Original subtitles

Stephen,

there's no way that I can

ever compare my pain to the pain of Holocaust survivors

that... I know

that I can only begin to fathom what you've went through,

but what I've went through,

what you've been through,

the root of our pain is the same, right?

75 years ago,

we were confronted with such overwhelming force,

but this force, they've always been there.

Those ugly ideas never went away.

During the war, my father would traumatize me.

He also, you know, kind of haunted me.

There's quite a bit of inherited trauma.

And I really admire you for your action.

You could run away,

but you used what you had available to fight back.

To me, there wasn't an alternative.

It was a very rude awakening for me.

'Cause, look, I was just a soccer mom from Montana.

I never imagined to go through what I went through.

My name is Tanya Gersh.

That's so nice.

I haven't been given the opportunity.

- We'll do it here. - So close.

We'll do it there.

Jacob.

Oh.

- So close. - Brain too small.

All right, you guys wanna sit down?

Amen.

You'd think after all these years I knew how to.

I still don't know it.

And the little boy.

My husband, Judah, when he was done with law school,

asked me to move to Whitefish with him.

He works at a law firm, started his own practice.

We have two beautiful sons,

Micah and Jacob.

Oh, that's cool, like, dark kinda weird thing.

Then I turn on the lights downstairs and like, oh.

I really wanna capture this.

Oh yeah, this is immediate light, whoop.

I want the kitchen to look like you never actually

have to cook in it, you know?

Yeah, oh, yeah.

Other than some wine glasses and a bottle of wine.

Yeah, this is a place where you just enjoy yourself.

Exactly, have that.

Gorgeous.

My parents always struggled to make ends meet.

There was constant fighting about money,

how they're gonna pay the bills.

So when I turned 14, I got my first job.

I had a little toy store.

Most of the money that I made, I actually saved for college.

Oh, I'm so cute.

Yeah, it was such good times.

- Oh, this one. - Oh, that's the old house.

That's the old house.

That's where I was brought up.

And we were raised in that house.

We were so filthy.

This picture could have been from the '20s.

Depression days.

Depression days or something.

Oh, look, mommy was so beautiful.

Oh yeah, and smart.

Yeah.

Your mom died young.

Yeah.

Too young.

My daddy, Lloyd Rosenstein,

lives close to me in Whitefish.

My brother and I were raised in Idaho.

Peace now, peace now, peace now.

You were passionate

about the civil rights movement.

There was things going on. There was Vietnam War.

We were in the streets and demonstrations,

just because we had to do something.

But I didn't like your passion for politics

because it made you angry.

I don't have any memories of the news

not being on in our house.

I like to know my enemies.

I remember us having so many arguments about like,

daddy, I just don't wanna hear about what's going on

in the world. Don't talk to me about it.

And I tried to expose you to the bad things.

You know, the world isn't that kind.

And you shut me down and after a while, I just.

Yeah.

You know, I didn't go too far with it.

You know what I mean?

Mm-Hmm.

But, hey, anyway, you made me very proud.

Everything you did, you worked for it.

This is Whitefish.

We're a ski town and a lake community of 7,000 people

in Northwest Montana.

Hi.

Hi.

Where I've made my life.

This is nice.

All over town you'll see Love Lives Here stickers.

This is left over from

from the time that the storm hit.

The U.S. has become a dumping ground

for everybody else's problems.

They're bringing drugs, they're bringing crime.

They're rapists.

And some, I assume are good people.

After Trump was elected,

I wasn't comfortable with his demeanor

and the language that he used,

but I told my kids, this man is our president

and we need to be good Americans and respect our president.

And then I was laying in bed one night,

scrolling through Facebook

and saw the video that had gone viral.

Hail Trump, hail our people, hail victory.

Hail Trump, hail America.

Is it heil or hail?

Do you know? I mean, I don't even know.

Is it heil Trump, heil America?

This was all so foreign to me, it's unbelievable.

This man, Richard Spencer.

He lives here.

I still remember so many people coming up to me

and saying, "This is devastating."

And I honestly didn't really pay it much mind

because I thought, we need to not pay attention to this.

We need to ignore the fact that this happened.

We need to move on.

There was a custom in Poland

to gather at cafes in the afternoon

to meet friends and listen to music.

Lodz, a very cosmopolitan and exciting city in Poland.

That was where my family lived.

My father, Maurice, was a physician.

My mother, Lena, studied dentistry.

She left school to marry my father.

The summer of 1939 was tense.

There was war in the air.

Poles watched fearfully as the German forces

advanced rapidly towards Warsaw.

I was born during the crisis.

My name is Stephen Jacobs.

Our lived experience is being a young white person

in 21st century America, seeing your identity be demeaned.

He says a lot of things

that a lot of people have been thinking for a long time.

I've lived in this multicultural mess,

and I'm trying to get out of it.

The Spencer family have a home in Whitefish.

They also own a commercial building in downtown Whitefish.

And some old friends of mine

rented office spaces in that building.

And Richard Spencer has his National Policy Institute

registered to that address.

Hail Trump.

The post of him hailing was going crazy viral

all over America.

Now he'd tell the world

he loves living in Whitefish, Montana because it's so white.

Hail our people.

The town started to really despise that he lived here.

Hail our people, hail our people.

On Facebook.

Fuck Spencer,

and all his Nazi douche bags.

Hail, hail, hail our people.

There was a group in town that organized

and protested that happening.

I remember reading it in the local newspapers

and staying so far away and being so happy

that my community was just taking care of this

without me having to be involved.

We're a very open town.

We welcome diversity.

We need to rediscover these bonds we've had together.

I mean, does anyone really believe that?

He slandered us and we don't appreciate it.

You don't believe that was a condemnation.

Of me?

No.

And then later I actually witnessed a photographer

take pictures of the Spencer building

and I sent my friends in the building a worried message

saying, "I'm watching people take pictures of your building.

I think there's gonna be protests.

You should probably put a Love Lives Here sticker,

or some sort of sign that says,

I don't believe in the ideologies of Richard Spencer

because your businesses are getting photographed."

I picked up the phone and she said,

"My name is Sherry Spencer."

Who's the mother of Richard Spencer.

My friend in the building gave my phone number to her.

Sarah had called me.

She felt there were going to be protests.

And there must have been a misunderstanding that

Richard did not have ownership in the building.

I own the building.

This is stressful.

These are not my beliefs.

This is my son.

I love my son.

I felt in that moment

that she was incredibly honest with me.

In that moment,

she was having a real mother to mother conversation with me.

My heart actually really hurt for her.

Tanya, can you help me?

Sherry, I would be honored to help you.

So what can we do about the protest?

If this were my son

and I didn't believe in his ideologies,

I would sell that building.

I would take some money from the sale.

I would donate it to a human rights organization.

And with that money, I would make a public statement saying

that I don't believe in the ideologies of my son.

And Sherry said, "Tanya, that's exactly what I should do.

That's exactly what I should do.

Can you help me?"

I was on autopilot at that point.

I put the listing agreement together.

I didn't wanna profit off the sale.

So purposely charging as little as heavenly possible.

I wrote on one of the chat rooms on Facebook

that we're talking about protesting,

because Sherry actually asked me to let everybody know.

Everyone relax, there's no reason to organize a protest.

I just talked to Sherry Spencer.

She's agreed to sell her building.

And being so excited and it felt good.

It made me feel like a peacekeeper.

I was really in that head space.

I went about my life even thinking,

"Dad, you don't have to get angry all the time

to accomplish something."

I just wanted everything to be happy.

There's no pain in our town.

There's so many beautiful moments of growing up here,

you know, but trying to find where I fit here,

that has always been the struggle.

Is it a struggle for you now in this generation?

Yes, you know, the microaggressions,

being followed around the grocery store

to make sure I wasn't gonna do anything or steal anything.

My dad had prepared us as young as I can remember,

that our lives were gonna be different

and solely based on the color of our skin.

And he had to constantly remind us

that we were beautiful and special.

It was just like,

well, then why does everyone treat us differently?

A powerful moment captured at a Black Lives Matter protest

in Whitefish, Montana.

I was like, oh my gosh, that's me in that photo.

Actually, the first time I saw you was on the news,

talk about the day you were at the Black Lives Matter rally.

Peaceful, peaceful, peaceful, peaceful.

There was, like, 40 people protesting.

And there was a commotion behind us.

Black Lives Matter, fuck you.

So I turned around

and I saw a gentleman yelling at some kids.

And so I kinda just turned around

to assert myself into the situation.

And then we locked eyes.

He started screaming, All lives matter, F you, F you.

There was just a moment that clicked for me.

My dad told my brothers and I, like, my entire life,

no matter what the threat is look them in the eye

so they have to acknowledge that you're human.

That went through my head.

I lifted up my glasses and I made him look at me.

In that moment, I did feel very powerful.

This is the first time in the 27 years I've been alive

that I've really felt a hundred percent owning myself.

Up until this point my life had been a struggle,

but it gets worse before it gets better.

And then a few days later when I reached out to Sherry

about the contract,

she had told me that she had changed my mind

and that she was going with another agent.

Didn't think much of it.

And I just said, "Don't worry.

I'm so sorry that all of this has happened to you.

Let me know if you would ever like

to meet for lunch someday."

'Cause I had never met her.

Interesting enough, shortly after that,

I was contacted by a news reporter named David Winter.

David, how's your first

St. Patrick's Day in Butte?

This is awesome.

These people are crazy.

I feel right at home.

He said, "I'm Jewish, I have two sons.

Somebody just forwarded me the post

that you put about helping Sherry Spencer."

And I'd never really dealt with media before.

I said, "Yes, I did,

but it's not my story to tell.

The story that will be told is Sherry's story."

But then when he called me once again saying,

"Tanya, I'm in Whitefish.

I would like to interview about this."

That's when I put a huge halt to this.

I told him, I am not part of this story.

"Tanya, this is your story whether you like it or not,

and you're gonna look really stupid

if you don't make a public statement,

because the story very much is about you."

And I trusted his word for it.

I called a human rights organization

to see if they might be able to help.

They sent me this statement.

I skimmed through it, not even really reading it,

just by being on autopilot.

They're a human rights organization.

I trusted that they would say the right thing

and help me through this.

And then just forwarded it on to David Winter.

The funny thing is, I was so uneasy with all of it.

I texted him and I said, "Please tell me

I'm not part of some big news story about this."

He texted me right back and said,

"You're not part of some big news story about this."

And I went, oh, phew, and I went to sleep.

The next day that news story went out.

Richard Spencer was raised in Texas,

but he has spent years in Whitefish with his family.

His mother, Sherry Spencer,

still lives here in this beautiful home

at Whitefish Mountain Resort.

In an email to me, Sherry says, "As painful as this is,

I am exploring a potential sale of the building."

One of those detractors is Tanya Gersh,

a prominent member of the

community who told me in an email,

"Sherry is profiting off of the people

of the local community,

all the while having facilitated Richard's work,

spreading hate by letting him live

and use her home address for his organization."

Before I sent it, I should have read it.

I guess that was my big mistake,

but the story was so inappropriate anyway,

because none of this should have been news.

And I thought, David Winter took Sherry and me,

pinned us against each other

as if we were on opposite teams.

At least I didn't think we were.

I think out of response to that news article,

Sherry Spencer wrote a letter to a website

called "The Medium."

Does love really live here?

My name is Sherry Spencer and I am Richard Spencer's mom.

Gersh relayed to me that if I did not sell my building,

200 protestors and national media would show up outside.

She even shamelessly suggested that she acts as my realtor.

She appeared to seek financial benefit

from threats of protests and reputation damage.

It was with that letter the "Daily Stormer" took note,

and my life changed forever.

That night I was out with some friends

and I got a text message from my husband that said,

"Tanya, it's really urgent.

Can you please come home?"

Judah doesn't do that very often, you know?

So I knew it was really important.

And when I got home, our front door was locked,

which was really strange because living in Montana

I don't even own a key to my house.

Judah opened the door and I said, "What's happening?"

There wasn't a light on in the house

except for in our bedroom.

And he said, "Tanya, I have to show you something."

And there was a laptop sitting on the bed,

and he pulled up the website.

I saw my picture.

I remember reading,

are you ready for an old fashioned troll storm?

This is the Jews for you, people.

This is a people without shame.

The "Daily Stormer" is one of the biggest

neo-Nazi websites in our country.

It's filled with nothing but vile, vile hatred

against Jews and other minorities as well.

That title was taken by a Nazi Germany publication

called the "Daily Stormer."

The owner-operator of the website was Andrew Anglin.

My goals are probably similar to Richard Spencer.

We all kinda have the same goal

of forming a white nation for white people.

He had, like, 300,000

followers or something like that.

Please call her

and tell her what you think.

Maybe you should stop by and tell her.

They published my phone number, email address,

my Facebook page, our office address, home address.

And Andrew Anglin claimed

that this was protected by the First Amendment.

It is well within

your First Amendment rights to tell these people

what you think of their actions.

The Supreme Court has called the bedrock principle

of our free speech doctrine.

That it protects freedom, even indeed,

especially, for the thoughts that we hate.

From the time I was really young,

I always wore a little Star of David.

I remember, I might have been sixth grade.

My grandmother was coming to visit from Florida.

She was giving me a big hug and a kiss,

and then she saw that I was wearing a Star.

And she said to me, "Why are you so Jewish?

What's making you so Jewish?"

And I remember being incredibly confused.

I didn't understand what that was supposed to mean.

And, of course, now thinking back on it,

it makes perfect sense.

She was,

she was brought up to be afraid.

And I was so afraid that moment.

There are so many neo-Nazi groups and white supremacists

all over the world, even in Whitefish.

When my husband and I came here in 2000,

people like April Gaede, a well-known white supremacist

came here spewing hate.

April Gaede and her white European people

wanted to create a white supremacist community here.

This is a white community by default.

They could disappear here.

Yeah.

It's about survival and who we are.

I think the first time that I saw Richard Spencer

was on television,

and he was right in front of Whitefish Lake.

And I thought, "Who is this guy?"

And then we found out that his mom lived here.

And then we found out that they had attended a conference

for white supremacists.

The whole family was there.

My husband Allen is a rabbi.

We were concerned about the white supremacists in Whitefish.

We were talking about it, and I said,

"It has to be Love Lives Here."

That was the beginning of the organization,

and we started to demonstrate against antisemitism.

Since Sherry's story broke,

I was in constant state of fear.

To make things more scary.

Now our own David Winter spoke to Anglin

exclusively this afternoon.

David Winter broadcast a one-on-one video interview

with Andrew Anglin.

Thanks for agreeing to do the interview with us today.

Sure, I mean, any problem that you look at,

you're gonna find Jews behind it.

Andrew Anglin has been underground for years.

Like no one can find Andrew Anglin.

To this day, nobody knows how David Winter managed

to contact Andrew Anglin.

Are you saying there is a conspiracy of Jews

doing these things?

It's a genetic behavior pattern.

White people build civilizations.

Jews destroy civilizations.

Would you be for the

extermination of Jews as Hitler was?

Well, I don't think Hitler actually was.

There's no evidence to that effect.

David Winter literally gave Andrew Anglin a platform

to proselytize to the world.

This is completely unnecessary drama.

People don't like to be threatened and so by.

I'm not threatening anyone.

These Jews are the ones making the threats.

The pain of being taken advantage of is

a sickening and disgusting feeling.

The next day we were woken up to a phone ringing.

Hi Tanya.

You should have died in the Holocaust

with the rest of your people.

The first few calls I answered.

Since I didn't know what was going on,

I actually talked to them and tried to explain,

no, no, no, this isn't what happened.

Dirty whore.

But they weren't interested in hearing what I had to say.

I think they would abuse me.

I heard gunshots.

That was a sign that they wanted me dead.

I got your fucking name, hoe.

My phone rang nonstop.

Burn in hell.

One call was over, another call began.

Fuck you, you stupid Jew.

Another call was over, another call began.

Everybody's watching you.

My voice messages filled up,

just rang over and over and over again.

You are surprisingly easy to find on the internet

and in real life.

Go kill yourself.

Filthy fucking leave Richard Spencer alone.

You people are gonna get what you deserve.

This is Trump's America now.

Emails flooded in.

You're going to jail for extortion

you hateful bitch.

Merry Christmas, you Christ killer.

I get asked so often,

why didn't you just shut your phone off

and shut your computer off?

Because I have active contracts.

I'm responsible for a tremendous amount of people's money.

Andrew Anglin told his people to contact me

in any way they possibly could.

Nasty Tanya never lets ethics,

or common decency get in the way of a good deal.

Andrew Anglin told his people to show up at my home,

show up at my place of work,

and ask to take them on a real estate appointment.

We are going to have a field day

with you scumbags.

They think of me because of my Jewish agenda.

You should fire and disavow

Tanya Gersh for her unprofessional, illegal,

and anti-white conduct.

Should she really be licensed?

Judah, this is a fellow Montanan here.

We're not far away from you.

And I will suggest that you actually

hold out the rein of your wife, Tanya,

you and your fucking mentality.

We locked the doors.

We shut the shades.

We had no idea if people were gonna show up to get us.

You have no idea what you are doing.

Six million are only the beginning.

And then I spent the time

pretending like nothing was happening

for the sake of the children.

Make light of it, to spend time with them,

to keep some sort of normalcy.

Do you remember the night, it was Alpine Theater Project,

and Micah was at the Yuletide,

and I spotted you through the door

and you were crying and you looked absolutely drained.

And I went and grabbed you and said,

"You're gonna get through this."

It was like talking to myself.

She and her husband

also received a tremendous amount of attacks.

Tanya, your information

is going all over the internet.

Andrew Anglin published the names and email addresses

and phone numbers of any business in Whitefish

with a Steiner, a Stein,

or even close to being Jewish got targeted as well.

My entire community was a victim because of this.

Instead of being resentful and being angry at me,

the town supported my family.

They stood by my family.

This is indeed a community

where the voices that speak for love and acceptance,

the extremist groups do not represent us.

Does love really live here?

The most painful moment was when my son.

Her son is a creepy little faggot.

His account got published and they attacked him.

Psst, kid, there's a free Xbox One

inside this oven.

One of the posts on their website,

they put our pictures

on the gates to Auschwitz concentration camp.

What kind of animals

attack a 12-year-old boy?

Every single story in Judaism pretty much

is about people hating Jews and then getting over it,

but why do they not like us?

Do you remember the time

that I was sitting at the kitchen counter

and I started to cry?

I think it was the first time I really, like, broke down.

Until then,

I didn't know it was that big of a deal.

Like, okay, something's actually going on.

And you put your hand on my shoulder and you said,

"It's gonna be okay, Mommy."

Mm-Hmm.

You keep talking all that shit.

You think I'm gonna hang up now.

You got my dick hard, bitch.

What the fuck do you want to do with this shit?

Give me you fucking address.

Should I tell you this?

When it was happening

and the kids were coming outta school,

I was there in the truck with a shotgun.

Not that I would shoot anybody, but I use equal force.

If they were threatening my family, you know,

I felt just as threatened as you did.

For the next phase of our plan

against Jew Gersh and Jew Love Lives Here,

we are planning an armed protest in Whitefish.

Why an armed march?

Because it shows we're serious.

Get to it,

if you are a true warrior for the cause.

March on Whitefish

was supposed to end at my house.

They were gonna have hundreds of Nazis with guns.

I went into hibernation.

I was afraid for my life.

Judah said, "Tanya, we have to pack our bags."

How long are we going?

He said, "I don't know."

Where are we going?

I don't know.

What do I say to them right now?

"Run in fear for our lives."

I'm really disgusted

with your pro-Jewish sentiment.

I just wanted to disappear.

Everybody's watching you.

Go kill yourself.

You better back off, bitch.

Fuck that fucking motherfucker Jew.

Jews historically were helpless.

They had no way of defending themselves.

Historically, they were kept in a very repressed state.

Couldn't vote, had no rights, deported.

The Holocaust didn't happen all of a sudden.

The atmosphere,

the politics,

the climate,

that made the Holocaust possible.

I had memories,

a child's memories,

which I would say were clarified

by reading my Aunt Alina's memoirs.

German troops entered Lodz on September 9th, 1939.

Shortly after, Jews were put in ghettos.

One memory I have is I was standing behind the barbed wire

and a Polish boy, maybe 11, 12 years old, spit at me.

And his spittle got into my mouth.

So that was a very horrendous experience for me,

because I remember it to this day.

Every day without let up,

we heard Hitler and his ministers on the radio

rabble-rousing the German and Polish populations

against the Jews.

He characterized the Jews as subhuman.

The Poles who we always thought friends

did not welcome Jews in Poland at the end.

All synagogues in Lodz were burned.

We all held each other for comfort.

And I could not control the shaking.

I would experience this fear every time there was a crisis.

The march on Whitefish it never happened.

The neo-Nazi "Daily Stormer"

had proposed a march.

Andrew Anglin, who runs the "Daily Stormer"

said Wednesday on the website

he's postponing the march due to the permit refusal

by the city of Whitefish.

Earlier this week, the city of Whitefish

said Anglin had not paid his application fee in full,

or filled out all the requested information,

such as the proposed route.

I mean, it's a delicate thing, David, to have, you know,

200 guys with rifles.

You know, we don't want there to be an incident.

We want a peaceful march.

It was the dead of winter when the storm hit my family.

A few months had gone by.

The phone calls and emails kept persisting.

And the kind of chaos that was taking place in my home

with police and FBI,

at one point looking around the house

and there were, like, four laptops open,

and they were tracking every single Nazi chat room

in our country,

making sure that they weren't organizing to come and get us.

I was having a hard time.

I had decided not to go back to work.

All I could do to just be a good mom and just focus on

getting through what we were getting through.

My husband at this point was taking charge

and taking care of all of us.

One night we got a message

from the Southern Poverty Law Center or SPLC.

I had no idea who they were.

I told my husband,

somebody from Southern Poverty Law Center called,

and I remember him getting right on the phone

and calling them.

They asked if they could come visit us.

They could offer some help.

And they were on our doorstep in a matter of days.

Oh my God.

Oh my God.

Exactly, right?

Yes.

Literally, like, ah.

I'll never forget the first time I met you.

I came to your house with my colleague Rick.

What did you guys think when two gay guys showed up?

Oh my gosh.

It was even more of a sigh of relief

because I knew that Judah trusted SPLC.

I was gonna ask, had you heard of SPLC?

I had never heard of SPLC.

At Southern Poverty Law Center,

we study, examine, report, infiltrate

the actual hate and extremism groups.

And because of that, we have this wealth of knowledge

about who people are, what their connections are.

There are in Whitefish, as we now know, white separatists,

but Richard Spencer was the main object of attention.

Richard Spencer wants to redefine

what it means to be American.

He had tried to rebrand hate

into something that looked as if it was academic,

look as if it were intellectual.

And then gives a talk in a three-piece suit,

and has a degree from a reputable institution.

That veneer is a dangerous one.

Instead of combat boots and tattoos and shaved heads,

Ivy League educated in suits.

And $3 million ski homes in Whitefish, Montana.

And this was a worrisome shift in the movement

because that visual change made it more likely

that people could be welcomed into the halls of power.

All the way down, that's Trump Hotel.

Oh, really?

- Uh-hmm. - Hmm.

We'd been watching the style with which

Andrew Anglin was engaged in spreading hate,

and essentially invented the tactic of the troll storm

using the forms of communication

that young people tend to use these days.

Memes,

jokes,

quips.

It can draw you in

because it seems maybe it isn't really real.

And a lot of what happened to you were people thinking

they were being really clever, pretending as if it's a joke.

And it's not a fricking joke.

When I got to their town,

we didn't know what kind of help

we might be able to offer you.

We can help you understand who these people are.

Right.

We can help you think through security risks.

We didn't know what we were gonna find.

We didn't know whether,

for example, this should or could lead to a lawsuit.

We were doing lots of things all at the same time,

talking with other people in the town

who also had been targeted,

checking up on facts.

Part of the evaluation was to get a sense

of what that would mean to the town.

Is this gonna make peace or is this gonna break peace?

And in my mind, I was thinking,

"Would this be good for Tanya and her family?

And would you be able to take on the burden

of filing litigation?"

I came back to the office,

and the president at SPLC said,

"This is your decision whether we could bring a case.

If there's gonna be a case, you would be in charge of it."

And I said, "One hundred percent, absolutely,

Tanya can do this."

Even at the beginning she was telling me why

this kind of stuff has to stop.

I wanted to stop being afraid to be Jewish.

And then I started thinking about the mothers and kids

getting targeted, like my children,

for just being who they are.

I couldn't let them do this to anyone else.

I don't wanna lose my patriotism.

No, you got this.

I want to love my country.

I wanna be proud to be an American.

You are.

I had a group of the most incredible attorneys

really taking care of me.

We prepared documents

to physically file in the actual court.

And they did tell me, you know, there's gonna be media,

but I had no idea that the world was gonna care.

We were vetting every journalist.

We knew who these people were.

In my view, she was taken advantage of

by a local Fox News reporter.

My understanding is that journalists

are not supposed to contribute to the stories they follow.

Tanya, this is your story

whether you like it or not.

Nor are they supposed to set up a series of events

that exacerbate things that might,

or might not be harmful to people.

Thanks for agreeing to do the interview with us today.

Unfortunately, I believe that that happened in this case.

Did you have anything else that you wanted to get across

in reference to this march and/or otherwise?

David Winter created the narrative in my view,

and this was very nerve-racking for Tanya.

Every time we had to think about what she was gonna say,

how she was gonna answer questions,

a lot of these doubts would come back into her mind.

Did I do something wrong?

Did I use the wrong tone on that phone call?

Am I misremembering something that happened?

So a lot of the prep was repetition.

This is what you have told us 25 times.

We're confident in you.

The second the lawsuit was filed

and media had a chance to hear my public statement,

which I was just doing over the phone for my safety.

It was a fairly small room

that a lot of us were sitting in.

I think they expected

a few organizations to call in.

The telephones went crazy,

and everyone around the table their eyes were super big,

and they just couldn't believe what was happening

with all the phone calls coming in

with all the interest about it.

And I was sitting there literally like

a deer in the headlights.

Um.

Tanya was nervous.

Her hands were shaking.

It's really tough to be asked pointed questions by people

from the "New York Times" or from CNN.

As she was reading her statement,

I was reaching over and I was kinda giving her a back rub.

We received hundreds and hundreds

of communications saying, "Die Jew die.

We're gonna bring you to the brink of suicide.

This is how we can keep the Holocaust alive forever.

We can kill you without touching you."

And she got through it,

and I knew then she's really good at this.

Tanya can tell her story in a very plainspoken way

that doesn't seem burdened with ideology, by politics.

They don't view her as a radical activist.

They view her as someone whose life was upended.

The second I decided to fight, I started to heal.

I started to be able to breathe again,

but I was not gonna go back to work.

There was no way I was ever gonna go back to work.

I was not ready to get hurt like this again

simply by trying to help.

I would wake up crying every morning to be reminded

that I was a victim of this.

The pain was really, really unbearable.

I wasn't sure if someone was gonna come and get me.

At the same time I was glued to the news.

For a long time,

we've only thought about Jihadi terrorism,

and have ignored the kind of terrorism

that the Charleston shooter represents.

I wanted to learn about what's happening

right now in the world and I couldn't shut it off.

I was taught to be a free-thinker,

to never stop learning,

and to always question,

gain the knowledge that you need

to become an educated person.

The first time in my life I became a news watcher,

to tell you the truth.

It became my father's house.

And Dr. Jonathan Reiner,

professor of medicine at George Washington University.

He previously advised the Bush White House.

I just wanted everything to be happy.

And I didn't realize how much I had closed my ears

to what was really, really happening

in the rest of the country and in the world as far as hate.

I was really in complete denial.

I remember reading newspapers

and a lot of news publications,

and I discovered Stephen's article in "Newsweek."

I'm a Holocaust survivor.

Trump's America feels like Germany before Nazis took over.

Jacobs, a successful New York architect

who designed the Holocaust Memorial at Buchenwald

tells "Newsweek" there's a real problem growing.

So much so that Jacobs thinks there's a direct parallel

with Germany between the two World Wars.

Perhaps more alarming than the far right getting braver

is the seep into mainstream politics of their hate,

their talking points, their rhetoric.

It feels like 1929 or 1930 Berlin.

Fascism could have been won in Spain.

It could have been stopped,

but appeasement of fascism is what led to everything.

Things that couldn't be said five years ago, four years ago,

three years ago, couldn't be said in public,

are now normal discourse.

It's totally unacceptable.

We thought our country had changed.

In fact, it didn't.

We are operating on a misconception.

Go, go, go, go.

A horrific scene in Charlottesville, Virginia,

a white nationalist rally

that descended into deadly violence and chaos.

The images just coming in,

a car plowing into a crowd of demonstrators,

protesting against those white nationalists.

A 32-year-old woman killed.

You're there at a memorial for Heather Heyer.

What are you learning about this young woman?

She worked in a legal law firm here in Charlottesville.

She was a paralegal.

She worked in the bankruptcy department.

In other words,

she helped people begin a new financial future.

When Charlottesville happened,

I was glued to every second of the coverage

because watching

the people in that crowd,

I realized what happened to me was coming to life.

Heather, she wasn't a Jewish girl.

She was just a citizen of Charlottesville

that didn't wanna see this happen in her town.

Shortly after her mother, her name is Susan Bro,

got up on national television and said.

The blood on the streets is that what made America great?

I didn't want her to die,

but if she had to die, I'm so proud of how she died.

All I wanted to do was tell the truth

and send out a call to action.

And I didn't know who would hear it.

I didn't know who would do what with it,

but had no idea how it landed with anybody, no idea.

I was listening.

Charlottesville, we care about who we are

and we will take a stand.

And it was organized by a local fellow

who then reached out with Richard Spencer to do this.

So in that way, too, we're connected.

Did you know Heather was going that day?

Did she tell you?

No.

Heather chose to go because she saw the tiki torch march.

I did not see that until long after Heather was killed,

but once I saw it,

I understood why she felt the need to go stand in solidarity

with her friends.

Jews will not replace us!

Jews will not replace us!

Where the fuck are the rest of you to defend against this?

My brothers,

the Jew has been drinking our blood for millennia.

And now this monster rules over us as a brutal slavemaster.

There is no cavalry coming to save us.

This is our war.

Death to traitors.

Death to the enemies of the white race.

Hail victory.

White lives matter.

White lives matter.

It was scary and she went anyway?

As the neo-Nazis and others were leaving the rally,

she stopped in the parking lot over on Water Street

to talk to one of the young ladies who was packing up.

Well, can you tell me why you're here?

Can you talk about what you believe?

Can you tell me why you feel this way?

And the girl just would answer, no comment.

So she didn't connect with Heather,

but that was Heather's way of doing it.

That's why America is proud of her.

That's why she's become a hero.

Well, she's not a saint.

She loved her cheap whiskey with diet soda.

She wouldn't like the public attention.

And the reason I allow it is because there's a lesson there

that the average person can make a difference

just by stepping up.

Fear and intimidation only work if you let them.

And that's what the murder of my daughter,

and the injury of several others was intended to do,

was to make people afraid,

but if we live in fear, then they've won.

Had Susan Bro not taken that interview that day,

my life would be very, very different.

It was that day, that moment I decided to go back to work.

I decided to live.

They call themselves trolls, what do you call them?

Terrorists.

Now Tanya and the Southern Poverty Law Center

are fighting back.

Anglin initially responded to the Gersh lawsuit

with this image.

This case is also

much bigger than Anglin.

No real crime was committed against poor little Tanya.

Stay strong and don't let anyone,

or anything dim the Festival of Lights.

Earlier this year,

U.S. Magistrate Judge Jeremiah Lynch,

had rejected Anglin's motion to dismiss the case.

The entire Jew media making it out

that I'm the one that's doing the harassment.

I mean, it's just like what,

it's just everything is reverso bizarro world.

A federal judge, again, denying the motion

to dismiss the lawsuit against the "Daily Stormer" website

saying it would be premature to reject the case

filed by the Whitefish woman.

Little fucking kikes.

They get ruled by people like me.

Little fucking octoroons.

I fucking, my ancestors fucking enslaved

those pieces of fucking shit.

Just pretend like it didn't happen to me

because I was scared?

How many other people is Andrew Anglin gonna do this to?

I read about her story in the "New York Times"

or some TV coverage pretty much when it happened in 2016.

Her story was definitely,

you know, going through those experiences.

Something that I know very well.

So I paid very close attention.

And I thought, I wanted to meet her.

I wanted to talk to her.

Judah is devoted to his Judaism

and our history goes so deep and painful.

I believe Judah suffered a great deal of inherited trauma

set off by this storm that was hitting.

I remember him saying to me,

how could I have let this happen to my family?

He spent the entire year reading

every Nazi chat room in our country

because he was afraid somebody was coming for us.

He collected data, do research,

helped SPLC put the case together.

And then it was almost exactly a year to the day

his physical wellbeing just fell apart.

Since the storm, we've all grown up and we've all grown old.

It was a long time coming.

We lawyers have been in court many, many times in this case.

And so much of it is behind the scenes.

Things that aren't worthy of attention.

Fights about which documents will be exchanged.

Fights about written answers to interrogatories.

The lawsuit took two and a half years

until I was able to testify to the judge.

Both sides, me and Andrew Anglin

were slated to testify that day.

My attorneys always just told me,

"Tanya, all you have to do is be yourself

and tell your truth."

I was gonna do exactly that.

I remember driving down to Missoula,

that's where the court was.

I think it's about a three hour drive from Whitefish.

Just the strange mixture

of all of this happening at the same time

about driving through this beautiful drive.

I mean, we went through different mountain ranges,

and we went through a Bison reserve,

and we drove by gorgeous lakes

and knowing we were going down

to put on a day's worth of evidence

about this neo-Nazi and his troll storm.

I was very concerned,

but I couldn't see you not doing something

and standing up for yourself.

I was definitely proud of you and behind you 400%.

We were in court about a First Amendment defense,

whether it would be inconsistent with a First Amendment

to penalize anyone for orchestrating this mass attack.

So there was a legal strategy to demonstrate

that this kind of conduct is actionable,

and you should face consequences if you cause harm.

Life is hard enough to get through

without taking the weight of the world on your shoulders,

but they say in Judaism

that God never gives you more than you can handle.

The day that Sherry Spencer called me,

was the day that I had a calling

to stand up for what is right.

This is what a calling is.

I'm answering it.

We walked in and I looked over at that defendant table

and it was empty.

There were no lawyers, and there were no defendants.

And I'll tell you what.

I won in that moment.

We proved to this judge that this conduct

was so reprehensible.

This is not protected by our Constitution,

and contrary to the values that he impose

the maximum amount allowable under Montana Law.

Anglin must pay $14 million for Gersh's lost wages,

damages, pain, and suffering.

With two million of the award

for future pain and suffering.

If that wasn't a statement

that Andrew Anglin's version of hate was not welcome,

I don't know what would be.

I wanted to document this situation here.

He can dish up all of this hate to me.

It's that time, fam, take action.

But he never had the guts

to actually face me in person.

You're gonna wanna dip out

before this thing really gets started.

He is nothing but a coward.

Shut up.

Hate-filled psychopaths

you simply are not welcome in this country.

The first interview I took after I said,

"I hope his followers are watching

because he obviously isn't worth following."

When they liquidated the ghetto,

they sent us to a labor camp.

My brother George and myself, were separated from my mother

and ended up with my father.

I was five years old.

I can't describe how many people perished

from illness and hunger.

What sustained my family was that we were together.

There was always someone looking after our welfare.

During the incarceration, I worked in a shoemaker shop.

And one day, it must have been close to the end,

we were standing outside the shoemaker shop,

a German army truck was packed.

They were taking stuff away.

And on top of this thing was a German soldier

and he was eating a bread and a sausage,

and we were staring at him.

He could've shot us for staring at him,

but he looked back at us.

And then when the truck started moving,

he threw down the bread and sausage at us.

One never knows where you find humanity.

We were able to survive the five months of incarceration

in Buchenwald.

We were liberated.

After liberation, I remember my brother ran in very excited

because he had found my mother's name

on a list of survivors after the war.

Fortunately, so many of our family had survived.

We were all intact.

In the fall of 1948,

we immigrated to the United States.

My parents settled in New York City.

We never returned to Poland.

Particularly my mother,

she said she would not go back to that horrible country.

Welcome.

Hello, nice to meet you.

It means the world to me to have the opportunity

to talk to a Holocaust survivor.

It's very nice of you to say that.

And I never really took the time

to teach my children about the Holocaust.

To them, it felt so long ago.

Now I realize this wasn't long ago at all.

And apparently we haven't learned much since then.

Reading your "Newsweek" article,

I was shocked that you predicted what happened with Trump.

Donald Trump is not a fascist.

Donald Trump enables fascists,

and historically conservatives enabled fascists

to come to power with the idea

that they would be able to control them.

And, of course, they were the first people eaten for lunch.

And that's what happened in Germany and in Poland,

but I have to say

that the Germans have confronted their past

and their history in a more honest way

than almost any other culture in Europe.

And you have to admire them for that.

There's some research that Hitler was actually inspired

by the Jim Crow laws of the United States.

Oh, absolutely.

By Jim Crow laws,

and by people like Henry Ford.

Henry Ford sent Hitler half a million dollars

as a gift for his birthday every birthday.

Not only Henry Ford.

Plenty of people like Charles Lindbergh,

and all of his followers

would've liked to see the Nazis win.

Many people in the Roosevelt administration

had great fear that there would be a military coup

with a fascist takeover.

We just went through, we were at that kind of precipice.

USA, USA, USA, USA, USA.

Some of these militia groups

in the United States today,

are very similar to groups of violent thugs

organized by the Nazis.

Fuck you police.

How do you think we are gonna change?

Things like this don't necessarily go away.

And the important thing is to seize political power.

Not to let these people come to power again.

And what you did is extremely important.

Fortunately, you were in a situation

where you had the wherewithal and the ability to fight back.

I did not.

We were overwhelmed,

but your action was an action that one could almost compare

to the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising,

to fighting back against tyranny.

And you made these people pay.

And I'm very proud of you that you did that.

I have this feeling like I

somehow need permission from Holocaust survivors

to talk about my experiences.

I want this next generation to know

that this was not long ago, this happened to me today.

And lives are still being destroyed.

That every single one of them should keep fighting.

But perhaps a better word than fight would be to resist.

And to realize that we are frightening animals,

human beings,

that we're all capable of this homophobia, Islamophobia.

That what's happening to Asian Americans today.

All of these things are part and parcel of the same thing.

What's worse than hate

is using hate as a political strategy.

Their followers they don't know what they're hating

because their hating is indoctrinated.

People spread Islamophobia or homophobia

are just political techniques,

but that is classic fascism.

That certainly was a Nazi tactic.

If we're not in the right political hands,

who's to say it wouldn't happen again?

That's why I'm so frightened

of what's going on in the United States,

and the rise of extreme right-wing in the world today.

When anybody attacks any minority,

or any group of people

for who they are, what they believe,

is an attack on all of us.

I know what it's like to be hated and it hurts.

Their goal was to drive me to the brink of suicide.

They ruined me publicly.

They ruined me socially.

They ruined me emotionally.

And they ruined me physically all because I'm Jewish.

Even though I won my lawsuit,

this is not the end of the power that white supremacy

and Andrew Anglin have on our society.

If this happened to another person,

if a troll storm happened to another person,

I'm not sure I could survive that.

Anglin is still on the run

and he continues to reach and brainwash his audience.

Ladies and gentlemen,

let's reach his audience before he does.

Let's be the next movement of love.

All we are saying is to give peace a chance.

Thanks for letting me speak today.

Thanks for having me.

♪ Angels never sleep ♪

♪ They're walking on the clouds at night ♪

♪ In the lonely streets ♪

♪ You can see their magic light ♪

♪ Expectations complications ♪

♪ All has gone and now you're real ♪

So I'm here at this Filipino mall

with my jailbait girlfriend.

♪ Angels never sleep ♪

♪ Even in the darkest night ♪

Now, what happened after a "Medium" post

that was written by myself and my then wife, actually.

Written by myself and my then wife, actually.

♪ All has gone and now you're real ♪

♪ Angels never sleep because you're near ♪

♪ Oh oh ♪

You're gonna have to get used to the alt-right.

You're gonna have to get used to white identity.

So get used to it.

There's gonna be a lot more crying, sweetheart.

♪ Angels never sleep ♪

♪ Even in the darkest night ♪

♪ Come let's reach your seat ♪

♪ It doesn't matter who we are ♪

♪ Expectations complications ♪

♪ All is gone and now you're real ♪

♪ Angels never sleep because you're near ♪