This is an iHeart podcast. Guaranteed human. Liberty has never been just a word to we Americans. It has guided every one of our endeavors for the past 250 years, and now it takes form in a new way. The 2026 Semi-Quincentennial Coin and Metal Program from the United States Mint.
It celebrates the founding ideals that have long shaped our coinage. Available one year only, this historic collection features new coin designs, limited edition releases, and reissues. Shop new official coins at usmint.gov forward slash semi-q. That's usmint.gov/slash S-E-M-I-Q. Spending time outdoors, then let's talk about skin cancer.
Non-melanoma skin cancers, or NMSCs, including basal cell carcinoma and cutaneous squamous cell carcinoma, are the most common cancers in the U.S. and can become harder to treat if left undetected. That's why sun protection and timely detection matter. Our sponsor, Regeneron, is raising awareness about advanced NMSCs. Learn more.
More and take the pledge to see a dermatologist annually at Let's Get RealaboutskinCancer.com. Fall is the perfect time to refresh and reorganize your space. At the Home Depot, find power tools and tool sets starting at $50 to help tackle DIY projects, home updates, and more. Whether you're drilling brackets to support new shelving or sharpening your hedge trimmer blade with an angle grinder, the Home Depot has the tools you need to check projects off your list. Shop Labor Day Savings at the Home Depot and gear up for fall projects with the right tools to keep your projects moving.
Indeed Sponsored Jobs gets you quality candidates when you need them most. Spend less time searching and more time actually interviewing candidates who check all your boxes. Less stress, less time, more results. When you need the right person to cut through the chaos, this is a job for Indeed Sponsored Jobs. And listeners of this show will get a $75 sponsored job credit to help get your job the premium status it deserves at indeed.com/slash podcast.
Terms and conditions apply. Need to hire? This is a job for Indeed Sponsored Jobs. You've watched racing.
Now get behind the wheel. At Kaizen Autosport Racing School at VIR, professional race drivers teach you how to drive faster, safer, and with more confidence on one of America's legendary racetracks. Never driven on track? We'll get you started. Already experienced, we'll take you to the next level.
Ready to race? Earn your competition license and learn real wheel-to-wheel racecraft. Stop watching, start driving. Go to racevir.com. That's racevir.com.
Uh This is Lee Habib, and this is Our American Stories. When World War II broke out in Europe, between 88 and 94 percent of Americans opposed entering it. After all, we were an ocean away from the conflict. What threat could Hitler possibly pose? Here to share another story of a member of the six percent who disagreed is Deborah Dwark.
Author of Saints and Liars Today, Deborah shares the story of a couple, Marjorie and Ross McClelland. Take it away, Deborah. Marjorie and Ross McClelland stumbled into refugee relief work. Ross, a doctoral student in comparative literature at Columbia University, had been awarded a fellowship run by the Quakers American Friends Service Committee. to conduct archival research in Geneva.
It was a wonderful opportunity. That came at the wrong time. In late spring nineteen forty, after the German invasion of Poland and Western Europe, The U.S. government no longer issued passports to travel to Europe for academic study. The AFSC, the service arm of a Protestant denomination dedicated to pacifism, promptly repurposed the fellowship and suggested that Ross take over their refugee relief office in Rome.
Marjorie, a child psychologist with an undergraduate degree from Stanford University, gave up her position as director of the Manhattanville Day Nursery in Harlem to join her husband. They were 26 years old. Married for 20 months and eager to undertake meaningful work together. The McClellans were charged with running the AFSC's modest relief operation to help Central European Jewish and political refugees hoping to sail to the Americas from Italian ports. Mm-hmm.
The office opened just three weeks before Italy, with its fascist government, entered the war on Germany's side. and civilian shipping ceased. Still, the United States was not a belligerent. Quaker delegates from the United States could continue to operate in Italy. This work really breaks your heart, Marjorie wrote to her family.
It's as though we were a small blotter trying to absorb a large pond of water. Still She was learning a great deal. This opportunity to work together is a very precious one to me, as I think it is to Ross. Our work, our new experiences shared, and our sense of aloneness in a world somewhat alien draw us even closer together. Their scope to help narrowed, and the Home Office in Philadelphia suggested redeploying the McClellans to Marseille.
a useful posting for someone who aimed, as Ross did, for a university position in French literature. And as the Marseille office was doing a lot of work with children, Marjorie assumed that her education and experience would stand her in good stead.
however logical their reasoning, The driving motivation was emotional. They found refugee relief work riveting and their former life plan paled in comparison. Indeed, Marjorie admitted. The song of the scholastic life really seems rather remote. and somewhat uninspiring.
Uh By the time Marjorie and Ross joined the Marseille office in August 1941, 475,000 refugees crowded in unoccupied France. All were desperate to emigrate. The German invasion of the Soviet Union in June had inaugurated the Holocaust in the East. Nearly one and a half million Russian Jews were shot that summer. The AFSC staff in unoccupied France did not know that Berlin had committed genocide.
The Jews in unoccupied France did not Did not know either, but the assaults they suffered spurred them to prize spots for their children on convoys to the U.S. organized by the United States Committee for the Care of European Children, called USCOM. Rumors swirled that Americans in the unoccupied zone would be repatriated. They certainly lived under lean conditions. Still, unfazed by their poor diet, the arduous process of keeping clean, and their much-mended attire, Marjorie and Ross remained in Marseilles.
It was, she said, impossible to pull out of the work. The need constantly increases, but we still struggle. against constantly growing ads. Indeed, we got a cable telling us to prepare another convoy and recommending me as a trained psychologist. to select the children.
She wrote to her family. Whom to choose. in the face of such misery, what criteria to apply? It fell to Marjorie to decide who would be granted the opportunity to escape. She was, as she said, the formidable dam Amériquen who had the life and death power of deciding whether a child could have a future in America.
or must stay where he was, with no future whatever to look forward to. Marjorie set certain criteria. I had in mind two basic considerations, the necessity for emigration and the desirability of immigration of each child. I wished to satisfy myself of the child's desirability as an immigrant to America. that he was a normal, at least averagely intelligent, adaptable child, who would be able to fit into an American family without too much difficulty.
I also took into consideration the situation of the child here in France. I considered the children who had lost one or more parents, children whose parents had remained in Germany or had been deported to Poland. Children who were all alone have less future here and therefore have greater need for immigration to America than children of families who are all here. Rational as these considerations were, the essentially emotional nature of her decisions courses through short biographies she wrote about each of the children she selected for the convoy. Her descriptions reveal that she chose children who appealed to her, prizing the physically attractive, docile, and, if Jewish, Not Orthodox.
Hannah Lore Bernay, aged eleven. Is an attractive child with lots of personality. Henri Boleslavski, 12, is obedient and cooperative. very realistic and practical in the approach to life and should be easily adaptable. Twelve-year-old Savely Schermann's manner and behavior show that he comes from a background of cultivation and education.
Doris Durlacher, age eleven, was a pretty, sweet looking girl who was obedient and docile, very easy to manage. A fifth convoy soon followed. Ernest and Richard Weilheimer were among those included. Their father Max wrote to Marjorie from an internment camp after they set sail, his words a stark reminder of what was at stake. Holding no hope of seeing his sons again, he He thanked her.
for what you have done for my boys. He cherished the thought. that his sons will go towards their happiness free from perils. And that they will never in their lives have to submit again to so much. unhappiness.
At the safe distance of nearly a century, we see the past. and the people who lived in that past as two-dimensional and in black and white. We flatten them and what they did. Marjorie's record offers a fresh lens on the complexity of the decisions and choices she and others made. Age.
gender, degree of religious observance, social class. All of these played a role in the calculus of selection, and so too. Did visceral reactions and emotional connections to the people who sought help. A remarkable story of Christian courage and sacrifice. Here on Our American Stories.
Liberty has never been just a word to we Americans. It has guided every one of our endeavors for the past 250 years. And now it takes form in a new way. The 2026 Semi-Quincentennial Coin and Metal Program from the United States Mint. It celebrates the founding ideals that have long shaped our coinage.
Available one year only, this historic collection features new coin designs, limited edition releases, and reissues. Shop new official coins at usmint.gov forward slash semi-q. That's usmint.gov/slash S-E-M-I-Q. Spending time outdoors, then let's talk about skin cancer. Non-melanoma skin cancers, or NMSCs, including basal cell carcinoma and cutaneous squamous cell carcinoma, are the most common cancers in the U.S.
and can become harder to treat if left undetected. That's why sun protection and timely detection matter. Our sponsor, Regeneron, is raising awareness about advanced. NMSCs. Learn more and take the pledge to see a dermatologist annually at Let's Get RealaboutskinCancer.com.
You've watched racing.
Now get behind the wheel. At Kaizen Autosport Racing School in VIR, professional race drivers teach you how to drive faster, safer, and with more confidence on one of America's legendary racetracks. Never driven on track? We'll get you started. Already experienced, we'll take you to the next level.
Ready to race? Earn your competition license and learn real wheel-to-wheel racecraft. Stop watching, start driving. Go to racevir.com. That's racevir.com.
You're grinding, putting tracks on Spotify, making TikToks, and watching fractions of a cent roll in. Exposure doesn't pay rent. It's time for real stakes. Welcome to The Beam, the new music competition app. Real fans vote.
Brands buy your music before it breaks. You win money and exposure. No more chasing algorithms. Just compete and get aid. Download the Beam at TheBeam.com or on the App Store.
Submit your track. Earn what your music deserves on The Beam, the only chart that writes checks. Professional wrestling fans, the action continues every week. Watch CNA Thursday Night Impact every week on AMC. It is like electricity blowing through your veins.
Don't miss the adrenaline, the drama, and the total non-stop action. No one can ever be as fun as me. Don't miss the action of TNA Thursday Night Impact every week on AM SIG. For show types and more information, visit TNA Wrestling.com.
