doing this kind of work. wor and i don't suffer those kindsf of things anymore. >> host: you know, they have really good pasta and look at the show they call yourself theo same. the expression on your parentsre faces other priceless. why did you include that? >> guest:nd ..shed moved in with my parents. i think they at first struggle to understand what it was i was dealing with. the memories, the experiences, the disillusionment being broke and feeling under appreciated. just the sheer psychological effects of covering more. there were a few, i think, tends dinners as they tried to tease out of me what was troubling me. and it was not always pretty. >> here it is. "war is boring" by david axe.

new american library is the publisher. a birdie you go next? >> guest: i have not decided yet. every time i come home from a war zone i announce that i've retired. i'm in retirement. give me about six wee associate professor of education at the university in jerusalem presents his research on an mycotic photograph of an anonymous away in a ghetto taken in the spring of 1943. he discusses his work at the illinois holocaust museum and education center in skokie illinois. this program is about 50 minutes. >> thank you very much for your welcoming word and it's a pleasure to be here. the jewel for coming on this cold windy city. but the first thank chicago and

michael for arranging and supporting my coming here to chicago. it has been a pleasure sitting here and i think you for that. i would also like to think i see your studies program and my friend the colleagues robert johnston and sam for their warm welcome it has been a true wonderful experience being here. finally let me thank of the illinois holocaust museum at the education center and especially ryckman for allowing me to present my work to you and it is an exciting moment for me to be able to do this and i couldn't find a better place than here. i will be speaking tonight with you about the very famous photographs of the new boy

raising his hand in the warsaw ghetto. this photograph which for many of us represents the holocaust, if so which encapsulates within the horror of that time the terror on the face of the little boy and the man standing in the background with his rifle possibly aimed at the little boy. this is of course the ice of the holocaust which many of us are familiar with and we know. it's a very famous photograph and ed is well-known it was taken in the warsaw ghetto during the uprising in the spring of 1943 within an album made by the notorious ss general gordon. an album that he prepared on the victory over the jews in warsaw.

over the perot i've been investigating the background of the story behind the photograph friends and colleagues would approach me and asked me then how do you come up with a topic, come up with the idea of investigating a story behind one photograph? frankly usually disappointed with my answer. my answer was that it was no inspiration, no revelation, it was mere coincidence. basically i stumbled upon this topic, and it took basically the moment when her this photograph became a topic began in the winter of 2001 in jerusalem. i was conducting a research project on the way the israeli teenagers precedes the holocaust

, and that is the winter i was in the home of one major and 16-years-old and i vividly remember that moment when we were talking about the horrors of the holocaust describing the experience of a family murdered during this event. her father was sitting by on the rubble of the ghetto and as he was talking i took a photo and placed it on the table. what happens next is extremely surprising. she smiled and she began to giggle, and then she pointed at the little boy and she said you know, he's a relative of mine.

he lives in new york and the punch line was the want his phone number? [laughter] you can imagine my face at that moment. now i would hear that story time and time again in the years that would come. i heard it from other students, i heard it from officials, i heard from professors and universities, i heard it from history professors. but unfortunately, i can say very clearly that today i know of different identities of the little boy, none of which again, unfortunately, are accurate. the way in my mind, and might very strong opinion, was in to a shot minutes after the soda was taken were gassed. but looking at this photograph, a different question came up.

a question that in my mind is even more significant than the question of the identity of the little boy. and this question was the question of how was this photograph taken in the first place? how was the photograph in which most of us, most human beings see the cruelty, the repeated cruelty i should say of men toward men, how could this photograph be incorporated in a victory album, how can someone take pride in this photograph, see it as an expression of duty, as an expression he wants to boast about? how can this be a photograph included in the victory album? and that was the basic question there would be my research in years to come and at the core of my book. and to answer that question, i

turned to five biographies which intersect in the photograph of the little boy. the first of them is an ss man soldier that stands behind the little boy. his name is joseph blosche. the second is a low ranking ss officer, officer francis conrad who also was the one who took the photograph. and third is the notorious stroop incorporated a photo in his victory all the land was the commander of the previous two. blösche was as perfect single bodyguard and can be seen in several of the photographs from that period, and konrad was on his staff and went with him wherever he went in the ghetto.

now when distinction to jewish lights also winterset in the photograph. the first of them being that of trapkovits in the ghetto during the revolt and reports seeing photographs being taken, and there was a good chance that she saw this group of men taking photographs. and finally, with a story in doctor from new york, holocaust survivor who claims he knew the little boy and a photograph and he's the one that was mentioned and in fact isn't actually the little boy in the photo. i argued vote we represents his terrific experience.

now the first person ever to speak about is joseph blösche, the soldier standing behind the little boy with a rifle in his hand. joseph blösche was born in 1912, and he lived in a very authoritative family. his father basically for the first 27 years of his life his father was the one who determined everything he did. he was the one who pulled them out of school the age of the team which was customary at the time. he was the one who determined that blösche would become a leader said he could work and family inn. he determined the schedule of blösche whether he would work in the inn or possibly go to work in the fields in the family livestock. he was the one, the father, who determined that blösche's elder

brother would be removed from his will because he was not as important and didn't follow the father's orders and would instead put blösche as his heir. it was in the family inn that blösche was exposed to much of the national socialist ideology that came about in this time. the father arranged for the multi-party -- nazi party, and also, they would hear transmit from germany calling for the unification in the fatherland of germany. it was there that he was also exposed to newspapers coming from germany, and he, himself, was a member of the nazi movement earning a gold medal for his participation. and it was only at the age of 27

for the first time that blösche moves away from his childhood scenery and goes out of that fisa -- vicinity to be trained. and that is in december of 1939. two years leader in 1941, he takes part in his first mass execution, and that mass execution is recorded in his memory, unlike the 20 or more mass executions in which he would take part, and hundreds of individual killings, he would not remember almost any one of those, but this first one was marked in his mind. he could remember the ten or 12 soviet citizens, which were locked up the forest. he remembered the death bits and

that one of these men, the soviets, wasn't shot well and they had to use a mercy shot to finish his execution. this was a transformation for blösche. he wasn't a killer in his initial fitting. he basically -- this was the moment where he shifted from treating the unions as unions to an understanding from his point of view that a command is a command and it is superior to the human life. and in the summer of 1942, blösche is transformed. he is transferred to the warsaw ghetto, and then he becomes much more engrained in this capacity of a killer.

within the ghetto, one of his common activities was when his commander would order him go out and make a racket he would get on a rickshaw and the ride down the ghetto streets, and as he is writing the jews are disbursing because they know what is coming next. blösche would shoot his favorite prey which were pregnant women and children. and the issues report about this rickshaw coming down the streets and the killing that came, and the do not know the name of the killers from the do not know the name of the people so they nickname him appropriately "frankenstein." what was most amazing for me when i was reading the documents of his interrogation in berlin is one story which cannot twice

or three times in his reporting. it was an incident that came after the ghetto was distracted. the jewish police was called in to the prison within the ghetto, and those jews who took part in assisting the nazis in deporting jews were lined up, and was very clear what was going to happen next. blösche takes his jewish policeman and walks him over to the courtyard on the other side of the streets. as he walks over there, the police man who knows what's coming swerves and punches him in the face and runs for his life. he was immediately shot dead. but the important point comes now, which is blösche runs back

and his commander yanks away his rifle and spin spins him and orders him not to take part in this max execution. blösche remembers the story 24 years leader and repeats it two or three times. and i was wondering what was so significant for him in this story, and basically my interpretation is that for the first time he is not fulfilling the command that his commander gave him coming and his inverted moral fallujah of the command as the main goal -- violating that is for him something that is more important than saving a person's life. basically a very strong

expression of his injured inverted moral compass at this point. blösche is arrested in 1945 by the soviets. and after a year of being transferred between different prisons in the soviet union, he is not identified as an ss man, and he arrives in 1946 in a monument in slovakia. and this is august of 1946. on the second day in the mine, he walks up the speenine team and is very curious at what is around him. he peeks at a certain point into a shaft, and what happens next is this: his whole face is caught between a elevator floor and the mine floor and his faces

disfigured. he loses sight in one of his eyes and he has a very hard time swallowing. for a yearlong he goes through surgery's. this formation of his face did not stop him from becoming a family man. in 1950, she married and this is of course a montage of him before his this figuration. he marries her and the have three children, one from a previous marriage of hannah. she testifies and letters that she writes the german security service, years later she writes how wonderfully has been he was, how he cared for each and every need of his children. and reading his letters from the prison in berlin to his wife i ran into a letter where he

cautioned her please, don't let our granddaughter run around the village alone because there are too many cars and it might be dangerous for her. so he becomes a normal family member, and not anyone who, it's hard to say this, is wicked, at least he becomes at this point back into normal life. and in january of 1967, after being picked by the west german jewish community, the east german secret service address blösche and takes him into custody. and on his second day in the investigation room, and again, i saw this in berlin, he writes on the back of this famous photo, and this is on of literally the back of the photo, he writes an

admission that i am the person who's in the photograph standing with a helmet and goggles on the helmet and with a weapon in combat position. this is a case where i am taking part in the deportation of jews out of the warsaw ghetto. blösche is put on trial in 1969 in a show trial and deserved everything he got. he was sentenced to death. he was executed, his body and belongings cremated and dispersed in an unknown location of east germany. so, that is the story of josef blösche. but now i would like to turn to the story of france konrad, who is the person who in all probability is the one who took this photo.

france konrad had a very different story. he was surely not destined to become a nazi militia leader. he was born in the austrian alps in 1905 and was a member of the social democrat party. he was even the treasurer of the local party and he spied on the nazis. he was a person of the world. he played chess, he sang in a quieter, he knew us esperanto, food chain, and his downfall began in 1932, when he was arrested by the austrian police for filling 900 skilling from the office and sentenced three months in jail and the was the

point when the nazi party kept him. his attorneys probably the one who introduced him to the nazi party, and over the three months he was in jail, the nazi party supported its family. it was the one who also offered him a job when he can out of prison as a road constructor. and at that point, he joined and becomes an administrative officer and in his local austria. after being on the eastern front -- sorry about that, she arrives in the ghetto after being on the eastern front in 1942. and he comes in charge of the [inaudible] in charge of collecting property left behind by the jews, and can

see the testimony for that right here on the right hand side of the photo. that is probably some type of property that was taken from the homes or the businesses of jews and would be transferred into konrad's warehouses. within these warehouses, he had an amazing collection. he had a room with 200 grand pianos come and he reports about this in 1945 when he is arrested by the americans. he has a room full of art and the like. he is a room full of buttons one of 100,000 a room with 50,000 police he took from jewish children and was planning for jewish kids in ukraine jews in

the ghetto named him the ghetto king because they believed that he himself collected for himself property that was worth -- but was for him himself. he collected mostly stamps and tapestry. konrad is arrested and the photo of the little boy, unlike blösche, this is for fulfilling the command of an order come here he sees here the valuables, the valuables that the jews are carrying in their luggage, hiding in their body or leaving behind in the apartments in which for the bunkers where they dwelled. ravee cic, the predecessor of the cia, konrad has hit the's

diaries. no those dalia aires don't exist. and americans seek them high and low and they do find him in the end, and instead of finding some of hitler's diaries, they find a pair of hitler's trousers. in the interrogation room, the investigators turn to konrad and says what were you planning to do with a pair -- i should add of shredded -- trousers of hitler and a suit of hitler's? konrad says this pair of trousers and the suit is from the assassination attempt on the night of hitler in december of 1944. okay. what are you planning to do with them? he says i was planning to travel to america and sell them for a lot of money. a typical konrad answer.

he also is executed in march of 1952 in warsaw. and finally, within the nazis, i will still talk about the jews, the third nazi i want to mengin here is that stroop, the notorious ss general. he was a veteran of world war i. here he is pictured with his colleagues in the department of the government detmold. i actually visited his home and he was -- he would love to become an officer. due to the structures of the social structures of the german society after world war i, he

was unable to become an officer, and his opportunity comes in 1930 to when he joins the ss and he is pushed up the ranks very quickly to become a high-ranking ss officer. and on april 17th, 1943, she is ordered to warsaw to oversee the liquidation of the ghetto. stroop arrives and promises to wipe out the ghetto within three days. and as we all know, this took him over for weeks. at the end of these four weeks come in may of 1943, he submits three copies of a secret report

by what leader get into the hands of iceland, a report entitled "there are no more jews in the warsaw ghetto." what is in this report, stroop has basically two goals: the first of them is to elevate his own status. this photograph in titles the leader and shows stroop right here with two of his bodyguards holding rifles to his sides, the car is sending him, the fire blazing in the background, and clearly he is standing with a very authoritative position. by the way, this is blösche on the right-hand side here. this is to mark him as a leader coming especially in light of his failure to fulfil the revocation or the liquidation of the ghetto within three days.

that is one goal. the second goal is to be greeted the jews -- degrade the jews as being sought humans. this photo entitled jewish rabbis, and you can clearly see the desecration, the sense of putting them down. in the same way this total also included in the report entitled humanity and shows a jew with sclerosis and possibly someone with a deformed foot and the acts between them i don't know what it is doing their but clearly that is the second goal, degrading the jews, showing the mass of humans, and that is in fact -- those goals are also what he see in this photo within his album entitled "put from the

ghetto by force." on the one hand, it is an orderly eve activations of the jews. it shows his control of the scene, of his forces. it shows also the contrast between the subhuman jews, the cockroaches in his views, the powerful german standing with a helmet on his head, rifle in his hand, the superior race versus the subhuman jews. stroop is arrested also by the americans, extradited to poland and placed on trial together with stroop. while konrad was convicted and executed for only killing seven

jews, stroop is executed for killing tens of thousands of jews. he then writes a clemency letter to the president poland stating that he never consciously did anything immoral. all he was kidding about was his wife and family. and as i said, both were executed in march of 1952. in counter distinction, i also discussed the story rivkah trapkovits. she was close to the group of the rebels of the ghetto, and she is about 20-years-old when this all takes place. she miraculously -- she herself didn't take weapons into her

hands. she was but in charge of managing a home, and she reports being pulled out of the bunkers, and at that point the nazis taking photos repeatedly, and since other nazis were ordered not to take photos, it is very likely that she saw them taking photos. i do not know, however, whether she saw them taking this total and she herself to the best of my knowledge was not in any one of the photos. she is put on a train and she jumps off and miraculously survives. her boyfriend of three or four years, possibly her husband, she is hurt but she is able to find

shelter and to obtain polish identity cards and she is liberated in 1945, joins or takes part in smuggling the jews across european borders to the land of israel. she, herself, and mary is in the late 1940's and gives first to two boys. this one being the eldest. 23 or 24 years leader in 1973 in an egyptian ambush, haim was killed. a couple of years later, she dies of anguish and sickness. finally i will mention the story of [inaudible]

boreman tel aviv 1965. the story comes and clashes between local arabs and jews, and his parents make a decision to return back to poland. in retrospect of course a fatal decision, and in the early 1940's, both of his parents were murdered. his brother is murdered, his grandparents are murdered, most of his relatives are murdered. as a seven-year-old, he remains alone. his aunt and uncle to can and go to warsaw into hiding where they hide through the revolt. but their money is dwindling and polish or trying to extract

money from them and the rumor comes around that the germans are arranging for a safe haven in a street outside the ghetto. the germans, according to the story, are planning to use jews with papers as bargaining chips in the return for german return in the hotel they are listed, and on july 13th, 1943, the s.s. storms the hotel. all of the jews are brought down into the record and the germans start calling out names and they call out the name of a uncle and

he walks away and the boards of truck and the call out the name hannah and they walk away and poured the truck. they expect to share his name but his name never comes and at that point he steps forward and a nazi raises his wife left him and he raises his hand. that is the moment, says nussbaum, the photo was taken. this is a terrific story of course and it's a very tragic story but unfortunately it is inaccurate because we know the report was on the table, on june june 2nd and the photo was taken with in the ghetto. but of course, this photo represents his true experience, and in that sense it is a truffaut of his experience of being arrested by this.

he is then sent away and incarcerated for two years. then i moved around by train an american platoon the doherty time. many jews were killed, most of them i should say. the route that was destined to the land of israel, mandatory palestine was actually mostly liberated. let me and my talk with reading out from a short poem written in 1947 by a yiddish poet in new york, alan. the poet turns to the nations of the world and says to them, and he talks about this little boy and he says to them you have achieved what you have sought,

the jewish boy is dead. the world is filled with towers of jewish bodies. but he doesn't stop by turning to the nations of the world. he also turns to the little boy and says to him the following words: in you, a jewish boy, in guilt i kiss your face, your pure and kosher jewish eyes, through a million years until the end of days, they demand an answer, your child cries. thank you. [applause] i want to thank donnie 40 really wonderful talk, and i hope his short presentation gave you a sense of how magnificent, how powerful this book is and why

it's already received considerably prominent mention in "the new york times," new york post, and again, the book hasn't even been officially published yet. what we would like to do the next 15, 20 minutes, is engage you and asking questions and offering commentary on what you've just heard. so we would really like to hear what you think and ask questions for donnie. >> and if you could identify yourself place that would be great. >> [inaudible] -- i'm curious what highs and lows did you experience during the purpose of time that you were investigating all of the aspects of the story. >> um, an interesting question. i will mention one thing. it was most amazing to me to follow my own -- getting so accustomed to killing. you read about when you

investigate this kind of material for five years, you read about one killing after the other. and at a certain point, you don't realize this, and you are -- i'm sorry to say this but you become happy about finding it and that is a down emotionally low point. the story unfortunately for me has no highs. there is no redemption for this story. i could mention mundane things, but these are really an important things. there were no highs in this kind of story in my mind, not whatsoever. >> thank you very much. i just wanted to asked and more

research oriented questions. how did you determine that the second person you talked about was the photographer? >> the famous photograph has blösche, the personal bodyguard of stroop. now, if blösche -- by the way, another bodyguard of stroop is here -- we should assume stroop is there. it is almost obvious. we can see stroop bayh blösche and several photographs. and since konrad was ordered to accompany all the way, it is very likely that konrad was there. in addition, i will say that konrad states very clearly that he took photos, that he was a person taking photos in the ghetto -- none of the nazis remember this image. it is a monday manage for them,

and normal seem as blösche says and tribal leader to be cannot recollect where the system and for us it is iconic of course because it is very likely, and a few other researchers agree with me, but this was konrad who took the photo. >> hi. in your research, the question that comes to mind is that little boy alone? do you assume his relatives -- what could you find out? >> i have no answers to that. the only thing i know about this boy, the one and only thing, is that he is probably younger than ten because he doesn't have a store. i don't know if the woman to the left of him is his mother or just someone else. i have no idea. i have no information. for the entire set of photos of

the investigative i was able to identify in a high probability or almost complete certainty the jewish images and only one photo, only one photo of three women from the result. on the other hand, i can identify many of the germans in these photos, and that is be in balance of holocaust photography. and you must remember that most -- most of the photographs that we see of the holocaust, the clear majority of them are from the perception of the nazis. and this is also a photo taken from the vantage points of nazis. this is -- this is a racist in its initial interpretation a racist photo. that should be very clear.

>> when did it become to be [inaudible] >> the question of how it became iconic is something that i plan to address in an article that i'm writing. but, so this is a work in progress as we see in academia, but i will say a few words about that. the photo was actually come to be more accurate, the report was presented in the marone bird trials by chief justice jackson, the american prosecutor. he is a nephew of the photos. i'm not sure whether this one. i think it was not here were there, and that turned the album, it got the album spotlight. and from there on, the jews, the jewish survivors who sold a revolt at the time as the one

important achievement so to say against the nazis took photos commanded the iconic photo that we know from the holocaust comes from that report. so that is the historical explanation. but there are some explanations within the photograph. this is a sanitized version of the holocaust. there are no reports, the jews themselves are not as malnutrition as you would see in a leader photos. they look relatively soon to say good in comparison to what comes leader. this is also beyond being a sanitized version this is also a picture that touches the mother child connection assuming this is the mother and child although we do not know that. so, and within that line there are only primarily women and

children. you barely see any jewish man. so those are some of the nation's i'm coming up with. there's others, but i will leave those for a later point. when i published an article about this. >> good evening. - -- im arrived late when you were being introduced. there are 2.5 like to ask or make. am i right in assuming if this isn't as a result of the resistance of the jews because they are clearing people of houses who are able to carry their packed possessions because they've got bags, and i am assuming that many of the bunkers that were cleared with photos of people coming out with nothing in their hands. >> this might be a bunker. i don't know. this might be a bunker in an early stage of the revolt. but clearly, this is within the

framework of the revolt because of the date. that is 100% sure. and we also -- the jews are being stopped along the way for the nazis to take away property. so it's very clear they did leave some belongings. >> in this place in particular maybe we can take back the victory that the photographer gives to the nazi regime and give it back to the people who have been forced out by looking beyond the fear and terror looking at the dignity of people coming out and trying to give that back to them. the photograph taken without any consent, and i think that is one way that we can honor the people whose lives ended in such terrible ways. >> i endorse your words, every one of them. >> you said that there were

seven other identities. you know of the boy, who are they? >> i would say two of them are in colish, one is australian. i know what to israel. i will tell you just in one of these cases the earliest 1i am aware of, and it's quite a tragic story. it's reported -- the earliest i know many of them are the 1980's and on this one comes from the 1950's. the photo is published in an israeli newspaper, and a father who lost both of his children in the ghetto sees the photo and he's convinced that this photo is a total of his two children and he has no photo to compare it to. only 15 years later is he able to locate a photo and he comes to the reporter and sesto the look the same -- don't they look

the same? for him this photo is his two children and in the hand of the little girl he identifies the ball he gave her for her birthday. 15 years later he still comes back with remorse because he believes his children survived until the revolt in april 43 when he actually lost them in 42 and he's convinced that he neglected them for eight months in the ghetto. i believe he saw his children, babies were not factually his children. >> you're saying basically all of the claims for being the boy or who thought they knew the boy were genuine and honest? >> the va when and honest there's no doubt about it. but the likelihood of this child surviving is less i'd say than

two or 3%. the number of jews in poland that were killed exceeds 90%, surely of those caught by the germans, and a child of this age would have never survived. there is no chance in the world that he survives. in each and every account of these seven or eight that i followed, there were indications that it just isn't fixed. and frankly, it's very important for me to say that this jewish boy is a symbolic icon but no way do i believe that he is less or more important than the title on the left-hand side or any child who is not photographed within the framework. it's something that arouses our curiosity. but there are so many over killed. and it's just impossible. the more important question for me at least was how this

photograph came about. >> we have time for one more question. >> [inaudible] >> yes, i did speak with one, dr. nussbaum, and heard his for a fixed rate. unfortunately, he's not in good condition to date, so one cannot communicate with him to date. but -- okay. >> just real quickly, are you aware [inaudible] >> really?

this photo basically represents, for many of us and for me, surely, all of those who perished, and also for some of my age represents the lost childhood and for survivors the lost child of their parents. this is the photograph from their childhood that they do not have. that is the photograph. >> [inaudible] >> some back 75 reproductions of the little boy. yes. >> on that note we do need to end but we can continue the discussion downstairs where he will be selling books. they are available although it is not officially open the stores yet. i want to thank the museum for hosting such a wonderful event and i appreciate all of you coming and i also want to thank the federation for sponsoring as well as this talk and above all i want to thank dan porat. [applause]

thank you. >> we will be shepherding donnie downstairs and again, she will be happy to continue talking to you. >> this event was hosted by the illinois holocaust museum and education center in skokie, illinois. for more information, visit ilholocaustmuseum.org. >> i did take over five and a half years to write this. my wife reminded me repeatedly. and it was really a labor of love. it's about an organization called the epidemic intelligence service. and a friend of mine went through this and told me about. first he sent me an e-mail and said you ought to write the history of the eis. i wrote back and said thanks, andy. what is the eis?

he told me it is the epidemic intelligence service i thought wow, this is non-fiction. they're really is such a thing as the epidemic intelligence service. it's part of the cdc. it began in 1951 in the middle -- i will show you the guy who started it. alexander lang was the head epidemiologists for the center of the disease control of the time it was called communicable disease center. it's always been the cdc. he had this idea and he wanted to get young doctors out into the field immediately within 24 hours of being notified that there was an epidemic. they would have their bags packed, they would be ready to go. it sounds exciting and it was exciting. but guess what? nobody wanted to go to the field of public health. nobody realized this was an interesting area because at that time it appeared the new antibiotics were going to wipe out all of the bacterial

diseases and that we were getting more and more vaccines. people said you are going into a dying field. forget it. she said no, i feel you're wrong. he was correct, as you know, we haven't exactly vanquished all of the microbes of the world but he couldn't get anybody to be interested in joining this group because it was considered a dead end. fortunately we were in the middle of the korean war and there was a doctor draft, so the doctors didn't want to go into the army and when they joined the eis it gave them an out. they spent two years in this program saturday and two years in the military. by the time it ended with the viet nam war it had become a well-known organization and they didn't need the doctor draft to get in. anyway, he was a bigger than life character. to read the book he will see that he sort of his daughter

said that when he walked into our room you can feel the room ticked towards him -- tip towards him. he was arrogant, intimidating. the eis officers or very afraid of him. i call this case silverback speed eight. he was brilliant and visionary and led the eis not only into dealing with microbes and infectious diseases and other words but to many other areas as well. >> we are here the national press club talking to lincoln historian james swanson about his new book bloody crimes. can you tell us what inspired you to pursue this angle? >> when i finished manhunt i realized the hunt for john wilkes booth was just one-third of a trilogy of stories on the end of the civil war. the other two stories for the

final journeys of abraham lincoln and jefferson davis. after they fell from power and each became a greater murder to his cause and a greater hero after his fall than during the height of his power and his presidency. so that interested me because i think that these final journeys of lincoln and davis are as important as other great american juries like the churning of was and clark or the selling of the west or even the journey to the moon because it created so many myths about what america is and what our history is, and i don't think the civil war mike is over. we still discuss the issues lincoln and davis argued about. i thought of doing one book of each of the stories. one book about the lincoln fuel train and pageant and then the data seascape. but one day i was visiting willie lincoln's too the oak hill cemetery and lincoln would often visit that spot alone. as i walked along the path abraham lincoln walked, i realized as i looked to my left, one of the sons of jefferson davis was. right next to that pass, and i realized that abraham lincoln

had to walk past the graves of the son of jefferson davis to walk to the tomb of his own dead son. and i realized there was much more that they had in common than just the fact that their final journey is happening at the same time. and i started to research. i found out that lincoln and davis had a bizarre similarities, and that's what really inspired me to do the book about both of them under one set of covers because in many ways, although he would never think it, they were alike in so many bizarre and strange ways, and there was that insight that made me want to write the story in one book. >> and can you tell me where the title came from? >> the title "bloody crimes," comes from john brown and abraham lincoln. when john brown was awaiting execution after the raid at harpers ferry, he was allowed to possess a team of james bible and he underlined his favorite passages. one of them was come from the book of ezekiel, "make a chain for the land is full of bloody crimes." and then on the morning he was hanging, john brown handed a

piece of paper to the dealer and is it all right, john brown, am convinced more than ever that the crimes of this bloody land can only be purged by blood. and then when can help me think of the title, too because we think of lincoln's second inaugural was seeking peace and brotherhood and reconciliation. but there is a very dark passage in lincoln's second inaugural it's completely forgotten. and lincoln says he essentially that if all the blood drawn by 250 years of slavery and the slave masters with, it has to be repaid by blood drawn by the sword, let it be so. and so lincoln's discussion of blood and the engines and john brown's prophecy that there is blood to come really gave me the idea of the title for the book. ..