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The Current Transcript for January 31, 2018

Host: Anna Maria Tremonti

STORIES FROM THIS EPISODE

Listen to the full episode

Prologue

[Music: Theme]

SOUNDCLIP

If I get four Gs of impact which is what's predicted for a wave of that size it's going to be quite harrowing. So I'd have the helmet on.

ANNA MARIA TREMONTI: She's ready for trouble. Jeanne Johnson has her helmet, 40 days’ worth of dried food, some of those metallic blankets, maps, a place for her dog all packed inside a bright orange metal orb called Tsunami Pod. If last week's earthquake near Alaska had actually triggered a tsunami, she figures she would have survived bobbing about it in safety and she is not alone in anticipating such a catastrophe. Today our project adaptation looks at the extreme measures some are taking to try to ensure survival along a lengthy coastline but vulnerable to seismic activity and the massive waves that could trigger, that's in half an hour. Also today, Israel criticizes Poland's attempt to police its Holocaust history.

SOUNDCLIP

Many nations including Poles were engaged in helping the Nazis murder Jews and handing them over to the Nazi authorities and in murdering Jews themselves.

AMT: Poland's ruling Law and Justice Party says it is protecting its reputation in drawing a line between the actions of its own citizens and Nazi occupiers in the atrocities of the Second World War. A new law would impose jail sentences on those who use the wrong words. We're asking why and why now, in an hour. But first, a growing number of women in Iran, this is the day they call White Wednesday, a day to protest the forced wearing of the veil.

SOUNDCLIP

I believe this is just a first step for women to say 'no' for compulsory hijab, because when you do not have any control of your head then you won't be able to control what you are thinking.

AMT: The hijab has played a potent role in Persian politics for decades but this latest political iteration is not what the male leaders had in mind. I'm Anna Maria Tremonti. This is The Current.

Iranian women risk arrest as they remove their veils for #WhiteWednesdays

Guests: Masih Alinejad, Shahrzad Mojab

SOUNDCLIP

It saddens me that I am walking in the streets of my own country with so much fear because I have not covered my hair. I have chosen to walk without a veil right now. But why should I have to do that in fear? I am afraid with every fiber of my being right now, afraid of being taken away.

AMT: Well the women you hear there is Bahar. She's walking in the streets of Tehran in Iran and her hair is fully exposed - a crime and her country - risking imprisonment, fines, sometimes lashes. Bahar's part of a growing movement of Iranian women defying the mandatory veiling laws and posting photos and videos of themselves as they do that. During the steep street protest that rocked the Islamic Republic last month a powerful image emerged of an unveiled woman waving a white veil on the end of a stick. In that case 31 year old Vida Movahed was arrested. According to reports, she was detained for nearly a month. She was only released this past Sunday. Another woman Nargess Hosseini was arrested three days ago for waving her white veil on the end of a stick. Those arrests come as a Facebook page called My Stealthy Freedom continues to gain popularity in Iran. It invites women to post pictures of themselves without veils or headscarves. Masih Alinejad founded that page as well as a new campaign called White Wednesdays. She is a former parliamentary reporter in Iran turned social activist. She is about to release a memoir called The Wind in my Hair and she is in our New York studio. Hello.

MASIH ALINEJAD: Hi. Thank you for having me.

AMT: That clip we just heard was posted on your website. You know that same fear that she talks, about taking off the headscarf.

MASIH ALINEJAD: That's true. You know from the age of seven, when you're forced to wear hijab, then you become popular of this fear. Because there are always somebody telling you 'put your hejab on' or 'put a proper Islamic hejab. In our life we heard this words a lot and now I think for almost four decades, we the women of Iran have been unhappy about compulsory hijab and we had the fear inside our heart. But now this is I think the government of Iran, they have the fear of these brave women.

AMT: When did you start to resist the compulsory wearing of the hejab?

MASIH ALINEJAD: You know I grew up in a traditional family in a small village and my family were really religious. So I was even forced to wear hijab inside the house as well. You know in my family. There are not many Iranian families are like my family. I started to envy at my brother's freedom. My little brothers in this small village were free to have a lot of freedom like free to ride a bicycle, free to sing, free to run, jump in a river, stream, showing his hair, playing with his friend outside but I was banned to do everything that he was allowed to. He was the most you know - he was the symbol of freedom that I was envying at. So that's why I started to gain my freedom, asking my brother to help me. So when I was a teenager I had my freedom in a stealth, in secret, just taking off my head job when my brother was not around, when my teacher was not around. That is why actually I launched a campaign first. The name was a Stealthy Freedom means you taking off your job in secret. And I asked women to publish their photos, to talk about it in public. You know just not being, remaining, in a stealth.

AMT: And you were a parliamentary reporter but that becomes a political story, doesn't it?

MASIH ALINEJAD: Let me tell you something. Hejab, it's a personal issue but it is a political issue in Iran. Because as I told you, after the Revolution the government of Iran has started to write their ideology in our body. You know when you go to my country, my beautiful country, the only way that you understand this is Islamic Republic of Iran, it's all women. So that is why a thing is a political issue because the government want to try the woman and the society by hijab issue. That is why actually Iran is the only country which force not just Iranian women, non-Iranian, female tourist, female politicians to wear on her job as well.

AMT: And so what is the goal behind White Wednesdays?

MASIH ALINEJAD: As I told you for four decades Iranian women have been protesting against hejab. So these women exist in Iran but their existence were ignored by the government of Iran. So I just gave them a platform. These are the brave woman inside Iran who are fighting against compulsory hijab, putting themselves in danger. Right now Nargess Husseini, one of the girls who waved her white headscarf in public, is in notorious prison called Gharchak. So the goal is this; we want to be free to choose our lifestyle. We want to be free to you know to have the same right as men having inside Iran. We want all of religion you know interfering in our personal life. This is a basic right that we want to have right now. It's a punishable crime poor woman to protest against hijab. I have been uploading the videos the whole night. I didn't sleep the whole night. Receiving videos from women saying that even you arrest us, you cannot stop us from protesting against compulsory hijab.

AMT: So what I see if we got to My Stealthy Freedom site now, what are we going to see there?

MASIH ALINEJAD: Iranian government trying to filter Facebook. Now Instagram is really popular. If you go to my Instagram page you will see there is a video from ordinary woman taking off her headscarf pudding on a stick and it got of 1 million views. These women never had a chance to be heard in Iranian state TV. So when some people say that you know - not some people - right now the government of Iran saying that these people are influenced by Western media, by anti-revolutionary people - you know they called me a prostitute. So they labelled me that being supported by MI6, CIA. But the thing is these women exist in Iran. They live in Iran. They dare to protest against Iran. And if they give me a platform I want to stay here for one single day. I want to have my platform inside Iran and be the voice of these women within the society in my own homeland. And if you go to my page you will see there is a mother - a mother - holding her baby in public, waiving her white headscarf and then she sent me a voice message saying that 'Masih if I got arrested, this is the contact number of my family. They are going to support me. Please be my voice'. So these are the women. They are putting themselves in danger. Why? Because they are carrying a fake identity. So we are not fighting against a piece of cloth. We are fighting for our dignity. We are fighting for our identity and we do not want men or any religion to tell us what to wear.

AMT: Now there are women who wear hijab and are happy to wear hijab who also send you photos, am I right?

MASIH ALINEJAD: Exactly. Exactly. I receive a photo right now on my Instagram, a woman wearing a black long Chador. But is she waving a white headscarf, another woman waving a black headscarf and they say 'we believe in hejab but we hate compulsory hijab'. You see that is what I'm trying to say. Compulsory hijab is an insult to all this society to all people. Why? Because women believe in hijab, they don't want to force other women to wear their dress. And it's an insult to men because the government of Iran saying that not wearing hijab can get men excited. So what does it mean? Men cannot control themselves? They can get excited by seeing an unveiled to women? So now you see men joining us and saying that 'we don't own the women. We have to stand next to our sisters, our mothers, our wives and fight for freedom' because one you want to measure the freedom of a society you have to go and see how much freedom the woman of that society has.

AMT: So let me ask you. In December police in Tehran said they would no longer arrest women who didn't adhere strictly to the rules of wearing hejab, instead they would force them to attend classes. Presumably some kind of morality class or something like that. What do you make of that change?

MASIH ALINEJAD: You know first when the police announced that people were just happy. But the day after police denied that they said that we are going to arrest and punish woman who violence the hijab laws in public. So you see the Western media are publishing the first news and celebrating that 'look what the moderate president of Iran has been doing' but they never published a second news when the police of Iran denied that. So what I'm trying to say is this: When women are protesting against compulsory hijab, police trying to spread fake news and some of the Western media never pay attention that this is not true. I still receive videos from women saying,, actually filming themselves, saying that 'my car was impounded. Why? Because were not you know wearing a proper Islamic hijab'. Within a year, Iranian police impounded 40,000 cars in public because the women were unveiled or not having a proper Islamic hijab. They still arresting woman. Right now as I told you, Nargess Hussieni is in prison. Why? Because she's protesting against compulsory hijab. Let me tell you something. Iranian foreign minister use Twitter which is filtered for Iranian people and wrote his opinion in English. His opinion was that Iranian government give the right to people to vote to protest peacefully. It's a big lie. I mean these women are peaceful protesting against compulsory hijab but they're facing punishment inside Iran.

AMT: Okay, Masih Alinejad,we have to leave it there but thank you for bringing us up to speed on this.

MASIH ALINEJAD: Thank you so much for inviting me.

AMT: That is Masih Alinejad. She joined us from New York City. She lives in self-imposed exile now in New York and she has memoir coming out in a few months called The Wind in my Hair. Well White Wednesday and My Stealthy Freedom, both of those protests are not actually the first time that women in Iran have defied the regime's rules on veiling.

SOUNDCLIP

[Sound: Women chanting in demonstrations]

AMT: Back in 1979 at the time of the Islamic Revolution close to 100,000 women marched through the streets of Tehran, bareheaded, protesting the Ayatollah Khomeini's decree to cover up. In those earliest days of the regime, Shahrzad Mojab was an activist marching in the streets. Today she is a professor at the University of Toronto in the women's studies department and at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education. She studies the impact of violence, war and revolution on women and Shahrzad Mojab joins me in our studio. Hello welcome.

SHAHRZAD MOJAB: Good morning. Thank you.

AMT: What are you thinking of this new wave of defiance that you are seeing on the hijab right now in Iran?

SHAHRZAD MOJAB: You see as the continuous resistance of women which has started almost 40 years ago. And flow has been going on during all these years and it is spontaneous. And women have been extremely creative and daring to resist this very cultural symbol of the Islamic regime.

AMT: And I guess we should point out that they have to wear their head scarf and be covered, but they also have to wear the Chador or it is called a monteau - like a long coat to cover what they're wearing as well on the streets.

SHAHRZAD MOJAB: Yes there are very coded dress codes and especially in being in public. But women have been resisting it all these years to the extent that there are different naming for different way of wearing the veil. For example they could be inappropriate veiling or bad hijabi, or unveiling is B-hijabi and there are different fines and punishment for that.

AMT: So even fines for whether it's like too far back on your head and showing too much hair or that kind of thing.

SHAHRZAD MOJAB: yes.

AMT: So what strikes you about the tactics we've been hearing about?

SHAHRZAD MOJAB: I think that it is this tactic of spontaneous resistance has taken a very important and creative way. It's a form of civil disobedience and it comes on the heels of a major uprising in Iran, which we call the riots an uprising of dispossessed. Which is this sort of the confronting the state on its economic policy and the creation of this massive poverty and class differences as well as the corruption within the regime.

AMT: So that push for greater freedom greater.

SHAHRZAD MOJAB: Greater freedom and the question of the veil becomes this defiance in its cultural form. So now the Islamic regime is facing the economic resistance and the protest and then cultural symbol of it is the protest of women.

AMT: Now before the Iranian revolution, the hijab was essentially abolished or was kind of banned.

SHAHRZAD MOJAB: It was banned. I always mention in my teaching and in classes that I am of the generation that my mother who is in her early 80s witnessed the forced unveiling of her mother and also the forced veiling of her daughter. So this is the spectrum of this continuous tension and the resistance of the women against both the forced unveiling and also the forced veiling.

AMT: So why do governments always want to control what women have on their hands? What is that symbol? Why is that so emblematic?

SHAHRZAD MOJAB: They control, punishing, disciplining a women's body and sexuality is very important part of the policy of the regime. And it's the culture identification of the regime. And when the regime calls itself an Islamic regime, women becomes the political cultural symbol of that regime. And therefore monitoring, managing, punishing, disciplining a women's body and their sexuality becomes a very important political policy and part of the political platform of this regime.

AMT: It's interesting we're having this conversation at a time when we're just starting to see the loosening of some gender roles in Saudi Arabia for example. How do you read the politics of all of this right now?

SHAHRZAD MOJAB: It's very complex and all of it is related to what is going on in the larger Middle East. And what we see is that when there is a little bit of the opening in terms of the freedom and expression of you know free expression, all these countries from Turkey, to Egypt, Saudi Arabia and then Iran, women a little bit of the opening and possibility for women to express themselves differently becomes a symbol of that opening. So we see that this is happening is Saudi Arabia which is also opening and trying to reach out to larger trade economic relationship and also a kind of ever more dominance in the politics of the region. Iran is going through with that turmoil. Turkey is going through that too. But also in Iran this is very much related with their recent uprisings and the massive economic problems, class differences, corruptions within the government.

AMT: And the power of the clergy, right?

SHAHRZAD MOJAB: Exactly. The crackdown within the regime within all the factions within the regime.

AMT: It's fascinating and it's so interesting that how much the politics - what it says about the politics and we need to keep watching this.

SHAHRZAD MOJAB: Absolutely.

AMT: Because you have a lot of women now who are just being very defiant and they're not going to turn back, are they

SHAHRZAD MOJAB: No there is no way to turn back and actually we are hoping to see more of this here spontaneous as well as the creative way of resisting and hopefully it will turn into a more organized way of resisting this regime.

AMT: Thanks for coming in.

SHAHRZAD MOJAB: Thank you.

AMT: Shahrzad Mojab is a professor at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education. She's also a professor at the University of Toronto. Looking at issues revolving around women and violence and war. She's in our Toronto studio. Stay with us. The news is next. This is The Current on CBC Radio One. I'm Anna Maria Tremonti.

Avoiding the 'human liquidizer': Getting ready for a tsunami strike on the West Coast

Guest: Gregor Graigie

AMT: Hello I'm Anna Maria Tremonti and you're listening to The Current.

[Music: Theme]

AMT: Still to come, legislating history. A proposed law in Poland would make it illegal to say the Polish state was involved with Nazi atrocities against Jews. That's proving controversial in Poland where the Auschwitz death camp was located, as well as in Israel and beyond. The Polish ambassador to Canada will be one of my guests when we look into that controversy in half an hour. But first bracing for the big one.

[Music: Adaptation theme]

SOUNDCLIP

[Sound: Tsunami siren]

AMT: Well that is the sound people up and down B.C.'s West Coast woke up to last week: a tsunami warning. It was triggered by a 7.9 Magnitude earthquake in the Gulf of Alaska in Tofino, Port Alberni and other coastal communities people living close to the water are headed for higher ground, fearing the worst. Thankfully the warning was cancelled within a few hours. But the incident has many thinking about ways to adapt to the threat of tsunami, what to do next time if massive waves do come ashore? As part of our season long project, Adaptation, we're taking a look at some of the lengths people are going to in anticipation of that kind of trouble. This is a subject of both professional and personal interest to the CBC's Gregor Craigie. He's the host of CBC Radio morning show on the island in Victoria right in the middle of an active seismic zone, and he's in our Victoria studio. Hi Gregor.

GREGOR CRAIGIE: Hi Anna-Maria.

AMT: What is your own experience during that alert last week, Gregor?

GREGOR CRAIGIE: WAGNER Well I'm sorry to report that I actually slept right through the start of it. I had signed up for the city Victoria's alert system and they texted me by phone but my phone, but was on mute so that they could get a good night's sleep. That meant I didn't hear a thing. Now as a morning show host, just like you Anna Maria, I wake up super early 03:45. So I was up for a while before the morning was cancelled but a lot of other people slept through the whole thing. And that sparked a lot of conversation here on Vancouver Island about how to improve the tsunami warning systems. Some people are asking whether all of the towns here need the sirens like the one you heard from Port Alberni there at the top. But you know sirens are not the only preparation some people in this part of the world have taken. There are some pretty extreme measures.

AMT: What are you talking about?

GREGOR CRAIGIE: I want to introduce you to a few people this morning Anna Maria. But first let me set the scene for you. We're going to go down the coast from British Columbia to the southwest corner of Washington state with a mighty Columbia River empties out into the Pacific Ocean and the huge surf crashes up on long sandy beaches.

SOUNDCLIP

[Sound: Ocean roars]

GREGOR CRAIGIE: Now the little tourist town of Long Beach is aptly named. It's on the Long Beach Peninsula which runs 45 kilometres top to bottom and claims to be the longest beach in the United States. It's a beautiful place. It draws lots of tourists from Seattle and Portland but it's also a vulnerable place.

AMT: Why is it vulnerable?

GREGOR CRAIGIE: Well when the next big Cascadia mega thrust earthquake occurs it's going to be swamped by a massive tsunami just 10 to 15 minutes later. And because the peninsula is so long many people there won't have time to get off and make it to high ground. And as a result many who live there have had to ponder what they would do right after the big one hits and before the tsunami washes ashore. Now some just choose to ignore it but not Jeanne Johnson. She's got a backup plan for the tsunami in her garage.

SOUNDCLIP

[Sound: Door squeaks]

So I've pulled it out a little bit and I placed my car outside. Normally, it is at the back of the garege.

AMT: Okay it's not an SUV, I bet it's not even a boat. What it is

GREGOR CRAIGIE: Jeanne Johnson has a tsunami escape pod.

AMT: An escape pod.

GREGOR CRAIGIE: Yes a tsunami escape pod. It's called the survival capsule. And yes she keeps it in her garage because the ground outside her house could liquefy in the big Cascadia mega thrust earthquake but the garage has a thick concrete pad under it.

AMT: So what does this pod look like?

GREGOR CRAIGIE: Well it's a bullet proof alluvium sphere with two seats inside, air tight vents, a locking Marine door and a hall long list of emergency supplies that are designed to keep Jeanne Johnson alive in a tsunami. She's the first customer to buy a survival capsule in North America.

SOUNDCLIP

I have a Mustang life which actuates when it reaches salt water. I have got a bicycle, helmet or a climbing helmet. I also have a trauma first aid kit in the event of, then…

GREGOR CRAIGIE: So you can hear this survival capstans packed full of supplies. It's also got food for Jeanne and her dog, clothes, blankets and maps and case she has to walk out.

AMT: And the dog, too. There's a lot of stuff. We're going to have a picture of this up on our website so our listeners can see this capsule. Just describe it a little bit. How big are we talking Greger?

GREGOR CRAIGIE: Well it's not big Anna Maria. It's actually about as tall as I am. It's about two metres six feet in diameter. Her pared has to go cart seats and she imagines she could be floating on the open water for quite a while maybe days.

SOUNDCLIP

JEANNE JOHNSTON: And it'll roll you know the ballast is the water. So the weight of the water holds it upright this way because this is an air tight capsule, if the vents are locked from the inside because we have we have air vents to breathe regular air. But if tumbling in water these are closed and then I'll have enough air in the capsule until it's gone and then I have 10 hours in the canister. And of course I don't think I'll need 10 hours .I don't think I'll be under water for a 10 hour.

GREGOR CRAIGIE: Because it's going to pop to the surface.

JEANNE JOHNSTON: It pops up like a little cork like a bobber. You know it's the best we can do I think, for now.

AMT: And you just made the point - you're a tall guy. can you see yourself getting inside

GREGOR CRAIGIE: Yes I could. You know it's pretty solid looking. So yes sure in an emergency I can see why people might turn to this in, Jeanne invited me to try it out occasionally.

SOUNDCLIP

JEANNE JOHNSTON: What you are going to do, you are going to grab this.

GREGOR CRAIGIE: Okay sounds good.

JEANNE JOHNSTON: And then you are going to put one foot in and then back in. Now you're really really tall. So watch your head here.

GREGOR CRAIGIE: Alright. It sounds good.

JEANNE JOHNSTON: Now just put your hip all the way. No. Put your hip in.

GREGOR CRAIGIE: That in first.

JEANNE JOHNSTON: Watch your head. It's tiny tiny for you. You are so tall. An as you can see I've got fishing gear and knives and you know it's unknown territory for us.

AMT: Okay Gregor. Are you claustrophobic? What's it like to be squeezed inside there?

GREGOR CRAIGIE: I am actually a little claustrophobic and it felt secure and incredibly snug. Now I could imagine it being extremely uncomfortable. If you had to stay in there for hours or days on end.

AMT: You mentioned that Jeanne Johnston is the first North American customer for this Pod. Are these things being sought elsewhere?

GREGOR CRAIGIE: Yes they have orders from dozens of countries in fact, primarily from Japan where there is of course a huge tsunami risk. But the Pods are designed by an aerospace engineer who works near Seattle named Julian Sharpe. The idea came to him when he was on holiday at Cannon Beach on the Oregon coast.

SOUNDCLIP

I was lying there at night, one or two blocks back from the beach listening to the waves and thinking 'what happens as an army comes now?' I have got four Kids, my wife and two Huskies. What do you do with them? I thought well I could probably design and build something to jump into for you I would be a pretty tight squeeze. Having said that if there's a 30 foot wave coming towards me at twenty five miles an hour, you could squeeze four of us in there. But basically it's a shell that separates the human body for what essentially is a human liquidiser. What the tsunami and the churning water does to the human body is horrific. Nobody deserves to die in that kind of environment.

AMT: That sounds really ominous. What did he talk about? What kind of environment might there be in a tsunami?

GREGOR CRAIGIE: Well it could be incredibly dangerous, not just because of the huge risk of drowning, but the capsule is made of aircraft grade aluminium. And it's so strong because tsunamis are so powerful they can haul objects against all sorts of hazards, like the rebar juts out from the concrete foundations where a home has just been swept away. And the capital is also heat resistant because there are so many fires after a tsunami.

AMT: So it sounds like a lot of engineering went into creating that. How much does it cost?

GREGOR CRAIGIE: Well it costs about 13,500 dollars U.S. for the small two person model.

AMT: A lot of money. What motivated you Jeanne Johnston to buy that?

GREGOR CRAIGIE: Well she only moved to Long Beach a little over a year ago and I think she brought with her a fresh set of eyes, as it were. She'd been working in Seattle for several years for big technology company and she moved to Long Beach to find a bit of peace and quiet. But when she found out about the tsunami threat there she thought 'now somewhere prepared for this?' And while that question is relatively new to places like Long Beach where the potential height of a tsunami wave has only really been known well for the last 20 years or so, the idea of preparing for natural disasters wasn't new to Jeanne. She used to live in the US Midwest and she was accustomed to preparing for tornadoes.

SOUNDCLIP

JEANNE JOHNSTON: You know I can remember when I was a young mother, we'd all run to the tornado shelter in Fort Gibson, Oklahoma. There were two tornadoes on the ground. And at the time I just had one baby and I was nursing him. I grabbed him and the diaper bag and we ran up to the shelter in the school. I was surrounded by families with babies and children who are not prepared and they didn't nurse. They didn't have formula and Mother after said 'can you feed my baby if we're going to be here awhile?' And I've realized looking around the house can be impossible for me. You know I remember those panicked mothers who wanted to save their children but didn't make plans early enough. And I have adult children and do not want them coming to get me in the face of flooding and tsunamis. And so you know maybe I make but am going to make sure my son makes it, by not having him come for me.

AMT: So interesting how she sees this and her experiences. But Gregor, why did she choose to live there?

GREGOR CRAIGIE: Well that's certainly something people have asked her. But you know when you walk from her house out through the pine trees and the rolling sand dunes, it's easier to understand.

SOUNDCLIP

JEANNE JOHNSTON: Welcome to my little paradise. Isn't it gorgeous? This is why I live here. But you know it's on people's minds. They think about it. And the way I see it is as long as you have a capsule like I have you have a shot. And you know I've spoken with some of the emergency preparedness folks and they say 'why would you live there?' Where will we go where we're safe from anything that nature can deliver to us? California is gorgeous. They're having wildfires now. You know Florida, hurricanes. Midwest, tornadoes. You can't run from nature.

AMT: She's right. You can't run from nature. So that's her way of preparing but an escape pod isn't the only solution, surely wouldn't work for a big family, even a big group of people. What other solutions are out there being tried?

GREGOR CRAIGIE: Well they want to take you next, Anna Maria, to a school. A little further north in West Port, Washington it's a busy tourist town in the summer. Now West Port is also on a peninsula. And most of the 2000 people who live there could not get to high ground after a tsunami. So the town and the school district built what they hope will be a lifesaving solution.

AMT: What did they come up with?

GREGOR CRAIGIE: Well it's believed to be North America's first ever vertical tsunami evacuation tower. On the outside it looks like any other modern elementary school. But if you look carefully you notice four imposing towers that surround the gymnasium. They're made of steel reinforced concrete and they support a grid of steel beams which holds up a massive roof that's designed to hold the weight of 2000 people or more.

AMT: So if there's an alert everyone heads for the roof.

GREGOR CRAIGIE: Yeah exactly and I went inside one of those four towers and walked up one of the wide stairways, up 52 steps, with the elementary school principal David Dooley.

SOUNDCLIP

The 600 students we have on the campus can get up here in a about five and a half minutes events, which is pretty impressive. [Children chattering and laughing] So in the drills we have done we have got the two ends of the roof that have concrete platform on them. And we can put the high school here and the elementary school on the other side. It would hold everybody and we have got lots of room get larger in between. It is not covered. It would be called. We understand that weather may be an issue when the tsunami happens, and people being here late at night. But you know they'll be alive and that's the most important thing. You may have to wait a couple of days to get rescued but we'll be up here instead of down on the ground where they would have been washed away. If you look at some of the earthquake predictions, if we get this major quake that they're predicting in the area, the ground drop. And we are basically at sea level. And so the ground drops six feet then we'd be under water. So we may be one of the only places that's out of the water that's still standing especially after the wave comes.

AMT: So that could be horrifying. Hundreds or thousands of people most of them children up there watching their town being swept away. What does he say about that possibility?

GREGOR CRAIGIE: Well it is a horrifying idea but you know like a lot of people who live in these zones, he doesn't do well or at least it doesn't like to dwell on what that might actually look like. People here are trying to prepare as best they can in concrete measures like building this tower or helping the kids there feel safe.

SOUNDCLIP

Maybe half the kids are going to school here live in the immediate area and can quickly get to the school of the tsunami or earthquake happened on the weekend they would come up here. For the kids who live in this community, they feel safer in either that this building is here to help them in some areas. And in some coastal towns I have seen and been around you know you ask yourself what do you do if there's a big tsunami and whether we would have to get over the bridge or have to get back into the town and then up to the tops of one of the hills. What everybody's trying to do that at one time there's not a lot of people going to make it. And that bothers people. It's just nice that our community decided to invest in the long term safety of our students and our families here.

AMT: Gregor you mention it's the first in North America. Have these towers been tried elsewhere?

GREGOR CRAIGIE: Yes Anna Maria. Japan has many vertical evacuation towers. In the big 2011 quake and tsunami, lives were saved by them but some of them were not high enough and people there were actually swept away to their death. So there are no absolute guarantees.

AMT: Interesting. Okay so now you've been focusing on tsunamis. What about the risk of earthquake?

GREGOR CRAIGIE: Well that's a good question because of course many communities in this part of the world are not at risk from tsunami as much as they are from the earthquakes that precede them. And I've talked to a lot of engineers and emergency planners here who worry that thousands of people could be killed just in B.C., if the big one happens soon. There is concern about dams, bridges, highways, but the one group of buildings that gets so much attention understandably is our schools.

AMT: Now I fat schools and British Columbia are fixed or designed so they can withstand a quake.

GREGOR CRAIGIE: Yes the new ones are. Many have been fixed. The provinces spent hundreds of millions of dollars either replacing or retrofitting more than 100 public schools. But the problem is there are still more than 100 other older schools here that are still extremely vulnerable in a big earthquake. Now one Catholic school here in Victoria decided to take action on their own. At Saint Patrick's elementary school, they've taken some specific steps to try to reduce the risk.

AMT: What are they doing?

GREGOR CRAIGIE: Well two things. Let's have a listen first to this.

SOUNDCLIP

[Sound: Tsunami siren]

AMT: That first noise sounded a lot like an air raid siren.

GREGOR CRAIGIE: It did but in this case it is an earthquake early warning siren St. Patrick's is now tied into a growing network of sensors along the coast and under the water that can detect the very first S wave of an earthquake and trigger alarms. A few seconds or even a minute before the shaking starts.

AMT: So they have a warning and what they do with that

GREGOR CRAIGIE: Well that's the question that the school struggled with because they're in an old building that may or may not survive a quake. But they were told you're not supposed to rush out of a building during a quake either. So they needed another solution.

AMT: So what did they do?

GREGOR CRAIGIE: Well the desks but special desks, steel reinforced earthquake desks which are designed to keep people safe even in collapsing buildings. Here is one of the parents who was involved in the project whose name is Euan Skinner.

SOUNDCLIP

And you can see here if you just look underneath, it has got handles and such for students to hold on to, in the event that an earthquake happens. The strength of it is exceptional. Should there be total building collapse, with the amount of desks that are in the room, it does provide a method of egress from school. It's actually strong enough to hold a roof that's thousands of pounds. In fact one of the demonstrations that is available is that you have walls coming down on tractors and such, driving over the top he retains its strength integrity until such time as first responders can come.

GREGOR CRAIGIE: Now I should mention that since I first visited St. Patrick's school they've completed seismic upgrades on the building itself. So they're optimistic that that will remain standing even in the biggest earthquake we might get here. But the school is still keeping its desks. They think it makes the kids that much safer.

AMT: So some people and some institutions are absolutely adapting. But Gregor these are still isolated stories. We got one tower in North America, one escape pod and a few schools that have these kinds of measures. It's not more common than that. Why not?

GREGOR CRAIGIE: Well I spoke to an environmental psychologist about this and there are a few big reasons that people don't prepare. For one, many are in a form of denial essentially telling themselves it hasn't happened thus far in their lives, so it won't happen for the rest of their lives. Others might rationalize that they have a few supplies in the basement and tell themselves they're fine even if they don't really have enough. And for some people just thinking about a bigger earthquake tsunami is too daunting and too awful a scenario to imagine. So they make excuses, like they can't really do anything anywhere, or it's too expensive or they're just too old to act. And another interesting factory Anna Maria, is social pressure. It can play a big role but it can work both ways can either enable people to do nothing or encourage them to take action depending on whether the people around them are proactive or not.

AMT: So the people around you are thinking can make a difference.

GREGOR CRAIGIE: And what they're doing as well. That's something that a man named Doug Doufherty has learned over the last 25 years in Seaside Oregon. Doug was a teacher and then a principal and then superintendent of schools in Seaside. And he retired recently so he could devote all of his time to volunteer on the signature project of his career and that's making the kids in the seaside district safe.

AMT: So how does he want to do that?

GREGOR CRAIGIE: Well essentially he wants to move all of the school's uphill and out of the tsunami inundation zone there. But that's no easy task. For it for one thing it's a big logistical challenge to move three of four schools in a small town out of town, and for another, a lot of people just didn't want to think about it.

SOUNDCLIP

I had a large portion of the community after I was going out and talking with them about this that we'd come back and say you know I've lived here all my life and I never see anything like that before and I just can't believe it. And then you get those that would say 'well we're all going to die anyway and so why? There really isn't anything for us to focus on. We're all going to die.' It sounds horrible.

AMT: So people think they're going to die. How bad could it be in Seaside?

GREGOR CRAIGIE: Well Seaside is actually one of the most vulnerable communities along the whole west coast of North America. There's almost no high ground in the town itself. Three of the four schools are in the tsunami inundation zone on and they're separated from high ground by one or two bridges that are all expected to fail in a major earthquake.

AMT: That sounds not good.

GREGOR CRAIGIE: Not good, but actually it gets worse. Those three schools are all expected to collapse and some of the classrooms don't even have windows and the doors to those classrooms are left shut routinely for security reasons. So escape would be incredibly difficult if not impossible. Now not surprisingly Doug Dougherty lost a lot of sleep worrying about the kids in his district for about 20 years.

AMT: Sounds like somebody should lose some sleep. But why did he decide to do?

GREGOR CRAIGIE: Well he did just about everything he could think of to get those squalls moved. Over a years, there were studies, there were negotiations. He finally got the town to vote on building new schools but then in the end that was rejected by residents who thought the plan was too expensive. It was going to cost the town about 130 million dollars. Doug Dougherty just couldn't convince enough people that it was money well spent.

SOUNDCLIP

I have people during our campaign saying let's not talk about the safety issues. Let's not talk about that danger because we know that. And in fact the comment that I heard over and over again was 'it just makes us look stupid for living here' and they don't want to be reminded of that. And I get that I understand. There is a certain part of it of needing to move on and live your life but at the same time there are some really tangible things that you can do that can make a difference.

AMT: So what happened 20 years later? What are they doing about these schools in Seaside?

GREGOR CRAIGIE: Well Doug Dougherty revised the plan Anna Maria. He got the cost down to just over one 100 million dollars and then just over a year ago they had another vote and he finally convinced enough tax payers to approve this new proposal. So right now they're clearing the land and students from the three schools are expected to move up to a new campus in 2020. And Doug Dougherty is volunteering his time to oversee this project. He's determined to see it through.

AMT: So interesting. What do you think Gregor? You've got are these examples of people taking action. After the tsunami warning last week, what you think, are people taking this far more seriously

GREGOR CRAIGIE: You know it's hard to measure Anna Maria, but I think so. Certainly the Japanese tsunami prompted changes in 2011. Now there are sirens in towns like Tofino on the west coast of Vancouver Island and they were not there seven years ago. And then after the warning last week emergency kits were being snapped up by a lot of people here on Vancouver Island and a lot more people are signing up for that text alert system. There is also a push for the federal government to change the law to allow emergency broadcast messaging to all mobile phones, not just for those who sign up for text alerts.

AMT: So what about you. And besides making sure your phone is on, are more prepared?

GREGOR CRAIGIE: Yes. Well I am a lot more prepared now than I was a decade ago. I'm going to keep that phone on and yes I have emergency supplies at home, an earthquake early warning app on my phone as well. But you know to be honest there still more that I could and should do like my house needs a seismic renovation for instance. And I think in that way I am pretty typical of this part of the world. We've taken a number of steps to prepare but there is still a lot more to do before the big one hits.

AMT: Well I hope you do a lot of preparing and then you never have to test it.

GREGOR CRAIGIE: I hope so too Anna Maria.

AMT: Gregor Craigie thank you very much.

GREGOR CRAIGIE: You're welcome.

AMT: Gregor Craigie is host of CBC Radio One's morning show on the island. He joined us from Victoria, B.C. Check out our website for pictures of that tsunami survival pod and escape tower. cbc.ca/thecurrent. It's on our Twitter feed as well @TheCurrentCBC. Let us know what you're thinking of all of that as you listen. Stay with us in the next half hour, setting the record straight or muzzling speech of proposed law in Poland would make certain statements about the Holocaust illegal. I am going to speak to the country's ambassador to Canada in just a moment. I'm Anna Maria Tremonti. This is The Current.

[Music: Theme]

'Polish death camps': Outlawing phrase will protect Poland's good name, says minister

Guests: Andrzej Kurnicki, Barbara Kirshenblatt-Gimblett, Anna Bikont

AMT: Hello I'm Anna Maria Tremonti and you're listening to The Current.

SOUNDCLIP

We are introducing a set of new better legal instruments which will help us to pursue historical truth to protect Poland's good name, anywhere in the world where it is slandered, shown in a false light or when Poslish history is distorted.

AMT: Or the history in question is about the holocaust. That was Poland's justice minister Zbigniew Ziobro who is speaking in Warsaw last week about a controversial new bill. It would outlast statements blaming the Polish state for atrocities committed in Nazi occupied Poland during the Second World War. Of course Poland was the site of several German Nazi death camps, including Auschwitz-Birkenau where approximately 1 million Jews were systematically slaughtered during the Holocaust. This proposed law would make it illegal to refer to those death camps as Polish death camps. The bill passed the country's parliament last week but must still gain the approval of the Poland's Senate and its president Andrzej Duda. Meanwhile the Polish Center for Holocaust research has expressed what it calls deep concern about this proposed legislation, saying it will muzzle discussion about the country's history. Other critics say this is just the latest move by the right wing ruling Law and Justice Party to downplay Polish complicity during the Second World War. The bill has also come under strong criticism from Israel. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had this to say about it on Sunday.

SOUNDCLIP

We will,under no circumstances, accept any attempt to rewrite history. We will accept no limitation on truthful historical research.

AMT: Well in a moment we'll hear more about the history but first I'm joined by the Polish ambassador to Canada Andrzej Kurnicki. He is in our Ottawa studio. Hello Mr. Ambassador.

ANDRZEJ KURNICKI: Hello. Good morning.

AMT: Good morning. Why does the Polish government feel the need for this legislation?

ANDRZEJ KURNICKI: It's a very important legislation. The new legislation is an amendment to the existing Polish law, if I recall, in the 1998, protecting the so-called collective memory against the defective console memory. It just simply important for the Poles, as well as for the Polish Jews, to support and even agree that this law will provide the basic justice to reflect the true relate to the Holocaust as well as the crime committed by the German soldier. That's the move. And I would say that's my position to the right direction to really reflect the true and not to limited researches or the artistic expression related to Holocaust. Holocaust in Poland is the crime. So denial of the Holocaust in Poland is a crime in Polish law subject not only defined but also to restrictions of liberty. So we protect their memory, collective member of the Polish citizen and the Jewish citizen related to the Holocaust.

AMT: So you have concern with linking the Polish government, Polish officials with the actual death camps, like the phrase 'Polish death camps.

ANDRZEJ KURNICKI: The is unacceptable but it's not true. It's not reflect the historic data and all this memory bein passed to the survivors of the Holocaust. There was a polish death camps, there was the German death camps. Even UNESCO, if I may recall, in 2007 the reviews the name of the Auschwitz and today under UNESCO it is the Auschwitz-Birkanau German Nazi concentration and extermination camp, that is the precise name

AMT: Okay. Many historians obviously agree with you that Polish death camps is inaccurate because, as you point out, they were...

ANDRZEJ KURNICKI: Not inaccurate, it is misleading.

AMT: Yes. Okay. Let me ask you. That's fine. But why do you have to criminalize it?

ANDRZEJ KURNICKI: Because it's not reflections the pain been suffered by the Jewish and under Polish under the German occupy army. So there is no penalty being used like in case of denial of the Holocaust. That's the same story. So we want it reflect the true and want the younger generation, in particular, to make sure that the true being related to the facts what happened before.

AMT: Why don't you just educate them?

ANDRZEJ KURNICKI: It is a crime, denied the crime against the Jews and against the Poles by many people. So easy reflect the history or try to change some of the facts is against the law. It's against humanity. These are our reflection and that's our position to stand of this issue.

AMT: So let me ask you the Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu calls this an attempt to whitewash history.

ANDRZEJ KURNICKI: No it's not whitewash. It's a simply once again to introduce the law that will protect the true. Let's reflect the suffer of the Jewish people under the Holocaust in the German Nazi concentration camp. We are not deny the Holocaust. As I say, it's a crime in Polish law to deny the Holocaust. We want protect the memory of the Jewish people. I met a lot of them in Canada, also the survivor, and they agree that the the German committed this crime against. So we aren't pro-tect. I understand the Israeli Prime Minister sort of emotion, some of the unexpectedly raised some questions related to this law but we want to protect. We want to protect this history and the facts in Poland nobody will have a different interpretation, unless it is artistics or research done by scientific research. So we allow this. There will be not criminalise or any penalty related to the folks who focus on their research stuff or artistic.

AMT: Many Poles were in fact responsible for violence against Jews in the run up to and during the time of the Second World War and the Holocaust or complicit in Nazi crimes. How do you reconcile that?

ANDRZEJ KURNICKI: Not complicit, I would say. We not collaborate with Nazi. We not collaborate with the German army against the Jews or against the Poles. There was some individual, I agree, that may behave not the way that we expect but the Poles pay the price.

AMT: In a book by, of all people Martin Gilbert, on Holocaust the 900 page book I'm talking about. He points out that, in 1936 before the war, the Polish Ministry of Commerce in Warsaw ordered all shops in Poland to include as part of a sharp sign the name of the owner as it appeared on the birth certificate. So it made the fact that the owner was Jewish obvious to everyone in Poland and it provided an incitement for anti-Semites.

ANDRZEJ KURNICKI: It is difficult for me to reflect upon this statement that your raise because I am not a historian.

AMT: Martin Gelbard is - was.

ANDRZEJ KURNICKI: Okay if it's happened, it's a shame. It could happened.

AMT: The reason I'm asking you because in the lead up to the Second World War we do know that there were Polish officials who were anti-Semitic and who actually were part of that. That whole change in the way the population viewed Jews. We also know, according to Laurence Weinbaum, the director of the Israel Council on Foreign Relations, that local authorities were left intact in occupied Poland and many officials exploited that power, according to him, in ways that proved fatal to Jewish constituents.

ANDRZEJ KURNICKI: I would say in my town, I am coming from the eastern part of Poland. There was organisations that was helping the Jews and the rescues their lives. Our pastor in my town was killed by the Germans army for helping Jews. That is the fact

AMT: Well fair enough, Sir. No one is arguing that there were not Poles who were slaughtered as well by the Nazis or did not do their best to try to help those in power. But is it not fair to point out that at that time of war there were people who chose different sides.

ANDRZEJ KURNICKI: I Would say there was people, individuals, but not representative of the community, not the government. The Poland government in exile issued a law that any crime committed against the Jews would be punished by the death. And there were some executions done by the underground structure, called the Home Army, against all this individuals who act against the Jews and act also against the Christians and the Poles. The war bring a lot of brutal actions from different stuff. There were also some individuals [unintelligible] tried to explode the Jews as Poles. That individuals was punished by death and a lot of execution was done by the Polish underground structure. That's a fact. We also understand that some individuals act against hopeless Jews or the Poles. But as a government, as a community was condemned any act there was directed against the Jews against the Poles. That is just a fact

AMT: Can I ask your response to the fact that some of your critics point out that this is coming under the new Law and Justice party. It is right wing and this is not really about back then. This is about today. This is about the politics of today and anti-Semitism today.

ANDRZEJ KURNICKI: No it is not anti-Semitism. Anti-Semitism are not the part of the Polish life, of our community or our churches. anti-Semitism is against the law and against the human being we are not except. There may be some individuals sometimes expressed the view that we not accept as a society as a community. And I will say the party of Law and Justice, it's not the party of right wing. It's much more central socially type of oriented party - I would say - but not the right wing. There is a lot of also Polish with Jewish descent being member of the Peace party. There is a lot of Jews with Polish citizens, pridely represent in Parliament. Highly officials being also related to the Jewish family. We have extended relations between the Jews and the Polish in Poland and outside of the Poland. It's not right wing. The law will bring the justice to make sure that this basic justice is a reflection of the truth related to the Holocaust. We never denied the Holocaust. It's against the Pol... It's a crime in Poland's to deny holocaust. I want to stick to this.

AMT: Mr. Ambassador we thank you for your time today.

ANDRZEJ KURNICKI: Thank you very much.

AMT: That is Andrzej Krunicki. He is the Polish ambassador to Canada and he joined us from our Ottawa studio. My next two guests have dug deep into the history of relations between Poles and Jews. Both fear this bill could harm rather than help in the search for truth and understanding. Anna Bikont is a journalist with the Polish newspaper Gazeta Wyborcza. She is the author of The Crime and the Silence, a book about the 1941 massacre of Jews by their Christian neighbours in the town of Jedwabne. And Barbara Kirshenblatt-Gimblett is a Canadian-American author and a scholar of Yiddish and Jewish Studies. She's also chief curator of the Core Exhibition at Warsaw's POLIN Museum of the History of Polish Jews, which is built on the side of the former Warsaw ghetto. And Barbara Kirshenblatt-Gimblett in New York. Hello to you both.

BARBARA KIRSHENBLATT-GIMBLETT: Hi.

ANNA BIKONT: Hello.

AMT: Barbara Kirshenblatt-Gimblett, I will start with you. The ambassador insists this is about correcting the historical record and making sure that it is understood. What do you think of what he had to say?

BARBARA KIRSHENBLATT-GIMBLETT: Well my position is very simple and that is criminalization of speech is not the best way to address the issue of historical truth, but rather open debate and education are much more effective. And we can see that this amendment to the earlier Act, the 1998 Act, is actually having the reverse effect. It is creating a very negative image of Poland. It is creating a backlash and it will have very negative repercussions in terms of a chilling effect on the scholarship, artistic expression, even though those are at least technically exempted from this kind of legislation. So legislating historical truth, from my point of view, is the wrong course of action.

AMT: Anna Bikont. What do you think of this proposed new bill?

ANNA BIKONT: I think that it is very sad. Not maybe very dangerous but very sad. Because you know all the story about the Polish concentration camp, it doesn't make any sense. You know maybe some time it happened and someone told someone say Polish concentration camp because he forgot that the German did the Holocaust. But I think that maybe he know it happened maybe once in three years, two years. But normally if the people use Polish concentration camps, they use it that it was concentration camp in Poland and not in, for example Theresien in Czechoslovakia. And our Polish nationality Jan Karski who helped the Jews and told the world had the Jews were killed by the Germans. He always talk about Polish concentration camps you know. So it's this, but this doesn't make any sense. It's about to provoke the reaction that 'We are the victims. We are the poor Poles and all the world about [unintelligible] we were the prosecutor and we were the heros'. And I saw, you know it was immediately after the bill, a wave of anti-Antisemitism in Potland. On the public television, the commentator who said talks about the Holocaust out and semite remarks.

AMT: You know I want to pick up on the idea of the use of that phrase because that is where the government's taking particular exception to and it has been a lightning rod for a while. Former U.S. President Barack Obama used it in 2012. Let's listen to what happened.

SOUNDCLIP

REPORTER: A slip up President Obama has infuriated Polish political leaders. The White House says the President misspoke during yesterday's Medal of Freedom ceremony when he referred to a Polish death-camp instead of a German death-camp, while honouring the memory of a Polish resistance fighter during World War Two.

BARACK OBAMA: Before one trip across enemy lines, resistance fighters told him that Jews were being murdered on a massive scale and smuggled them into the Warsaw ghetto in a Polish death camp to see for himself.

VOICE 1: The president misspoke. He was referring to Nazi death camps in Germany occupied Poland and then as we've made clear we regret the misstatement.

VOICE 2: He said the Polish death-camp. He never suppose to say that. I know there was mistake but it's very hurt us.

VOICE 3: Poland was invaded by the Nazis and Polish people were imprisoned in death-camps too. There were no Polish death-camps. There were Nazi Death-camps.

VOICE 4: We didn't do that. It was the Nazis that did that. It was the Nazis and he should know this. He's really making it bad for Poland.

AMT: Well President Obama quickly apologized for using that term. Barbara Kirshenblatt, why has that phrase become such a focal point?

BARBARA KIRSHENBLATT-GIMBLETT: Will you know it's fascinating and this is something that Anna Bikont just said that is Barack Obama was talking about Jan Karksi. And Jan Karski referred to Polish death-camps. It in an article. It is the headline. It is the title of an article. So in a sense it's actually an historically accurate reflection of Jan Karski's language and Jan Karski is a great hero. He is somebody who risked his life to bring knowledge of the Holocaust to the world when it was actually happening and that's the irony of this situation. From my point of view Polish death-camps is basically a shorthand. It means death camps in Portland. What's happened is that somehow it has been construed as making Poland as a state responsible for these death-camps which is very unfortunate because clearly that's not the case. However what has basically happened is that by criminalizing this phrase it's actually reinforced it. And rather than having the effect that is intended which is to educate people to what actually happened during the Holocaust in relationship to Germany, in relationship too- There was no Polish state. There was a Polish government in exile. There was a Polish underground state and it should be noted that the Polish underground state had created a separate department specifically to help Jews known by its code name, Zegota. I would rather see an effort to educate than to legislate.

AMT: Just remind us as well, Poland was occupied on two sides in the Second World War. The Germans and the Russians divided up, did they not?

BARBARA KIRSHENBLATT-GIMBLETT: The Soviets. Yes exactly.

AMT: So you don't have a problem with the Polish government of today making that distinction of that history.

BARBARA KIRSHENBLATT-GIMBLETT: Well. Right. How can I say? I think that the historical truth is not to be legislated and statements are not to be criminalized. That for me is the bottom line and that there is a wider issue which is the historical policy and the politics of history in relation to the current government. And that is a wider issue so that for example during the presidential campaign which Andrzej Duda won, he spoke of what he called- He actually campaigned on the slogan Down with the Pedagogy of Shame. In other words he was holding the previous centre right government responsible for acknowledging the crimes of Polish citizens in Jedwabne against Jews.

AMT: Well let's talk about Jedwabne. Anna, you can give us the history of that, what happened?

ANNA BIKONT: Jedwabne in [unintelligible] in 1941 the Polish inhabitants of Jedwabne killed all the Jews in Jedwabne, all the population it was hundereds of people. And elderly and children and all the people and burning them in the barn. And it was not only in Jedwabne, it was few days before in this small town of [unintelligible] also all the Jews were burning in a barn. And two days before in a small village [unintelligible] all Jews were killed by Poles with axes, one by one. And the killings happen many many small towns of [unintelligible] Eastern Poland. When [unintelligible] neighbours about this event, no one really knew before. In 2000 it was a huge event and we started to talk a lot about it. Really I was so proud of my country that we were so brave to confront with the past. And I think that something was once done is done, but it is not [unintelligible]. Now we have a real backlash. The minister of education, she said that she did not know who did the Jedwabne crime and who did the [unintelligible] crime. It was the crime after they war, 1946, when Poles killed 46 Jews after the war.

AMT: Can I ask you then, Anna Bikont, how much of this is related to the new government in power, then? This kind of feeling. What are you watching for in government What are you seeing?

ANNA BIKONT: It's not it's not so easy to say because of course it's good to say oh because we have bad governments. But no we have bad government because people chose to vote for them. And people chose to vote for them, for- I think that big part of it, of the popularity it was about history. It was too difficult for people and they wanted a party who had told 'The Poles were perfect. We are one only hero. We never did anything wrong.' The backlash was before. This government was chosen because not only but because of it. It was incredible that we had a presentation of a would be president. Yes in television and the first question they ask together [unintelligible]. And the first question and the now president Andrzej Duda ask to president Bronislaw Komorowski, the president that we had before, is why he apologise for Jedwabne. So he knew that it is important for people to not apologize for Jedwabne, for not talking about the time that the Poles committed- the time of the holocaust

AMT: Let's just get Barbara to jump in here too. We want to pick up where Anna is going with this. What does this tell us about this government and the mood in Poland right now?

BARBARA KIRSHENBLATT-GIMBLETT: Well basically I would say that this government- The phrase that I would use, and Adam Mitnick in an interview, some years ago, talked about the triumphalism of innocence. That I would see is this government's answer to the pedagogy of shame. And this triumphalism of innocence is very linked to this government's historical policy which is to celebrate the Polish nation, basically to promote patriotism. We can see it around the debates over the Museum of the Second World War. We can see it in the way in which the curriculum is being reshaped. We can see it in commemorations we can see it in many many ways. And so it is an historical policy which is to promote - well to protect the good name of Poland - but this is not the way to do it. If anything these legislative measures, these attempts to legislate what can and cannot be said are actually destroying the good name of Poland. It is having the exact opposite effect and it will not help us, in Poland, to have the kind of open debate and open scholarship. It's not simply a matter of scholars reading for each other in you know in obscure academic journals. It's rather what Anna was saying that after the publication of young grossers books and other books from the year 2000, it opened up public debate. That's where it matters in an open society.

AMT: We have to leave it there but thank you both for your perspective on this.

BARBARA KIRSHENBLATT-GIMBLETT: Thank you.

ANNA BIKONT: Thank you.

AMT: I've been speaking with Anna Bikont a journalist with the Polish newspaper Gazeta Wyborcza. She's the author of the book The Crime and the Silence. She joined us from Warsaw. Barbara Kirshenblatt-Gimblett is the chief curator of the Core Exhibition at Warsaw's POLIN the Museum of the history of Polish Jews. We reached her in New York City today. That is our program for today. Stay with Radio 1 for Q. The best selling Canadian author of young adult fiction Kelley Armstrong joins Tom power today to talk about her new book. Now after this discussion of Polish and Jewish history we leave you with some music from the Yiddish speaking singer/songwriter Wolf Krakowski. He's the child of Polish-Jewish Holocaust survivors. He was born in 1947 in an Austrian camp for displaced persons. The family moved to Canada. He grew up in Toronto and here he is performing the song Warsaw. I'm Anna Maria Tremonti. Thank you for listening to The Current.

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[Song: Warsaw by Wolf Krakowski]

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