentioned that sort of backwater, relatively new colony, it had just survived a war between the colonists and the indigenous people who didn’t want them there. And he goes to the governor of this place in this little town of 600 that sometimes serves as its capital. And he just shows up there and says, Hey, I want to take your part in and you know, wink wink nudge nudge I will spend I’m just going to set myself up in the trash collection business right and if I if I keep finding you know, piles of gold out see one want to trash I’ll sell them to you and my matter all you know that the indigenous people attack again, I’ve just almost doubled the population of your of your army, you know, with all these battle tested men around me so basically he buys off the protection of the governor. In this scheme where he’ll keep he’ll he’ll become an under a world crime figure protected by the cops mayor. He’s bought off the authorities in this tiny colony and he’s fencing his goods to them so they get to hear the governor in this impoverished place. Suddenly you have all these goods coming in. Under pay your debts, and you’ve got all these some, you know, well trained people know how to handle weapons to help keep your place secure. So he goes for that. So he so Blackbird never crosses paths with Woods Rogers, but his death is not unlike what they show in Black Sails. So the unscrewed another governor who was very unscrupulous was the governor of Virginia, Alexander Spotswood and Spotswood with no authority whatsoever, invaded North Carolina he conspired with a the real the captains of the two Royal Navy vessels posted in Hampton Roads. And they did a two pronged invasion using so like as mercenaries. And basically Blackbeard is surprised at Ocracoke Island. And there’s a battle not between Woods Rogers and Blackbeard but a battle between a lieutenant Maynard the Royal Navy, sailor in charge of the detachment center to capture him. And it happens very much like they depict in Black Sails, the the there’s a broad side across the depths of the of the sloop that the Royal Navy sailors are on. Blackbeard has been boarded, thinking they’ve won the day, there’s bodies on the deck, and then all of a sudden, it’s an ambush coming out from the hold. Come all the Royal Navy sailors and gentlemen who have been hiding down there, surprise them, there’s a giant battle just like in Black Sails, and ultimately, Lieutenant Maynard, you know, and his men kill Black Beard and behead him and take the head back home to their governor as a prize where it’s placed on what’s now known as Black beards point and Hampton Roads, Norfolk, Virginia. So the manner of death is correct. It’s out of sequence in the timeline, and the person who did it is completely different. But yeah, that’s what became of Blackbeard. And they pay homage to all that, and having Woods Rogers take on black beer, but they have they set up the battle to be very similar to what actually happened to black beard. In Ocracoke sound and 1718 Wow,

Dan LeFebvre  47:00

yeah, it’s not Yeah, another example of how they’re fitting it into their story, of course, but still adhering to history pretty well. It sounds like Yeah,

Colin Woodard  47:09

it’s like what’s Rogers gets to take on some of spots, woods, you know, on scrupulousness, and then gets to play the dashing Errol Flynn, like Lieutenant Maynard character in his battle with Blackbeard. Okay, you kind of tie them all together. But again, we could have made it up any way they wanted. They intentionally echoed what actually happened to Blackbeard in history when they decided how that battle would play out, which, you know, is a story and it’s like, Hey, if you’re gonna do it, yeah, right.

Dan LeFebvre  47:36

As I was watching that, you mentioned that the queue hauling of Blackbeard. It really kind of struck me that you know, that Woods Rodgers was sent there to be the English governor is supposed to be returning the island to the civilized world. And although pirates have been romanticized throughout much of pop culture, I think everyone knows that they’re brutal murderers without regard for law and order. They’re pirates. But we don’t really think of the brutality on the other side the brutality of those in a position of Law and Order were the actions of what we call a civilized nation of the time just as brutal as the pirates were.

Colin Woodard  48:12

Oh, yeah, definitely. That’s what you know, really came through in researching the pirate story for when I was writing Republica pirates was that you know, the authorities needed to cast them as you know, demons Villains of All nation, Devil people trying to bring down all that is right and true. And when you really look at it, though, you know, all this propaganda was out there. The pirates themselves, most of them, Charles Manson exception, but Blackbeard and Bellamy and most of these other pirates. You read through all of the surviving documents and all the documents are from unsympathetic witnesses. They’re all from the victims of the pirates are the accounts of what happened. The pirates didn’t leave any letters or anything behind for us. So we have court death. We have depositions given to officials and then court testimony. And despite that, like Blackbeard right, bloodthirsty, scary, Blackbeard, didn’t harm or kill anybody in any of these accounts, you know, there’s probably 1415 Different piracy attacks on ships. He scares people, he acts threatening and says I’m gonna do terrible things lets you do what I want. And so everyone does what he wants me doesn’t have to hurt anybody until his final battle with the Royal Navy and Ocracoke sound. And if you compare that restraint by these particular outlaws to what you know, the legally sanctioned people are doing like privateers like Henry Morgan. I mean, oh my god, Henry Morgan, like, you know, goes to Panama and Saxa city and like, kills every single person, man, woman and child just for fun and the law you know, children in London, you know, caught starving children stealing loaves of bread, you know, are executed and orphans or, you know, sold to people who are chiming sweep up, you know, operators who send the small children up and down the chimneys that scrape them out personally until they fall to their deaths or, you know, die of, you know, not being able to breathe anymore. I mean, it’s like, brutal, terrible time and official and legally sanctioned violence, when you really start reading into it is considerably worse than what the pirates were actually doing. So yeah, it’s it’s a brutal time. But the pirates seem to be acting with remarkable restraint in their actions compared to the norm of violence around them.

Dan LeFebvre  50:33

It leads to another aspect of understanding how why people would turn to piracy when they’re seeing that law and order is not really Law and Order anyway, then. I mean, especially if all this Spanish gold is crashed off off the coast. Why not go get it? Yeah.

Colin Woodard  50:54

And, you know, they, there were many reasons for the outbreak of piracy. But most among them is that, you know, the, the world of the English Empire was starting to get much more difficult for ordinary people. And this is this is in the middle of the sort of what they call the enclosure movement. So the all of the relationships between Lord and serf in the countryside in England were kind of breaking down, you know, serfs run their families to be on 100 year leases for their little scrap of land. But there was suddenly these incentives as the beginnings of industry were start to happen for the Lord’s to get rid of this 150 individual little plots of subsistence farms and make one big sheep pasture and grow sheep for the wool to send to the woollen mill mill would be a much better deal. So over the decades leading up to this, a lot of the Lords were not renewing the lease, which was just like what you know, that wasn’t even a possibility in people’s minds. And so tons of people from the countryside massive numbers were moving destitute into the cities. That’s where the Dickensian phrases about the surplus population and the social Darwinist would use at the end of the 18th century, this is what was driving it. And if you were a person, in the worst possible situation coming to the cities, you had absolutely no prospects. The last straw thing you would do to survive, would be to go be a sailor, because being a sailor was staggeringly dangerous and paid terribly, and the food was awful. And all the rest, but you would use the line was it was much like being in prison, except for the added possibility of drowning, right? It was something we didn’t do unless you had to. When people were doing that, then the worst fantasy session comes along, you know. And when the war ended, the British Navy reduced its size of its force by two thirds, just dumped all these real Navy sailors on the docks, and then the labor market a supply demand problem. And a lot of merchants like yeah, we’ll pay these people a third as much as we used to, which was already starvation wages. And so people were just getting cheated. And the system was consolidating the sort of emergence of an English upper class who would send their children to different schools who would speak a language different than the other people like with their own dialects, that all that stuff was starting to happen and the resistance to it was starting to build. And the pirates, the sailors were in this one position, where they’re operating out of the reach of the law on the ships, right, and the possibility of resisting and taking over the ship. They’re the sort of the people who had the most opportunity to, if they were fed up to finally do something about it in a way that you couldn’t on land back in England. And so the piracy outbreak, I say all this because when the Pirates start saying, you know, we’re, we’re not just brigands, we’re Robin Hood’s men, right, we’re, we’re fighting back, we’re fighting the man, on behalf of all the people who are getting screwed. People on both sides of the Atlantic were like, yeah, like they weren’t buying the pirate story, despite everything the authorities were doing, which made the pirates folk heroes which led to that uprising to free Stede Bonnet led Alexander Spotswood, not to dare to share his plans to stop the pirates with his own House of Burgesses his own assembly, because there were so many pirates sympathizers in Virginia. And it led to the publication of a book in 1724, when some of these pirates were still active, called a general history of the pirates. Legit history. It’s a mix of things that are perfectly accurate, almost quoting official documents and other things are made up. But the point is, this book was a best seller on both sides, the Atlantic, and it casts the pirates in pretty good light. Every pirate mythic story you’ve heard, basically comes from this book, including Treasure Island and all the rest. And because it was such a hit, and the point is they say the pirates at the time are folk heroes, because rightly or wrongly, people bought their version of the story that, hey, we’re fighting the system and the system’s evil and a lot of people felt like the system was being pretty evil.

Dan LeFebvre  54:54

Well, it sounds like in many cases, it was

Colin Woodard  54:58

absolutely, my boy. If you’re kind of describes just how bad it was. And again, it’s it’s also carrying Henry Avery whose crew was was, was betrayed in the most terrible ways by some of the most powerful people in England. And they’re like we’ve had enough, we’re just gonna seize this ship and you know, go live a merry life and a short one that was the fantasy and something about that spirit, you know, grabbed onto the public imagination then, and as a let go yet?

Dan LeFebvre  55:25

Well, if we go back to this series, we see was Rogers can’t seem to get any support from England anymore. So he turns to the Spanish governor in Havana, Cuba, to help him put down the pirate in maroon rebellion. And according to the show, Spain and England are at war. So the Spanish are not likely to help was Rogers. But then Rogers points out that if pirates and slaves are allowed to take NASA then words gonna spread, and there’s gonna be even more uprisings of pirates and slaves. And on top of that, Rogers also mentions that they have the earth a gold that we talked about earlier that pirates are using to fund their future ventures. And the only way for Spain to get that back is to help him. So then we see in the series, Rogers returns to NASA with a Spanish fleet. There’s violent fighting in NASA, and they destroyed many of the plantation of the island as well, we see Rogers killing his own wife, Eleanor Guthrie, that was kind of by accident. He didn’t do it himself in this series, but sent people off and she died. And then so we get this idea of the English going to the Spanish for help, to form kind of an alliance to put down the pirates and slaves on New Providence Island. Does any of that historically accurate?

Colin Woodard  56:37

I mean, if I were a show, right, that I need to figure out how to have some excitement, I might have come up with something like that. But whoa, in the real universe, would Rogers definitely wouldn’t have done that it would Rogers had many flaws, he had some kind of personality flaw that we don’t know exactly what it is. But what we do know is that he managed to make enemies of all sorts of Royal Navy captains and other people need to be as allies, it results in him being suddenly dismissed as the governor of the Bahamas and sent back home, he ends up in debtors prison for a while before in the 1730s. He’s returned to NASA. I mean, he obviously had some kind of, you know, social bilateral screw loose. But one thing he definitely was was a patriot in the English sense. He didn’t like the Spanish, his brother had been killed in that raid he wanted to, he expended a lot of energy, in the period between his round the world trip and going to NASA and wanting to figure out a way to placate another pirate nest in Madagascar, the place that Henry Avery was supposed to go to. He’d invested in large amounts of Bibles, and it approached the Church of England, for sort of a messianic effort to bring the Word of God to the pirates to sort of shift them morally, she was like really committed to bringing law in order about and he didn’t like the Spanish and and a time of war, he wouldn’t have turned to them in reality. But what rings true is the Spanish did indeed, do well, you know, tried to attack Nassau later on and tried to seize the place that was always a danger, and had in an alternate timeline, had the pirates and the maroon communities and enslave people form this kind of alliance. Maybe you’d end up in a situation where a governor might have or where England would have approached Spain, or they would have had similar interests. None of that, though quite happened. What they’re doing there is they’re sort of foreshadowing the Haitian Revolution, which would come a century later, where a enslaved people really did rise up and take over a colony and wipe out the planters and form their own Republic. And it’s sort of like they’re imagining, let’s say, we were a century earlier, and somehow the pirates acted as a catalyst and formed alliances. And that happened earlier. And that had happened to NASA. Yeah, it’s kind of a neat, you know, if you’re trying to create an alternate history sort of event, that’s a pretty cool one. And that would have been threatening Hades uprising, even the early 19th century, was something that terrified, you know, the Power Base everywhere, including the United States, by the by the idea that enslaved people would not only rise up successfully, but would build their own country, and their own Republic that was deeply threatening to all sorts of things. So yeah, that, you know, the themes are interesting, but it didn’t happen in the 1710s. And woods, Rogers would not have been a part of it. It

Dan LeFebvre  59:32

sounds like a putting a lot of things that could have happened, especially with the Orca goal too, because that plot point makes sense to have like the Spanish are wanting their gold back. So it just seems to make sense that it could have happened, even if it didn’t, yeah,

Colin Woodard  59:45

and the Spanish the governor in the era was furious in the real in the real world timeline, at the gold being seized, and by this pirates nests not being pacified and was there was this constant threat that invasion fleet would come at one point you know, I think just Bad weather turned back out Spanish invasion fleet that would have destroyed NASA and burned it to the ground. So there, there are fears that come up over and over again among the pirates that that their their nests could be destroyed and the sort of zone of freedom as they see it would be destroyed by the Spanish is was absolutely true and was a constant menace, facing the Pirate Republic and woods Rogers, you know, early post Pirate Republic, which was on thin ice and you know, provisional state for many, many years after his arrival in 1718.

Dan LeFebvre  1:00:32

If you go back to the series near near the end, there’s a climactic showdown at a new location called skeleton Island. And according to the show, skeleton Allen is a place that not on any charts and the Spanish use it to conduct illicit transactions for decades. But then Henry Adria was the first Englishman to find it. This is all according to the show. And then when he gets there, Henry he gets there he finds us a Spanish ship that set sail from Havana and 1636 the Captain’s Log says there were 31 souls, Avery finds the remains of all 31 on ship. It’s locked from inside the ships hold there’s some evidence that someone were dismembered while still alive. So it starts to add this idea of this island being haunted. And then in the in the series. Captain Flint is recounting the story in the show, and he says the rumor is that the crew refuse to go inland after the first few came back with reports of hearing strange sounds and voices. And this is the setting for where Woods Rogers and Captain Flynn have their final battle once and for all in the series. Not to get too far ahead. We’ll talk about the battle but we see Captain Flint actually burying the treasure from the Erica. It’s been a key part of the story throughout the entire series. So the impression I got was this is Treasure Island from Robert Louis Stevenson’s novel. Is there any truth to the location and legends of skeleton Island?

Colin Woodard  1:01:50

Yeah, I think they’re at that point they’re pulling in the setting for Treasure Island because they did the plot of that as they go. They’re trying to find the elderly Billy Bones arrives at this little kids fam the in a little kid family owns at the end in the West Country of England. This old man pirate. Billy Bones shows up as a guest he ends up dying while he’s there already has a treasure map. And the kid ends up on this involved in this adventure to go find the treasure left by Captain Flint. And he ends up the cook on the vessel is on is a guy named Long John Silver, an old man who turn leads a mutiny to take things over and they go to skeleton island. So in the end to bond the fictional world of Robert Louis Stevenson to the pirate world they need skeleton Island to be the fulcrum point which has them shifted there but know that island didn’t exist and there wasn’t anything like that. The closest you could say, I mean, there are a couple of things. The idea of us there’s a there’s a stranded sailor there has been stuck on this island in Robert Louis Stevenson’s book and that is all modeled off the real Robinson Crusoe. Alexander Selkirk was a guy actually stranded on an island in the middle of the Pacific alone for years and years and years, surviving off goats and stuff and it is his story became very famous in England. So tapping on that was already a trope. Well, he was rescued by who Alexander Selkirk the real Robinson Crusoe was rescued by Woods Rogers during the circumnavigation of the parliament, right. You just have come by and they found this guy. So, the route the Robinson Crusoe story, the real story was first publicized in woods Rogers book. And so that part has some echoes that Robert Louis Stevenson ended up using that island would have been in the Pacific Ocean instead. The other element is that pirates, the real pirates in the Caribbean had all sorts of pirate layers they would go to including, you know, abandoned or unoccupied islands. Outside the view of the major sea lanes, they would go into those places to clean the bottoms their vessels, there’s a whole thing about creating a vessel and one of the things in season one of Black Sails, which is all true, you had to kelp and stuff would grow on the bottom of the hole of your vessel and slow it down, which could result in your death of your pirate. So they regularly had to find a beach where they could at high tide, bring it in and lay it on its side and then when the tide goes out, scrape all the stuff off the bottom and then get it back seaworthy again that you can’t do that, you know, they don’t have shipyards, so they can’t wait somewhere safe to do this. They actually have to do this somewhere where they hope the authorities won’t happen by while their ships careened or otherwise incapacitated. So they had all kinds of layers like skeleton Island, where pirates would go to do r&r To repair ships to you know, find fresh water or to hang out and just recover. You know, when far from NASA, and they were often far from NASA. I mean the pirates based in the Bahamas, rated as far north as Newfoundland In Canada, and what’s now Canada and as far south as the Spanish mean and Venezuela, so I mean, or even some of them even down to the coast of Brazil. So I mean 1000s of miles of range with the Bahamas in the middle, but they were oftentimes when you needed some other place of refuge. So there were many in that sense, there were many skeleton islands scattered all over the place. And finally, even you know, there were places where you could go to fence your goods. There’s a famous place gardener’s Island, in if you look at Long Island in New York, and which starts in New York City and goes out along Long Island Sound and ends in a fork and in the fork of the seaward fork, there’s a little island in the middle, that’s gardener’s island where Captain Kidd went and fenced his treasure to the garden or family or the proprietors of the islands until just two years ago. They’re like 13 generations of them had been proprietor this island continuously. And after Captain Kidd the next generation fence the goods for Sam Bellamy and Paul’s, Greg Williams and others, so there were places you would know you could go not to hide treasure in the ground, but to parlay your treasure with the sort of, you know, Cayman Islands slash Swiss bankers of the era.

Dan LeFebvre  1:06:12

I like that I like that. That comparison.

Colin Woodard  1:06:16

The awful bankers had them to offshore

Dan LeFebvre  1:06:19

bankers again quite literally. Some violence

Colin Woodard  1:06:22

was was very open and the kind of capital they would bring in and deal with to at the time. Wow,

Dan LeFebvre  1:06:28

wow. Well go back to the series. There’s the battle I mentioned it on skeleton island I already mentioned Captain Flint buried his gold there, and the fighting between the pirates seems to come to an end. When was Rogers burns John Silver ship in the harbor while Flint is fighting silver and Israel Hands. And then just then Captain Jack Rackham shows up with his own ship. There’s another battle on the ship that ensues and woods Rodgers ends up a prisoner of the pirates, but they don’t kill him. The reason for that in the in the series because Rackham went to Philadelphia with Max to strike a deal with Eleanor Guthrie’s grandfather, the Guthrie’s are rich and powerful family in this series. So even though her grandfather refuses the deal publicly, grandmother Marian agrees to it. There’s all this political intrigue going on in this series. She turns out to be the one in power anyway. Not really the grandfather, it’s the grandmother that’s that’s the one in power so she finances the support to house with Rogers as governor from England’s perspective, while recommend Max help the Guthrie’s get control of NASA under a new governor. So once Rogers is in pirate custody, he’s basically sent back to England to face his crimes. Is that a pretty good portrayal of what really happened to Woods Rogers?

Colin Woodard  1:07:42

Well, in that we don’t have the Guthrie angle, woods, Rogers loses his governorship unceremoniously and ends up in debtors prison. He’s eventually bailed out of it. And he has all kinds of difficulties and travails. But eventually, people feel bad for him about, you know, 20 years later and send it back as governor, he dies in the Bahamas, in the 1730s. So he had a bad go of it, but he wasn’t like in prison for his crimes and all that sort of thing. In the real world timeline. But we’ll why was he removed from his governor’s post that’s never totally clear. He’s kind of left high and dry by English. He’s constantly saying, Oh, the Spanish are about to invade, I need help. I’m out of money. He’s having to shell out his own money to pay, you know, troops and to bring in, you know, cannon balls and provisions and things to hold this colony for England. And all of his pleas for help go on the answered back, you know, in London. So and then eventually they recall them. So you know, could there have been some additional plotting going on behind the scenes? Yeah, sure. Hypothetically, they tried to get rid of him, somebody else was in there as governor for for quite some time after Rogers left, before he ended up returning as an old man. So you know, there’s, there’s enough room for, you know, maybe scenario tossed in there, but we don’t have any evidence as such.

Dan LeFebvre  1:09:03

One of the things that we see in this series is Jack Rackham is kind of, he’s one of the he’s a wheeler and dealer throughout the entire series. But at the end, part of the deal is that he makes with the the Guthrie’s in England is basically that he wants to be the one to help tell the story of what Rogers downfall in the historical record. So very heavily suggests in the series that he was given that opportunity. Do we know if Jack Rackham was involved in the would Rogers story at all?

Colin Woodard  1:09:35

Yeah, no, what’s Rogers kind of gets to tell his own story in that the the only telling of the story in any form really comes in the general history of the pirates, the book I described. And if you’re like me parsing this book, where some of it is completely made up fantasy, and some of it is absolutely right, almost down to the word. You’re trying to figure out the passages. You don’t know which one isn’t. Right. So I was constantly like Daniel cheating backwards? Where did this come from? Where are these? I find that if I don’t have any source for it, is this possibly true? And what you start figuring out is anything that Woods Rogers could have been the source for about things that were happening in NASA, the book is pretty accurate on a lot of the documents, like you’d see that the, you know, basically sort of secret documents from Woods Rogers back to London, that they’re quoting from them in real time documents that whoever had this book shouldn’t have access to. So I mean, there’s a good case to say that basically, Woods Rogers was approached by the person who wrote under a pseudonym wrote this book, and cooperated with them to sort of tell his story and through the that book going out, that’s what rehabilitates Woods Rogers reputation in England and makes people a little more sympathetic to him and, you know, eventually results in him being set back to being governor. So I think Woods Rogers got his story out through another writer, Calico Jack was dead by them. The book in the series, portrays him as sort of thinking higher ed talker, but who’s very concerned the whole time about his legacy about making his mark. The real Calico Jack was, there’s not that much sight of sight of deep substance there. He ends up betraying well, that well leading a vote against Charles Vane and deposing Charles veinous captain and being elected Captain himself. And then his whole captaincy, and his second trip out with Mary readin and Barney are not very successful pirate trips, he takes all kinds of risks he shouldn’t take, he read a damn body all get captured and sent off to Jamaica for trial because, you know, he’s operating in a small vessel in around the waters of Jamaica, which are the most dangerous place to be it’s like, you know, basically, you know, committing crimes in front of the police station, as it were on gets caught by the police, right? It’s just like really dumb stuff. You’re like, what do you think of? So you didn’t seem to be particularly good at being a pirate. And so his reign as an independent pirate captain was very short and resulted in his hanging in Jamaica, so he was not available to tell any stories.

Dan LeFebvre  1:12:16

Yeah, well, speaking of kind of how his story ended, but I thought, overall, Black Sails did a pretty good job of of wrapping up storylines at the very end of the series, kind of leading into Treasure Island. We talk a little bit about that. In this series, we see John Silva ending up with the marine leader Batty, although initially she’s not happy with the piece and NASA wasn’t really the kind of piece that they had fought for. And we see, silver finds out that the love of flinx life Thomas Hamilton is alive in a plantation near Savannah, Georgia, where people from England make other people disappear. So he arranges for Flint to go there so he can let Captain Flint as a character die. And then he becomes James McGraw again. be reunited. Yeah. And then back in NASA, there’s a new governor that gets installed installed is a former pirate named Mr. Featherstone that we kind of see throughout. Although the real power going into series, it seems like it’s going to be with with Max kind of like the real power and Philadelphia’s mayor in Guthrie and that really your husband. And then since the governor is a former pirate who just happened to be second command on Captain Jack Rackham ship, the last moments of this series, we see Captain Rakim going back out to sea with and Barney and then a new recruit named Mark reed in the in this series. Is there any other like realistic elements is what as far as how the show ends, that we see,

Colin Woodard  1:13:38

they elongate and prolong the tension over what’s going to happen to NASA by quite a bit and have entire invasions didn’t happen in the you know, the, the alliance with the Maroons, and that, you know, uprisings and there’s a whole series of wars that didn’t really take place. In terms of how it all ends, it doesn’t end with any pirate veterans as governors, that would be difficult because one station mattered a great deal back then, you know, a person born poor was just not going to be appointed to be the permanent governor of anywhere. Somebody else would be sent in, which is what happened. But some of these pirates did end up, you know, respectable members of the restored Nassau society, you know, merchant leaders, and I think some of them may have even ended up on the Governing Council, the governor’s council have sort of advisors and stuff. So they, there were people who, who became upper middle classes, we might call it afterwards within living regime. And then the Bahamas eventually stabilizes. It takes really a decade or two for it to happen, but it eventually does so and and carries on without leaving the British Empire to return to piracy again.

Dan LeFebvre  1:14:53

Well, thank you so much for coming on to chat about Black Sails. Before I let you go. I want to shift to your book, Jay. Have you the Republic of pirates? Can you share a sneak peek of your book for someone who wants to learn more about the true story?

Colin Woodard  1:15:06

Sure, well, this book, I was researching it long before Black Sails existed and many of these other shows that you’ve seen. And my quest was to figure out who these pirates actually were back to the archives, separate fact from fiction and, and solve any the mysteries around them. So this was the first time I think, probably in 40 years that someone had really tried to go into the archives and do this kind of work. And when I was doing this, in 2005 2006, when I was doing the official research on this book, I was kind of the first person to go in with the digital tools available where, you know, the first versions of the big microfilm collections, you still have to if you want to look the newspapers there, you had to go through the microfilm of each newspaper individually, right? That’s incredibly laborious. If you want to, you know, if you couldn’t keyword search it, you couldn’t like say, I wonder who this you know, Featherstone guy is if he shows up, nobody could have you know, search for Featherstone in every newspaper and see what you could come up with. Well, now I could write the first keyword searchable database versions where everything was in PDF or in OCR two images, which was happening. And you could do the work of you know, 20 people in 1950, you could do as one person with, you know, the catalogs and other things available, and then use that to triangulate and figure out where documents might lie. And most of it was done in the National Archives in the UK, where most are the primary sources are was digging and things like people looked at the official records of each colony and each government, but nobody had really plumb the Admiralty, the Navy’s records, which included not only logbooks of all these various vessels, some of the mentioned in the general history of the pirates, and but also the letters of their captains. And the captains were the primary Intel, you know, agents trying to keep track of these pirates on behalf of the Empire. So with their letters, there’s all kinds of gold mines of things that people didn’t know about yet. And if you started tracking each individual pirate, like in a spreadsheet and on a piece of paper, where were they on this day? What’s the prevailing winds? Which direction were they headed? Where did they have to be the next day? If they were going to end up now? You see them here? And then five days later they here? Where did they have to go in between to get there? And then that would allow you to say, okay, you know, which colonial official was there? And go fine, dig up that colonial officials, look them up alphabetically, figure out where their letters are, and see, did they see a pirate vessel go by them. And maybe a previous researcher had said, you know, they mentioned a pirate vessel, but who knows who it is? Well, you know who it is, especially when they described the vessel that matches. So it allowed all kinds of my triangulating and all different ways, rebuilding their story, because if you organized everything in that way, you could kind of figure out where people were, where they were going next and where the archival treasure lay that would solve various mysteries. So we’ll roll that all together and told the story of this Pirate Republic primarily through four principal characters that it focuses on because it tells the story well, Blackbeard, wax and Bellamy indeed Charles Vane, who was not a well known pirate then, and with Rogers, who, you know, the understanding of him as being the person who overthrew the Pirate Republic was not well focused on either. So I sort of put that all together and told the story of this gang of pirates and how they’d captured our imagination. And why both because they were super effective because they had this pirate base, but also for the ideological reasons of they cast themselves not as criminals, but as Robin Hood’s men and many people agreed with. So that was the sort of story in a nutshell.

Dan LeFebvre  1:18:47

Fantastic. I’ll make sure to add a link to that in the show notes. Thanks again, so much for your time.

Colin Woodard  1:18:51

Pleasure anytime.

May 13, 1940. London, England.

Two doors open to show a large room filled with people, most of them seated. The two men who opened the doors are walking in front of the camera as it follows them into the room. There are a few lights in the room, but mostly we can see light streaming from a window somewhere off the camera’s frame.

There are two levels visible in the room, with a gallery of seats in the balcony overlooking a large, open area below. Also on the ground level are plenty of other seats on either side of the open space where the two men are walking into the room. It doesn’t look like there’s an empty seat, and everyone in the room are wearing dark clothes. Suits for the men and dark dresses for the ladies, although to be honest I only saw one woman in the entire room filled with what has to be hundreds of people.

As the men enter the room, the last few people are taking their seats as others are talking amongst themselves. There’s no specific words we can hear, but these little side conversations going on contribute to an overall sound of murmuring. A bell can be heard tolling in the background.

The camera cuts to one of the men in the audience. With a serious look on his face as he looks at the ground floor, he takes a seat in the balcony above.

Down below, Winston Churchill is one of the men sitting. He takes out a watch from his pocket, glances at it, then puts it back. He’s played by Gary Oldman in the movie.

In another camera cut to a couple men in the gallery above, one turns to the man sitting next to him and softly says he should look at Chamberlain’s handkerchief. The camera moves to an overhead view of a white-haired man below who is taking out his handkerchief and setting it on his knee. This must be Chamberlain.

The man talking says if Chamberlain waves his handkerchief at the end of Churchill’s speech, that’s our signal to show approval. If he doesn’t, we keep quiet. Without saying anything, the other man nods slightly.

Then, down below, the Prime Minister is announced.

Winston Churchill gets up from his seat and stands at a table with what looks like a decorated wooden trunk or podium of some sort. Churchill places a single piece of paper on the wood in front of him and looks up to the people in the room.

The scene cuts to the serious-looking man in the balcony above. He looks behind him as an older gentleman taps his shoulder. The older man says, “Here we go,” and they both smile as if they’re not a fan of what’s about to happen.

The camera circles from an overhead angle as Gary Oldman’s version of Winston Churchill begins to address the room: “Mr. Speaker, on Friday evening last I received His Majesty’s commission to form a new administration…”

The true story behind this week’s event depicted in the movie Darkest Hour

That is how the 2017 movie called Darkest Hour shows an event that happened this week in history when Winston Churchill gave his first speech to the House of Commons as the new Prime Minister of Great Britain. Today, we know it as the “Blood, Toil, Tears and Sweat” speech.

The movie is correct to mention the commission last Friday. That was when King George VI appointed Churchill to be the Prime Minister to replace Neville Chamberlain. That’s the guy we also hear mentioned in the movie with the handkerchief.

Before we get to that, though, the reason I didn’t continue with the speech from the movie is because instead of reading the speech myself, I thought perhaps you’d like to hear the actual speech from the real Winston Churchill.

So here is the speech from the movie:

“On Friday evening last I received His Majesty’s commission to form a new Administration. It is the evident wish and will of Parliament and the nation that this should be conceived on the broadest possible basis and that it should include all parties, both those who supported the late Government and also the parties of the Opposition. I have completed the most important part of this task. A War Cabinet has been formed of five Members, representing, with the Opposition Liberals, the unity of the nation. The three party Leaders have agreed to serve, either in the War Cabinet or in high executive office. The three Fighting Services have been filled. It was necessary that this should be done in one single day, on account of the extreme urgency and rigour of events. A number of other positions, key positions, were filled yesterday, and I am submitting a further list to His Majesty to-night. I hope to complete the appointment of the principal Ministers during to-morrow. The appointment of the other Ministers usually takes a little longer, but I trust that, when Parliament meets again, this part of my task will be completed, and that the administration will be complete in all respects.

I considered it in the public interest to suggest that the House should be summoned to meet today. Mr. Speaker agreed, and took the necessary steps, in accordance with the powers conferred upon him by the Resolution of the House. At the end of the proceedings today, the Adjournment of the House will be proposed until Tuesday, 21st May, with, of course, provision for earlier meeting, if need be. The business to be considered during that week will be notified to Members at the earliest opportunity. I now invite the House, by the Motion which stands in my name, to record its approval of the steps taken and to declare its confidence in the new Government.

To form an Administration of this scale and complexity is a serious undertaking in itself, but it must be remembered that we are in the preliminary stage of one of the greatest battles in history, that we are in action at many other points in Norway and in Holland, that we have to be prepared in the Mediterranean, that the air battle is continuous and that many preparations, such as have been indicated by my hon. Friend below the Gangway, have to be made here at home. In this crisis I hope I may be pardoned if I do not address the House at any length today. I hope that any of my friends and colleagues, or former colleagues, who are affected by the political reconstruction, will make allowance, all allowance, for any lack of ceremony with which it has been necessary to act. I would say to the House, as I said to those who have joined this government: “I have nothing to offer but blood, toil, tears and sweat.”

We have before us an ordeal of the most grievous kind. We have before us many, many long months of struggle and of suffering. You ask, what is our policy? I can say: It is to wage war, by sea, land and air, with all our might and with all the strength that God can give us; to wage war against a monstrous tyranny, never surpassed in the dark, lamentable catalogue of human crime. That is our policy. You ask, what is our aim? I can answer in one word: It is victory, victory at all costs, victory in spite of all terror, victory, however long and hard the road may be; for without victory, there is no survival. Let that be realised; no survival for the British Empire, no survival for all that the British Empire has stood for, no survival for the urge and impulse of the ages, that mankind will move forward towards its goal. But I take up my task with buoyancy and hope. I feel sure that our cause will not be suffered to fail among men. At this time I feel entitled to claim the aid of all, and I say, “come then, let us go forward together with our united strength.”

Going back to the movie’s plot points, do you remember the mention of Chamberlain’s handkerchief? If he waves the handkerchief at the end of the speech, the men listening say they’re supposed to show support. If not, they’ll be quiet.

Spoiler alert, at the end of Churchill’s speech in the movie, Chamberlain did not wave his handkerchief.

But, that’s not necessarily true…not just that Chamberlain didn’t wave his handkerchief, but the whole handkerchief thing at all.

Let me play you a clip from my chat with Churchill biographer Furman Daniel about this scene from the movie. This comes from episode #299 of Based on a True Story:

[00:16:38] Dan LeFebvre: That leads to my next question because in the movie we see even though Churchill is appointed as the prime minister and his first speech that he gives, people watching are actually watching Chamberlain to see if he waves his handkerchief to show support for Churchill. So Then they would follow suit oh if Chamberlain supports Churchill, then we’re gonna support Churchill, is the impression that I got.

I found that interesting, because it seems like the movie just said that Parliament has lost faith in Chamberlain, and that’s the whole reason why he’s being replaced, and then it talks, and then it’s oh, but not everybody, obviously, because some people are still following Chamberlain’s lead. So it never really seems to dig into why Chamberlain lost the faith of Parliament, why he resigned.

Can you clarify some of the reasons why Chamberlain stepped down?

[00:17:27] Furman Daniel: Sure. First of all the handkerchief as a signal to the party, whether to support or not support Churchill. There’s no evidence that actually happened. It’s a creative kind of device that the Filmmakers did and again, it’s one of those you can easily be tricked because it seems like something you could do or you would do To the broader question.

It’s important to remember that, as I said before Churchill was not trusted and old wounds heal very slowly and there are people that had known Churchill for 30 40 years and seen him as Someone that they should not trust someone that was dangerous Someone that was a schemer, someone that would gladly stab them in the back if he could get higher office or some kind of fame or fortune out of it.

So a lot of it was a personal dislike of Churchill. Some of it was also a personal like of Neville Chamberlain. Neville Chamberlain was a a true gentleman. He was a very sincere leader. And he was someone that in his own way, in his kind of understated way, the contrast to Churchill.

Got quite a bit of loyalty from his political supporters. The other thing to remember and it’s always hard as an American people didn’t serve fixed terms. They served at the kind of Whim of whatever coalition they could build in Parliament. So Churchill was able to peel off some conservative boats who thought Chamberlain was not an effective war leader And he was able to also peel off liberal and labor votes who realized they didn’t have the votes to put their own candidate as, as up as prime minister, but Churchill seemed more acceptable to them.

He would fight the war more aggressively. And he did have this kind of liberal streak in him that appealed to some of the members of the liberal and labor parties. So it’s one of those things. A lot of this was personal there, much like today, there is no, there, there is no single Tory or single liberal party, just like there’s no single Democrat or Republican party in America.

There’s factions within each one. A lot of that’s personal or a lot of that’s also regional and things like that. And then also it’s worth remembering the prime minister isn’t elected in the kind of same way. They are in the president would be elected to the United States. They have to build a coalition.

So oddly enough, the fact that Churchill had been in both major parties and was seen as this kind of somebody at least he’ll fight made him acceptable to enough conservatives and acceptable enough. Liberal and labor party members to where he could get that coat, that vote to force Neville Chamberlain out and then get a coalition that he could build to actually be prime minister himself.

If you want to watch the event from this week in history as it’s shown in the movie, check out the 2017 movie Darkest Hour and Churchill’s speech starts at about 23 minutes into the movie.

Once you’ve seen it and want to find out how much of the whole thing happened, check out episode #299 of Based on a True Story to hear the rest of my conversation with Furman Daniel about the historical accuracy of the movie.

May 14, 1607. Virginia.

We’re on a river as rain drops gently splash into the water. The banks of the river on either side of us are filled with deep green grasses. An even deeper green row of trees can be seen along the horizon, leading up to a stormy sky that still has hints of blue in it.

A couple birds fly into the camera’s view on the left side for a moment as our view glides along the river.

Now the camera cuts to show a man walking among a field of grass. It doesn’t seem to be raining anymore, but the sky is still a cloudy white with the slightest hint of blue. We also can’t see the river anymore, but the tall grass looks similar to what we saw on the riverbanks a moment ago. There are tall trees on either side of the grassy field.

With shoulder-length brown hair and a full beard, we can recognize the man as Colin Farrell’s character, John Smith.

Another camera cut shows Farrell’s version of Smith walking among the woods now. The sound of insects buzzing and chirping birds make for a peaceful walk under the green canopy of trees. As Smith walks, the camera shows images of the sun peeking through the tree leaves to cast off lens flares on screen.

Smith looks up at the greenery around him. Other than the noise of the bugs and birds, there is silence.

It’s calm. Tranquil.

Just then, the movie cuts away from Smith’s walk to some other men. On the left side of the frame we can see seven men in a small, wooden boat along the edge of a large body of water. It looks like a river because we can see green trees in the distance, but this river is a lot bigger than the one we saw at the opening of the segment.

Other than the seven men in the boat, there are two standing in the waste-deep water next to it. They’re reaching into the water with their hands as if they’re fishing for something. A little closer to the camera in the middle of the frame are three other men. The water is only ankle deep where they’re at along the bank of the river, but each of the three men are bent over with their hands in the water. They, too, are looking for something in the water.

The focus of this shot, though, is the one man who is walking toward the camera. From our point of view, we’re looking over the shoulder of a man along the right edge of the frame. The man walking towards the camera is addressing the man whose shoulder we’re looking over.

The man addresses him as Captain Newport, and showing something he has in his hand he says they’ve found oysters.

He goes on to say the oysters are as thick as stones, holding one out to the Captain in the foreground. And there’s fish everywhere, he continues to say, they’re flapping against our legs. We’re going to live like kings!

That must be what everyone in the river is looking for: Oysters and fish.

In the next shot we can see Captain Newport’s face. He’s played by Christopher Plummer in the movie. A bunch of men are behind him carrying tools or weapons as they watch the captain speak.

Facing the camera, Newport says he’s weary of looking further after all their months at sea. This place will serve. There’s deep water to the shore, we can see up and down river so our enemies won’t have any surprise advantage.

We can see shots of the men carrying cargo off the ships in the river and onto land. The movie shows an English flag they’ve set up, suggesting these must be Englishmen. Axes start cutting trees. The noise catches the attention of the indigenous people, and we see some of them watching from the tall grass as the Englishmen start putting up a tall, wooden fence made from nearby trees.

The true story behind this week’s event depicted in the movie The New World

That comes a movie released in 2005 called The New World, and the event it’s showing us is when the first permanent English settlement in the Americas was established. That happened this week in history on May 14th, 1607. The settlement was called Jamestown after King James I of England, and today it still holds that name. It’s just in the state of Virginia in the United States now.

And the event I just described is a good example of how movies have facts from history that did happen and then fill it in with fiction to tell the story.

For example, did John Smith walk in the silence of the woods as other Englishmen started cutting down the trees to build Jamestown?

Maybe.

But it probably didn’t happen exactly like we see in the movie because, well, that’s just too specific and we don’t know those kind of specifics from something that happened in the year 1607.

So, what are the facts?

In this case, basically that the Englishmen from three ships decided on the location and started building a new fort there. It didn’t quite happen as fast as we see in the movie. For example, we see Christopher Plummer’s version of Captain Newport tell his men that he’s weary of traveling further and this is a good location. Then, they start building.

And while that did happen, in the true story they started building the day after Captain Newport decided on the location.

Take one point away from the movie’s historical accuracy. Perhaps that’s nitpicking, but it’s an example of how the movie speeds up the timeline.

So, let’s dig deeper into the true story.

I didn’t talk about this in the segment, but the movie does show the three ships in the river. I didn’t talk about it because that didn’t happen this week in history. Those three ships actually reached the Virginia coast in late April of 1607. And it is true that Captain Newport was the name of the man in charge of the expedition.

Ironically, his first name was Christopher just like Christopher Plummer who played him in the movie. Maybe we should give that point back to the movie’s historical accuracy. [haha]

Something else the movie got right was when it shows Captain Christopher Newport telling his men the location for Jamestown is a good one due to the deep water and being able to see up and down the river. It’s a good defensive position for a fort, and those were exactly the reasons why they picked the location.

That decision came on May 13th, and on May 14th, the rest of the people came off the ship and the work began to establish the colony.

And while the movie goes on to show the happenings of the days and months after this week in history, it’s also correct to show the English colony was in the middle of Algonquian Indians led by a man named named Powhatan. His daughter, Pocahantas, gets into a relationship with John Smith–but that’s a story for another day.

As a side note, if you want that day to be today, you can hop way back to episode #27 of Based on a True Story when we covered Disney’s animated Pocahontas movie.

Queue it up to listen to as soon as this episode is done.

If you want to watch the sequence I described in this episode, though, look for the 2005 film directed by Terrence Malick called The New World. We started our segment right around the beginning of the movie, just eight minutes in.

May 19, 1536. London, England.

We’re going under archways and there are tall, stone walls on either side of us. Walking down stone stairs behind two uniformed guards are three women. One in the middle, two on either side behind her.

They walk to a courtyard where a large crowd is gathered. Despite its size, no one in the crowd is making any noise. It’s quiet as the guards lead the three women up a wooden staircase across from the stairs they just descended.

One of the women, Natalie Portman’s version of Anne Boleyn, stands before the crowd and speaks. She says she submits to the law. As for her offenses, God knows them and she beseeches God and Jesus to have mercy on her soul.

In the crowd watching is Anne’s sister, Mary. She’s played by Scarlett Johansson. A couple other guards walk over to Mary and hand her a piece of paper. Anne notices this and gasps slightly—she’s expecting this to be a pardon from the king or something that stops what is going to happen.

Mary unfolds the note and reads it.

Tears fill her eyes as she realizes there is no pardon contained within. She looks up at Anne, who immediately seems to know what her sister does: Nothing will stop this.

Anne cries and takes off her hood, cloak, and necklace.

The executioner places his hand on her shoulder, commanding her to her knees. She continues crying as the sword is placed on her neck. In a brisk movement, he pulls the sword back and the camera cuts to Mary as she winces from the noise of the slashing sword followed by a thud.

The true story behind this week’s event depicted in the movie The Other Boleyn Girl

That sequence comes from the 2008 movie called The Other Boleyn Girl and it’s depicting the execution of Anne Boleyn, which took place this week in history on May 19^th, 1536.

She was the second wife of King Henry VIII of England, who annulled the marriage to his first wife, Catherine of Aragon, whom he had been married to for over 20 years. She was unable to have a son—at least not one that survived. She did have three sons in their marriage, but they all died through miscarriage, stillbirth and one through some unknown reason we don’t really know.

This didn’t make Henry happy, who started becoming enamored with the idea that the Bible was telling him if he were to marry his brother’s wife, she’d be childless. And Catherine was married to Henry’s older brother, Arthur, first. But, Arthur died a year later and so Catherine was betrothed to Henry. Things seemed to be okay for a couple decades until Henry started to pressure the whole idea of having an heir.

We know Henry wasn’t faithful to Catherine at least once as he had one son with one of her ladies-in-waiting. That’s not a legitimate heir, though, and soon King Henry VIII was infatuated with another of Catherine’s ladies-in-waiting, Anne Boleyn.

Oh, and we also know Anne’s sister that we see in the movie, Mary, was also one of Henry’s mistresses.

The Catholic Church refused to allow the king to divorce Catherine because there was no cause and divorce went against God’s will according to the Pope. When Anne got pregnant by Henry, he quickly married her in a secret ceremony anyway so the child would be a legitimate heir.

When Catherine refused to divorce him so he could acknowledge his marriage to Anne, Henry went on to instead divorced the whole of England from the Catholic Church to establish the Church of England with himself as the head of the Church.

As a little side note, this ushered in what we now know as the Reformation and a conflict between Catholics and Protestants that’d mean countless killed on either side as a result.

On May 23^rd, 1533, Henry was able to get his marriage to Catherine of Aragon annulled—about five months after he married Anne Boleyn.

That marriage didn’t go so well, either, as Anne also didn’t give Henry the male heir he wanted. So, Henry charged Anne with conspiracy against the king, witchcraft, adultery, and even incest with her brother George.

With that historical context in frame, it’s probably not too big of a surprise that the movie is correct to show King Henry VIII did not grant a stay of execution. After all, he was the one who orchestrated it to begin with.

The movie was also correct to show her execution being done by sword instead of the traditional axe.

Oh, and that child Anne Boleyn had that sparked Henry’s marriage to her? That would end up being the only of Anne’s children to survive childhood. It was a daughter, Elizabeth. After Henry VIII died without a male heir, his half-brother became King Edward VI until he died and she became Queen Elizabeth I in 1558.

As an extra bit of historical trivia for you, exactly 32 years after Elizabeth’s mother was executed, Queen Elizabeth I arrested her own sister, the woman history remembers as Mary, Queen of Scots, in a move that would ultimately end in Elizabeth solving her own political problems through by executing a relative.

If you want to learn more about Anne Boleyn this week, check out the 2008 movie The Other Boleyn Girl. The execution takes place at the end at about an hour and 45 minutes into the movie.

Once you do that, we covered the historical accuracy of The Other Boleyn Girl back on episode #92 of Based on a True Story.

February 28th, 1993. Waco, Texas.

A line of vehicles are driving quickly down a dirt road.

In the lead we can see two pickup trucks. One of them is red and white, while the other is blue and white. Both pickups are pulling covered trailers. Behind the two pickups are three large, black SUVs—they look like Chevy Suburbans, although it’s hard to verify that’s what they are from the camera angle at a distance. Overhead, a Huey helicopter passes the line of vehicles and heads toward a compound with a large building.

The camera cuts to inside the building with two women. One of the women is holding a screaming baby while behind her a young boy sits on one of the two bunk beds in the room. The other woman, not the one holding the baby, hears a noise outside and looks out the window. She’s surprised to see the helicopter fly overhead.

Downstairs, three men approach the front door. They peer outside to see another flyby with the helicopter.

Taylor Kitsch’s character, David Koresh, turns around from the front door and says all the women and children need to go upstairs right now. One of the women nods in approval as everyone heads upstairs. There are quite a few women and children, too many to count all at once.

As they get the children into rooms, downstairs we can see some of the men handing out guns—assault rifles, maybe a machine gun, it was hard to tell.

Koresh tells the men not to do anything stupid, he’s going to go outside and talk to them. Other men scatter, at least one of them going upstairs, while Andy Umberger’s character, Perry Jones, looks at Koresh and lets out a big breath of air.

Then, Koresh turns around and with one hand already up he opens the front door and steps outside. As soon as he gets outside, his other hand is up. Both arms raised just outside the front door he is rushed by the uniformed men outside. They’re all wearing ATF vests and most of them are carrying heavy weapons.

Koresh yells out for them to calm down, to please stop!

The officers yell back at him to get on the ground. Koresh says there are women and children inside.

Then, some of the pet dogs they have on the compound start barking and growling at the armed ATF agents on the other side of the wooden fence. One of the agents puts his gun over the fence and shoots the dogs.

Hearing that, another agent yells “Shots fired!” and all hell breaks loose.

Koresh is hit as he runs back inside. Jones is hit as a shot goes through the front door just after it’s closed.

Neither are killed, but they’re bleeding badly. From inside the building, one of the men fires back and we can see an ATF agent get hit and go down. One of the women near a window gets shot in the hand, the baby she was holding falling as she hits the ground as well.

Both sides start firing back and forth creating a hail of bullets that rip through the walls, doors, and glass windows of the building.

Inside, as he ducks for cover from the gunfire, Demore Barnes’ version of Wayne Martin calls 911. He screams into the phone that there are 75 ATF agents around our building and they’re shooting at us!

The true story behind this week’s event depicted in the TV miniseries Waco

This depiction comes from the 2018 miniseries called Waco and it shows us an event that happened this week in history: The gunfight that started a 51-day siege between the U.S. government and the Branch Davidians. That event took place on February 28th, 1993.

The series was correct to show that 77 agents from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives—or just the ATF—went to the Branch Davidians compound 13 miles outside of Waco on the morning of February 28th.

The official reason they were there was to execute search warrants on the compound for weapons as well as a warrant for the arrest of David Koresh. They believed the Branch Davidians had about 250 weapons on the compound. There were 126 Branch Davidians on the compound, 46 of whom were children.

From there, the true story is shrouded in a little more mystery than what we see in the series simply because there’s a lot of “he said/she said” type of finger-pointing.

For example, in the series we see dogs barking at the ATF agents from behind a fence. That’s what causes the agent to shoot the dog, which triggers another agent to think they’re being fired upon so from there everyone opens up.

This is what the official ATF website has to say about how it started:

The Davidians were alerted to the impending raid by a local postman, who was also a cult member. The heavily armed, cult members were waiting in ambush as the agents unloaded from their vehicles. Koresh was outside on the porch, as the agents approached telling him they had a search warrant and instructing him to “get down,” he retreated inside the house. Gunfire burst through the door, as the agents approached, one agent was wounded.

So, that certainly sounds like the Branch Davidians shot first as the agents approached. But, according to Branch Davidian survivors, they deny shooting first. We’ll probably never know the true story for certain.

Another thing the series got right was that 911 call from Wayne Martin. This is an excerpt from the real 911 call:

911, what’s your emergency?

>> There are 75 men around our building and they’re shooting at us in Mount Carmel.

Tell them there are children and women in here and to call it off.

They didn’t call it off.

The ensuing gunfight lasted two and a half hours. Four ATF agents and six Branch Davidians were killed in the opening gunfight. After that, the FBI took over and for the next 51-days the Branch Davidians were held under siege by, according to some reports, up to 900 federal agents.

The siege ended on April 19th, 199,3 and in the end those four ATF agents died while 82 Branch Davidians lost their lives.

If you want to see this week’s event in history depicted on screen, check out the 2018 miniseries called Waco. The ATF agents arrive at the compound at the very beginning of the third episode.

February 29th, 1692. Salem, Massachusetts.

At least a dozen young girls are sitting in a row. They’re each wearing very modest and dull-colored dresses with white bonnets. A few of them also have white aprons. A man seems to be scolding them. He says someone had to have led them to dance around the fire. Save yourselves and tell me who it was.

We can see the man now, it’s Rob Campbell’s character, Reverend Hale. He asks more questions of the girls, none of whom have said a single world.

Did someone drink from the kettle that was over the fire? Were there spells being cast?

Looking at one of the girls right in front of him now, he yells at her.

“Was there!?”

Obviously afraid, she shakily points a finger at Winona Ryder’s character, Abigail Williams, who immediately denies it. She insists it wasn’t her, but the Reverend wants a name. Who was it? Then, Williams gives a name: Tituba.

In the next shot, we can see another Reverend, Bruce Davidson’s version of Reverend Parris, alongside Jeffrey Jones’ Thomas Putnam with Abigail Williams and Charlayne Woodard’s character of Tituba. Williams continues to accuse Tituba, but Tituba insists she didn’t do anything bad. Parris and Putnam throw Tituba to the ground with force while Williams’ claims get even more extreme, saying Tituba made them drink blood.

At this, Reverend Hale is even more outraged. You drank blood!? Then, another claim from Frances Conroy’s version of Ann Putnam, saying it was her baby’s blood—you murdered my babies, Tituba!

Reverend Hale asks Tituba when she compacted with the devil, but Tituba says she doesn’t. To this, Reverend Putnam whips Tituba, saying he’ll beat her to death unless she admits to compacting with the devil. Finally, as the whipping continues, Tituba says she doesn’t desire to work for him.

The “Him” she mentions referring to the devil.

The whipping stops, but Reverend Hale isn’t done with her yet. He’s going to rid her of the devil!

He takes her up into a room and asks her when the devil comes, does he bring other people? Ann Putnam is there, she asks Tituba if Sarah Goode is one of the others working with the devil.

Tituba stutters, she says it was dark, she couldn’t see anyone else.

Reverend Hale tells Tituba that the devil can never overcome a minister, so he will protect her. You are here to help us cleanse this village. Now, who came with the devil?

Ann Putnam again blurts out, asking if it was either Sarah Goode or Osborne. The Reverend insists Tituba give them their names—the names of others in league with the devil!

Then, Tituba, a Black woman from Barbados, tells a story about how the devil tells her that he has white people who belong to him. And she saw Sarah Goode and Osborne!

Others in the room gasp while Anna Putnam says she knew it!

The true story behind this week’s event depicted in the movie The Crucible

This depiction comes from the 1992 movie called The Crucible. The event it’s depicting is when Tituba, Sarah Goode, and Sarah Osborne were accused of witchcraft, which happened this week in history on February 29th, 1692.

Now, the movie is only loosely based on a true story. It’s really an adaptation of a play by Arthur Miller so it’s one more step removed from history, but it is true that those three women were accused of witchcraft this week in history at the beginning of what would become known as the Salem witch trials.

We don’t know a lot about the real Tituba, but we do know that Reverend Samuel Parris brought three enslaved people with him when he arrived in Massachusetts from the Caribbean. It’s likely she was one of them.

We also don’t know if Tituba tried to practice any sort of magic with the young girls in Salem like the movie suggests.

The true story is that Reverend Parris’ 9-year-old daughter, Betty, started exhibiting what they thought was strange behavior. She and the 11-year-old Abigail Williams, who was Reverend Parris’ niece, and the 12-year-old Ann Putnam, Jr. started having fits. They were contorting violently and seemingly uncontrollable bursts of screaming. The town doctor and Reverend Hale, a neighboring minister, came to get to the bottom of these afflictions. The diagnosis was that the girls were bewitched. So, they tried to get to the bottom of it.

Meanwhile, other young girls in the town started to act up in the same manner. They were “afflicted” as well.

Trying to get to the bottom of the bewitchment, the young girls blamed Tituba who, in turn, was beaten as they tried to get a confession out of her. She claimed to see visions of the devil and witches. Two other women, Sarah Goode and Sarah Osborne were also named.

And so it was that, on February 29, 1692, the first arrest warrants were officially issued for Tituba, Sarah Goode and Sarah Osborne. It was the start of what we now know as the Salem witch trials when, between February of 1692 and May of 1693, about 200 people were charged and 19 “witches” were executed.

In 1976, Science magazine published a study that suggested the cause was fungus ergot found in rye, wheat and other cereals that can cause delusions, vomiting and muscle spasms.

If you want to see this week’s event in history depicted on screen, check out the 1992 movie The Crucible. The first accusations start around the 29-minute mark. And if you want to dive deeper into the true story, we covered The Crucible back on episode #143 of Based on a True Story.

March 2nd, 1940. Arcadia, California.

An announcer holds the mic as he waves at the throngs of people behind him. He says it’s the largest crowd ever at Santa Anita with 55,000 in the stands and 20,000 in the infield and it’s only 12 o’clock!

The camera cuts to a man strapping his boot on tight. The camera pans up to show us Jeff Bridges’ character, Charles Howard, and Elizabeth Banks’ character, Marcela Howard. They’re standing along with Chris Cooper’s character, Tom Smith.

Now we can see the man who was pulling on his boots: Tobey Maguire’s character, Red Pollard. Marcela Howard hands Pollard a St. Christopher necklace for luck. And with that, Red says it’s time to go win a race.

In the next shot, we can see Red Pollard being helped onto a horse by Tom Smith. Wearing the number 9, Smith gives Pollard a few last-minute tips. They look nervous, but Pollard reassures them it’ll be fine. Charles Howard takes his seat to watch the race as we see all the horses take their places in the starting gate.

The bell sounds and we can hear the thunder of hooves as the horses race down the track.

We’re in the thick of the race now. At first, Pollard is in the middle of the pack, but as the race continues he falls behind—far behind. Pollard urges his horse on until he catches up to another jockey, Georgie. They chat with each other for a brief moment and let the two horses see each other.

That seems to be all he needs as Pollard urges his horse on ahead.

Before long, he catches up to the rest of the pack. Then he passes one horse. Two. Three. Taking the outside track, they keep passing the other horses almost as if he’s not even trying. As they come around the stretch, the movie switches into slow motion as we see Red Pollard riding Seabiscuit way ahead of the rest of the pack. The crowd is cheering as Seabiscuit takes the victory!

The true story behind this week’s event depicted in the movie Seabiscuit

This depiction comes from the 2003 movie named after the horse called Seabiscuit. The event it’s depicting is when the real Seabiscuit ran his last race, which happened this week in history on March 2nd, 1940 at the Santa Anita Park in Arcadia, California.

And just like in the movie, he won that race…but it didn’t happen quite like we see in the movie.

The true story is that Seabiscuit didn’t fall that far behind only to race ahead of everyone else so easily.

You can find footage of the race itself on YouTube and there’s no indication of Red Pollard chatting with another jockey named George Woolf in the middle of the race, either. George is played by Gary Stevens in the movie, and he was based on a real person who raced in the 1940 Big ‘Cap, as the Handicap is called.

In the true story, George was riding Heelfly and came in sixth place.

So, while the race itself wasn’t quite as dramatic as the movie shows it to be, it is true that Seabiscuit came in first place and cemented his name in the history books.

If you want to see this week’s event in history depicted on screen, check out the 2003 movie Seabiscuit. The final race starts at about two hours and four minutes into the film. If you want to dig deeper into the true story, we covered that movie back on episode #131 of Based on a True Story.

November 9^th, 1888. London, England.

It’s the dead of night. It’s so dark you can hardly see anything. The only thing we can see are some dim lights seeping through the windows of what I’m assuming is a house. The camera pans up and we can see some more lights from other houses until we can see the skyline of the city silhouetted against the moonlight.

After a moment looking at the city’s skyline, we can hear a commotion of people talking and shouting.

The camera then cuts and it’s brighter now, and we’re among a crowd. It looks like many of these people we’re among are police officers, but there’s also some ordinary citizens. We’re following a man in a suit with long hair as he pushes his way through the crowd toward a brick building. There’s an opening in the building guarded by two policemen on either side who are holding back the crowd.

The man we’re following isn’t wearing a police uniform, but the officers guarding the entrance let him pass by anyway. On the other side, he’s about to turn around the corner just to the right when he runs into another man who stops him. It’s Robbie Coltrane’s character, Sergeant Peter Godley. Now that we’ve stopped moving, we can see the man we were following is Johnny Depp’s character, Inspector Frederick Abberline.

That explains why the police officers let him pass by while holding back the crowd.

Sgt. Godley grabs Inspector Abberline tells him not to go in there. There’s no need.

Even though Abberline has stopped, the camera takes us past both Godley and Abberline to another entrance just behind Godley. An older man is standing by the open door looking into what I’m assuming is a house. He asks a uniformed police officer how bad it is; the reply is simply that the officer has a hand to his mouth as if he’s trying to stop himself from vomiting.

He composes himself quickly, and taking off his hat, he mutters that she’s in pieces. Then he walks out of the house and off the view of the camera. With a little better view now, we can identify the older man by the door as Ian Richardson’s character, Sir Charles Warren.

Warren turns to Godley to say that Abberline can go in now.

The camera follows Abberline as he walks through the doorway into the house and almost immediately, we can see the back wall is splattered with blood. The movie cuts to a closeup of Abberline’s face as he’s shocked to see what has to be a gruesome scene.

The true story behind this week’s event depicted in the movie From Hell

That sequence comes from the 2001 movie called From Hell. The event it’s depicting is when Mary Kelly was found murdered. She’s widely believed to be the final victim of the notorious serial killer Jack the Ripper. Mary’s body was discovered this week in history on November 9^th, 1888.

Just before the sequence that I described, the movie shows the murder taking place and that’s something the movie does a lot of: Filling in the gaps. The truth is that we still don’t know with absolute certainty who Jack the Ripper was, so even though there have been a lot of people who have dug into the story and come up with a lot of theories and hypotheses—at the end of the day, it’s a mystery we don’t have all the answers to.

What we do know, though, is that Mary Kelly was working as a prostitute at the time of her murder. Unfortunately, her profession in the 1800s meant that a lot of society looked down on her and today that means we simply don’t know a lot about her other than things the investigators uncovered after her death.

For example, we don’t know for sure when or where she was born, although the investigators talking to someone that she lived with said she was born in Ireland, probably around 1863. So, that would make her 25 at the time of her murder.

In the movie, Mary Kelly is played by a red headed Heather Graham as she and Johnny Depp’s character, Inspector Abberline, have some sort of a romantic relationship going on.

That relationship is made up for the movie, but she might have had red hair. There were reports of that. Others said she had blonde hair. Still others said she had black hair. Or maybe she changed her hair color; we don’t really know.

What’s less likely is a relationship between Mary Kelly and Inspector Abberline.

While Frederick Abberline was a real person, and he really was the inspector on the Jack the Ripper case.

But there’s nothing to suggest Abberline had a relationship with Mary Kelly.

Remember when I said just a moment ago that Mary Kelly had lived with someone? That was a man named Joseph Barnett, and he is not in the movie at all, but he was the one to recount some of the final moments of Mary’s life.

He revealed that on the evening of November 8^th he was with Mary but had left at about 7 or 8 o’clock that night. She wasn’t alone when he left; there were a couple other women with Mary—Maria Harvey and Lizzie Albrook. When investigators talked to them, one of the women named Lizzie said Mary was sober even though others had said they saw her having a drink earlier in the evening. Other witnesses said they saw Mary having a drink at a nearby pub with a couple of friends. I’m not sure if that was Maria and Lizzie or someone else. Apparently, she had enough to drink to make her drunk. By 11:45 PM, Mary was seen being drunk and returning home with a man.

Mary’s night wasn’t over, though, because she was seen again at about 2:00 in the morning by a man named George Hutchinson—that wasn’t the man she took home earlier, but George was someone who knew Mary. She asked him for some money, but he didn’t have anything to give her. He told police that he saw Mary walking away before being approached by another man. The two disappeared into the night and George didn’t think anything of it.

Others who lived around Mary said they didn’t hear anything coming from Mary’s place. Maybe someone left around 5:45 AM, but because of Mary’s occupation no one thought anything of it and nothing seemed to be amiss.

At about 10:45 in the morning, the landlord’s assistant went to collect rent—the place Mary was staying was the kind of place you rented by the day. When he knocked on her door there was no response. The door was locked, but he managed to look through the broken window and saw Mary’s mutilated body on the bed.

The assistant told his boss, the landlord, first, who went to make sure the assistant was telling the truth before the police were called. The police arrived, including Inspector Abberline, and the investigation began.

If you want to watch the event that happened this week in history as it’s shown in the movies, check out the 2001 movie called From Hell. We started our segment today at about an hour and 46 minutes into the movie.

And if you want to dig deeper into the true story, we covered that movie back on episode #93—and we also did an extra bonus episode that’s almost three hours of additional historical context from newspaper reports at the time, too!

I’ll throw a link to both of those in the show notes for this episode if you want to check them out.

November 11^th, 1620. Atlantic Ocean.

We’re under the wooden deck of a ship. There are three men in the room, two of which are sitting. Right away we can recognize the actor Anthony Hopkins as the only man who is standing. He’s cast as Captain Jones in the movie. He’s also wearing something different than the two men who are sitting; they’re wearing a black shirt with a huge white collar.

Between them on a table is a map, and all three men are looking at it as if they’re figuring out where they are on the map. Then, someone calls from above. Rushing to the deck, Captain Jones makes it there just in time to hear the lookout call, “Land Ho!”

A flurry of activity can be seen on the ship now as everyone looks, too. We hear some of them calling out, “Land! Land!”

The camera cuts to a view of the water, panning to the left we can see a thin strip of land on the horizon.

Back on the ship, everyone is cheering the sight of land. Men, women, and children are excited at the news. The women are wearing head coverings and most of the men are wearing similar outfits to the two men we talked about a moment ago—the black shirts with huge white collars.

In the next shot, we can see the ship’s sails are up as it floats in the water near a row of trees along the beach. The camera focuses on one of the young men named John Alden on the ship as he talks to a young lady named Priscilla Mullins.

Alden is played by Michael Beck in the movie while Mullins is played by Jenny Agutter.

He says she must be wondering the same as he is: What the future holds in this place. She says she knows what she wants, but that’s not always what you get. He goes on to start talking about another on the ship named Myles Standish, but she cuts him off. Putting her hand on his, she starts talking about a future of the two of them, together.

He smiles at this, saying that when she goes ashore he’ll be there—to welcome her home.

The true story behind this week’s event depicted in the movie Mayflower: The Pilgrims’ Adventure

That sequence comes from the 1979 made for TV movie called Mayflower: The Pilgrims’ Adventure. The event it’s depicting is when a group of English settlers that we now know as the Pilgrims landed on what is today the United States on November 11^th, 1620.

The movie’s depiction is very dramatized, but I suppose that’s to be expected for a movie that’s basically about a bunch of families stuck on a ship for a couple months—66 days to be precise.

Anthony Hopkins’ character, Captain Christopher Jones, really was the name of the man who was in charge of the Mayflower. The other two people the movie mentions by name in the segment we talked about, John Alden and Priscilla Mullins, were also real people. And they really were a couple, John ended up marrying Priscilla the following year in 1621.

The reason for the Pilgrims’ leaving England was entirely religious. Basically, they weren’t happy with the Church of England. They thought it had become just as corrupt as the Catholic Church was. So, they moved to Holland in an attempt to leave the religion of England behind. But they encountered a new foe: Non-religious people in Holland. Basically, some of the children decided not to follow their religion, they started learning how to speak Dutch instead of English, and this all terrified the parents. They didn’t want their children to be seduced by a non-English, secular life.

So, they decided to move again. This time they wanted to go where there would be no distractions and what better place than the New World across the Atlantic Ocean?

They went back to England to get prepared for the trip across the ocean, and in August of 1620 they set sail on two ships: The Mayflower and another ship called the Speedwell, which had launched from Holland and planned to meet up with the Mayflower for the voyage.

But, the Speedwell started leaking.

It obviously couldn’t make the trip, so they had to return to England. They repaired it, set out again, and it started leaking again. They decided to ditch the Speedwell, and everyone piled into the Mayflower for the trip. There were now 102 passengers on a ship that’s 80 feet by 20 feet; that’s about 24 meters by 6 meters.

On top of that, the delays meant they left in September instead of August and they encountered a lot more storms as the weather changed. They sighted land on November 9^th, so also this week in history, and then made landfall on November 11^th. But they didn’t land where they wanted to. They had planned on landing in Virginia, which had been colonized by the English since 1606. Well, I guess 1585 was when the Roanoake Colony was established but that didn’t last, but that’s another story.

For our story this week, though, by the time the Pilgrims were going to the New World in 1620, they had permission to go to the Virginia colony. But they missed the mark and instead landed near what is now the state of Massachusetts. That’s roughly 450 miles, or 720 kilometers, to the north.

When the Pilgrims landed there, they established a colony in Plymouth. In fact, Plymouth, Massachusetts is a town that still exists today…and although a lot of people think it was named by the Pilgrims, it received its name from English explorer John Smith, who named the area in 1614 after the town of Plymouth, England. It was a coincidence that the Pilgrims, after their fiasco dealing with the leaking ship we talked about earlier would end up leaving from Plymouth, England in 1620. But, they were the ones who founded the Plymouth Colony—John Smith mapped the region and named it, he didn’t settle a colony there.

If you want to watch the event that happened this week in history as it’s depicted in the movies, check out 1979’s Mayflower: The Pilgrims’ Adventure. We started our segment about an hour, 26 minutes and 12 seconds into the movie.

November 11^th, 1918. France.

We’re in a French village. There are three yellow buildings, one on either side of a brick plaza with one in the center blocking our view of anything beyond but the blue sky above. In the foreground of the buildings, a bunch of German soldiers are milling about. They look dirty, scuffed up, and rather defeated. A medical truck with a white flag and red cross on it sits off to the left as soldiers continue walking through the plaza. The camera cuts to a different truck as more German soldiers hop out.

Church bells are tolling throughout the town, as if to announce something.

In the next shot, we’re inside as a German officer sits at a large desk. He has a stern look on his face.

Now we’re back outside with the soldiers and with an overhead shot, we can see all the soldiers are walking the same direction, from the left side to the right side of the frame. We follow one of the soldiers from behind as we can see a big building up in the distance. All the soldiers gather beneath the building just as we can see the German officer who was behind the desk emerging from the second story window. We can identify him now as Devid Striesow’s character, General Friedrichs.

He looks out over the soldiers as they’re called to attention. A moment later, Friedrichs begins a speech to his men. In a nutshell, his speech asks them if they want to return home as soldiers and heroes, or as weaklings? He then orders them to make one last charge before it’s over.

A few soldiers refuse, and they’re dragged away by other soldiers. As the rest of the men slowly turn and walk the opposite direction, we can hear the gunfire as the soldiers refusing the order are shot.

The camera cuts now and we’re not in town anymore. We’re in a trench filled with what look like French soldiers just standing around, talking to each other. The soldier in the center of the frame hears something, though. And we can hear it in the movie, too. It’s a rumble and people shouting, although it’s not anywhere close. They’re muffled as if they’re a ways off from where we are in the trench.

It seems to have caught the soldier’s attention, though, and he turns to the camera to listen a little more intently. Then, after a brief moment, he shouts out to his colleagues, telling them to get into position. The soldiers behind him jump into action, putting on their helmets.

Then the camera cuts to where the noise is coming from. We’re following scores of German soldiers running through the muddy ground. We can’t see how many there are exactly because it’s so foggy out that the men off in the distance just disappear into the fog. But they’re shouting, and it must be enough to cause the rumble we heard a moment ago.

Back inside the trenches, the soldier is yelling to his men to open fire at the oncoming attack. A blast hits somewhere nearby, raining dirt down on the men. They grab their rifles and run down the trench toward the enemy. A siren goes off in the trench, alerting even more soldiers of the attack as we can see soldiers standing up at the top of the trench taking aim with their rifles.

The camera cuts to a machine gun placement as it opens fire.

The sprinting German soldiers start getting hit by the machine gun, and we see some of them fall. An artillery shell hits, sending dirt sky high. It’s hard to tell if there was anyone close enough to get hit by that, but the machine gun keeps shooting and more men fall.

Now the camera switches angles to be right behind the two soldiers operating the machine gun and we can see the German soldiers just off in the distance. It’s hard to see how many are close by with the fog, but they’re getting closer to the trenches.

The closer they get, the closer they are to the machine gun. Even more Germans are hit at what’s point blank range now and fall to the ground.

The camera follows one of the German soldiers as he keeps running forward. Men to the left and right fall as they’re hit by bullets, but he doesn’t even look. He seems unphased by the death and carnage around him as he just looks forward and runs. There are others like him, too, who keep running. When he gets closer to the trenches, he falls on his hands and knees and crawls the rest of the way.

Hiding behind a dead horse for cover, he grabs a grenade and tosses it in the direction of the enemy. There’s no strategy behind the toss, it’s obviously just throwing it that way because the enemy is that way.

The true story behind this week’s event depicted in the movie All Quiet on the Western Front

That sequence comes from 2022 movie called All Quiet on the Western Front. The event it’s depicting is the armistice that ended World War I, which happened this week in history on November 11^th, 1918.

While we didn’t cover the part of the movie with the armistice being signed, the timing of the segment we talked about happened after the armistice was signed at 5:45 AM and when it would go into effect at 11:00 AM. So, there was a few hours when everyone knew peace was happening and yet, in the movie, we see General Fredrichs ordering his men to make one last charge; to return home as heroes instead of weaklings.

How much of that happened?

Well, I posed that exact question to Dr. Christopher Warren back on episode #218 of Based on a True Story.

Dr. Warren is the Vice President of Collections and Senior Curator at the National World War I Museum and Memorial, and he shared a lot of great insights into the real history behind the whole movie, but here’s an excerpt from my chat with Dr. Warren about the part of the movie we talked about what happened this week in history.

Dan LeFebvre: Was the movie be correct to show this literal last minute, last second fighting that we see happening in the movie being ordered by General Friedrichs?

Dr. Christopher Warren: So well, first of all, he’s not a real character and he’s not actually even in the original novel. Oh, okay. Okay. It’s true that units on all sides were fighting right up until the last minute. Lots of units have like I said, pulled back and decided they weren’t going to attack each other.

But there were some that kept fighting, that commanders that were trying to position their units, grab some glory at the end, that type of thing. So that absolutely happened to my knowledge that there wasn’t any German or any other offenses that occurred that we’re supposed to start within that.

Close to the end of the war, 15 minutes. I think that’s a little bit dramatic. Interjection. So that’s a little bit probably not quite as accurate, but certainly they were fighting right up and inserts. It’s right up to the last minute there. I didn’t as a historian that was a little bit, historical, but I didn’t have a problem with it because I understood what the filmmaker was trying to do in terms of.

You notice that when the commander says, we’re going to keep fighting, there’s some German soldiers who protest and they dragged him off and they shoot him and get the building. Paul doesn’t even read, he, he’s being portrayed as he’s so warned, he doesn’t care. It doesn’t even influence him whether he lives or dies at that point.

So he’s not mad at anything that despair and desperation and just his soul has been crushed to that point. So I understand why they were trying to do that because that was absolutely soldiers on all sides, how they felt by the end of the war.

If you want to learn about the historical accuracy of the rest of the movie, you can find the full interview with Dr. Warren by scrolling back to episode #218 of Based on a True Story. Or if you want to watch the event as it’s shown in the 2022 movie All Quiet on the Western Front, and we started our segment today near the end of the movie at about two hours and four minutes into it.

August 15, 1945. Long Island, New York.

An elevator dings as the scene fades up from black to reveal we’re inside a hospital. A line of beds are filled with men. We can hear a woman speaking, saying nothing of huge importance to the storyline but then the camera cuts closer to where we can see that she’s reading from a book, saying things like:

“…Then bethought them of the blessed boon of sleep; but Achilles still wept for thinking of his dear comrade…”

The series doesn’t mention this, but that’s Homer’s Iliad.

The camera pans over to a couple of the guys in the hospital beds. The man further away from the camera is heavily bandaged. His fingers, wrist, arm, head, eye, all have bandages…there’s also a metal contraption of some sort around his chest, neck, and although the camera angle makes it hard to see everything it looks like there might be something attached to his legs, too.

In the foreground of the camera’s shot is a man without any visible bandages. Neither of the men are paying attention to the woman reading to them, but the man in the foreground is reading the newspaper. It looks like he’s reading the comic strips.

Oh, there we go, she just noticed they’re not paying attention to her. She puts down the book and says, “Hey, you’re not listening to me.”

Putting a cigarette to his mouth as he puts down the paper, the man who was reading the comics says they were listening. He puts a cigarette in the other guy’s mouth—I’m guessing he can’t move his arms enough to smoke on his own. Each of the men take a drag on their cigarettes, the smoke swirling as they blow out.

He recites the last few things she read, proving he was paying attention. Then, he looks back at the newspaper and suggests he read a comic to the other guy all bandaged up.

In the background, we can hear a door open.

The camera cuts to a man walking into the room. He looks around. Then, addressing no one in particular, he blurts out the news. The Japanese have surrendered.

Everyone looks at him, including the two men who were preoccupied by the comics and being read to.

The man standing there smiles, laughs a bit. Then he continues, “The war’s over!” He says.

Murmurs start among everyone in the room. A woman’s voice in the back confirms the news as we can see a nurse excitedly saying it’s definite. It’s on the radio! The war is over!

This is how the HBO miniseries called The Pacific shows an event that happened this week in history when Japan surrendered on August 15^th, 1945, bringing World War II to an end. Or, as it’s sometimes called, V-J Day. Victory over Japan Day.

It’s also known as V-P Day or Victory in the Pacific Day, since it’s the Pacific Theater of the war as opposed to the European Theater. When that came to an end with the fall of Nazi Germany, May 8^th, 1945, became known as V-E Day, Victory in Europe. We talked about back in episode #246 for the BOATS This Week covering May 8^th, 1945. So, I thought it’d be fitting to use how another HBO miniseries covers V-J Day.

Although, it’s worth pointing out that is not technically when Japan surrendered.

V-J Day or V-P Day, whichever you prefer, is commonly known as August 15^th, 1945. But that wasn’t the official surrender. That commemorates the announcement of surrender. Or, due to time zone differences, August 14^th in the United States is when it was broadcast. So, the series is correct to suggest that’d be when people found out about it. However, the formal surrender happened a couple weeks later, on September 2^nd. That’s also why sometimes people refer to September 2^nd as V-J Day.

Naturally, some historical sticklers who point out its September 2^nd, and technically they’re not wrong, but in The Pacific they mention August 15^th, which is why we’re including it this week. Of course, just like Band of Brothers doesn’t show the actual surrender itself, neither does The Pacific. It’s showing what happened on the day for the characters the series is about.

So, to give a little more historical context that we don’t see in the series, on July 26^th, 1945, the Allies sent the Japanese government what’s known as the Potsdam Declaration. That’s named after Potsdam, Germany, the name of the city where a conference between the three leading Allies took place to draw up a plan for peace.

Maybe you’ve seen the photograph of Winston Churchill, Harry S. Truman, and Joseph Stalin sitting together…that happened at the Potsdam Conference. If you haven’t seen it, here’s a photo of it:

00:01:41:02 – 00:02:14:11
Dan LeFebvre
We’ll get into some of the details of the movie. But looking at the movie from an overall perspective, how much would you say is accurate? Is it over 50%? Less than 50%? Kind of a ballpark range there.

00:02:15:09 – 00:02:41:12
Michael LeFebvre
That’s a really hard question to answer, actually. Of course, there’s actually two levels of it. How accurate is it to history and how accurate is it to the Book of Esther? Because the Book of Esther itself, an artistic interpretation and and summary of historical events. So there’s a whole lot of scholarship that engages in, you know, the questions of of how the book relates to history.

00:02:41:18 – 00:03:04:19
Michael LeFebvre
So all I can really comment on here is how well the movie relates to the historical representation in the book and clearly they took a lot of artistic license. And clearly, there’s no you know, they’re not trying to pull the wool over anyone’s eyes because they know most of their audience have read the book. So they’re not trying to do anything tricky, but they have taken a lot of artistic license.

00:03:04:20 – 00:03:25:25
Michael LeFebvre
There’s lots of stuff they’ve added in that’s not in the biblical story. This Jesse fellow, Esther’s friend, is a totally invented character. The whole home scene is invented. A lot of the back stories of the various characters are invented, so there’s a lot that’s added in. That’s not part of the biblical story. There’s also a number of things that have been changed.

00:03:26:01 – 00:03:48:10
Michael LeFebvre
For instance, when Esther goes before the King and then invites the king and him into a feast, she actually at that feast then invites them to another feast. And the way that all unfolds is actually not consistent with the story. We’ll probably get into that further. So there are a lot of things that are changed as well for various dramatic reasons and so forth.

00:03:48:20 – 00:04:05:14
Michael LeFebvre
The structure is clearly based on the book, but how accurate is to the book? You know how degraded? I think I’m going to take the diplomatic approach and say it’s 50% accurate. Yes, because obviously the structures differ, but they take a lot of license and how they retell the story.

00:04:05:28 – 00:04:26:18
Dan LeFebvre
Well, it’s interesting mention to the book because one thing while I was preparing for this interview, I noticed that it is a, you know, a biblical movie, but it’s based on a different book. That’s actually a novel from Tommy Tennyson. Mark Andrew Olson. So it seems to be yet another step removed from the interpretation. So I wanted to ask you about some of the main characters that we see.

00:04:26:19 – 00:04:37:25
Dan LeFebvre
You mentioned Jesse, but there’s, you know, Hidatsa, her uncle, Mordecai King, Xerxes, Prince Mantilla, a Prince member can paimon. Were they all real people?

00:04:38:02 – 00:04:59:10
Michael LeFebvre
Unfortunately, I haven’t read that novel you mentioned, which would be interesting. I’d like to see how they did with it compared to the movie, but so the book does name a lot of characters. But they’re kind of just flat cardboard characters are just sort of names dropped in at points. And so to create the story from the movie, they give personalities to those characters.

00:04:59:18 – 00:05:15:06
Michael LeFebvre
Some are invented. Like I said, Jesse is invented. Rebecca, I think, was the name of the housekeeper is invented and so forth. But the princess and courtiers are names in the book. But, but they don’t have the backstories of personality that the movie kind of invents for them.

00:05:15:25 – 00:05:37:05
Dan LeFebvre
Okay. Okay. Now, at the beginning of the movie, we do see a scene where the Prophet Samuel sends King Saul of the Israelites to wipe out the Malachite, their order to leave no one alive but King Eggs Wife survives. And that’s how the movie sets up this sort of revenge concept that king egg eggs descend into a want to destroy the Jews.

00:05:37:19 – 00:06:00:10
Dan LeFebvre
The movie doesn’t really explain really about why this conflict started. It just suggests that the implicates were child sacrificing enemy, which is horrible. But I’m also guessing in that time it probably wasn’t really unique to the Malachite. There were some pretty horrible things that were going on around the world. But it makes me think that there must have been something that the movie doesn’t explain.

00:06:00:11 – 00:06:06:01
Dan LeFebvre
Can you set up some context, historical context around this tension between the Jews and the Malachite?

00:06:06:14 – 00:06:33:25
Michael LeFebvre
Yes. Although that’s one place where the movie takes a lot of artistic license, but it’s not unique. It is actually. So Heyman is called in the book an aggregate. And so as a gag gag was also a name of a king in another book in the Bible. And for Samuel of the Malachite, whom Saul had that battle with that you’re referring to.

00:06:33:27 – 00:07:00:15
Michael LeFebvre
The movie picks up on. So it is connecting some dots here, but it’s making a lot of assumptions on how it connects the dots. So first of all, about the Malachi, just very briefly, there’s actually no historical or even textual evidence in the Bible that the Malachi specifically were child sacrifices, like you said, child sacrifice did happen in the ancient world, probably in school cultures today, too.

00:07:00:15 – 00:07:25:18
Michael LeFebvre
It’s a horrible thing. And it is talked about it places in the in the in the Bible as something that is evil and detestable. But there’s no reference to the Malachi specifically doing that, I think. I think the movie sets it up that way in order to very quickly get the audience to side with Israel against Malachite. So it’s an emotional ploy which which movies do all the time.

00:07:25:18 – 00:07:54:11
Michael LeFebvre
So there’s nothing disingenuous about it. But there’s but historically, there’s no evidence the Malachite specifically or childlike, but the Malachite are regarded as sort of the most ancient peoples in the land that was promised to Israel that they came to later. They are. And they were Israel sort of oldest enemy when Israel came out of Egypt as slaves and were being led through the wilderness up toward the promised land.

00:07:54:11 – 00:08:14:20
Michael LeFebvre
The Malachite, as sort of the oldest peoples in the land, came out and were the first to attack them and to try to destroy them in the desert. So that’s sort of the backdrop to this sort of us or them kind of tension which which plays in then to the historical record. And for Samuel of Saul’s battle with the Malachite.

00:08:15:00 – 00:08:36:04
Michael LeFebvre
But it’s a whole assumption that that has anything to do with the Astral movie, because Esther as a book, never mentions the Malachite. And in fact, a gag is probably scholars think that is probably not the name of a person, but it’s a throne name. Like Pharaoh is a throne name or Caesar is a throne name. There are a lot there.

00:08:36:04 – 00:09:08:26
Michael LeFebvre
There was one Caesar, but there’s lots of Caesar’s after him. Similarly, Gag is probably the name of the throne. And so. So really what The Book of Esther is doing is simply by saying that Heyman is an aggregate. It’s just playing off the fact that, okay, he is part of this lineage of Israel’s most ancient enemy. And that’s probably all it’s doing is just just saying he represents the animosity of all these foreign nations that have for generations been trying to stamp out and destroy and annihilate those people.

00:09:09:02 – 00:09:34:26
Michael LeFebvre
And so he is connected to the most ancient of peoples with that vendetta to destroy Israel, to just capture that idea that this is an embodiment of Israel’s history, of fighting against enemies, which actually the movie picks up in a very kind of gratuitous and and completely inaccurate but interesting way by making his symbol a swastika. You know, hangman symbol is not a swastika.

00:09:35:00 – 00:09:46:21
Michael LeFebvre
That is all huge. But that’s that’s sort of a modern approach to the same thing of saying this is someone who represents this long historic effort to stamp out this people.

00:09:47:03 – 00:09:55:19
Dan LeFebvre
It’s yeah, it sounds like the movie is using some more modern symbolism to basically set up good guys and bad guys type concept and to.

00:09:55:19 – 00:09:58:16
Michael LeFebvre
Help the audience quickly tie in to know which is which.

00:09:58:21 – 00:10:11:00
Dan LeFebvre
In the movie, we do see some flashbacks of Hidatsa as a child with her parents. During the main timeline of the movie, though, she’s living with Mordecai. Do we know what happened to her parents and why she was living with Mordecai, her uncle?

00:10:11:15 – 00:10:31:29
Michael LeFebvre
We do not. All we know is that her mother father died when she was young and that when her parents died, The text says Mordecai took her in as his own daughter. But and this this is a common misunderstanding at the movie picks up on because Mordecai takes her in as his daughter. The assumption is he was an uncle.

00:10:31:29 – 00:10:54:08
Michael LeFebvre
But actually the text says that he was her cousin, that Esther was the daughter of Mordecai, his uncle, meaning they were cousins. But obviously there was enough of an age difference that Mordecai takes her as a daughter. That’s the way the text describes it. But technically, he was an older cousin. Oh, okay. But we don’t know anything about the parents or their background.

00:10:54:14 – 00:10:54:18
Michael LeFebvre
Hmm.

00:10:55:06 – 00:11:22:25
Dan LeFebvre
Well, going back to the movie, we see King Xerxes has this feast, and he sends for Queen Vashti. She refuses. Says she’s a queen, not a pawn. She’s not going to lower her dignity to stand before him because he’s been partying and he’s drunk. And it’s it’s a thinly veiled war council, according to the movie. So then following what the movie calls the protocol of the land, Xerxes then declares that there is no more queen.

00:11:22:26 – 00:11:37:09
Dan LeFebvre
Since she’s not, she’s refusing his word, basically. And then a search is launched for every made in to be considered the choices of whom we’re going to be brought from across the empire into the palace. It’s a pretty accurate depiction of what really happened.

00:11:39:00 – 00:11:41:03
Michael LeFebvre
So there are several layers here to sort out.

00:11:41:04 – 00:11:42:22
Dan LeFebvre
I’m sensing a way.

00:11:43:18 – 00:12:07:16
Michael LeFebvre
Exactly. It’s drawing off and interpreting it. But so, first of all, and this is one of my concerns with the movie and this is common in Hollywood. It’s one of my concerns. The movie’s across the board. So I’m not just picking on this one. I really, really appreciate a piece that helps the audience to enter into the story’s history.

00:12:08:09 – 00:12:39:10
Michael LeFebvre
But that’s really hard to do. It’s a whole lot easier to bring the story into our history with our cultural interests and values. That’s a whole lot easier to do. And frankly, it really can galvanize the audience for the causes that the moviemakers want you to support. And that may be where I have kind of a political concern with this movie, if I can put it that way, that the whole backdrop of the Greeks is nowhere in the story of Esther.

00:12:39:29 – 00:13:04:27
Michael LeFebvre
Hmm. It is true. Ahasuerus, which is the name that’s used in the text for the king. That’s the Hebrew attempt to pronounce the Persian name, which the Greeks attempted to pronounce as Xerxes. So Xerxes of the Greek pronunciation and has where is the Hebrew pronunciation? Both tie back to the same Persian name, which I’m not having to try to pronounce.

00:13:04:27 – 00:13:30:28
Michael LeFebvre
It’s a mouthful. So, yes, this probably is we’re pretty confident it is Xerxes that’s being talked about here. And yes, after Darius fought with the Greeks, Xerxes later took up the mantle continuous fight with the Greeks in this great battle that history has come to recognize as a turning point in the expansion of the Greek Empire and democratic ideals gradually throughout the world.

00:13:30:28 – 00:14:04:20
Michael LeFebvre
So from now, looking back, we see the battle between Persia and Greece as a great battle between barbarians and civilization, with democracy at its core. But that has nothing to do with the Astor story. Astor has nothing to do with that battle. But the movie makes a big deal of pulling in that aspect of Xerxes story and the way we remember it, to suggest that the Jews are allies of democratic ideals, that the Jewish ideals and the Greek ideals coincide.

00:14:04:20 – 00:14:34:29
Michael LeFebvre
Therefore, the Jews are a threat because the rise up with Greece, they are pro-democracy, they are democratic, they are anti-monarchy. I mean, yeah, biblical law has a whole lot to say about human values. That’s profound and really countercultural in its day. It has a lot of beautiful express signs of justice and care for the poor and the dignity of the downtrodden, a lot of beautiful human values.

00:14:35:19 – 00:15:12:19
Michael LeFebvre
But politically, Israel was never a democracy, that that political structure just was not a concept. It was a monarchy, too, just like Persia was. So this whole idea of this banquet being a thinly veiled war council and setting up the whole movie as sort of a you know, the Jews are allies of democracy, he kind of worries me that the movie might have sort of this underlying effort to promote a certain American, Israel political agenda against the Palestinians, maybe even.

00:15:12:27 – 00:15:38:04
Michael LeFebvre
I you know, I’m really pro-Israel, but also pro-Palestine, Palestinian. I think I think we need to have a lot of nuance in how we approach the political issues over there. And I’m nervous the movie might be trying to suggest an alliance of the Jews with Greek democracy in a way that’s that’s not that has nothing to do with the biblical story, but something that’s maybe on the heart of the authors of the book or the movie.

00:15:38:22 – 00:16:10:02
Michael LeFebvre
So anyway, so there was no war council, There was no all this discussion about fighting with the Greeks and all that had nothing to it. Rather has you was had just come to the throne and in his third year on the throne, he throws his his big celebration, which is very typical. You know, when you rise on the throne towards the end of one year, that’s the first year during your first full year on the throne, your second year, you’re just solidifying your control.

00:16:10:02 – 00:16:37:26
Michael LeFebvre
You’re setting up your own court, you’re stomping down rebels that that learned to take the opportunity of a change in power to try to. So the third year is when you secured your reign and this big feast celebrates that reign. And that’s kind of how it’s all all set up and yeah, and then and then all this feasting and display of his glory culminates with his bringing Vashti to show her beauty and she rebels.

00:16:37:26 – 00:17:03:27
Michael LeFebvre
And that kind of sets the context for Esther to rise. And now, I’m sorry, this is a long answer, but if I can, I think this is a point to maybe draw something else in the book that the movie misses. But I think it’s critical to understanding the story of Esther. A lot of people don’t realize it, but the Book of Esther is actually a comedy.

00:17:04:21 – 00:17:06:18
Michael LeFebvre
Huh. It’s a satire here.

00:17:06:18 – 00:17:07:15
Dan LeFebvre
Would not get that far.

00:17:08:21 – 00:17:33:01
Michael LeFebvre
Yeah, And and that’s kind of the way it starts if you. If it. I mean, here’s this. This king showing off all his glory. He’s got a six month long feast, and then the last week or whatever, however long it is, he has, the entire York City, all participate and and the grandeur is all set up. And he’s got all these funny name courtiers that are all around him showing his power everything.

00:17:33:07 – 00:17:55:23
Michael LeFebvre
And he’s going to show off all his glory with the final culmination being the showing off the beauty of his Queen. And then she doesn’t come and humiliate him before everyone. And that starts the whole movie, which are the whole book. Sorry, Which which really throughout the whole book, the King never makes a decision on his own. All these courtiers are making decisions for him.

00:17:55:28 – 00:18:18:02
Michael LeFebvre
He’s kind of a buffoon character, and the courtiers make all the decisions for him. He doesn’t really know what’s going on, and it ends up being this woman who humiliates him at the beginning of the movie and then another woman who gains control and is, you know, the powerful leader who actually saves her people. At the end of the end of the book, I keep saying movie.

00:18:18:12 – 00:18:38:15
Michael LeFebvre
I would love to see Hollywood create a satire out of this story. And that would really be more true to the book and how it’s told and all the the way that unfolds, beginning with this great king being humiliated by which in the culture is very funny, You know, a woman unseating him, you know?

00:18:38:20 – 00:19:02:09
Dan LeFebvre
Yeah, Well, I think you me, you make a great point of like setting in modern times. You know, if we’re looking back on this, you know, as Xerxes the Great and there was this big change in history and it wouldn’t really play into that storyline to cast him as some sort of a buffoon that all of his courtiers are the ones making the decisions like he’s supposed to be this great leader that changed the course of history.

00:19:03:07 – 00:19:34:25
Michael LeFebvre
Yeah, and I’m sure that obviously he was a very powerful king. But so this is this is the place of satire. You think you’re mocking when you’re just mocking someone just to be cruel. That’s wrong. You know, bullying, mocking, making fun of people. That’s just wrong. But there is a place for satire, nobly done. When you are an oppressed people, you are downtrodden like the Jews were in Persia.

00:19:35:02 – 00:19:59:18
Michael LeFebvre
You are oppressed, you have no hope, you have no rights, you have no power. And here is this powerful oppressor over you. Satire is a source of hope. It’s a source of of relief to how we see it in our late night comedy. You know, when we feel hopeless about our government and what it’s doing. Where do we turn?

00:19:59:24 – 00:20:26:15
Michael LeFebvre
Late night comedy, which satires and helps us remember. They’re human, too. They’re a bunch of buffoons, just like we are. You know, it gives a sense of relief. And as a book of faith, what the Book of Esther is really doing is it’s assuring the people of God that though they look so powerful, though they are oppressing, you know, that there is a God of just us who is greater even than Xerxes.

00:20:26:22 – 00:20:51:28
Michael LeFebvre
And Xerxes is a fool who will fall to his own folly. So satire is a source of hope for people in oppression and suffering. And that’s what makes the Book of Esther really a beautiful and very valuable book. And it would be great if a movie like this could bring that out in a way that really communicates that sense of hope to oppressed peoples today.

00:20:52:10 – 00:21:12:04
Dan LeFebvre
You mentioned you mentioned Esther, and since obviously the movie is about her, but so far at this point in the movie, she’s not named Esther. She’s Hadassah. And there is a declaration, you know, we mention of rounding up all the women to be candidates for queen. And then there’s a scene where we see Mordecai as is comforting her because she’s one of the ones going to be called in.

00:21:12:18 – 00:21:31:05
Dan LeFebvre
It’s not likely they’re going to come for her. But if she is, then he says that, you know, she should forget that she’s a Jew. Mordechai says had access to Jewish of a name and then he kind of seems to pick a name out of thin air. Esther sounds like a good Babylonian name, Esther of Susa. And but, you know, only use that if you’re taken.

00:21:31:05 – 00:21:37:06
Dan LeFebvre
And then, of course, if you seconds later in the movie, she’s taken. Is that how Hadassah became Esther?

00:21:37:15 – 00:22:02:01
Michael LeFebvre
So that is, of course, an interpretation of how that conversation may have gone. We don’t know how the conversation went, but yes, they got it right here. I’ll give them credit. Hadassah is cousin who had taken her in as a daughter. Mordechai instructed her to adopt this new name, Esther, to hide her Jewish identity. That’s one of the themes of the movie.

00:22:02:19 – 00:22:27:08
Michael LeFebvre
Of the book. Sorry. And while the movie to also bring it up to, I guess but one of the themes of the book is this idea of when you are an oppressed people living in a land that despises you, do you hide your identity or do you own it? And that’s part of the tension is Esther, her and her cousins instruction hides their identity as a Jew, takes the name Esther.

00:22:28:03 – 00:23:02:08
Michael LeFebvre
But then that crisis point comes. Or she’s got to decide who are my people? And that’s sort of the crisis question that the book confronts us all with. Will we be true? Will we own our identity and our people? And that’s what Esther finally makes that decision to do and comes forth in great courage and great risk and delivers her people by by no longer hiding behind the name Esther, but identifying herself as Hadassah, which is a very beautiful name.

00:23:02:08 – 00:23:08:04
Michael LeFebvre
I love that name, Hadassah. It’s Hebrew for Myrtle, like a myrtle tree. It’s a pretty name.

00:23:08:15 – 00:23:31:06
Dan LeFebvre
Okay. Yeah. Yeah. If we go back to the movie, the candidates for Queen are given access to the Royal Treasury. And we see Haggai, The Royal Eunuch, is charged with their training, and he explains that whatever the candidate chooses for their one night with the king will be theirs for the keeping. And all the other women are turning looking beautiful jewels in the things in the treasury.

00:23:31:14 – 00:23:50:00
Dan LeFebvre
And then Esther tells Haggai it doesn’t matter what impresses heard or doesn’t matter what impresses me from her perspective, what impresses the king. And then she asks if he’ll teach her. So he agrees. And he gives her a necklace and says this is something that the king will find most pleasing. How much of that happened.

00:23:50:21 – 00:24:12:19
Michael LeFebvre
Which also, coincidentally in the movie, happens to be the necklace that was torn off her neck when she was first taken. So that’s kind of giving back to her the necklace of her grandmother, which is kind of ironic. A lot a lot of suspension of belief there. So, you know, there’s actually a classic movie trope. I can’t think of any examples specific I’ve taught my head.

00:24:12:19 – 00:24:57:17
Michael LeFebvre
But, you know, you can imagine a scene where someone, you know, a European moves into a third world setting and they give this outsider a black stone. And he thinks he’s being honored, but has no idea that he’s really being marked out for death, you know, misunderstanding the symbols and reversing it, that kind of thing. I think that innocently, what the movie producers or novel authors did in this setting, because the text does say that when Esther was given the opportunity to ask for whatever she wanted, they weren’t necessarily taking it to Treasury.

00:24:57:17 – 00:25:20:10
Michael LeFebvre
But yes, each of the women were allowed. You know, if someone played music, they could get a harp to sing or whatever, You know, they could ask for whatever they wanted to take the night with the king. And the way the book tells the story is that, after all, they took what she was told to take. She did not shoot, ask for advice, and it just took off, she was told.

00:25:20:19 – 00:25:44:08
Michael LeFebvre
The movie writers have taken that little line and I think misunderstood it in the opposite. They understand it as, okay, so she’s not asking for what to take. She’s just relying on their advice because she wants to please the king. And so she wants their advice. But that’s the opposite of what the text is actually saying. What the facts are actually saying is that she didn’t want to please the king.

00:25:44:12 – 00:26:09:10
Michael LeFebvre
Remember what’s going on here. This is a horrible, horrible thing. This movie, in addition to the kind of democracy side of it. The other thing that really troubles me by it is it turns it into a romance story. This is not a romance. This is a satire. This is a spoof of the gross greed and lust that often go along with oppressive power.

00:26:09:18 – 00:26:37:16
Michael LeFebvre
And here’s the embodiment of it. This Persian ruler who you know that not only the book of Esther, but Greek historians, ancient Greek historians, also spoofed Persian lust by talking about how these kings had a different woman for every night of the year. You know, I’m sure that’s exaggeration, but the point is, the Greeks, ancient Greek authors, as well as Hebrew authors, are all satire.

00:26:37:16 – 00:26:57:26
Michael LeFebvre
Bring the lust and wealth of these rulers who think they’re gods among men. And so the Book of Esther is not telling a romance story. Esther is not going in saying, Oh, you tell me what I should take to please the king. No is showing her that she’s just passively being pushed along. She’s not wanting to be here.

00:26:57:27 – 00:27:09:00
Michael LeFebvre
She’s not trying to please the king. So she only takes what she’s told to take. I think the movie has grossly reversed the implication of that line in the book.

00:27:09:25 – 00:27:26:01
Dan LeFebvre
Yeah, that makes perfect sense. And it’s it was something that I was as I was watching you in the very beginning of the movie, it’s, you know, this this thing is happening. And you can tell the Esther or Hadassah at that point doesn’t want to be taken. But then when she does, it does kind of spin around. It’s like, okay, well, I’m going to be taken.

00:27:26:01 – 00:27:40:23
Dan LeFebvre
So I guess I want to please the king. It just kind of seemed like why is why is this being portrayed as a as a romance? Like, why why is it something that she’s wanting to go along with this, you know?

00:27:41:10 – 00:28:05:18
Michael LeFebvre
Yeah. Yeah. And who knows? Who knows what became of their marriage. I mean, obviously when she came in later, the approach is thrown. He respected her at least enough to extend his scepter. But we often impose our modern ideals of marriage, many of which are good, but not all which are good. But nonetheless, we do tend to impose on other sides.

00:28:05:18 – 00:28:29:27
Michael LeFebvre
And remember, this is a royal marriage. Usually, you know, a Persian emperor. He’s got his concubines, he’s got all the women he wants. The point of having a queen is to produce legitimate heirs, not to provide a partner, a soulmate. That’s that’s not what a queen needs to be. I’m sure sometimes it was, but that’s not what this was about.

00:28:29:27 – 00:28:54:16
Michael LeFebvre
This king was just looking for who’s going to be his queen. That will produce good, healthy, you know, good looking, strong heirs, legitimate heirs, concubines, produce all kinds of courtiers. But the legitimate heirs come from the queen. That’s kind of the main point of of of what he’s looking for here. So this whole romance thing, who knows, maybe something did come of the marriage, but we have no idea.

00:28:54:28 – 00:28:57:16
Michael LeFebvre
And the book’s certainly not telling a romance story.

00:28:57:25 – 00:29:22:06
Dan LeFebvre
The movie paints a picture of Esther as being a woman who can read in multiple languages. She doesn’t seem to be impressed with any of the material stuff, the beauty treatments that they’re they’re giving, all that stuff that kind of comes with being in a royal palace. But her knowledge even led to Peggy giving her the chance to read for the king, not as a candidate, but as a servant.

00:29:22:28 – 00:29:35:06
Dan LeFebvre
And it’s something that the movie doesn’t show any of the other women doing and kind of helps her stand apart. How well did the movie do showing how Esther was different or maybe treated differently than some of the other candidates?

00:29:36:04 – 00:30:01:02
Michael LeFebvre
So the book does kind of portray her as standing out, you know, that that she gained favor, that Hagai put her in kind of a favored apartment and and that the king obviously loved her most and made her as queen. So she was favored. But it doesn’t ever really tell us apart from her beauty. You know what actually it she may have had.

00:30:01:10 – 00:30:25:08
Michael LeFebvre
I doubt that she could read. There’s no evidence she could read. I mean, literacy rates were pretty low in the ancient Persian Empire. And for an enslaved, oppressed people, particularly, there’s not going to be like schools and so forth. She was very wise. I mean, the book definitely upholds her wisdom, but there’s no indication that she could read.

00:30:25:19 – 00:30:46:16
Michael LeFebvre
This is another place where the I think what the movie does is it takes a few dots out of the book and creates its own pattern out of it for the sake of its own storytelling arc. There’s one place in the Book of Esther where there’s mention of reading the Chronicles at night to the King. The King can’t sleep one night.

00:30:48:14 – 00:31:05:25
Michael LeFebvre
So the books of the Chronicles are brought and read to him, commonly repeated. And the movie repeats that this is somehow done to bore the king and lull him to sleep. That’s not the reason. But there is one point where he needed to consult the Chronicles in the middle of the night. So the read to him in the middle of the night.

00:31:06:08 – 00:31:31:15
Michael LeFebvre
And so the authors have sort of taken that little tidbit out of the story and suggested maybe Aster is reading them. And I think the reason they’re doing it is because, again, they’re wanting to play to modern cultural ideals of loving a woman for her intelligence, not just for her good looks, which is a great message. It’s really important to appreciate people for who they are, not just for their appearance.

00:31:31:24 – 00:31:55:17
Michael LeFebvre
So I commend that writers of the movie hold that value. But that’s not, you know, what’s in the Book of Esther. She was a very wise woman. But that’s not what the king was looking for. And it was her beauty that he selected her for, which, again, is part of us being sad, tired, as from and horrible.

00:31:55:26 – 00:32:23:16
Dan LeFebvre
Yeah, it kind of goes back to some of the things that you mentioned before where, you know, the difference between society today and the society. Then just being so different. I mean, I guess in that way, if they had actually made made it a lot more realistic to the way society was, then it would. I mean, it would be extremely appalling and not the kind of thing that anybody would want to watch as entertainment in a movie.

00:32:23:23 – 00:32:44:08
Michael LeFebvre
Yeah, it’s it’s it’s hard to and as I said earlier, I respect movie producers for the difficulty. It is to take an audience into history. It’s so much easier to bring history to an audience. And so that’s what our movies almost always do. Yeah.

00:32:44:08 – 00:33:04:12
Dan LeFebvre
Speaking of of Esther being able to read in the movie when it is time for her one night with the King, he recognizes her from when she read the scroll and went on to tell the story of Jacob and Rachel. And then only a few minutes into their conversation. Esther says the only thing that she would accept from the king is his heart.

00:33:04:22 – 00:33:21:07
Dan LeFebvre
And he says, Then it is yours. You know, his profession of love. As I was watching the movie, I mean, I. I just couldn’t help but think, okay, this is happening super fast. She didn’t even need to spend one night with King until the title of the movie. She only really needed a couple of minutes because, you know, she had already established this relationship.

00:33:21:22 – 00:33:32:22
Dan LeFebvre
And a lot of movies compress timelines. Now, you you alluded earlier, you know, maybe we don’t even really know if there was love, but did this happen as fast as the movie makes it seem?

00:33:33:09 – 00:33:58:21
Michael LeFebvre
So a yes or no, as we discussed, and you yourself kind of brought out there, romance didn’t happen that fast. Romance doesn’t happen that fast. And yeah, so that that did not happen that fast. But yes, the book does say in the movie, right, that it just was one night and he chose her as the story’s told. Again, it could be at the book itself is compressing things.

00:33:58:21 – 00:34:29:26
Michael LeFebvre
But again what’s the king looking for? He’s looking for someone to produce his heirs. He’s not necessarily looking for his favorite sexual partner. He can he’s not limited to his queen when it comes to anything except who are going to be his legitimate heirs. So something in Esther’s beauty, her strength that he thought I’m going to say it as crassly as it horribly is, that makes for good breeding stock.

00:34:29:26 – 00:34:47:19
Michael LeFebvre
You know, they could be as simple as that. And so, yes, the way that the way the movie tells it is she came in for her night. And that night he loved her more than all the other women. And she found favor in his eyes and he sat the crown upon her head. Now, what does that attachment mean?

00:34:48:00 – 00:35:10:19
Michael LeFebvre
I don’t think we should read too much into that expression. He loved her more than all the other women. It means that whatever he was measuring them for, she was the one that he said, Yes, this is it. And he made his decision and made her as queen. Now, maybe he grew to respect her. Later in the story, there are certainly indication that he did respect her and to some extent that he extended the scepter and heard out her request.

00:35:10:24 – 00:35:32:01
Michael LeFebvre
But that took time. And we don’t know how that all unfolded or even whether there was ever romance or what we would call a genuine love story in this, The Book of Esther is not a model for romance. Don’t use this as a model for a good marriage at all.

00:35:32:28 – 00:35:40:02
Dan LeFebvre
Well, maybe I did, but the book does mention the word love, and so maybe there was some sort of a misinterpretation there. I think.

00:35:40:09 – 00:35:41:26
Michael LeFebvre
And the text uses the word love.

00:35:41:27 – 00:35:43:13
Dan LeFebvre
But not necessarily like in the role.

00:35:43:14 – 00:36:13:06
Michael LeFebvre
But yeah, in our own context, that can mean a lot of things. And, and the, the, the book of Esther is, is, is very delicately written. I mean, it’s a masterpiece of literature. It’s full of satire, full irony. It’s confronting and being very honest about the horrible things happening, but it’s also very delicately written. So, yes, it does say that when she went, she was taken to him.

00:36:13:06 – 00:36:36:19
Michael LeFebvre
That’s the language used, which is an idiom for. Yeah, she spent the night with the king. It was consummated. It happened. The movie kind of suggests it never happened. But, yeah, she was royally raped and then selected to be the queen out of that. The book is very delicate in how it says it, but it makes clear that that.

00:36:36:19 – 00:36:37:15
Michael LeFebvre
That it did happen.

00:36:37:16 – 00:36:38:01
Dan LeFebvre
It didn’t.

00:36:38:01 – 00:36:38:11
Michael LeFebvre
Happen.

00:36:38:15 – 00:37:01:05
Dan LeFebvre
Yeah. According to the movie, Heyman devises a plot where he wants to take over the house and Wealth of Prince Atlanta. Then once he has a position of power, he suggests to King Xerxes that all the Jews must be killed so they can confiscate all their belongings and use that to fund new ships. And this plan was to be carried on on the 13th day of the month of Adar.

00:37:02:08 – 00:37:06:13
Dan LeFebvre
How well did the movie do showing this plot of humans against the Jews?

00:37:07:14 – 00:37:30:13
Michael LeFebvre
So that matter is one of the names in one of the early lists of courtiers around the King. All we have is there’s like two lists of like princes and courtiers, and they both have seven names in each. So it’s kind of symbolic lists. Just again, to paint the scene of this king with all his court years and all his wealth and so forth.

00:37:31:06 – 00:37:55:24
Michael LeFebvre
So the movie has invented this whole backstory out of a real name. Their secondly, there was a plot to assassinate the king. That’s told a little later in the story there was an effort by two of the eunuchs to kill the king. We don’t know why. We just know that they were discussing it while in the gate area, which is where Mordecai was working as a scribe.

00:37:55:24 – 00:38:26:20
Michael LeFebvre
That’s one thing the movie got right that a lot of people missed. But I thought, Man, kudos to them. Mordecai is identified in the book as one of the scribal offshoots working in the gate area of the palace complex. So he was there. He overheard the plot. So that also is part of the book. And then also the storyline does in the timeline say that it was after those things happened, after the plot was exposed just in a sequence of time, not necessarily connected as an event, but in the sequence of time.

00:38:26:27 – 00:38:54:10
Michael LeFebvre
It was after that that Heyman first becomes introduced into the story and is appointed as the second in command to the king, as his vizier or as prime minister of the king. So the the authors are taking these three points. This name add math, this existence of a plot to assassinate the king, which Mordecai overhears and exposes, and then the rise of Heyman, and they’re creating a story out of it.

00:38:54:19 – 00:39:17:29
Michael LeFebvre
But the story is not anywhere in the book that we don’t know anything about any effort of Heyman to unseat and matter. We have no suggestion. The matter was that you know, previously in that place he wasn’t. So they do an interesting job stitching together these actual pieces from the story to create a further backstory. But yeah. Heyman At the heart of your question.

00:39:18:05 – 00:39:26:21
Michael LeFebvre
Heyman was plotting to destroy the Jews and the movie kind of endeavors bring that out in its own creative way.

00:39:27:06 – 00:39:45:04
Dan LeFebvre
It does. The some of the motivation behind the plot, at least according to the movie, kind of ties back to the very beginning of the movie with the killing of King Agag. Was that actually his motivation? The movie kind of suggests that he’s exacting revenge on the Jews on behalf of his forefathers, suggesting that, you know, that he’s going lineage through there.

00:39:45:28 – 00:40:12:18
Michael LeFebvre
So I think this is part of the artistry of the book. Sometimes when you’re creating a story that’s designed to be a template, it’s designed to be a story that you can take to heart and apply in your own setting. It will deliberately leave certain details out to make it transferable. There’s no motive ascribed to Heyman. We don’t know why he hates the Jews so much.

00:40:12:20 – 00:40:33:16
Michael LeFebvre
He’s just one of those aggregates using the term to mean like the ancient lineage of all those who have tried to destroy the Jews. So the movie is saying, okay, what’s his motive? Let’s use what little dots we can and try to give him a motive. But I think that’s a disservice. We don’t know. And we don’t need to know.

00:40:33:21 – 00:41:00:24
Michael LeFebvre
The point is, this represents just that hatred that seeks to destroy. And yes, he did go to the king and say, listen, I’ve calculated that if we destroy the Jews, we can take their wealth and it will bring 10,000 talents of silver into the king’s treasury. But it wasn’t to build ships or anything like that. The way the story is told.

00:41:00:27 – 00:41:27:29
Michael LeFebvre
Heyman hates and wants to kill the Jews, and he prays upon the king’s greed again, spoofing the buffoonery of King’s that they’re blind to the horror of what’s happening because Heyman comes along and splashes some silver coin and says, Hey, listen, I’ve got this plan and it’s going to make you rich. And suddenly the king’s on board. He is doing foolish things, unwise things, horrible things out of his greed.

00:41:28:10 – 00:41:42:09
Michael LeFebvre
How manipulate, how easily we manipulate rulers. When you give them women and money. You know, that’s kind of what the story is doing. And heyman’s the mastermind with this desire to destroy the Jews. But it never tells us why.

00:41:42:21 – 00:42:00:28
Dan LeFebvre
Yeah, it sounds like the movie is filling in a lot of those details because, you know, maybe, you know, in the ancient times it was okay to not know some of those things leave it vague. But these days we really want to know all those details. And in those kind of filling in some of those plot points. That’s right.

00:42:00:28 – 00:42:23:21
Dan LeFebvre
Those holes making that up in the movie. King Xerxes asks Heyman for assistance in how to honor someone who has been of assistance to him, and that includes saving his life. Heyman seems to think of that it’s him that the king is wanting to honor. You know, he’s talking about and he gives us long list of things that he should do.

00:42:23:24 – 00:42:50:08
Dan LeFebvre
I wear a robe, a horse, a royal crest parading through the streets with the noblest of princes, a proclamation of thus shall it be done to the man in whom the king delights to honor. And of course, Heyman is giving all these recommendations, just thinking he the king’s going to do this to me. But he’s not. I he hates this when he finds out that the man the king’s going to do this to was not Heyman but Mordecai.

00:42:50:10 – 00:42:51:14
Dan LeFebvre
It didn’t happen.

00:42:51:28 – 00:43:16:22
Michael LeFebvre
That story is the hinge point in the book. Tavis Literary structure is it tells a story built around ten feasts and there are five piece at the beginning, and then they’re five feet at the end. And in the center there’s a fast where Esther asks all the Jews to fast. And this story takes place at that center point where Esther hosts those feasts.

00:43:16:22 – 00:43:35:21
Michael LeFebvre
And there, you know, Esther seasonal as kind of this this whole structure to the book that centers on this night. And the fast leads up to it and then the feast that is true prepares out of it. And this story you’ve just referenced that night and the turning point. And it’s one of the most hilarious, riotous parts of the whole book.

00:43:35:21 – 00:43:58:00
Michael LeFebvre
I mean, it’s Shakespearean in its comedy of errors, if you could just appreciate it. I mean, here you have on the same night after Esther goes into the king, he extends the scepter and she says, My request is that you and Heyman would join me for a banquet. And they have this banquet. And then gestures like My request is that you come for another banquet.

00:43:59:09 – 00:44:25:05
Michael LeFebvre
And so heyman’s getting really excited and the king is really confused. And that night, Heyman is boasting in his excitement, I’m being hosted at these bankers, the King and the Queen. But Mordecai will buy power to me. He’s he’s my one irritant in this moment of my joy. And so his wife suggests him. Well, then crush Mordecai. Let’s kill him.

00:44:25:05 – 00:44:45:00
Michael LeFebvre
Go into the king and ask for his execution so you can go to the next banquet. Happy that very same night The king can’t sleep. He is. His conscience is bothered. Something isn’t right. There’s something that’s been left undone. That’s why he calls for the Chronicles to be read for him. What is it that I’m supposed to do that I haven’t done?

00:44:45:00 – 00:45:06:05
Michael LeFebvre
That’s not been taken care of? And they find, Ah, Mordecai saved your life and he’s never been honored. And so he. So the same night Heyman is plotting out of his hatred for Mordecai and the King is full of gratitude for Mordecai. And they both converge on the Royal court the next morning to decide what to do with Mordecai.

00:45:06:16 – 00:45:44:02
Michael LeFebvre
And so the King asks Heyman, What should I do with someone who I really want to highly honor? Heyman thinks, Oh, that’s. And so it’s the most hilarious turn of events that he gives the idea for. He wants to be honored and then he has to turn around and do that to Mordecai instead of having him killed. It’s a comedy of errors, just like Shakespeare would do, and forms to the crux of the book, how did it all and four fold literally in history, as is the way with satire, you’ve got to have real events.

00:45:44:02 – 00:46:05:03
Michael LeFebvre
You’re working with. I mean, satire could be totally fiction while you’re doing historical satire. You’ve got to have real events you’re working with, but you highlight and you bring things out in order to emphasize the comedy that really is present in life. A good comedian brings out the comedy that’s really there. But by the way, you tell the story to really heighten it.

00:46:05:10 – 00:46:25:24
Michael LeFebvre
And this this book did a masterful job of of heightening the the irony of this hilarity of of of power. And what a how ridiculous it is and the way it shows in the book’s view of the hand of Providence, the hand of heavens justice, bringing forth justice and undermining the stupidity of man.

00:46:26:17 – 00:46:44:21
Dan LeFebvre
So it sounds like to make sure I’m understanding that you were saying that this that night for the king was when he had the Chronicles read. But then the movie was kind of using that point for earlier in the timeline of the movie. So is that the same the same event that you’re talking about there? The Chronicles being read?

00:46:45:00 – 00:47:08:22
Michael LeFebvre
So the movie suggests that the Chronicles are read to him every night. Okay. Including that night. That’s a misunderstanding because, again, as the movie state, the movie says and the first time it happens that they read the Chronicles to help them go to sleep. Okay. That’s not what it’s for in the ancient world. Again, this is this is something we don’t understand in our own culture, our own time.

00:47:09:08 – 00:47:42:04
Michael LeFebvre
But in the ancient world, the thinking was that a king is the embodiment of the nation. The king is a bridge between the people and they’re their deities. And so he has to live on this plane where he has oversight of the entire kingdom and understands everything that’s happening. But he also lives in communion with the gods in such a way that his own conscience is sort of a meeting point of the state of the kingdom and the desires of the gods.

00:47:42:04 – 00:48:03:18
Michael LeFebvre
And so when a king can’t sleep at night, his conscience is bothering him. It means something not just personal, but national. Something is not right. The gods are not pleased. There’s something I have to fix in order to restore balance to the kingdom, not just to get to sleep at night. So he falls for the chronicles. Let’s look through the Chronicles.

00:48:03:24 – 00:48:19:06
Michael LeFebvre
What have we done recently that we have not properly executed justice to. To, to to satisfy high heaven, as it were. And that’s kind of the context in which the chronicles will be brought and read to him on that particular night.

00:48:19:21 – 00:48:42:29
Dan LeFebvre
That that’s that’s a fascinating I wouldn’t have thought of that is almost a it sounds almost like an ancient medicinal aspect of, you know, some sort of that’s a kind of, oh, I can’t sleep, let’s find something. And to of course, that I mean, that’s a little too, you know, modern thinking in that way. But let’s find something to fix so that we can rest better at night.

00:48:42:29 – 00:48:45:07
Dan LeFebvre
You know, if you’re having a tough night sleeping.

00:48:46:07 – 00:49:07:27
Michael LeFebvre
And this is a prime example of it, take a lot to bring an audience back into history to understand what’s really happening in that story. Because this whole idea of kings and their kind of divine intuition, that’s something that, you know, we just we don’t have a category for.

00:49:07:27 – 00:49:22:16
Dan LeFebvre
Yeah, yeah. In my mind, the closest thing I can think of when I’m thinking if I’m having a hard time sleeping, you know, there’s just something this kind of my mind is racing. It does help to write it down or, you know, to get it out of my mind so that then I can I can be at peace and get some sleep.

00:49:22:16 – 00:49:27:09
Dan LeFebvre
And so it sounds like a completely different purpose, you know, But it’s a concept.

00:49:27:24 – 00:50:04:25
Michael LeFebvre
And you’ve just illustrated beautifully the challenge of of retelling a story as we read the story and say, okay, they read the Chronicles to him at night, Why would I do that? Yeah, here’s why I would do that. And so I read that into the story. And that’s that’s part of the trick of, of a good historian and a historical retelling is to bring out the symbols of the text with their own cultural meaning rather than just what they would mean to us if we were to do that.

00:50:05:12 – 00:50:30:27
Dan LeFebvre
We go back to the movie. Is Timeline Xerxes about to leave for the military campaign in Greece that they had referenced earlier? That leaves him in as regent and there’s no time left. Heyman is going to enact the edict will annihilate the Jews. So Esther risks her own life by breaking protocol and going before the king without being summoned.

00:50:30:27 – 00:50:57:01
Dan LeFebvre
She runs through the rain, shows up in the hall of the king, drenched to beg for the lives of the jewels, a deuce I should say. And at least according to the movie, it works. Xerxes lowers his scepter. It’s an indication to spare Esther’s life for breaking protocol. Then later, Esther is in the room with Xerxes and Heyman, and she tells the king of her people and she begs for their lives.

00:50:57:01 – 00:51:08:09
Dan LeFebvre
And that’s when she reveals she is Hadassah, the daughter of the tribe of Benjamin. How accurate was the movie’s depiction of Esther’s plea before Xerxes?

00:51:09:07 – 00:51:36:25
Michael LeFebvre
The ultimate outcome was correct. And obviously, again, they’re working with the same basic elements. But it’s it’s I, I would love to sometimes sit down with a a writer just to better understand how they turn a book into a script. Because I know it’s telling a movie on screen is very different than in a book, and there’s got to be a lot of changes that are made.

00:51:37:08 – 00:51:53:28
Michael LeFebvre
And I don’t know which ones have to be made and which was done, but this is obviously a place where they’ve done a lot to bring out the drama on screen that they felt accurately they felt accurately portrays the drama of the book. But it takes all liberties with the book to do it. There was no rain that night.

00:51:54:04 – 00:52:25:21
Michael LeFebvre
The book didn’t describe any rain. She came there full royal regalia. There was no war looming and you know, there weren’t you know, he wasn’t about to leave and go to war. Heyman was not about to take over as regent. He was just vizier vice, the prime minister of the king. She just wanted to stop this edict from going into effect to destroy her people and courageously decided, Here’s the moment where I am going to reveal my identity and plea on behalf of my people for the king.

00:52:26:03 – 00:52:53:21
Michael LeFebvre
And so she took that courageous step which which really in the poetry of the book is an echo of Vashti in reverse. Vashti refused to come when summoned by the king and was banished for it. Esther is coming on, summoned to the king. Hmm. Well, she died. It’s really I mean, the story of those two women in Echo in the book is really quite, quite powerful.

00:52:54:00 – 00:53:15:13
Michael LeFebvre
And so she went and he extended the scepter. Now that that’s a powerful act in itself. You know, even in our day when a head of state meets with someone, a foreign dignitary, they don’t just meet without things being worked out ahead of time. You know, we know what they’re coming for. We know what the request is. We know what we can offer.

00:53:15:22 – 00:53:46:17
Michael LeFebvre
There’s kind of all this planning goes ahead of time, and then they meet to kind of seal the deal. Well, the king hears requests and to come in on summoned with a request is a great affront to the king. It potentially an embarrassment and it’s disrespectful. But by extending the scepter, he’s saying, I accept it to you. But by doing so, the implication is that he is going to accept your request as well.

00:53:47:03 – 00:54:06:27
Michael LeFebvre
And he even says to her, Tell me what you want up to half the kingdom and I will do it for you. I mean, that’s that’s why it’s so risky for him and so risky for her. Therefore, will he extend the scepter? Because by doing so, he is extending favor to this person who’s coming unbidden and their request.

00:54:07:20 – 00:54:29:27
Michael LeFebvre
So there’s reason for him to say, I don’t know what in the world this woman is here for, and I’m not just going to write her a blank check, you know? Sorry, woman, I will find another queen. But. However it unfolded, the book kind of just leads us to recognize this is the providence of God working out heaven’s justice in the midst even through the hands of buffoons like this.

00:54:29:27 – 00:54:56:11
Michael LeFebvre
KING He does extend his scepter and offers to hear out and to grant her request. And she in a way that just builds up the drama and prepares him for the significance of the request. That’s part of the reason her preparing for the significance of the request says, My request is that you come to a banquet where I’ll tell you my request, and then at that banquet again, there are two banquets.

00:54:56:11 – 00:55:18:11
Michael LeFebvre
The movie just shortened it all to one. My request is you come to another banquet tomorrow night, and then at that banquet is where she reveals my request is for my life and the life of my people. And by that point, the king’s question in the book is Who has threatened your life? And she says this wicked hymn.

00:55:18:15 – 00:55:43:06
Michael LeFebvre
Wow. It’s a powerful moment in the book. I think the movie I’m sorry, it just makes a mass of it by suggesting that the King doubts Aster at that moment that he goes out. You know, there is this thing with the the necklace and they didn’t see the stars. And so it was sort of doubting her identity and this Jewish concern.

00:55:43:06 – 00:56:09:18
Michael LeFebvre
And Heyman is choking her in the movie because he seems victorious. The book totally different. The book describes Heyman as cowering in fear and the king rising in rage at this moment when Aster has identified what’s been done. Because remember the way the story is told, the book Heyman plots are death but distracts the king with all these £10,000 of silver.

00:56:09:28 – 00:56:39:18
Michael LeFebvre
You know, and Hadassah Aster is the one who exposes to the king the true horror of what he has done and gets him to see the horror of it so that he is in rage. And the way the book it Heyman falls on on the couch, the seat where Esther is seated pleading for his life. And that’s the king accuses him of even assaulting the queen.

00:56:39:27 – 00:57:00:16
Michael LeFebvre
And they they put a bag over his head and take him out to kill him and put him up on the same post that he had built for Mordechai. Again, the poetic justice here by Yeah, so outcome is the same, but the process is a little bit different in the book. Yeah. Than the way the movie unfolds. And I think they lost a real great potential for drama in the way they changed it.

00:57:00:23 – 00:57:28:08
Dan LeFebvre
Yeah. Yeah. You mentioned that you’re grabbing, There are some mentions that sound like it’s so like they’re pulling little pieces there, you know, the assault, the I think they did mention the the gallows where Heyman was making those to hang Mordecai And then you Xerxes orders Heyman to be hung on them instead what happened So kind of at the end of the story in the movie that all happens and then that the Jews are saved and Mordechai is appointed a prince.

00:57:28:08 – 00:57:48:14
Dan LeFebvre
Heyman is hung on on the gallows, as you mentioned, Esther, kind of you get the idea that Xerxes defends Esther. And of course, in the movie, you know, they imply there’s this great, you know, love and all that there. How well did the movie do showing kind of the end of Esther story and how it wrapped up at the end.

00:57:49:21 – 00:58:16:06
Michael LeFebvre
So one other just little historical nuance that I’ll just because you mentioned the gallows there, the movie does talk about the gallows. That’s a common understanding of what Heyman was building, but hanging by the neck and gallows are a European invention many centuries later. That’s not something that was done in the ancient world. Rather, what the what what Heyman was wanting to do.

00:58:16:11 – 00:58:43:06
Michael LeFebvre
He built a 50 cubit tall post is really what the text says a post to hang him on. So he sometimes interpreted I mean almost be like a gallows. But what it means is they would execute Mordecai and then impale his corpse on this post for everyone to see in order to demonstrate. This is what happens when you cross me and to shame that criminal.

00:58:43:06 – 00:59:11:25
Michael LeFebvre
That’s being impaled like that. So that’s really what’s being described. And so Heyman is really getting poetic justice when he ends up being the one executed and impaled on the very post that he was seeking to have Mordechai impaled upon. That’s just a little, little, little historical tidbit there in the way the movie portrays it. But but, you know, the the final comedy of the twist is is portrayed rightly in the movie.

00:59:12:06 – 00:59:52:09
Michael LeFebvre
Mordechai is now the takes Hayman’s seat also takes Heyman’s house while Heyman gets Mordechai his post and then Mordechai with Esther’s ratification sends out needing to pronounce this festival of Purim which is just sort of mentioned in the movie. But that’s actually the whole purpose of the book. The whole purpose of the book is it’s building up to this festival of Purim, which is an annual celebration of Heaven’s justice, unseating buffoonery, wealth and lust driven human oppressors.

00:59:52:09 – 01:00:13:03
Michael LeFebvre
I mean, that’s the whole point of this book, is to build up to that festival to every year, celebrate and remember this this book that gives us hope in a time of suffering and oppression. So the movie brings out those details, but it always brings about a sort of, oh, just wrap up the story rather than realizing this is kind of the climax.

01:00:13:03 – 01:00:14:29
Michael LeFebvre
This is kind of what the story is all about.

01:00:15:06 – 01:00:15:18
Dan LeFebvre
The story.

01:00:15:18 – 01:00:15:27
Michael LeFebvre
Here.

01:00:16:29 – 01:00:17:24
Dan LeFebvre
Not just little dots.

01:00:18:23 – 01:00:30:03
Michael LeFebvre
Because they turned it into a romance and they missed the real beauty. But this is a book to satire, human oppression, and they give us hope and heaven’s justice in the midst of our sorrows.

01:00:30:04 – 01:00:42:27
Dan LeFebvre
Wow. I mean, it sounds like the movie messed up the storyline a lot. But overall, how do you think the movie did kind of capturing the essence of that time period with the the look, the sights, the sounds, that that sort of thing?

01:00:43:27 – 01:01:11:17
Michael LeFebvre
Of course, like we said several times, bringing the audience into history is very difficult. But I don’t think that was really what they were trying to do. I think as a movie, as as a historical piece, they didn’t do well at all in portraying ancient history. I think I’ve established that already. But as a movie, I thought artistically they did the way they used drapes and kind of how these drapes everywhere.

01:01:11:17 – 01:01:40:23
Michael LeFebvre
I thought it it had you know, it created a nice effect, a feel of sort of what we imagine as kind of, you know, the ancient near East and Persian beauty and so forth. So as an impressive piece of art that is impressionistic piece of arc, I think they did well at portraying that feeling. But yeah, but it’s definitely not capturing the history itself.

01:01:40:23 – 01:01:52:09
Dan LeFebvre
Yeah, Yeah. Speaking of history, if there’s was there something from mystery story in history that you really wish had been in the movie that they didn’t even touch on?

01:01:52:09 – 01:02:16:15
Michael LeFebvre
Well, they did touch on in the beginning of the movie. Hadassah is kind of hanging on Mordechai like a little girl on her dad saying, you know, can I please go to Jerusalem to see the temple? And all. That was a nice allusion to the fact that this is happening after a remnant of the Jews had left Persia to go back and rebuild the temple.

01:02:17:01 – 01:02:49:12
Michael LeFebvre
It would be interesting if the the book instead of the a malachite backdrop that it starts with, which is not, you know, really relevant to the the story. If they had instead opened with maybe the Babylonian conquest of Jerusalem and the destruction of the temple a couple of generations before, and then the Persian rise to power, conquering Babylon and Persia, sending back a remnant to Jerusalem to rebuild the temple.

01:02:49:12 – 01:03:09:27
Michael LeFebvre
But these dispersed Jews that are still living throughout the Persian Empire, living in places where they don’t have a temple, don’t have synagogues or anything like that, because that that really is, again, talk about the artistry of the book. The Book of Esther is one of the most unique books in the whole book. It is the most unique book.

01:03:09:27 – 01:03:30:00
Michael LeFebvre
It is unique in the whole Bible. It is unusual in this respect. It is the only book, an entire Bible that never mentions the name of God wants it, never even mentions God. But that’s part of the artistry of the book, because it’s written for people who are living in a society where there is no temple, unlike back in Jerusalem, there is no synagogue.

01:03:30:07 – 01:03:55:23
Michael LeFebvre
We are living on the margins, oppressed, hated is God even here. And the book is very artistic, only sort of giving you the experience of being in a place where God is not heard, God is not mentioned, God is not known. And yet his justice, His redemption, his deliverance is beautifully, powerfully experienced, even overthrowing someone as powerful as Xerxes.

01:03:56:03 – 01:04:12:02
Michael LeFebvre
So would I think it would have helped the story if, in terms of history, it had opened up with some reference to the Babylonian conquest and the rebuilding of the temple in Jerusalem, but then brought us back to those still living under Persian oppression in a place far from the temple.

01:04:12:24 – 01:04:29:22
Dan LeFebvre
It’s interesting you mention that because the movie kind of implies it’s it’s talking about the survival of all of the Jews. And it doesn’t give you a lot of run a lot of context around that. But it gives at least when I was watching the movie a kind of give you the impression that all the Jews were in Persia at that time.

01:04:29:22 – 01:04:34:07
Dan LeFebvre
But it sounds like that’s not necessarily the case, right?

01:04:34:07 – 01:05:05:05
Michael LeFebvre
Well, all the Jews were under Persian Dominion because Jerusalem at that time was on was a Persian okay province, if you will. It talked with 127 provinces. That’s sort of just a big number to give the idea of the vast rain from Ethiopia to India, you know, over the stretches of the known world. And yet again, as part of the artistry of the book, is talking in sweeping terms and and writers going to all corners of the empire to deliver these edicts to destroy the Jews.

01:05:05:14 – 01:05:18:09
Michael LeFebvre
You know, whether every single Jew in every corner of the empire, you know, is going to actually be annihilated. So the point of the story is to communicate the severity of it by giving that sentiment.

01:05:18:22 – 01:05:25:21
Dan LeFebvre
You mentioned the necklace that Esther has. You see the when light shines on it, the star of David reflects out.

01:05:25:26 – 01:05:26:06
Michael LeFebvre
Yes.

01:05:26:14 – 01:05:32:13
Dan LeFebvre
Is there any truth to that? Was that a thing? Does or do we know anything about that? That specific necklace?

01:05:32:13 – 01:05:59:05
Michael LeFebvre
I have never heard of anything like that. I think it’s an imaginative. Yeah, I think I think the movie is taking and giving Heyman the swastika and giving Esther the star of David as kind of to help us connect with those in our modern sentiments. I mean, the Star of David, it’s called The Star of David, but I think it’s a fairly recent invention.

01:05:59:05 – 01:06:30:13
Michael LeFebvre
I mean, by by recent centuries. I’m an ancient Greece historian. So recent to me as several things. You know, it’s a fairly recent invention, meaning I don’t it’s not from biblical times. It’s not something that David himself had on his crest or anything. So it’s not something that Aster would have had or known of. But the movie is, you know, using this necklace to portray one symbol and using the pendant of Heyman to portray another, I think to help a modern audience identify.

01:06:30:13 – 01:06:30:27
Michael LeFebvre
Yeah, again.

01:06:30:27 – 01:06:54:06
Dan LeFebvre
Another good versus evil, making it easier. Yeah. Yeah. I have to ask with Xerxes, right. So when I think of Xerxes and they kind of set this, you know, he’s, he’s having a season of fasting and we talked about this earlier, it’s kind of the stalling, the decision to march on Greece. And when I think I think of that, I just think of the story of the 300 Spartans.

01:06:54:11 – 01:06:58:12
Dan LeFebvre
Is there is there any tie in to that at all, I mean, in this sort of time period?

01:06:59:03 – 01:07:22:19
Michael LeFebvre
So if indeed Ahasuerus is Xerxes, which we’re pretty confident that’s the king that is intended by the story, that it is the same, the same Persian king. And that’s where the authors of the movie are filling in cracks with other historical information that’s not relevant to the book. But they are drawing on real dots and are just inventing the way they all connect.

01:07:23:13 – 01:07:53:09
Michael LeFebvre
Xerxes father, Darius, failed to conquer. Greece was defeated at the famous battle of Marathon and was later killed. Xerxes himself then tried again to conquer the Greeks with the battle of Thermopylae and the famous 300 and all of that. And I think I think he did do that pretty early after is ascension to the throne, not as early as the third year, but maybe within the first decade.

01:07:53:29 – 01:08:13:28
Michael LeFebvre
I don’t know the exact timing of it. So, you know, so the the the writers of the movie are are they know their historical timelines and they’re connecting these dots. But by doing so, they’re creating a backstory that really is not part of the book of Esther and I think distracts from what the book of Esther is actually trying to get at.

01:08:14:09 – 01:08:18:04
Michael LeFebvre
But yeah, it is the same Xerxes from that movie or that story in.

01:08:18:04 – 01:08:19:06
Dan LeFebvre
Other ways is that.

01:08:19:06 – 01:08:20:21
Michael LeFebvre
Movie’s accurate. That’s a whole another one.

01:08:21:00 – 01:08:22:15
Dan LeFebvre
I do have an episode on there. That is another one.

01:08:23:22 – 01:08:24:01
Michael LeFebvre
Yeah.

01:08:24:11 – 01:08:43:24
Dan LeFebvre
Thank you so much for coming on to chat about one night with the King. Before I let you, I wanted to ask about your article for the Center for Hebraic Thought at King’s College called the story of Esther as redemptive humor in the Bible. Can you share a brief overview of that article for someone who wants to learn more about Esther story as well as where they can find all your work?

01:08:44:20 – 01:09:05:15
Michael LeFebvre
Yeah, sure. And thanks for having me. It’s really fun to do this. I’ve Been looking forward to doing this with my brother. What a what a treat. It’s great. I’ve been a huge fan of your your podcast for a long time now, so it’s great to have our our interests and areas of of research overlap in this. This project is pretty great.

01:09:06:19 – 01:09:45:26
Michael LeFebvre
Yeah. So I’ve, I’ve taught on the book of Esther a lot but I’ve never written a book on Esther specifically. I’d think it’d be a fun one to do someday, but I haven’t, haven’t done that. But I did write an article that you mentioned for the Center of Hebraic thought and also recorded that as a podcast. So if people are interested, the article basically brings out the whole idea that this is ancient satire and helps to draw out and show you humor in the book and how this works to Minister Hope and Joy to an oppressed people who have no other hope, and to just laugh at the stupidity of human beings in power.

01:09:46:09 – 01:10:07:25
Michael LeFebvre
So that that’s what the article does. And I did record it as a podcast episode in my podcast called The Bible is Beautiful. I just think the Bible is full of all kinds of amazing literature like this that’s so fun to delve into and explore whether. You’re religious or not? It’s classic literature, extremely well written. That’s why it’s lasted so long.

01:10:07:25 – 01:10:24:23
Michael LeFebvre
And I think it’s so fun to explore this collection of texts and I did an episode on Esther were based on that article. So people who want to read can read on the Internet or they could listen to the podcast if they’d like to hear more about Esther from that perspective.

01:10:25:24 – 01:10:31:16
Dan LeFebvre
That’s that’s fine. I’ll make sure to include links to that in the show notes for this episode. Thank you for coming on, Mike. I really appreciate it.

01:10:32:12 – 01:10:43:24
Michael LeFebvre
Yeah, it’s been fun. Thanks a lot and take care.