The Keeper

Episode 4 : Annette Lantos

 
 

On a bitter cold Christmas eve in 1944, a little Jewish girl, 13 years old but with her diminutive size and Shirley Temple curls looked closer to 8, kissed her mother goodbye and alone began to make her way towards the Swiss border.

A short while earlier, they had fled from Hungary where Jews were facing deportation and death at the hands of the Nazi occupiers. The family had sought refuge in Switzerland, but the Swiss had expelled them. They had heard that children alone might be given refuge and so with fearful broken hearts, they said goodbye and this child walked with her little suitcase in hand towards the barbed wire of no-man’s land.

Mrs. Annette Lantos shares some of her story of that terrible night and how she survived to become one of our country’s great advocates for human rights all around the world.

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Episode 3 : Father Patrick Desbois

 
 

Over fifty years ago the Reverend Martin Luther King Jr. spoke about the fierce urgency of now as he sought to make America at long last live up to the promises of our founding. Our guest on this episode of The Keeper is another man of the cloth, Father Patrick Desbois, who understands the fierce urgency of history and the need to document it and claim its secrets before all the witnesses to the past are gone. Father Desbois is the author of the book “The Holocaust by Bullets”, which recounts his mission to uncover the truth behind the murder of 1.5 million Jews in the Ukraine. With utter dedication and quiet determination, Father Desbois has succeeded in breaking the code of silence and the cloak of invisibility surrounding these unimaginable crimes.

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Episode 2 : Bill Browder

 
 
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Bill Browder, founder of Hermitage Capital, has become an unlikely human rights crusader who was almost single-handedly responsible for the adoption of the Magnitsky Act, a groundbreaking piece of human rights legislation. Bill and Katrina recently had the chance to talk about his life and the singular, tragic injustice that transformed him from an international financier to an international advocate for human rights and the rule of law. 

Businessman Bill Browder Details Dealings With Russian Lawyer Tied To Trump - NPR

Red Notice: A True Story of High Finance, Murder, and One Man’s Fight for Justice by Bill Browder

Bill Browder Senate Testimony - Full Text

In 2018, The Lantos Foundation re-released Mr. Browder's episode in wake of the July 16th press conference in which the President of the United States seemed to argue that there was a credibility equivalence between US intelligence agencies findings on Russian interference in the 2016 elections and the laughable denials of Vladimir Putin, a former KGB officer who many believe to be a cold blooded killer. Another outrageous moment during this memorable press event was when Putin suddenly launched an attack on Bill Browder, the brilliant and brave man behind the Sergei Magnitsky Accountability Act. To listen to Bill Browder's episode of The Keeper with Dr. Lantos Swett's updated introductory comments, click here.