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For the Cause · Aaron Mahnke's Cabinet of Curiosities

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  Speaker 1: Welcome to Aaron Manke's Cabinet of Curiosities, a production of
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  Speaker 1: iHeartRadio and Grimm and Mild. Our world is full of
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  Speaker 1: the unexplainable, and if history is an open book, all
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  Speaker 1: of these amazing tales are right there on display, just
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  Speaker 1: waiting for us to explore. Welcome to the Cabinet of Curiosities.
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  Speaker 1: It was a late night in Eastern Europe in nineteen
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  Speaker 1: forty two, and Tanya was hard at work. She bobbled
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  Speaker 1: and weaved through the dining room, delivering food to hungry
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  Speaker 1: men to the officers who sat at the tables. She
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  Speaker 1: looked like nothing more than a pretty, dark haired waitress.
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  Speaker 1: Rumor was that she was the daughter of a prince
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  Speaker 1: from the country of Georgia, and she hated the Soviets
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  Speaker 1: for killing her father, hated them enough to work in
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  Speaker 1: a Nazi officer's room. As she passed by the table
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  Speaker 1: of drunk soldiers, she paused for a moment to deliver
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  Speaker 1: a very special dish to their table, one that she
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  Speaker 1: had made herself with a few extra ingredients. She smiled
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  Speaker 1: at the SS officer, who gave her a wink and
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  Speaker 1: took a large bite before offering it to his friends,
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  Speaker 1: and then she returned to the kitchen, grabbed her bag
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  Speaker 1: and slipped out the side door. She did not want
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  Speaker 1: to be there when the poison began to work. Tanya
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  Speaker 1: was no Georgian princess. She was really Tatiana Marcus, a
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  Speaker 1: Jewish fem fatale from the Soviet Resistance. Born in nineteen
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  Speaker 1: twenty one in Kiev, then part of the Soviet Union,
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  Speaker 1: Tatiana wasn't a soldier, a spy, or even a trained killer.
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  Speaker 1: She was from a large Jewish family and worked as
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  Speaker 1: a railway secretary in Kiev before moving to Moldova in
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  Speaker 1: nineteen forty. But like millions of others, she suddenly found
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  Speaker 1: herself living in a nightmare as the Nazis invaded the
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  Speaker 1: rest of Europe, and she could only watch from afar
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  Speaker 1: in horror as Kiev, her hometown, quickly became came home
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  Speaker 1: to one of the worst atrocities of the Holocaust. On
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  Speaker 1: September twenty ninth of nineteen forty one, Nazi soldiers forced
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  Speaker 1: the Jewish population of Kiev to assemble at Bobby Yar,
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  Speaker 1: a large ravine on the north side of the city.
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  Speaker 1: Over two days, they systematically murdered over thirty three thousand
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  Speaker 1: Jews and buried them in a mass grave in the Ravine.
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  Speaker 1: In late nineteen forty one, Tatiana returned to Kiev to
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  Speaker 1: the remnants of her friends and family left behind, But
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  Speaker 1: the second she stepped foot into the city, she was
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  Speaker 1: determined to make the Nazis pay. Tatiana obtained fake papers
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  Speaker 1: under a new name, Tanya, and spread rumors about being
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  Speaker 1: a Georgian princess and being sympathetic to the Nazis. This
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  Speaker 1: helped her get jobs infiltrating Nazi spaces, like serving in
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  Speaker 1: a dining hall or working as a secretary in their offices.
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  Speaker 1: This was the perfect cover for a spy, and the
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  Speaker 1: information she carried back to the Soviet underground was invaluable.
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  Speaker 1: But Tatiana didn't want to stop at collecting information. She
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  Speaker 1: wanted to take action, so she started a campaign of
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  Speaker 1: deadly sabotage against the Nazis. In one instance, she and
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  Speaker 1: her father attended a parade of Nazis and distributed bouquets
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  Speaker 1: to passing soldiers rather than handing them the flowers, Though
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  Speaker 1: the two of them threw them at the ground under
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  Speaker 1: the Nazis' feet. The impact set off the grenades hidden
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  Speaker 1: inside the bouquets, which exploded, killing four Nazi soldiers. In
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  Speaker 1: the chaos that followed, Tatiana and her father slipped into
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  Speaker 1: the crowd and disappeared. Another time, she noticed that she'd
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  Speaker 1: caught the eye of a high ranking Nazi official. She
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  Speaker 1: flirted with the man and invited him home, but the
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  Speaker 1: second they entered her apartment, she drew a pistol from
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  Speaker 1: her purse and shot him dead. Tatiana wasn't just courageous,
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  Speaker 1: she was terrifyingly effective. Her missions were precise, personal, and
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  Speaker 1: often carried out in broad daylight. Over the course of
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  Speaker 1: an entire year, Tatiana killed dozens of SS and Gestapo officers,
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  Speaker 1: as well as Nazi informants. In one instance, she even
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  Speaker 1: left a note daring more to come after her. The
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  Speaker 1: note said, all of you fascist reptiles are waiting for
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  Speaker 1: the same fate. Honestly, how do you not love this woman?
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  Speaker 1: But Tatiana's luck, like that of so many resistance fighters,
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  Speaker 1: eventually ran out. In nineteen forty two, she was captured
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  Speaker 1: by the Gestapo, and even then she wouldn't break. Although
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  Speaker 1: brutally tortured for five months, she refused to betray the resistance.
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  Speaker 1: On January twenty ninth of nineteen forty three, Tatiana was
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  Speaker 1: shot by the Nazis. Some sources say that she was
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  Speaker 1: buried in Babi Yar, the same ravine where thousands of
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  Speaker 1: Jews had already been massacred and thousands more civilians of
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  Speaker 1: all backgrounds would be murdered still. In two thousand and six,
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  Speaker 1: Tatiana was honored as an official hero of Ukraine, and
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  Speaker 1: in two thousand and nine a statue of her was
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  Speaker 1: erected at Babi Yar, one of many honoring the people
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  Speaker 1: who were killed there. She didn't survive the war, but
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  Speaker 1: her legacy lives on, not just in medals and memorials,
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  Speaker 1: but in what she represents. Tatiana Marcus stands as a
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  Speaker 1: powerful reminder that resistance doesn't require an army, just the
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  Speaker 1: will to act when it matters most On July seventeenth
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  Speaker 1: of seventeen ninety four, muskeet fire erupted just outside of
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  Speaker 1: Pittsburgh on a sprawling estate known as Bower Hill. United
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  Speaker 1: States militia clashed with a rebel army of over five
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  Speaker 1: hundred men. America wasn't even yet twenty years old, and
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  Speaker 1: already they were battling their own citizens. Both the leaders
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  Speaker 1: of this rebellion died in the gunfire and Bower Hill
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  Speaker 1: was burned to the ground, but it was still a
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  Speaker 1: startling defeat for the United States government. The dead rebels
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  Speaker 1: were seen as martyrs, and the resistance only grew. President
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  Speaker 1: George Washington ordered his cabinet to assemble an even stronger
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  Speaker 1: militia to protect the integrity of the United States. When
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  Speaker 1: few men volunteered, a draft was implemented, and Washington himself
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  Speaker 1: traveled to Pennsylvania to lead the troops, the first and
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  Speaker 1: only time a sitting American president personally took command of
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  Speaker 1: a field army. A militia of twelve thousand strong marched
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  Speaker 1: through western Pennsylvania. They made several arrests along the way,
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  Speaker 1: but there was no more fighting. The protesters dispersed at
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  Speaker 1: the show of force, and the conflict seemed to subside. Ironically,
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  Speaker 1: the cause of all of this commotion was not dissimilar
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  Speaker 1: to one of the founding myths of the American Revolution.
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  Speaker 1: It was caused by tax Three years earlier, the United
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  Speaker 1: States had been suffering from intense amounts of debt. In
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  Speaker 1: order to ease the financial burden on the states, Washington
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  Speaker 1: had implemented attacks on whisky distilleries six to nine cents
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  Speaker 1: a gallon at the suggestion of one Alexander Hamilton. The
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  Speaker 1: subsequent uprising would become known as the Whisky Rebellion. As
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  Speaker 1: the dust settled on the rebellion, it seems that he
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  Speaker 1: recognized the mistake of this tax, pardoning those who had
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  Speaker 1: been arrested for organizing protests against the whiskey tax. But
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  Speaker 1: that was just the first step. Washington knew that it
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  Speaker 1: would take more than a few pardons to fully disperse
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  Speaker 1: the former rebels. Washington reached out to Thomas Jefferson, then
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  Speaker 1: the governor of Virginia, to put together an offer for
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  Speaker 1: the settlers. If they moved to the territory west of Virginia,
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  Speaker 1: they would be offered sixty acres of land to farm
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  Speaker 1: upon on the condition that they used the land to
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  Speaker 1: raise native corn. And all of this resulted in three
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  Speaker 1: important things. First, scores of settlers took Jefferson up on
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  Speaker 1: the offer, causing a wave of migration into the territory. Second,
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  Speaker 1: Jefferson would later be able to successfully run his presidential
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  Speaker 1: campaign on the promise of repealing the whiskey tax. And Third,
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  Speaker 1: the settlers who moved from West Pennsylvania to Virginia produced
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  Speaker 1: much more corn that they knew what to do with,
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  Speaker 1: and so they did what every society does when it
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  Speaker 1: has a surplus of produce. They made it into alcohol.
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  Speaker 1: This process would eventually coalesce into a few key guidelines
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  Speaker 1: at least fifty one percent corn and a certain amount
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  Speaker 1: of time spent aging in an oak barrel. The resulting
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  Speaker 1: whiskey would have a dark brown color and would serve
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  Speaker 1: as a cheap alternative to French cognac. It's the only
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  Speaker 1: liquor native to the United States, and it would eventually
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  Speaker 1: bear the name of the county that started it. A
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  Speaker 1: lifelong Francophile, Thomas Jefferson had named the western most part
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  Speaker 1: of the Virginia territories Bourbon County, Virginia, and in the
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  Speaker 1: mid seventeen nineties it would become Bourbon County, Kentucky. And
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  Speaker 1: this corn based oak barrel aged liquor is obviously known
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  Speaker 1: as Bourbon whisky, usually just shortened to bourbon. It's a
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  Speaker 1: common enough saying that you are what you eat, but
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  Speaker 1: it may be a truer statement that you learn a
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  Speaker 1: lot about a culture based on what it drinks, and
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  Speaker 1: every time you raise a glass of bourbon to your lips,
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  Speaker 1: you're drinking not just spirits, but flavors that trace all
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  Speaker 1: the way back to the Whisky Rebellion. It might be
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  Speaker 1: a beverage, but it's also a curio. This bit of
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  Speaker 1: food for thought. I hope you've enjoyed today's guided tour
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  Speaker 1: of the Cabinet of Curiosities. Subscribe for free on Apple Podcasts,
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  Speaker 1: or learn more about the show by visiting Curiosities podcast
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  Speaker 1: dot com. This show was created by me Aaron Mankey
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  Speaker 1: in partnership with how Stuff Works. I make another award
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  Speaker 1: winning show called Lore, which is a podcast, book series,
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  Speaker 1: and television show, and you can learn all about it
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  Speaker 1: over at the Worldoflore dot com. And until next time,
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  Speaker 1: stay curious.