Hey there, and welcome back to Rootless, the podcast that is doing its best to tell the truth.

And these days, telling the truth ain't easy, especially when you're talking to yourself.

So I'll try to set some kind of example here and take you on a journey that's a little bit more personal than usual.

Ready? Let's kick things off. I want to play you a a journey that's a little bit more personal than usual. Ready? Let's kick things off.

I want to play you a brief piece that ran on NPR's All Things Considered,

almost exactly eight years ago, on the morning of November 18, 2016.

The first voice you'll hear is that of the show's host, Kelly McEvers.

The second, well, you'll recognize him soon enough.

Leal Liebowitz's grandfather, Siegfried, moved from a village in Romania to the city of Vienna in the 1930s to go to Music Conservatory.

He spent time in the city's famous coffee shops with people like Sigmund Freud.

And then one day, he left. At some point, in the very early on in the city's famous coffee shops with people like Sigmund Freud. And then one day, he left.

At some point, in the very early on in the Nazi uprising, he just turned to his friends and said,

I'm leaving. I'm taking my two young sisters and I'm going to Palestine. And they sort of looked

at him like he was mad. They said, you know, you're going to give up these, you know, cosmopolitan dreams and success in Vienna. And he said, you know, I'm a simple Jew. People tell me they hate me. I believe them. And he left. And eventually, the relatives he left behind were killed. Leibovitz has been thinking about his grandfather, Siegfried, a lot this week.

And he's written about him in Tablet Magazine in a piece called What to Do About Trump.

While the U.S. today is not the same as Europe in the 30s, he said there are some things he has learned from his grandfather's experience.

Siegfried died when Leel was young, but I asked him to tell me what he remembers.

He was a sort of very old-world person, you know, a loving, warm man with very strong moral

principles that he, you know, he left me very little except for a very peculiar turn-of-the-century

taste in music and these clear moral convictions for which at this moment in time I am deeply grateful.

I guess I want to understand a little bit of what it was like in Vienna at the time.

Like what is it that he saw that other people didn't see?

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