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The Current Transcript for May 25, 2023

Host: Susan Ormiston

STORIES FROM THIS EPISODE

Prologue

[Music: Theme]

SOUNDCLIP

JOSEF LEWKOWICZ: For a while, I just wanted to walk away from it. I wanted to forget. We have to tell this story again and again in order that it should never happen again.

SUSAN ORMISTON: Josef Lewkowicz is not just a Holocaust survivor. He was responsible for saving hundreds of orphaned children and also became a Nazi hunter who brought many to justice. But he never told his incredible story until now. At 96, he's sharing his life and his hopes for the future in the face of rising antisemitism. That's in 30 minutes. Then.

SOUNDCLIP

FEMALE SPEAKER: I think that we need to clean it, but I'm not sure if I'm going to swim in it.

SO: It is one of Paris's most treasured landmarks, but it's not exactly pristine. The Seine is getting a much needed cleanup in the hopes of restoring its lost ecosystems. In an hour, what it takes to save the Seine from sewage and the other rivers getting the same treatment. But we begin south of the border where Florida is certainly steaming up the U.S. presidential race. Hi, I'm Susan Ormiston, in for Matt Galloway and this is The Current.

[Music: Theme]

RON DESANTIS

Guests: Lori Rozsa, John Feehery

SOUNDCLIP

RON DESANTIS: I am running for president of the United States to lead our great American comeback. Look, we know our country is going in the wrong direction. We see it with our eyes and we feel it in our bones. I don't think it has to be this way. American decline is not inevitable. It is a choice. And we should choose a new direction, a path that will lead to American revitalization. And to voters who are participating in this primary process, my pledge to you is this. If you nominate me, you can set your clock to January 20th, 2025 at high noon, because on the west side of the U.S. Capitol, I will be taking the oath of office as the 47th President of the United States. No excuses. I will get the job done.

SO: That's Florida Governor Ron DeSantis announcing his U.S. presidential bid. And it wasn't a flashy press conference with crowds of supporters. He opted for a live Twitter stream with Elon Musk, which spectacularly crashed. The rising star in the Republican Party has made headlines for his action on anti-abortion bills, book banning and a high profile feud with Disney. Many see him as a contender, a key one to unseat former President Donald Trump as the frontrunner for the Republican ticket. For more, I'm joined by Lori Rozsa. She's a reporter for The Washington Post covering the state of Florida, and she's in West Palm Beach. Lori, good morning.

LORI ROZSA: Good morning, Susan. How are you?

SO: Well, good. But I'm wondering about Ron DeSantis. That was a pretty spectacular failure to launch, as many are calling it, last night on Twitter spaces. What happened?

LORI ROZSA: We don't know the exact details of the technical failure that marred the governor's launch, but it really was awkward is one terrible way to put it. If you tuned in, you tried to hear, silence and whispering and then it ended and then it started again. He did ultimately get his message out. But even then, it was, you know, just, you know, a few men talking to each other and we were there to listen in. Governor DeSantis did go on Fox later. A slightly more traditional kick off, but yeah, the start was what you might call inauspicious.

SO: Yeah. And Trump's team were having a field day really spitting out emails and, you know, comments on this. What was the reaction from them?

LORI ROZSA: As you said, basically mocking and making fun of the technical glitches that sort of haunted that first hour of this long awaited announcement. Because, you know, the world has known that Ron DeSantis was going to run for president, but we've had to couch it because he's never said. Sure, he's been kind of, you know, toying with it. When asked, when he was asked during a debate before he won re-election in November, will you be in Florida for four years to serve out your term? He wouldn't answer that question. So it's been open knowledge, but it's finally official when he, you know, filed with the Federal Elections Commission yesterday. So Trump's people had a field day with the glitches, but it's early days yet.

SO: And DeSantis, though, has been polling well behind Donald Trump recently among Republican voters. And those two have a real history. So how has this relationship changed recently?

LORI ROZSA: It really is interesting because when Ron DeSantis was in Congress much of that time when Donald Trump was president, he was a Trump supporter, and it was Donald Trump's endorsement that catapulted DeSantis as frontrunner for his first gubernatorial race in Florida. DeSantis acknowledged that. Trump makes a point of that every time, every chance he gets that he made Ron DeSantis. That's not necessarily true, but he certainly made it possible for him to win his first governorship. But in the four years since then, DeSantis has definitely become his own man. He's led Florida the way he sees Florida should be led. And he was re-elected by a landslide in November without any support from Trump.

SO: Yeah. And Trump loves to come up with those nicknames, doesn't he? Swamp creature he's calling DeSantis now or Ron de-sanctimonious. But, you know, talking about his platform and his history handling the pandemic, he was, you know, against shutdowns and vaccine mandates. How did that shape how he's going forward in this race?

LORI ROZSA: Ron DeSantis’s reaction to the pandemic pretty much changed his political outlook. If you watched him when he was first elected as governor, he was somewhat more centrist. Pandemic comes along, he goes along with restrictions at first, but then he decides to do it his own way. And by his telling, that worked out best for Florida. So he thinks he wants to make America Florida, and the pandemic restrictions and freedom from them is one of his big selling points.

SO: And he's actually gone further with a tagline almost. You know, he's known for this slogan, Florida is where woke goes to die. What does he mean by that, Lori, and how is that going to fit into his political ideology that he's selling on the campaign trail?

LORI ROZSA: Woke is undefined by Governor DeSantis. He doesn't say exactly what it is, but he indicates when he talks about woke, he talks about indoctrination, he talks about leftist and liberal, he talks about Hollywood, he talks about content for children. Woke is a convenient catch all phrase that he's turned into a pillar of his campaign, even though it is slightly undefined. But generally, when he starts talking about that, it generally means African-American history, for example, or critical race theory or LGBT issues.

SO: And these are things that he's going to be using to try to stir up more support.

LORI ROZSA: Right. And it's worked. It's worked in Florida. As I say, he did win re-election by a landslide. He champions parental rights. And the bill that most people call the Don't Say Gay Bill, its real name is the Parental Rights and Education Bill. So it's all a matter of where you're looking at it from. From Governor DeSantis’s viewpoint, he's protecting children. And lately, he's been saying he's protecting women and children with some of these anti LGBTQ laws. And others from a different perch see it as infringing on individual rights.

SO: Some people, though, are concerned that, some Republicans that I've heard and read about are concerned that this brand of conservatism may not be able to sell to a wider audience outside Florida. Is that one of his challenges?

LORI ROZSA: Oh, it absolutely is. If he does get past Donald Trump, which right now it doesn't look likely. But as I said, it's very early days and Trump has a lot left to get through in courts and elsewhere. But if Ron DeSantis does make it to the general election and he's running against Joe Biden, that message, how it sells in Florida may be very different from how it sells in states that DeSantis will need to win to become president because the message is pretty narrowly focussed on, as you mentioned, woke and the rest of it. He'll need to prove to America that it isn't as divisive as it has been in Florida and that it really is good for the country, not just good for his political ambitions.

SO: And the other concern that we've heard somewhat in the last few months is that this idea of retail politics, that he's not at ease on the campaign trail, certainly no match for Trump, as we've seen recently in that CNN town hall. Is that what concerns some Republicans who support DeSantis even?

LORI ROZSA: I think it does. I'm not sure if millions of American voters really care about whether they could have a beer with Ron DeSantis or not. He can point to a lot of policy victories that he pushed through in Florida. Florida's only one state. But I don't know if his, what they call his likeability or the retail stuff, I'm not sure how much that will matter in the end. Getting to the primaries, it will matter. So for GOP voters, it will matter. But I think for the general electorate, once he’s going up against Joe Biden, it's not going to be a lot of would you have a beer with this guy.

SO: I mean, last week, the NAACP issued a travel advisory for Florida saying the state is actively hostile to minorities. How does DeSantis respond to that kind of criticism?

LORI ROZSA: Very dismissive. His team says that's just a stunt. Same with LGBT groups issuing travel advisories. They say it's a stunt. And Ron DeSantis addressed it last night during the Twitter space once it finally got going. He said, you know, those folks will come down here and vacation in Florida and then they'll issue travel advisories. So they do not take it seriously, although the issue is very serious. You know, I've interviewed people. I've met people who are leaving Florida because of some of these policies.

SO: All right. Lori, one final thing. Trump's team, of course, is mobilizing. I mean, Florida has become this focal point of this early day of the nomination race. What are you seeing about Trump's team mobilizing at the moment?

LORI ROZSA: Well, they're very much on line and pushing back against DeSantis any time they can on Truth Social where, you know, Trump sort of lives online. It’s going to come down to, in many ways, the campaign war chest. And right now, Ron DeSantis has a lot of money. He's sitting on top of huge pile of cash. Trump, of course, will be well-funded as well. But it's going to be a money race, I think, in the early days, and the first, you know, caucuses and votes don't even come until early 2024. So there's a lot of time for them to sort of duke it out online or in public. But right now, it's a lot about getting the money to do that fight.

SO: Well, we'll be watching with interest. Lori, thanks so much.

LORI ROZSA: Thanks, Susan.

SO: Lori Rozsa is a reporter for The Washington Post covering the state of Florida, and we reached her this morning in West Palm Beach. John Feehery has been listening in. He is a Republican strategist and partner of EFB Advocacy, and he's in Florida, in West Palm Beach as well. John, good morning.

JOHN FEEHERY: Good morning.

SO: So John, your take on the quote some are calling the failure to launch on Twitter and his decision to do that alongside Elon Musk.

JOHN FEEHERY: Well, it certainly was a unique strategy, and I think DeSantis’s people are spinning it as they broke the Internet and shows the enthusiasm for his candidacy. And that might be true. You know, typically, when you want to make some sort of announcement that you're running for president, you want to have a lot of people behind you cheering. And so it was kind of odd for him just to be kind of in a room with Elon Musk, kind of very quiet. And so, you know, it was a unique, unique start to the campaign. But it's really not how you start the campaign, it’s how you finish the campaign. And, you know, there's a long road ahead, so I don't want to count Ron DeSantis out right now. And he does have access to lots of money, and that can keep you in the campaign for a while.

SO: Yeah. Huge bump to start, though, really quite spectacular. You know, I've watched him for quite a long time. He seemed quite a bit more golden last November when, you know, he won by a landslide in the midterm elections when Republicans generally underperformed. So what's happened since?

JOHN FEEHERY: Well, I think what happened since was he had Trump running against him almost exclusively. You know, if you look at these ads in Florida and Washington, D.C. where I'm based, Trump has been running thousands and thousands of ads against Ron DeSantis, basically attacking him for supporting cuts to Social Security and raising taxes. But also, what happened to DeSantis, and I like Ron DeSantis and I would prefer him over Trump, to be honest with you, is that he had a huge conservative majority in his Florida legislature, and that allowed him to kind of push a lot of things that were further to the right than he would have done otherwise. And you see a perfect example of that with the six-week abortion ban, which, you know, might play in Florida. But I think abortion is still an issue that Republicans have to be careful with. And if they get exactly everything that the far right wants, it's going to alienate some people in the middle. So I do think that when you have a huge majority like that, you do things that you would not do otherwise. And that's kind of pushed him further to the right. And I also think that I understand what he's trying to do with Disney. You know, they got in a spat and sometimes you want to punish your enemies, but Disney is an iconic brand. And again, you know, there's just a lot of Republicans who like the Disney. They like Disneyland, they like Disney World. They go to it or their families go to it. And so picking on Mickey Mouse is really not the greatest strategy of all time.

SO: John, is age in this Republican race going to make a difference? Trump is 76. DeSantis is 44. Will that make a huge difference?

JOHN FEEHERY: You know, it's really an interesting point. I think that having Donald Trump run these ads on Social Security shows you how the Republican base is older and wider than the populace at large. And you would think that the case for generational change would be a good case to make, especially if you're running against Joe Biden. And as you said, you know, Trump is no spring chicken either. But I think it works in the general election better than it works in the primary election. That's because Trump has this kind of visceral connection with a wide swath of Republican voters that, you know, seems to transcend age. And Trump also doesn't seem to be old and doddering. I mean, he's pretty vibrant, at least in his public communications, and that I think helps him. And, you know, also for the older voters in the primary, they don't seem to be all that concerned about Trump's age, at least right now.

SO: Hmm. Who of Trump supporters will be hardest for Ron DeSantis to steal?

JOHN FEEHERY: Well, like I said, I think it's going to be the older, whiter people in the primary who not only like Trump's position on Social Security, but also like Trump's, how he handled COVID. You know, I'm somebody who likes DeSantis’s approach to COVID, but there are some folks in the Republican primary who thought that Trump did as good a job as he could. They supported his efforts on the vaccine, and they kind of credit him with the fact that they were able to survive COVID. And so those are the type that tend to be the older voters. And I think that it’s going to be very difficult for DeSantis to steal those voters away. And, you know, the other thing that's interesting is Trump has this, you know, persona of being a working class person, even though he's come from a very wealthy family. And DeSantis has this kind of reputation of being an Ivy League, even though he came from a working class family. So, you know, a lot of those low information working class voters have this cosmic connection to Trump that seems to be very difficult for anyone to peel away from him as he runs for president.

SO: Now, of course, Ron DeSantis is solidly in position to at this early stage, but still, there's a big gap developed between Trump and DeSantis. What about other candidates? Are there any others you see who are in the race or could enter still that might challenge Trump and DeSantis?

JOHN FEEHERY: You know, the guy I look to, and I think if you're looking for the favourite inside the Beltway candidate, it’s Senator Tim Scott.

SO: South Carolina.

JOHN FEEHERY: Scott, the senator from South Carolina announced earlier this week that he was running for president. John Thune who is the Senate minority whip immediately endorsed him. He is well-respected, well-liked. And, you know, he's also giving a very positive message, and he's not really going to get involved in the fights between DeSantis and Trump. So if DeSantis and Trump get in a huge food fight and tearing each other down, I think someone like a Tim Scott can kind of come through and rise to the occasion. He also has access to a lot of money. He's already got $22 million in his account. He has the backing of Larry Ellison from Oracle, who also pledged to give him $30 million for a super PAC. So he's well-funded. He’s probably the third best funded in the campaign, and you could see him kind of lasting a long time.

SO: Just briefly on that point, John, there was some talk a couple of months ago that big donors were starting to hedge their bets a bit on DeSantis. Is that accurate?

JOHN FEEHERY: I think that's true. That's happened especially after the six-week abortion ban bill signed by DeSantis and some of this fighting with Disney. You know, some folks are looking for an alternative and many of them are looking at either Nikki Haley, who also has a lot of support amongst female Republicans. I talked to a lot of women across the country and they really like Nikki Haley, but she doesn't seem to have as much access to cash as Tim Scott does, though. And a lot of those big funders are looking elsewhere and potentially in to support either Haley or Tim Scott.

SO: But still, those candidates like Nikki Haley, they’re in still very small percentage support at this stage. John, I'm going to ask you to look into your political crystal ball. Who comes out ahead in 2024?

JOHN FEEHERY: Well, you know, you have to start kind of doing it state by state. Who's going to win in Iowa and who's going to win in New Hampshire? I think that Trump wins Iowa. It's a very conservative state. And then that gives him some momentum. Can DeSantis or Scott do well in New Hampshire to kind of change that narrative? You go down then to South Carolina and, you know, you have Haley and Tim Scott and do they go home state or does Trump have great numbers down there? You know, you'd have to say that Trump's going to get the nomination if you were looking at the conventional wisdom and looking at all those facts and figures right now. But, you know, it's going to be a long campaign, so I'm hesitant to say that the conventional wisdom is quite completely right. There could be a surprise in the Republican primary.

SO: And anything can happen in politics as we saw last night, didn't we?

JOHN FEEHERY: Exactly. There could be a couple of bumps in the road as we all go through this process.

SO: Thank you very much, John.

JOHN FEEHERY: Okay. Thank you.

SO: John Feehery is a Republican strategist and partner of EFB Advocacy, a lobbying firm. We reached him this morning in Florida. The CBC News is next. And then.

SOUNDCLIP

JOSEF LEWKOWICZ: Now what is the revenge? The revenge is just to do the opposite of what they did. To everything that they did bad, we should do good.

SO: Josef Lewkowicz survived the Holocaust. He rescued hundreds of orphans and tracked down Nazis to face justice. Now, at 96, he's telling his life story and hopes it will be a message of hope and of goodness. Our conversation is coming up in six minutes. I'm Susan Ormiston. This is The Current. Stay with us.

[Music: Theme]

THE SURVIVOR

Guest: Josef Lewkowicz

SO: Hello, I'm Susan Ormiston, in today for Matt Galloway and you're listening to The Current.

[Music: Theme]

SO: Still to come, cleaning up the city of Light's stinky river. Why the Seine needs to be restored and how other rivers are getting the same treatment. But first, a survivor's life.

[Music: Theme]

SO: If you've ever seen the cruel reality of the Holocaust in the movie Schindler's List, you may remember the brutality of Nazi officer Amon Goheth.

SOUNDCLIP

[movie clip]

FEMALE SPEAKER: My name is Vienna. I am a graduate of civil engineering from the University of Milan.

MALE FIRST SPEAKER: Educated too like Karl Marx himself. Otto Shapira.

SECOND MALE SPEAKER: Yeah.

FIRST MALE SPEAKER: Shoot her.

FEMALE SPEAKER: Commandant, I'm only trying to do my job.

FIRST MALE SPEAKER: Yeah, I'm doing mine.

SECOND MALE SPEAKER: Sir, she’s fallen off construction.

FIRST MALE SPEAKER: I'm not going to have arguments with these people.

SO: Actor Ralph Fiennes Portrayed Amon Goeth. Josef Lewkowicz saw the real Nazi officer's ruthlessness up close as a teenager at the Plaszow concentration camp. He endured Goeth’s tyranny and terror at that camp and lived to survive five more camps during the Holocaust. Now, at the age of 96, he's telling his story in a new memoir. It's called “The Survivor: How I Survived Six Concentration Camps and Became a Nazi Hunter”. We've reached Josef Lewkowicz in Jerusalem. Good morning.

JOSEF LEWKOWICZ: Morning.

SO: Joseph, you've lived many lives, really. You are a true survivor. And at 96, you're finally talking in detail about those horrors you saw. Why now after staying mostly silent all these years?

JOSEF LEWKOWICZ: For a while, I just wanted to walk away from it. I wanted to forget. I didn't want to look back. I just wanted to look at the future because the back was terrible, fearful, demoralizing. I did not want to look back. My children grew older, they started bothering me, daddy, daddy, daddy, talk, talk. I didn't listen much to them. Little bits I spoke. But a few years ago, there was a rabbi Naftali Schiff from Jay Rhodes in England, the head of Jewish Future. He insisted You have to tell this story. People have to know what happened. And I said, why do they have to know? And he says, because we have to tell this story again and again in order that it should never happen again.

SO: That's very true. And you talk a lot in the book about the task of surviving as a teenager. You said this quote, which really caught my attention, “At day, we prayed it would be night.” You were just 14 when you went to the first camp. What kept you alive while so many thousands died around you?

JOSEF LEWKOWICZ: Yeah, I thought that that was a very great purpose in my survival, that I have to do something. If so many millions didn't survive and I did survive, it is not for nothing. There is a purpose for my survival. So I put myself after having negative thoughts like that isolate me from the world. Go somewhere very, very far where there's no people. Live in a farm with animals, horses, cows, goats, chickens because they will not hurt me. People hurt. They kill. Amon Goeth, that was a butcher, a murderer. I was in Plaszow with one of the builders. They came with heavy machines and destroyed the Jewish cemetery called the Jerusalimska, levelled it out and built upon it the concentration camp. And Amon Goeth came, that was hell on earth. I gave you one only case, and you will need no more.

SO: Was that the case about your friend, Joseph? You called Amon Goeth the embodiment of evil. What did he do to your friend?

JOSEF LEWKOWICZ: One case I want to tell you, he went in front two walls of me. There was a man. His name was Thomas Spielman, and he called him out of the row and he said, step out. He stepped out and he said in German, I cannot take it a Jew looking so handsome. POW, pow, pow, gave him a few bullets. You don't need any more to describe that beast.

SO: There was more from this beast. You talk in the book about how Goeth shot a woman cradling her baby on a balcony at one of the camps.

JOSEF LEWKOWICZ: Yes.

SO: You talk to him. You say that he would kill people for looking him in the eye, for walking too slowly. How did you get through that pain and suffering of seeing that, being exposed to that?

JOSEF LEWKOWICZ: In his mind, I am dead. I was dead in his mind. There was an occasion where he pulled me down from a pole that I was dismantling. He shot the person because I threw down the bricks and he didn't catch it. And then he asked me to come down and he took his gun and I don't know what happened. The story is that I had the courage to go to the Jewish commandant of the police that was always on his left side, always walking with him, and I asked him, I said, I can polish your shoes, your boots, I will polish. I'll shine them they will shine like the sun. So he said, come before the sirens. I used to go to his bar and then he gave me a piece of bread, a little soup and what ever, ever, ever was gold, you know, just to survive. So this man, I didn't know the story, but I woke up in a hospital and I look at my skin and I was always cut. The skin was open. When I got a little better, I went to the lavage, to the chief of the police to get something to eat. When I walked in, he said, you're alive. You're alive. I said, yes, I'm alive. He told me the story that Amon Goeth was to shoot me. So he beat me up, I fainted and fell on the floor and didn't move. And he said to Amon Goeth, save your bullet, he's dead. And they said to two guys there, come two guys, carry him to the crematorium. He saved me.

SO: In your book, you say, I was a zero, not a hero. What did you mean by that? Was it that you were having to step out of yourself to become sort of silent and anonymous so you wouldn't be harmed?

JOSEF LEWKOWICZ: You know what, the human being is really not a hero, but a zero. We are here today, we don't know what will happen tomorrow. I had an experience with my son. I had two sons and a daughter. One son went in one morning from his car. It was still dark in the morning, went out of his car and was hit by another car and then disappeared and was killed. He was full of life. He was a big economist, a very known personality all over the world, Tobias Lewkowicz. So that's what I want to say by zero. We are in God’s hands.

SO: Yes. Joseph, you had, as I said at the beginning, many lives, it seems, because after the war, you worked with the American military police. And with your fluency in German, you had some Russian and English, I think, you set out on a motorcycle given to you by the Americans to find some of the Nazis who tortured and murdered so many. And you went to Dachau and I think you found Amon Goeth. How did you react?

JOSEF LEWKOWICZ: It took a long time to find him. But when I was told by a commanding officer that all his battalion is there, so I went there. When I saw him, he looked not that big, big, he played the role of God, not that big, big man. He was a beggar lying on the ground, on the dirt, dressed like a beggar, half of his size. When I approached him, my blood was boiling in me. What do I do? What do I do? I wasn't that at my best. But the minute I went there and I started, I said, you dog, get up from the floor and kicked him a few times. And I started punching him and I called him all the names that he used to call us. I remembered them. People ask me, why didn’t you shoot him? I said, shooting him would be giving him a reward for his deeds. No, not so easy. Let him suffer a little bit. He cannot die twice. And suffer means bring him to justice, bring him to court, bring witnesses and he's got to die by hanging. What else can you do to a guy that has on his conscience tens of thousands, tens of thousands of people?

SO: When you saw him, how did you know for sure it was him?

JOSEF LEWKOWICZ: I recognized him right away. I saw that murderer’s face. I know it. I knew it very, very well. It was well in my mind.

SO: Yes. And when he was executed, how did you feel then?

JOSEF LEWKOWICZ: I will tell you a little story. When I put him in an isolated cell in Landsberg, in a jail and a little tiny cell, I went to him and I put my arm over his shoulder and I said, Amon, like talking to a friend, I wanted that on purpose, Amon, tell me, why did you do this and why did you do that? And I mentioned so many things and who asked you to do it? Tell me. Tell me. We are two together here. Tell me just one man to another. He didn't open his mouth. He didn't open never this mouth. He didn't answer anything to the judges.

SO: Gosh.

JOSEF LEWKOWICZ: What did I want there? I wanted to see if there was any drop of remorse. And you know what? I came to the conclusion that he would have done it again.

SO: Gosh.

JOSEF LEWKOWICZ: The world cannot understand how could human do that to other human. We are not ants, we are not the flies, we are not even rats. How could he do that?

SO: That is the enduring question. How could this have happened? All of us wonder still and your book brings it all to life for us again. Why was it so important for you to personally track down Nazis? I mean, you could have gone and lived on a farm, as you say, and never had to endure the horror face to face again.

JOSEF LEWKOWICZ: Justice has to be done. I was just last week in Poland and visiting a death camp called Belgique. A half a million Jews were brought there. My whole family, my mother, my siblings, my uncles, my whole family were brought there. Life brought them in to those chambers in Gadsden. I had three little brothers. Why do we say never again and never again? Why do I talk? Why do I go? Why do I? Because to prevent that should never, ever happen again.

SO: You know, Joseph, that brings up a very moving part in your book when you talk about the last time you saw your mom and your three brothers. You talk about how there was no chance of goodbyes or farewell, you were just brutally separated. You also talk about feeling a sense of guilt or shame about what happened to them. Why do you feel that way?

JOSEF LEWKOWICZ: This is such a terrible situation. I couldn't give a kiss to my mother. I couldn't say goodbye to her. I didn't know where they were going or where we were going because we were separated. What was the shame? Because each of us were allowed to take 10 kilos and not enough. Now that we know that my mother with my little brother, they went to the death chamber to big guys, we gave them our 10 killers. My father and myself, we were selected to life. We gave them our 10 killers. So my mother had to carry to death all that heavy load, that was my guilty conscience. Our intention was we will somehow men be able to manage, but them, let them have everything that we have if they will be able to save themselves or something. That is the guilt.

SO: It was good intention, Joseph, wasn't it? You took up another mission in your life to find Jewish children who were orphaned or fostered by other families during the Holocaust and reunite them with their birth parents or take them into care. And that was kind of like another separation for them. So what was that like? Why did you do that?

JOSEF LEWKOWICZ: That took a year of my life, a year of my work after the war because there were abandoned Jewish children. Because they took the parents, they never returned. So I figured we lost five, six million Jews and we cannot afford losing more. So I started to work on that and it was a very big job under communism to try and find Jewish children. But I did get the authority and I went to work on it and I was successful and found about 600 Jewish children and brought them out of Poland, brought them to Italy, I shipped them to Palestine. At that time, there was no Jewish state yet, rerouted them to Cyprus. They eventually came to Israel. That was something that I had taken upon myself. I said, I have to do something good. If I survived, there's a reason to my survival. And I did that for a year long, day and night, searching all over wherever possible, and then in churches and monasteries and orphanages and organizations and societies and private homes and tried to unite them with families who survived. Many did not survive, so we take them to certain homes. We got a place and so we put them down there.

SO: Yeah, just a huge effort. Although you say in your book, just quoting, looking back, it was an extreme case of being cruel to be kind. What did you mean by that?

JOSEF LEWKOWICZ: Yeah, because they didn't want to go. And the people I know, whether it was organizations or orphanages, they didn't want to release them either. So it was a real cruel job, you know. It was a hard job, but it was a satisfying job.

SO: I wanted to talk to you about anger. You told me about anger around Amon Goeth when you saw him again. That's completely natural, of course, I can't imagine. But you talk about anger being like a rocking chair. You keep moving, but it doesn't take you anywhere. I love that phrase. So do you feel that you were able to get revenge without stewing in anger long after, of course?

JOSEF LEWKOWICZ: That's what I said. Yes. Anger takes you nowhere. Anger is not the answer. So being nice, doing the right thing. I had a movie done and the movie is called A Survivor’s Revenge. Now, what is the revenge? The revenge is just to do the opposite of what they did. To everything that they did bad, we should do good. Just the opposite. That is the revenge. To be able to repair all the badness to goodness.

SO: To live your life.

JOSEF LEWKOWICZ: Yes.

SO: And you did. I mean, more than a survivor of concentration camps and a Nazi hunter, in later life, you did so many things. You became a diamond dealer, you were married, you had children, you raised a family in Montreal.

JOSEF LEWKOWICZ: I’m a proud Canadian citizen too.

SO: Good. We're glad to have you.

JOSEF LEWKOWICZ: Yeah, living in Israel.

SO: As I understand, you were a pillar of the Jewish community in Montreal.

JOSEF LEWKOWICZ: Yeah. Yeah, yeah. A lot of friends and a nice community. Wherever I was, I was always active in doing things and always trying the positive way and not anger. My mother had a phrase in Polish, which is actually repeated so many times, being nice, being gentle, being fine, you'll never lose.

SO: So Joseph, Amon Goeth was not able to rob you of this long life.

JOSEF LEWKOWICZ: No. He almost did. He did to so many others. But I by miracle, I have many miracles. I cannot start telling it. It is not the time and we have a few minutes. I can talk for days and days and days and we will only start. So it’s in a few minutes very hard.

SO: Yeah.

JOSEF LEWKOWICZ: But this was an angel of death. This was not a person at all. If I call him an animal, I give him a lot of honour. It's too much to give. Yes.

SO: Joseph, I want to, we have a couple of minutes, I want to ask you about today. Today, you talk about your fear, as we all fear, of the resurgence of anti-Semitism. Why do you think that is happening today?

JOSEF LEWKOWICZ: We see what's happening. We are not dreaming. We are realists. We see what's going on all over today. The feeling by me, I was a child at the time, but it is like in the 30s. I heard about beating up Jews in New York City, in Chicago, in L.A. and in Europe. Europe is terrible. So many European countries wherever there is a noticeable Jew, they’re being beaten up. Anti-Semitism, graffiti and all kind of things, it is that. You know, the Holocaust was so well documented all over the world, and there are deniers running around and denying it didn't happen. Evil people. It's so much evil in the world. We have to fight that evil. We have to do everything possible publicly and in the CBC and I had done another interview with the BBC and with other TV. We have to fight antisemitism. We don't hide it. We have to bring it into the open. People should know that it is existing and it is terrible and it is dangerous.

SO: Joseph, you say in your book, as you've gotten older, you've sometimes felt that you were studying another person who lives in historical archives. How do you want to be remembered?

JOSEF LEWKOWICZ: Well, I don't know. It's not to me. It's not for me to judge how I want to be remembered. It is for other people to judge. I don't judge people. And if people want to judge me, let them do it as they wish. I did what I have to do. I am satisfied with myself. I go to Poland and I speak to people. I show them around the concentration camps that I was. I tell them the story. I am talking that we have to fight antisemitism, that there's a lot of antisemitism now and there's a lot of evil people going around. As I said before, this Holocaust is documented in all the countries of the world. How could people deny that it never happened? We have a fight. We have a fight to fight.

SO: And are you happy now that you've put this all down in a book?

JOSEF LEWKOWICZ: Yes.

SO: That trauma was worth it to go back in your mind and remember?

JOSEF LEWKOWICZ: Well, we have to tell this story like I said before because it is important for the world to know. The world is forgetting. You know, it is already 80, 90 years ago. And time, you know, time flies and people forget and the new generations, they never learn, they never knew. And then if we don't talk, they will never know and we have to know.

SO: We do have to know and we do have to remember and you've helped us so well. I want to thank you, Joseph, for speaking with us this morning and also for having the courage to write this book and remind us all of the evil that did occur and can occur again.

JOSEF LEWKOWICZ: And you should talk about it too on your program because the world has to know. We should not sweep it under the carpet. You know, we should not forget it.

SO: Thank you, Joseph.

JOSEF LEWKOWICZ: Thank you.

SO: Josef Lewkowicz is the author of “The Survivor: How I Survived Six Concentration Camps and Became a Nazi Hunter”. He wrote his memoir with Michael Calvin, and we reached Josef Lewkowicz in Jerusalem. Coming up after your regional update.

SOUNDCLIP

FIRST MALE SPEAKER: I think it's great. It's a great idea. And I remember my father who was swimming in the Seine River, you know, a long time ago. And it was abolished and after, it was impossible. But today, if we can swim in the Seine River, I think it's great.

SECOND MALE SPEAKER: The Seine right now is not that dirty, but there are still some, you know, bottles floating. So if it could be completely cleaned up, that would be great. Specifically, you know, we all wakeboarding regularly every weekend, so we can just do it more often. It would be just perfect.

SO: Now, not everyone would wakeboard down the Seine in Paris. The river has a reputation for being pretty dirty, but there's hope that's about to change. In 90 seconds, the efforts to clean up Paris's iconic waterway and other urban rivers. I'm Susan Ormiston and you're listening to The Current.

[Music: Theme]

WATERWAYS CLEANUP

Guests: Dan Angelescu, Dalal Hanna

SO: I'm Susan Ormiston and you're listening to The Current.

SOUNDCLIP

MALE SPEAKER: I think it's great. The Seine is Paris. The Seine is in the middle of Paris with all the history along the Seine River, with the monuments, with of course the Eiffel Tower.

SO: The Seine is Paris, an iconic landmark, a spot to watch the sunset, to take a romantic boat ride, but definitely not a river where you'd jump in for a swim. The Seine is polluted with pathogens from sewage waste. And swimming there, well, that's been off limits for decades. The 2024 Summer Olympics are coming up, though, and in less than 500 days and Paris is hosting. So there are big plans to clean the river and make it safe for swimming competitions. Parisians are curious to see if their Seine will be swimmable again.

SOUNDCLIP

FIRST MALE SPEAKER: So yes, I think it's a very good idea. I think it was a long, long way to achieve this finality.

FEMALE SPEAKER: I think that we need to clean it, but I'm not sure I'm going to swim in it. It's part of our history and it's also something cultural. But I think that tourists get more into the Seine than us.

SECOND MALE SPEAKER: It’s certainly a good idea, but I don't think it will really happen because, for example, Jacques Chirac back in 88 said, I would drink my car with the water of the scene. You know what, we’re still waiting.

SO: Dan Angelescu has been tracking the Seine’s water quality as part of the cleanup operation. He's a scientist and the founder and CEO of the Water Quality Solutions company Fluidion. Dan, good morning.

DAN ANGELESCU: Good morning.

SO: So you heard some Parisians positive, but a bit of scepticism. Does that surprise you?

DAN ANGELESCU: No, it does not surprise me at all. A bit of scepticism is healthy. And the Seine River, you know, is a huge river and, you know, it carries the sewage of all of the Paris region. That's the main conduit for the treated waters. And traditionally, it has been quite polluted. So yes, I understand that people can be sceptical about that, but there are efforts underway to change that.

SO: We're going to get to that, but how polluted is it?

DAN ANGELESCU: Well, it really depends on the time of the year and on the weather mostly because usually, most of the pollution gets into the river when there is a big storm event. And since there are combined sewers, the rainwater and the sewage sort of mix together and there is so much water that the treatment plants cannot treat. So the excess water, if you’d like, mixed with sewage, goes directly into the river, which is called a combined sewers overflow. And this is what brings really a lot of pollution into the river when there is a storm event. And, you know, during those days, yeah, it isn't swimmable. However, if you have a long stretch of good weather, actual water quality can get pretty good.

SO: You know, they're infamous, those sewers, of course. They take tours of them. I've been down there myself. Victor Hugo used to write about those sewers. They're fetid, wild and fierce. Of course, that was a long time ago. So where do you begin to even make this river swimmable?

DAN ANGELESCU: Well, so the city of Paris is trying to address the different sources of pollution. Like I mentioned earlier, stormwater is one of the main sources which happens when it rains. And there, what they're planning to do there is to build these underground storage tanks where the rainwater and the sewage, when it overflows like this, instead of going into the river, it goes into these underground pools which are really, really big. We're talking multiple Olympic pool sizes, and they fill these up and then when the weather improves, then it's pumped out at the rate that the wastewater plants can process. And then that way, there is no more overflow into the river. So this is one big infrastructure project they've undertaken. And it's very ambitious, but it's currently ongoing. So we don't know yet the results of that.

SO: That sounds massive. I mean, huge new almost like runoff reservoirs. Is that accurate?

DAN ANGELESCU: Yes, it is. It is accurate. It's massive. It's very ambitious. And we hope that it will achieve what it's planning to do, which is to retain these waters for enough time so they don't pollute the river and then they can be treated properly.

SO: Yeah. You know, the Olympics, I mean, one thing it does aside from sports is liberate these massive amounts of cash, you know, over 1.5 billion that the Olympics have given to this project. Do you think that's going to be enough?

DAN ANGELESCU: That's a little bit difficult for me to judge. I'm not an expert in these big infrastructure projects. It looks like it's a lot, but they also are talking about massive underground construction in a very busy city, which is not a trivial thing to do. So yes, there are costs associated with that. And there are other places in the world that are attempting projects like that. I think Paris is probably the first that will achieve a major project like this for the Olympics, but there are others and yes, the costs are similar, I think.

SO: So would you say this project then, the Seine, is kind of, you know, a first project that hopefully will be followed by many other European cities and elsewhere in the world?

DAN ANGELESCU: Absolutely. We hope so. We really are in a way liberating the waters or basically the citizens in many places want to regain access to the natural watercourses. And there are European events like the big jump, which is sort of one day a year where at certain times of the day, people jump in the local rivers everywhere in Europe at the same time, at the same moment to make a statement. They want to be able to do that every day. And it's tolerated, if you’d like. It's not always legal, but people do it. And that's a clear statement there.

SO: Dan, what is the standard that would need to be met for the Seine to be considered clean enough for people to swim?

DAN ANGELESCU: So on one hand, you have the current regulations, the European regulations, and then they are translated into French law. So there are European directive, the bathing water directive. And, you know, the way that goes is that over a period of four years, you need to take so many samples. It's about a sample every week or every two weeks and analyze them. And then over four years, you need to have a geometric average of the values that is below a certain threshold in terms of number of bacteria E coli per under the Mel, for example. So the problem is that the current regulations require you to sample every week or every two weeks, and that is clearly insufficient to protect the health of the people. So the city of Paris is taking an approach that goes way beyond the regulations. And this is where we come in with our technology. We have rapid analyzers that can provide results within hours so you can get same day results. So we can do a measurement today and later today, you will know if the water quality is good enough to be swimming in it or not, if it's below that threshold that you set or not. So in a way, you have a regulatory approach which is followed, but on top of that, you have high frequency and high resolution monitoring that is done that goes beyond what the regulations require in order to ensure public health.

SO: Well, which would be critical if you're putting Olympic world athletes in the water, something the course organizers would want, wouldn't they? I mean, is one of the threats during the Olympics a heavy rainstorm, for example, that would put all this into a bit of a mess?

DAN ANGELESCU: I think they will have to do monitoring of the water quality during those days. Indeed, if a big storm event comes and if the current infrastructure projects are not completed, then it would probably pollute significantly the river and it could pollute it for several days. So in that case, most likely, I don't know what the plans of the Olympic Committee are exactly, what their mitigation routes are, but most likely, the event would have to be postponed until the water quality improves again.

SO: We've seen other attempts, other Olympics, in Rio, for example, I was there when they tried to clean up the waterways, but they essentially failed. Are you confident that this may happen successfully in 2024?

DAN ANGELESCU: Well, I think the amount of effort put in place both on the infrastructure and disinfecting the wastewater effluent from wastewater plants and, you know, cleaning up illegal connections from the sewage network and so on, I mean, all of this is a work that's ongoing and it will definitely have a big impact. And I don't think this kind of attempt has really been made in the past at this scale. So yes, I think this is the best chance we have to reach the water quality. Whether that will be the case or not, it's still to be seen, obviously, because some of these projects will only start operating in the coming months. So we don't really know the exact results. But all the simulations showed that yes, the impacts should be important on the water quality. Yes, I do hope and I do trust that things will be on track and the Olympics will be in the Seine.

SO: And even if we do get there in Paris, which everybody would like, of course, do you think Parisians are going to get over their concerns about that filthy river that they love and go swimming?

DAN ANGELESCU: Well, you know, Parisians and French people have a little bit of a tradition of complaining about things. But then when the things are there and, you know, you have data that shows that the water quality is good, I'm convinced that people will take advantage of that and, you know, cool off in the summer month by going to the Seine when they cannot go to the beach at the Atlantic or at the Mediterranean. So yes, I think, you know, there has been another project like this called Paris Plage where people would go and sort of lay down on the banks of the sand. There would be sand put there to make it look like a beach and you had showers. And, you know, nobody expected that that would be so popular, but it was. And then in 2017, they opened the first pools in the canal dock, which is a canal which sort of feeds the Seine or, well, it's a side canal of the Seine. And they had open water swimming in the canal that they had to monitor every day. So we installed systems there that monitored water quality every day. Nobody knew whether that was going to be popular or not, but, you know, there are hundreds of thousands of people that go there every year to swim. So it is very popular. And I think yes, there will be scepticism at the beginning just because of all the history of the Seine and, you know, the water. It's a big river and, you know, it has things developing in it. You can have algae, you can have other things, so the water may not be very clear. So, you know, people associate that with water quality, but in reality, big rivers can be like that even when they're extremely clean from a microbiological perspective and risk free.

SO: When the data is good, jump in, you're saying. Well, thank you very much, Dan. I appreciate it.

DAN ANGELESCU: Thank you so much.

SO: Dan Angelescu is a scientist and founder of the Water Quality Solutions company Fluidion. He's working on the Seine’s cleanup efforts. Well, Canada's also trying to clean up its urban waterways. Earlier this year, the federal government announced a total of $750 million over the next 10 years for this work. Dalal Hanna is an assistant professor of conservation science at Carleton University in Ottawa. Her research focuses on freshwater ecosystems. Dalal, hello.

DALAL HANNA: Hello.

SO: So we just listened to Dan and the state of the Seine in Paris. How would you compare the Seine and its pollution to rivers and lakes in Canada's urban centres?

DALAL HANNA: Well, I unfortunately don't think we can say that any Canadian urban waterways get an A-plus in terms of their overall health and cleanliness. Every major urban waterway that I can think of in the Canadian context, spanning from the Yukon River which runs through Whitehorse, to the Saskatchewan River which runs through Saskatoon, the Don River in Toronto, the St. Lawrence in Montreal, Rideau in Ottawa, just like the Seine, they all have problems associated with industrial and agricultural waste and pollution, sewage overflow like Dan talked about in the Seine and fragmentation of habitat or degradation, to name a few problems. That isn't to say that we aren't making efforts.

SO: Yeah, I'm going to get to that. Those are big problems, though. You know, it's interesting because as Canadians, we think of pristine lakes, you know, in rural parts of our country where we're famous for that. But how do we think of water close to where we live and drive and work, you know, in these urban centres?

DALAL HANNA: Well, I think that we unfortunately have created quite a bit of segregation between us and our urban waterways through things like putting ports into place and having infrastructure that prevents people from accessing those waterways or through historical pollution, right? So if you think about the Don River in Toronto, my mother grew up in Toronto and she was telling me, oh yeah, we definitely wouldn't swim there when we were kids, in part because it has this bad reputation. But that bad reputation comes from a history of not treating these rivers with respect by throwing waste from industry like tanneries directly into the river or having, you know, significant amounts of sewage overflow going into them. And so I think we tend to think of these urban rivers as places that we're not really connected to. But I think they represent an immense potential to connect with fresh waters and that they are often just as clean as the rivers that are in rural areas because rivers flow over these long distances. And so, you know, in urban spaces, things that are happening upstream of the rivers are going to influence the rivers just as much as in rural areas.

SO: So on that, you know, you're quite right. We've been talking about making these rivers better, cleaner for decades. So when it comes to actual cleaning up as we just heard in the Seine, what can be done that would make, do you think, a measurable difference?

DALAL HANNA: Well, there are unfortunately lots of threats that affect freshwater ecosystems, you know, spanning from pollution of microplastics to nutrients, nanomaterials, overexploitation. And so all these different factors that are really difficult to manage, in part because large rivers like the ones that we were talking about in urban contexts drain massive areas, right? They’re part of these big watersheds. And so things that happen thousands of kilometres away can influence their health and cleanliness. That said, there are lots of things that we can do, and I think something that's happening right now in Toronto is a fantastic example. The city of Toronto is investing in rerouting sewage so that this problem of storm overflow can be eliminated so that the river ends up not getting all this waste into it, which has huge impacts on water quality, of course. So that's kind of a local scale style of action that we can take. But there's also a much broader scale action that we can take in terms of just managing upstream of these waterways that we want to be able to benefit from. So that means things like being careful of industrial waste that goes into rivers or that's tolerated in rivers. And so that is pointing straight towards regulation and really having aggressive regulation that prevents waste from being deposited into rivers. But then we also need to think about regulation on the land. And so what happens when there's agriculture very close to waterways? Well, unfortunately, all the excess nutrients that are in that agriculture run off into the rivers and pollute them. Same thing when it comes to timber harvesting or tree planting. And so thinking about all these various approaches would be a really good way to try and protect these waterways and improve their health and their water quality.

SO: So regulations we've heard about and they change. Do you think, though, that governments are thinking about cleanup in the right ways or are they missing something?

DALAL HANNA: I'll start by saying that it's wonderful to see that the current government has committed to investing more money than has historically been invested in freshwater protection in Canada. You talked about 750 million that they committed to this time around, but they did commit to one billion over the next 10 years. And so that's great to hear. I think that's a good part of their approach. But to put that number into perspective, I know that Toronto is investing three billion to build the tunnels that are going to be required to reroute untreated sewage away from the Don River. And so that just shows that, you know, financially, I think one of the things that we're doing wrong is that we're just not investing enough. And I think that's something that we really need to be thinking about because fresh waters contribute not only to our physical, but our mental well-being on many levels. Everyone needs drinking water. And I think 80% of Canadian drinking water comes from surface water. So this is an important resource. We need to be investing in it. It's not something to play around with. And one billion over the next 10 years, it's just not enough. So that's the first thing I think that they're doing wrong. And then beyond that, I think that there's currently a pretty big reliance on small grassroots organizations to take the lead on helping protect fresh waters. And I think that's wonderful because these organizations can have really important impact, but these organizations are subject to ebbs and flows of funding. And so, you know, having inconsistent funding and uncertain funding really influence their ability to take action. I think another thing that we need to be thinking about is the scale at which we operate. So it's fine and well to say, hey, we're going to clean up the Don and take a bunch of local action on the Don. But the reality is that these rivers are major rivers, like the St. Lawrence, for example, are impacted by things that are happening thousands of kilometres away. So thinking at scale, thinking about cross-boundary management is really important.

SO: And from your research, what have you discovered about the relationship between sort of healthy water systems and healthy cities?

DALAL HANNA: Well, water systems, as I was saying, are very important for physical and mental well-being. So they provide us with all these resources that are very tangible and easy to think about, like drinking water or fish for communities that rely on fish for sustenance. Beyond that, they provide us with all these other benefits that we might not think about so much. So, for example, rivers are very big climate regulators. They store massive amounts of carbon. And so thinking about them at that scale is very important, something to know about. Beyond that, they’re places that contribute to our emotional well-being. They’re places that we can go to recreate, to feel good. And I think, you know, coming back to your question about what are we doing wrong in terms of protecting and restoring these places is really focusing on that emphasis of the importance of creating connection between people and waterways. And I love Dan's story of how, you know, they built this thing on the Seine and they weren't sure if people would go to it or one of the rivers in France. And then in the end, hundreds of thousands of people go there every year. And I think that's true of our urban waterways as well. If we care for them, we're going to kind of move into this wonderful feedback loop where people start caring about them more and then care for them more and benefit from them. And so we have a lot to gain.

SO: That's a very good point, Dalal. I have the reverse question just briefly too. Do we need to minimize how much we humans impact our waterways in order to keep them clean?

DALAL HANNA: Well, I think we need to minimize how much certain human activities impact our waterways. Absolutely. Through things like regulation in terms of being careful of how the industry is regulated and what type of infrastructure we put along shorelines that are very sensitive places that are in need of protection. But that doesn't mean that we can't interact with those waterways in sustainable ways. I think it's wonderful. You know, to me, a healthy watershed or a healthy waterway is not only one that has clean water and fish and invertebrates and a good water flow, but it's also one that's connected to the people that live in its community. I think connection to community is a really important element of health of waterways and we can do that in a sustainable way. There's all kinds of ways to access water without it damaging the shoreline, be it through docks or through kind of specific types of ramps. And so we do need to be careful of how we utilize water and making sure that that's sustainable. But I don't think that that's a reason to segregate ourselves from water and not have it be an active part of our life. In fact, I believe that the contrary is true. The more we're connected to water and think about it and we care about it, the more we're going to be inclined to take good care of it on other scales and be able to benefit from it in turn.

SO: That's a perfect way to end our conversation. Thank you so much.

DALAL HANNA: Thank you, Susan.

SO: Dalal Hanna is an assistant professor of conservation science at Carleton University. Well, that's our program for today. Stay tuned to Radio one for Q. The music world lost an icon yesterday with the death of Tina Turner at age 83. And back in 1985, Turner kicked off her North American tour with four shows in St. John's, Newfoundland and Labrador. She and her band were the talk of the town.

SOUNDCLIP

FIRST FEMALE SPEAKER: She's begun her Canadian tour with four concert dates in St. John's, Newfoundland. Mary Wharton reports that Turner chose St. John's to kick off the tour to find some peace and quiet.

TINA TURNER: I have a view from my window. It looks like the neck going up to the sea. That is very soothing to wake up in the morning to have my coffee too. And then it feels like a town where you could just get out and walk if you want. You know, just…

SECOND FEMALE SPEAKER: Tina Turner is spending a week in St. John's to start her North American tour and she likes it here.

TINA TURNER: And the quiet is like a very sort of meditating state, the feel of it. The stopping is really very good for me.

THIRD FEMALE SPEAKER: And St. John's is happy to have Tina Turner here. Because of its isolation and small population, Newfoundland is often overlooked by touring stars like her who go to other major Canadian cities as a matter of course. But now, being out of the mainstream might just be an advantage.

SECOND FEMALE SPEAKER: Donald K Donald is the Canadian promoter of the Turner Tour. He suggested St. John's as a place to prepare for the North American shows.

DONALD: It's away from New York, it's away from the media hype, its away from the big blitz event and it keeps them out of the way and on the go.

FOURTH FEMALE SPEAKER: We needed a quiet place. The musicians can get sort of sidetracked. It's good to get out. It was good to get out of L.A. or out of New York. We need a quiet place.

SECOND FEMALE SPEAKER: And what could be more innocent than a ball game for the roadies and musicians on Turner's tour? They've been cooling their heels in St. John's between rehearsals, thrilling locals with sightings of them at city bars and restaurants.

FIFTH FEMALE SPEAKER: Musicians really love it here, and we plan to sort of hit a few of the little nightspots before we go.

SO: Sidetracked. Hmm. Well, we'll leave you now with some classic Tina Turner. Here's What's Love Got to Do With It. I'm Susan Ormiston and thank you for listening to The Current.

[Song: “What's Love Got to Do With It” by Tina Turner]

Thursday May 25, 2023 Episode Transcript

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