yes. [laughter] meaning that the process is really an open one. restarted in no way with the sources and with a hypothesis. a perception as to how we wanted to go about it. once we get into the material things started to change. it really is a process that is quite messy. i would like to use the terminology in this instance, but it really doesn't apply that well because it is in no way chaotic. what we had, the abcanineteen we had was to draw on this source of material that we have here at the museum and other archives. that was really an incredible help. it did not help in telling us what to select from. so we basically went by the idea of presenting a storyline that would also work in conjunction

with what we had in mind. if you look at the book you would see that it is not an addition as you might know it. it has been integrated that combines authored text and document. so it really is a book that you can read from cover to cover. you can also pick up the document and just stick with the document. that being the case it lead to an even more interactive process when the government would speak to our narrative. in no way we were guided by what we found, but we also then guided our search for material by our analysis. were we surprised? i think a lot that we were surprised by, at least that is the case as far as i'm concerned. there is also a surprising lack of material of the kind that we tried to include here, which is

material generated at the time. one would think there is an awful lot. there is an awful lot, but not the kind of material that is really telling and really describes the life situation of the people at the time. a lot of it is formalistic, repetitive, but now trivial. that is the part of the reality. what did we do with that? we need to be elected to be on the other hand, this is not the perfect teaching tool. the need to find material that is also attractive that raises questions. provide a stimulus for further research which is all we really had in mind. >> had just had it, the the idee series was nothing retrospective. he really, there were certain measures. we had gaps. never had enough on youthful sexuality, young jews who were still able in the crevices of

life, nevertheless. we had some things. perhaps we should break the principle. i must say, i really think it was great that he did that. it alters the whole character. there is no second guessing. there is no hindsight. it is simply how people read it at the time and the sense they made of it. we didn't have the document. obviously there are things that research for that we could not find. so there was an area we thought, this is an interesting area. it's not in there. i think it was really great that he stuck to the principle. the thing that most struck me was something that i referred to briefly. about the association of germany as this new top organization gives this kind of response at the nuremberg laws are passed that this, perhaps, is the basis for future coexistence between jews and non choose. when was conscious that, of

course, in some ways they had to respond like that. the way that people have tended to read the organization is also believing it. for them to find out from these reports were they say at the same time absent in the clear that there was a vast majority of our youth will have to seek their professional futures abroad and at that point that really amazed me. i had not realized that at the very top there was the sense that this community is finished. we will do what we can for the older generation. we will speak out because maintaining our route gives us strength as long as we are here, but this community is finished. that was really remarkable. and obviously as margaret was saying there are all sorts of people at different levels him maybe had not yet seen this. the was real. that was very powerful. i had not expected that.

>> my name is maureen greenberg. and guess i have a similar question. you call your book, the editors as well as the panelists, jewish responses to persecution. the variety, although this is a wonderful program. the variety of responses from ten year old children to grandfathers, the average person on the street, to a jewish newspaper to a jewish organization. to us as readers how much weight should we give these responses? all of equal weight? it seems to me, i would say, i would suggest, i would assert, that maybe one a 12 year-old the the same or a 17-year-old or 3 0-year-old who just lost his job may be of more interest in

some ways of what people are feeling than what a jewish newspaper is same for fear of the nazis, for fear of further persecution as well as some of our jewish organizations. so when we read this book how much weight should we give these? at the we have to be to be carei would assert, and giving them all l of equal weight, all of equal consequence. they are all of equal interest. i agree with that point. put your comments please. >> i, in reading this book, fear it is a snapshot of many different times and activities. i think the book covers all the bases, but unevenly, not even. it doesn't assign the same amount of importance to

different things. look at the snapshot. different reactions by different people. after all, the jewish community that i knew, it was a great the different community from the very or the knocks to the very e very assimilated christian, a christian. so you have this enormous range of opinion on a great many different activities. so looking on that i think you look at the very rich combination of testimony. that is how i read it. i don't think i need to assign a certain weight to certain testimony because there is no way of knowing. it is not a scientific sample of how many people believe this versus how many people believe something else. >> would you like to comment?

>> i absolutely agree with what you just seven. i would add it depends what question you are asking. for example, if you are asking which are the views that most shaped the way in which jews, and they responded then we might well want to look at this people behind the corridors your written the reports and his views filtered into the jewish newspaper articles. if we want to know what is the publicly being said in the jewish community then obviously we wouldn't get the newspapers. if we want to say what was the average view of the jew on the street we were likely to find out there is one. in this particular situation the experience is so variable between regions, between occupations, between generations, between those who are more visibly, eastern jews

or more visibly orthodox and therefore speak out on the street. often when we are looking at public opinion we are imagining some kind of a continual between a broad groundswell out there and certain more he need organs which may be influenced by a certain australian newspaper earnings. this is how they, the process, this is how the process goes. here we don't really have that. there are a lot of experiences that can't be fed into this broad body. this isn't a free exchange. in that sense at think one is forced to say this is part of the diversity. we have to recognize there isn't the average. yeah. >> i would describe to everything that was asked and

said. the aim of this series is to reflect diversity as much as we can which is, of course, possible only to a limited degree. even if we add formal lawyers to the series b will be nowhere near the range and diversity that you find. there is no attempt at being comprehensive. so that is, these add a caveat that we have outlined in the series introduction. that is something the reader needs to be aware of. this is not a monograph series that tells you an entire story. this is something to stimulate interest and to further research. >> and a follow-up to that question. >> briefly. even within my own family the reactions were very differs. when you go back and think about what different people thought and also changed, of course, over time because, you know, as

things got worse people began to lose hope. whereas at the beginning there may have been some idea that would be a way of surviving. initially my father tried to convince members of his family and my mother's family to emigrate with us. found it very difficult. in fact most of them, therefore, perished. >> we say diversity is one of the lessons we have learned from this book. diversity of opinion among jews. >> the thing that would be a great tool to achieve. that is a perception that readers come away with. also the teachers and college students. we wanted to go against the stream and break up what has been presented as a consensus to

release stretched the spectrum and reflect that spectrum as much as we could. reflect a little bit about how changing the way that the holocaust is taught or the way it is research to the university level. is that a part of your goal for this series? >> i guess they're basically two ways. one, is again, the stimulus factor. if we kind of put teasers for people to get into topics and find material that speaks to certain aspects, that in itself has a reviving aspect. in terms of what we ourselves present it is pretty much up to the reader to take away. as was just mentioned, we gain some insight that we did not expect to gain at the beginning. there is, i guess, quite a bit in there in terms of individual

documents as well as the composition in containing one volume or five volumes in a series. >> who should at present to say. even though we know that it is obviously a horrible fiction nevertheless when one is teaching text that is driven by not policy you tend to assume a certain abstraction which is the victim of not to measures, the the uniform individual that they were imagining. even though we know that is completely bogus the reality doesn't emerge from a lot of the texts that are available in teaching at the moment. here with such a rich profusion of real individuals thinking so often so cogently or so personally about their concrete experiences or about what is happening on a larger scale, i

think if it is rarely used properly that will complete the altar of the sense and create a counter image of a very real, yet diverse community, but with certain kind of centers and the directions and tendencies caught up in its maelstrom. ultimately of course is is the powerless or much less powerful side. we, i think, found in all sorts of areas that at least in limited ways or for a limited as there was a certain degree of agency of being able to shape your face. again, one, though later volumes will be very important for this, that notion of going will be definitively prudent. >> i would like that had something to this as a leader of this volume and as a survivor and as a guide in the museum here.

i think because we know what happened during the holocaust everything, much of what goes on here is really geared toward the later years and the horrors. we know quite a bit about hitler's rise to power, but i think we know very, very little about the jewish responses to this. therefore i think this particular volume is so important because it takes us back to where it began and where one can really see the progression that is by and large at least to my baby limited knowledge kind of lost. i was really a very impressed and very pleased that it that kind of hard to my very first inklings of what was going on in germany. so i feel greatly enriched by this volume.

>> i want to add to that if i may. i am so pleased and grateful to authors and people involved to finally bring something to the holocaust museum that teaches people that the holocaust did not begin in 1939 when the war broke out one. it was six years of absolute torment in germany for the jews. no one held and no one heard them. no one cared. countries would not open up. people got out somehow, but very slowly and many, many of the german jews went to countries surrounding germany and were caught up and murdered. and there in that chapter of history is an enormous lesson. when it came to the invasion of poland in the way the nazis went

into those countries, into czechoslovakia, even into austria and poland, it was too late. the signs were there from january 30th 1933, and nobody listened. they didn't even listen to the people that left her told them what was happening. in fact, in germany my parents told me that there were people who went to the concentration camps early and came out and try to tell their people in the community what happened to them and what was happening. they were furious at them. the nile. they would not listen. so this part of history is enormously enormously important for the future. if you wait for the bad stuff to start striking it is too late. >> i am a tour guide in the

museum. for those of you who are here and you have not gone to our permanent exhibit, can you hear me all right? those of you who have not gone to our permanent exhibit, the fourth floor, this book is the whole fourth floor. i would really recommend that you study, go on the fourth floor, and i would like for you to see all of the things that we talked about here are all on the fourth floor. and i would like to just disagree with you a little bit because you had said this all happened so suddenly and so quick. it did not happen suddenly. if you are going to the permanent exhibit you will see that hitler and the nazi movement grew very gradually. it started when he came into power, and then all of these different persecutions' happened very gradually and said that in 1939 he was able, the nazis were

able to do what they did in 39. so it was a time of six years. it was not very fast. it was gradual. so for those of you who are here, i hope you have a wonderful learning experience on our 44 today. >> please tell your friends about the book that has been written and to come back. >> i would like to thank all of our panelists. [applauding] >> for more information visit ushmm.org. >> professor laura brodard. who is that? >> that is sergeant jacalyn bravado, a marine who went over to the iraq iraq. she told me that she had a lot of anxiety about going. she wanted to stay with her

daughter at home. as soon as she got on the bus to get to cherry point and fly out she said the mommy mentality left me and the marine mentality hit me. i was ready to go to war. she really wanted to redeploy. her mother is not crazy about that, saying your daughter has only one childhood. she told me, you know, you can always be a mommy. you don't always get the opportunity to be a marine. >> in your september, portraits of women combat veterans, combat veteran. >> everyone in the military knows that women are in combat. we have the ban on combat, but that is meaningless in a war where there are very few clear distinctions between friendly lines and your support. >> what does this sergeant? >> she worked with helicopters

on the line as they came in and out. not every woman that i interviewed had a job that put her directly into combat. i did interview a marine who had a drug sniffing dog which became an explosive sniffing dog when she went to rock. that was clearly a very dangerous position to be interviewed women who were convoy gunners who were out doing house-to-house searches and were out driving on these very dangerous roads and sometimes getting blown up by ieds or hit by mortars. >> how did you find these women? >> it was a real process. i kind of bumbled at first because as you know, the military is a parallel universe. if you don't come from a military background it can be difficult to navigate. i began by casting a wide net and just trying to find a couple of women to talk to me.

once i did that i was able to get letters of support from the marines and army to go on to bases and interview. >> did they choose the women you talk to? >> when i interviewed on base the public affairs officers chose, but when i was interviewing otherwise i could tease. >> do you find any common themes and one of the women? >> one thing that really surprised me was i had gone into the project assuming that women in the military would see themselves as marginal. i think civilians see them as marginal. what i found was that was absolutely not the case. they saw themselves as soldiers, marines come more sailors first and women second. they had an amazing degree of loyalty to their fellow troops, even if they did not believe in the war. >> that the fellow troops have a degree of loyalty to them?

>> absolutely. there were many women i spoke to his bonds with the women of the unit were stronger. when they had to leave the unit to go home for a child surgery they were really torn and felt very guilty. of course their families did not understand this at all. >> to is captain catherine strict? >> she was interesting. a veteran of the first gulf war. we made the decision to photograph the women who had retired from the military and their civilian clothes and everyone else in uniform. she had been a captain, got into the military through rotc. she was involved in the first gulf war. she talked about how surreal it was for her. the band was playing. they were marching from kuwait into iraq and seeing horrible sights. cars that were burned up with people still inside them to be

very traumatic for her. she was under very rough conditions, she said when her tour was up she went to kuwait and saw the first porcelain toilet she had seen in five months. she said i can't live this way. so she ended up getting out of the military. now she works on a military base as a civilian. >> she was a captain. >> she was a captain. >> how long will she in? >> she was and, i want to say between five and d ten years. >> staff sergeant shawnda jackson. >> she was very interesting. shawnda was a great illustration of the way that women who personally did not believe in the mission but carried it out anyway because of their loyalty to their fellow soldiers. of course, the uniform code of conduct prohibited me from asking any questions about how they felt about the war because in the military you are not allowed to criticize the commander in chief. i found that women had a way of letting me know anyway.

the code was supporting the troops. is it possible to support the troops without supporting the war. those who felt critical of the board would say that it was and nd the incident who didn't would st no, that was impossible. you have to support the war effort as well as the troops. a cultural history of women and guns in america. throughout the story was the threat of women in combat and the way that whether or not women were allowed to fight tied closely into whether or not they could be considered full citizens. back in the revolutionary war era you have politicians like james burke saying the difference between the citizen and a slave is the ability to bear arms and defense of your country. that red and all the way up through philip's leslie.

the equal rights amendment was narrowly defeated in the 1980's making the point that if it was passed women would be forced into combat. that was too much for the american public to stomach. the era was defeated. here we are now in a conflict where over 220,000 women have served in combat so. clearly this is a watershed moment for our future. i wanted to hear what the women who were on this front line had to say about their experiences. >> to they think their roles should be clearly changed? >> most of them absolutely. there were a few who differentiated themselves from the war fighters who were out on the front lines, but most of them knew that they were in combat and accepted and thought that they should be able to do what they wanted. they consider themselves equal to the man. there was no question. >> you believe the rules to be

changed. >> absolutely. adding the will already has changed. we don't know it. while officially at think they should be. >> what are you teaching? >> right now i am finishing up a stand at virginia commonwealth university where i taught creative writing. i am going on to accept a job at the university of richmond in the fall teaching american studies. >> when ginnie comes marching home is the name of of the boo

>> every year the national press club hosts an author's night. author of 14 books. a new book out called defenders of faith. let's start with the basic questions. >> the holy roman emperor. the tenth sultan of the ottoman empire. the two came into a clash in vienna in 1527 and 1532. really was a clash of empires and the clash of civilizations and the clash of religions.

we think after 9/11 we were the only ones that never had this experience of jihad versus crusade, but this is what i have been really doing for the last four books, reminding people of episodes in history where christianity and islam came into conflict. >> what was the result? >> well, the result was that the ottoman turks, the islamic forces. had they not been stopped what he wanted to do was go all the way to the rhine river. had he prevailed europe would had been islamic in 1527. so it is a major turning point in history. >> when you are working on this type of ancient history what are your sources cannot. >> i have an office at the library of congress. the library of congress is the best library in the world by far. there