As Putin invaded Ukraine last month, the Atlantic writer Franklin Foer found the Russian leader’s justification for violence uncanny. Putin referred to the “Nazification” of Ukraine—a distortion of history at best. But Franklin was told a similar story his whole life from his grandmother. This week, we bring you a story from The Experiment, a podcast from WNYC Studios and the Atlantic, about the Holocaust survivor Ethel Kaplan, and how Foer once came to believe Putin’s myth, and his journey to Ukraine to debunk it.

This is a segment from our March 25th, program, All the World’s a Stage.