his own as a sympathizer and he crosses over to operator and wants to commit an act of terrorism, that is how it happens. >> you can watch list and other programs online at booktv.org. you are watching booktv on c-span2. and then we have the associate curator leading a panel discussion about the assassination of president john f. kennedy. lee harvey oswald shot the president on november 22, 1963. at 8:30 p.m., a historian gives

booktv a preview of his forthcoming book, mr. president. george washington and the making of the nation's highest office. then at 8:45 p.m. eastern, the first amendment cases the author has participated in or written about over the years. he also discusses his fight for freedom. and then "after words" with an author and guest interviewer. she is the author of women in the club, gender and policymaking in the senate. we wrap up tonight's program at 11:00 p.m. eastern with a discussion on how economic balance has brought down powerful nations. glenn hubbard and the hudson institute talk about the possibility of the same thing happening to the united states. visit booktv.org for more on this television schedule.

>> now it's time for more booktv. the author is the daughter of two holocaust survivors. sonia taitz was featured at the authors wrote literature fest. >> i am so honored to be here with this great audience and the author sonia taitz, who has written a very haunting book called "the watchmaker's daughter." you are the daughter, tell us about who was a watchmaker and was it like to live with him? >> well, i was born into a family of israel a couple who had survived the holocaust. and they seem to me more like victors and victims. so my father was a very charismatic man and i would say that physically you could

combine him as a good dancer and walter with pablo picasso, a man who looks old but never got old. he had saved the lives in the holocaust. he became a watchmaker because it was through very unfortunate circumstances. but if his life had away with turning lead into gold. his father had been shot and my father was a baby of three years old when his father was shot. his father had been a miller by the river mel and his mother, my namesake had to scramble to protect your kids. and he chose watchmaking and he really took to it. you flip the calendar and years go by. the russians came in to his country and he lost his harley

and a harley was an index of that highlight. then does not cease these came and lo and behold when they asked each person what their profession was, he did not say lawyer, which would have been useless to the regime. but he said watchmaker. it is sort of cliché that the germans had tremendous amount of respect for punctuality. and he could pick and tran-six anytime he's from the smallest watch to the clocks like a man. so he became a watchmaker at dock out concentration camp. he would play with the micro tools and was careful not to break in him. soon he had a workshop with other workers. my mother had saved her mother and she had come to america she

played the piano and she played for us. my household was a strange place of clocks ticking and cuckoos kook alive living in two times and places, the past and present, which was america and had nothing to do with any of that. >> when you grew up for the first several years, you did not really know the story of what your father did in a concentration camp. please tell us how you found out about this. >> i have to say that i didn't know he was a hero. but a lot of people who come out of my experience is that american children were war refugees in the holocaust, and

they didn't particularly get to hear this. there was a feeling of silence because the people were traumatized and no one was aware of that. they kind of went on with their lives and i felt heroically there was no one i knew they didn't get up in the morning and didn't shave and get out more. my parents do that but they talked about it nonstop. although i didn't know about his heroism, i did not have a had been in camp. it was a day one can think as i entered the birth room. i am sure that i was told something about it. so actually my mother was in a explaining to the giving birth was painless. i had having gave babies in that era actually was or could be painless. so i learned about my father's heroism they both seemed very unbroken and together.

they went to do things, like the fact that they were in the holocaust comes to great things. but they would say i had tears and then joy. and you are having a really bad time. and a whiskey over to paradise and those are typical songs that were written by david. and every holiday made sense, the typical jokes he made about the holidays and so for me, passover was my father's story. it was almost like being a kennedy. we are having passover, that is about being a slave and being released. he did tell me there is very little about having enough to make him onset. would you like to hear that story? >> yes, tells that story. he went to israel ever there was her father and people say, he saved us. tell about that moment.

>> yes, it is true. when i was 10 years old my brother was 13, my older brother. for a present for him, we went to israel. we were not rich. so i remember going and i got to see athens and rome and paris. finally we arrived and we went to jerusalem to this part. my father was admiring the fact that there were so many trees in the country was green and they were talking about how things could be born out of the dust in and the sand in the desert and the swan. i am sure that my eyes were as big as tight plates. people started to come out of the trees and the directions and a group of them said, are you the one who saved us. and i thought my father was pretty great. i'd but i never expected this. this was more than that and that is how i learned that he had saved lives. as i mentioned before. so it was -- i guess it was a

very climactic moment for me and very much a homecoming to see that even if you were in the worst of circumstances, you could be standing under a beautiful paltry in a place like tourism and feel nothing but admiration that in the darkest time someone could be helping other people. being a hero instead of sitting back and watching was one of the big legacies that my father gave me. >> i think at the same time living with your father was not easy. it was a difficult and dark and violent side of that. can you tell us about that? >> okay. his shakespearean flow was that he had a bad temper. the holocaust went into the periodic functions of rage. he it used to be someone like my brother you know, the jewish day schools and refugees from

europe, fairly observant in these close knit communities. my brother didn't fit in very well and my father hadn't had a father. so my brother was sometimes age-appropriate and sometimes fresh in his response in. and my father would freak out if he said something to be learned from the tv, like you don't understand anything, dad. and he would freak out about that. my brother would often enrage him and that was an issue in the family that my father really didn't understand my brother and chose me as the honorary boy, the honorary air to him, the olympic runner, here's the torch, you going on. he definitely loses his temper and i would be very worried about him. i did think about david. and i think that i was the david that tried to console and cover my father.

and in turn, he consoled and comforted me. he said they're a very bad people in the world and are not always save a nurse on the other levels. everything seems pretty safe, except she never calls out my name. but just to make the world safer, i think that he gave me a lot of strength and in turn i gave him a lot of strength. but it wasn't easy. i don't think it's an easy relationship to be your father or mother's confidant. and tiny midget messiah. >> remember what happened when he came home from summer camp at one point he said, dad, i learned something at summer camp. >> yes, i see where you are going with this. yes, that is pretty much how i became a writer, my father's final attack on me. he almost never got angry on me. we were on the same page on

almost everything. i was at school, he loved that. you talk about what we learned today. then i got very good grades and my father wanted me to go to law school. i was definitely running a good way. i went to summer camp and that was not at all about academics or being a good girl. it was about having boyfriends and a change in my id bracelet that i was 13 or 14 coming into my own as a female and feeling very good about it. i have been feeling like i was very ethnic, but suddenly barbra streisand was out and share was having a style of a gypsy or an indian and one day my father is being overbearing. we stopped to greet him and asked him how his day was. he was very old-school european. i think i said i realize now

that i am a grown-up like you and i don't need to listen to anymore. i'm laughing because his badly needed to say and he really flipped out and he hit me. and it sounds like yes, it is violence, and it was, because when you hit someone in anger, even in the old days when people's bank their kids, it depends on the mood and whether they do it because you and teach them or because you put out. and i think that he flipped out for that led to my becoming a writer in ways that are disclosed in the book. i wanted to hit him back and i really would have, but of course i couldn't. and that is the sort of thing in the bible they get killed for. so i went to the bathroom and took a piece of toilet paper. i was like upset in the bathroom and i wrote some notes about how much i hate daddy. and one day i will write about it. and then i flushed it down the

toilet. since then i thought i was sending my went out to the ocean. about the first indication you could be rewrite the world and reshape it and you can make it make sense or make it better or even just vent. it is an interesting day. >> tell us tells about the dynamic between your father and mother. it is a volcano of energy and anger. and how they relate. >> they met in a weird way, which i will have to convince was romantic. because they didn't meet in lithuania, they came from the same town. and they didn't meet the concentration camp and everyone left their apartments and homes and got concentrated to this little village.

they didn't meet in concentration camps because they were male and female parent i thought it was with his father and a mother was with my father's mother who died and didn't know that either. you know any of this. then they spent four years as displaced people in germany. they come to america and everyone is desperate to get married but it's the land where you don't have to have a passport to say what is your religion. it had tremendous democratic values and gifts that certainly were not true all over the world and in he wanted to get married. they were getting on in years. my father was 40 and this was part of a lithuanian holocaust survivors ball.

but it was because my father was an incredible dancer. it was the polka and i thought with my parents. they never touched the floor. i bet he did most of the work. he skated around in his part of the world in the winter and he did all the work. i thought it really was good to it until i let go and hit the ground. he fell in love with her beautiful green eyes and she told him that he played the piano and that was a huge thing for him. he was cultivated and hadn't gone to school and she loved the way that he danced. she never used that word, but i feel that there is a charge between them. as i read in the book, she was estrogen to his engine. so they lived for a time with

relationship of male dominance over women was very common. she began to see that i was living a different life and also the fact that my father figure to me over my brothers. they were considered to be lesser than my father and me, who had a very special relationship and he had chosen me, you know, we weren't destroyed, but it was like come back to the bible and the main stories were like entity. and my father put that mantle on at a very early age. she did present me and it probably feel envious and hurt. but yet i knew that my parents had a really good life on some level. every time they went dancing come they went right into the first scene.

so that is complicated. >> tell us about the song libya knows and what it meant to them? >> well, i thought about a little bit and that was her song. it was called life in pink. it is a good time to follow through and you'd just do see life in rows and then he began to see all of the colors, primarily gray and black. because no matter how great the initial love story is, there are going to be problems. and as everyone knows, this is the human condition. and they actually grew to have come as i say -- the sort of didn't understand the america that i was born into what everyone seemed to be infantile and wanting to be happy and it was very neutral like the batman

era and everyone smoked cigarettes and debate about this and how it was. they wanted me to have understanding. they didn't want me to say, oh, that's over, i was mugged, and i'm going to have a party. it was more of a collection of the history of every individual that has problems. but the la vie en rose is like the time that they danced and something kept them together and they could always meet in the spot of rows. >> let's talk about your mother.

she was an accomplished pianist who had serious repertoire are the that was one of her many losses because of the holocaust. that potential career and the artistic life. what did she lose and what kind of a tool that take on her? >> my mother was raised in an upper-middle-class way, which my father was from a poor family and i think he always admired the fact that she had a grand piano and she had puppies. and she was very gentle and soft-spoken and she was raised to be a concert pianist and she came here i knew that she had a

brain tumor because one day she took a nap. even when she had a meal going on, she would run and run. then when she would come to the piano, everyone would go silent. even with a brain tumor at the end of her life, it was so serious that it was inoperable and a fast moving tumor and she became really quiet and smiley and sweet. i had the best talks with her then because she was no longer envious of me and we were just sit on each other's laps basically. but she would go to the piano and she would play as well as she ever did. maybe better. one time she only had a few days to live in a neighbor knocked on the door and said what radio station i listen to. so the piano is always there for

her. she made the whole world beautiful. >> you think she grieved for the ardor she could not be as a pianist? >> no, i think that she took on america very strong leverage would've loved to have had one of those houses in the suburbs and to maybe still enjoyed having time off. time off and being a lady of leisure. i think it suited her very well to have things to do all day. my mother and i left the house

and she still wanted to bring -- she had nothing to do. when my father died, and she was at a loss. i don't know why they put her in the conservatory other than it was something that every cultivated family would have come april when the piano. she happened to be good at it, but she wasn't a star personality. it was more like she wanted a nice life where people had nice things and you weren't scared or stressed. that kind of thing. >> you're going to go to college and your father had a request that he made of you. >> yes, my father made a few. he was a man of very few words. he spoke very slowly. his voice was very deep. he rarely asked her something and would preface it by saying i don't like to ask her anything, but my that my blood would run

cold. [laughter] i have kids and i know how relevant is that you have to go to an iv league school and that seems to be the pressure that people are under in many parts of this country. i was one who hadn't gone to college and i did really well all the way through high school and all of a sudden the principal says to my parents -- and i was well aware that i was doing well and had good sat scores. but i didn't know what that would translate into. the principal said atomic father that i could get into yale and that he had a verbal guarantee that i would get in. somehow my father had one of his questions at that time and he said, i don't know how many years i have left, but you're the apple of my eye and i don't want to go away. i want to stay in the city. so i ended up going to a very good women's college that was part of columbia. that created a stringy, a desire to go further. even my grandmother had been on a leash in the park, i had one of those polyester silk dresses that were itchy.

and the other immigrant kids were frolicking in the fountain and have the sox would the bubbles and i was literally on a leash. she wasn't moving. so i definitely had a desire to not stay, but i did for him what he asked me. >> why was i? >> because i took care of my parents and they were my children in a way. i was there current. i was there caretaker. i pitied them. i nurtured them. i felt so much for my father saying i have no family and i don't want you to go. i just wanted to do something that would help. it is an honor when someone asks you something like that. my father was on well with cancer. i had three kids and i would stay with him and he would say, why are you doing this with me, and i said it's a great honor. you are always so busy and i feel like it is such a great thing that you have time for me now.

but it was true. my father saying that i need you around, you make my life light up was wonderful. then i got into law school and he was happy until the time when i was at law school and i hated it and a lot of the people they are, i was 21 years old and i was very young and i was in over my head in terms of the society as income i was in the careers they were talking about, i really loved english literature and art and this was all about big bucks all the time and some had big next and they were from the midwest and i was frightened. [applause] >> a lot of these people have phd's before because a phd was part of this degree and then they went to law school. so i saw that they traveled the world to oxford and cambridge and i thought, oh, now i can get away. but i thought, i would like to take a leave of absence and i checked with the dean and it was such a good offer that they said yes, go ahead and i said all i want to do is go to oxford and

study english. so i had to talk my father into it. and i used his own consciousness against him because he wanted me to be part of one of the main stories that was an example of a try to kill us and it didn't work. so the king has an alcoholic at it and he has finished his wife because she doesn't want to dance naked for him. so he chooses queen esther and her uncle says, you go in there and you will be infiltrated and it will be good to have a jewish queen. and later esther comes up to his chambers and says, i think i am disillusioned by the story and away and she says, you know, the

people you want to kill or actually my people and he says, really? and she says yes, i am a jew and these are jews. please save the jews. my father wanted me to go to law school and do that and be missed america and the secretary of state and some combination. so my asking him if i could go to oxford, his idea of having what he called brass buttons or authority or status in the world, i said that come i really made it and i had accomplished a lot. and frankly i hate it. and i would like to take a leave of absence and go to oxford. and he said why sacrament and i said that oxford is even better than harvard or yell and used who's to say that his omega was the highest education and i said that is your harvard and yale. and i suggested that if harvard was omega, then oxford was for the elite. and he was very impressed that

he sent a couple of going back to europe i wanted to go where you have gone away and come back and be a student and make an impression and study and get a degree. so he was very kind to me in a sense. but then there was another request of a vow. it was like a fairy tale. so he said, okay, i will let you go, but i have another request of you. and i wanted about that where everyone are and wherever you go, you will never forget who you are. and i thought, that is not likely to happen. since from the birthing room i was told before this, you know, it wasn't going to be that i would forget. and i said okay. then i went to oxford and all hell broke loose. >> tell us what you learned at oxford about how jews were regarded. >> okay. so my trip there was every

adventure and great story begins with a journey like ulysses leaves the nullity and only then could he go home. my parents had had their journey across the atlantic. you know, abraham was told to leave the place you are usually go to a new land. .. hi geiger counter was going off

because i had not experienced what my parents talked about all the allied believed them. and it is exciting to feel that the world was really fraught with conflict, and i fell in love with an english guy, and shelby the last thing the parents would have wanted. if you marry a gentile, she would drink and be you, and call you a dirty jew. that didn't happen. that was amazing and his mother said she hated him. it was very open, it wasn't politically correct and i've got misguided leave that they would like me as soon as they got to know me and that didn't happen because my charm failed miserably and telling them how good i was in school, nothing

worked and they seem to be saying to me we are in england day and even if you discovered the cure for every cancer and have leaderboard made of solid gold we don't like you and we are english and we stayed in england, we don't wander the world and laying people and flirting with their sons. we don't do that. but there's a lot more to the story. >> didn't his mother also said his incredible phrase in response to you and his courtship of your your corn chip of him but a negress' that the shoe? >> is loaded in so many ways. the thing about calling them that, i came from a place where you could call everyone and girl, everyone was a woman. baby was a baby woman. so yes, i have to say, i have to jump ahead and say a woman who said that is now my mother-in-law and wraps up to

the little presents for each = 24 and mails them from england and they are all something. she did say is that, i was told she was brought up that way in the small village in wells where she definitely not jews, there were centuries with no jews in england, they were kicked out in the middle ages from york and get a lot of the literature has aleutians to jews and very negative once and she learned a lot of prejudicial things my father experience in eastern europe where people would run after him and try to beat him up and said he drank christian blood. i don't know what her particular images were but she felt a dread of me and my family and then in the end she met them. >> you wasn't the only one who tried to stop this court should, so did your mother.

>> needless to say my parents believe in continuity of their heritage. certainly from their circumstances they were 5% remaining that got out and they felt it was their duty to transmit this torch or this little candle to the next generation, like it again and the worst that would happen is it would be snuffed out and forgotten and not just their life but all the way back and a poignant, resilient tradition, easily snuffed out, both my parents felt this would be a really bad thing. even when i met my parents in jerusalem again and tried to make the argument this was my greatest attempt, the man i was in love with was one of the 36, an old jewish legend, 36 people in the world who are not jewish and they make the world because

they are so good and my father said i really don't think so. now that i have been married for a decade i can say he is not one of the 36, but who is? and both sets of parents and does break and then we were broken up and then married someone else who fit the bill, rebound romance, he became a lawyer and his father was a professional and my parents didn't get what they wanted their because there was a big piece of ham in the fridge and offered some to my father and he says why do you read this, why don't you read this? it tastes great so even though they were jewish was not quite the familial feeling my father had wanted, about to marry the wrong guy. and a book a call in indiana and have a lot of misgivings because every day i am facing a boy in england that i loved and i'm getting older and older and feel

like this was the one, am sure of that and i'm about to walk down the aisle with someone i'd pretty much like a lot but don't think i should be marrying him and i went to my father and said call it off, he said always go forward, not backwards and that might have been how he survived the doesn't work if you're in a speeding car rushing toward the cliff and if it doesn't work if you are a and lending. and sent out an sos letter to paul and said i am getting married, what do you think, something like that and i learned later my mother had 4 of those letters, because when i finally did get back together with paul, separated from my husband and left wonderful laugh job with the beautiful desk and flowers on it and went back to england because paul said that he would marry me if things were different now and goes by the way why didn't you answer my letters so at the wedding day my mother apologized and said i have torn up, i am really sorry. i cost you so much time.

that was -- everything happens for a reason. i guess we were both much more mature, in our early 20s, now we were a more appropriate age although it was hard to get the jewish divorce. from the first husband died decided to do it in a very religious way so there was no question we were divorced. i was married to the new father and they stood up on a court, when you get a jewish divorce and they sat on this davis, a three rabbis each with different beards like the smith brothers, one high, one mile and one sideways and i was humiliated because i had to be given a bill of divorce in this old fashioned way and at some point one of them said to me do you two have children? i said no? he said thank god. i was allowed but i guess -- that is what happened.

>> let me ask about something that is a little more difficult. two subjects, shame and guilt. you say when your parents came to one of your college graduation, law school, ashamed you were about how they looked unlike the other people's parents and how killed you felt about that, the shia felt when people in your apartment and saw what it was like, tell us about those things and how you deal with that? >> i wanted to come back, talk about the wedding and also parents, madly in love with each other and it was the most beautiful scene, very tiny wedding and on his deathbed many years later my father said thank you for bringing these people into my life and some my fears and my shea and and all that vanished away. i felt i was a teenager that my parents were so different was ridiculous and i now know that as a teenage thing as well

because my children also think that of me, money, don't talk, stay there. we see someone in a department store i have to hide behind a rack. i know is a common thing to children. my children -- finally like -- you are talking too much. i probably am. my parents would come to visiting day, i became very sassy and said i was a grown up because i am a id graceless from some cute guy. i had the look and long hair and it is as straight as it always has to be, and doing my thing and here comes mom wearing socks and sandals and everybody is getting snickers and m&m's and i've brought some hardboiled eggs and reasons. the eggs are in there and if you should open one, not that big,

very sad. my father wore a straw hat which he wore every day in the summer and at some point on my bunk bed asleep and snoring with the yiddish paper over his face and that is really cool. i have no idea what i had to deal with so i was always ashamed and even if they were religious people so few people him from holocaust but also my parents didn't quite know the rules and i was sitting with a rabbi's daughter and my mother turned on a light and i said you and not supposed to use electricity, she says you are not? you could never hinged or do this because she would say -- the pinnacle that howard was bringing up, at law school, graduating from law school -- it was after i came them exactly like oxford and everybody's parents seem to be, the dads are all 61 with silver hair, beautiful hair and the moms all at blonde hair with a velvet head band and here come my parents and my father with a hat

and my mother has food but this time it is a banana that is five days old and brown and i think she got revenge on me for being such a smart alec and being my dad's favored and said you like a banana and we are standing in line in the cap and gown and write about in this point one of the kennedy kids, but the for shriver's in my class and we are friends and i see his parents and they're just like what i just described and maria to is not yet journalist is filming the whole thing and i am -- my mother opening the tinfoil. and the tinfoil has been reduced. it is like catching the sun in so many ways. and then the thing for me, when my kids when they're mean to me hide behind the coats. they don't feel guilty because my husband and daughter are like strong modern parents and i

would feel bad if i was ashamed of my parents and sad that kids want come to my house because we were in the wrong neighborhood but also would be relieved. of very big conflict the painful thing. , i couldn't dress them, they were adults. or answer the phone and mmx s and it was hard for me. yes? >> what is it about -- you devote a lot of thought and pages in this book to the death of each of your parents, why do you do that? why is that so large in the context of the story? >> it is fun to save does anyone -- a lot of immigrants know what it is like to feel the shame of yellow plastic, but about their

deaths i wrote the book many years after my parents passed away and wasn't going to write this kind of book although my mother used to say to me everybody has a story. and she said tell us story but i agree, everyone watching has the story and can be written about and you don't have to have gone through these dramatic things to have a story. there are a little dramas everywhere. i wait until they passed away, it was almost like a couldn't go on living. i had been so much in their world and felt i failed them and each of them died of cancer and it was heroically trying to get in the surgery that was impossible and someone said you had to get muds from pluto i would have tried to. remember playing tips for my father, these new-age things about the you really fulfil yourself because of something you didn't do? do i have to listen to this crap? so after they died

later i started to write the book and i feel that in terms of the memoir, shouldn't be writing a diary, a journal, a mommy dearest but really see the characters of people as fully fledged rounded people with good and bad. as a check of woods and i need to fall in love with my characters and see them as real people, not all rose and pink and sentimental but some bland. i hope i did that because i saw all the story as being the story, happens to be my story but it has the drama of a novel in that i'm born in two worlds, they don't go and i take the journey and meet the catalyst and the present davies want me to be with and he converted and all families are happy and at my father's death thank you for bringing these people into my life and i feel i delivered to them -- i know known i deliver certain sense of peace and my

father, even though he was a coma was able to have a last moment with my brother where they forgive each other and told each other they love each other and my mother and i at that moment as well so the debt is really important because people think if they can keep their life savings in some silly where we feel we will not get sick or die. it is part of life as is the holocaust or any challenge, how do you deal with this. they were lucky to be surrounded by love. >> please help me thank sonia taitz. [applause] >> you are watching 48 hours of nonfiction authors and books on c-span2's booktv. >> up next, ben mezrich report and questions from the university of montana who founded the online brokerage company absolutepoker.com. he details the company's