>> thank you all very much >> i didn't even have to say anything you are a well-trained bunch. good afternoon ladies and gentlemen to the illinois holocaust museum and education center.

as director of public programs i get this privilege on a regular basis. thank you so much for being here with us today. we hope you will return on other occasions. is this your first visit? raise your hand. thank you. our presenter must have a fan club in the interest of qualities of the rest of you can exercise your arm if you are a regular please raise your hand. if you raised your hand the first time around ask anyone else around you whose hand went up a second time why they support this institution and come here on a regular basis and why i know many of them by their first name and i haven't

learned your name i will do my best. also i will suggest to pick up a quarterly calendar of events this will let you know i will tell you we have a program on thursday evening a brand-new exhibition we just mounted that's on this thursday the next sunday we have another program that is tangentially related with memories of the iceman trial to interviewed survivors and others that were witnesses or attended the

trial. one of those witnesses whose photographs are featured in this special exhibition. those are just a few of the reasons to return and i hope you will. at the conclusion our presenter will be available to sign copies of her new book. as a courtesy please allow her to exit the auditorium and continue your conversation near the shop. some of you may have noticed we have additional apparatus in the room today. we are very excited for this afternoon's program is preserved and tape for future broadcast by c-span book tv. we are excited to have an

author whose work commands such important attention as it should because the subject matter will never go out of style. debbie is associate professor and of investigative reporting at the school of journalism. she oversees the investigative lab and the pulitzer prize author who writes for the washington post. she has spent three years at george washington university before joining the faculty. her investigative stories invested wrongdoing prompted congressional hearings leading to changes in federal and local laws in her classes her students focus on social justice investigative

reporting winning an award in print journalism including robert f kennedy award for reporting about human rights and the goldsmith price were investigative reporting from harvard university. she received the pulitzer at the miami herald for a series about corrupt affordable housing developers stealing from the poor and then a finalist about dangerous breakdown in the nations hurricane tracking system. a frequent speaker at conferences and book events. her first book published in 2016 was named one of the most notable books of the year by washington post. her second book the recently released hot off the press the hunt for hitler's hidden soldiers is a topic of conversation with us today.

working on the washington dc campus on the investigative stories. [applause] >> thank you for that lovely introduction i'm so happy to be with you here today although based in washington dc for this first quarter at northwestern i have been here living all about northwestern and chicago it has been a lot of fun happy to be here to talk about this book project. and actually started in the final moments of 2016 when i was at a new year's eve party in maryland with my friends and husband my husband didn't want to leave because there

was loud music in the background and he had enough and this woman i had never met before it turns out she was a lawyer from the department of justice and then deep inside the us justice department that is three decades hunting not see war criminals. i knew very little about this unit and asking myself to questions after this to our conversation how is it possible that so many years after the war after the holocaust that they were still

living here on us soil i could not understand that i was fascinated by the idea and more than that who are the men and women at the us justice department to spend the book of their careers hunting for these perpetrators? year after year day after day inside some of those darkest moments in history and then to go home at night to their wives and husbands are her children and take vacations and live normal lives when during the day hearing and reliving some of the most horrible horrific moments in holocaust history. so to get to know the people of this and then i rounded up

my husband from a cocktail party he was reading the washington post waiting for me for a while i knew i had the beginnings of another book. in the department of justice. and barry white i asked him to tell me what she was doing here and she recounted a story that prompted me to write this book. in 1990 after the collapse of communism barry white and another historian named peter black. [laughter] you already got my joke i haven't even told you yet. that they went to prague because communism had

collapsed. they knew the nazis had stashed a lot of records of prague, war documents. because the communist government would not allow them inside the car loan - - the archive it with the collapse they could get in and it was a treasure trove of information. so they rented a little car into prague in the middle of the night in a little rented apartment in the russian caretaker that barry white was not there with her husband but on the job and was pregnant at the time and the russian caretaker very much wanted to give them beer for breakfast. [laughter]

so with this massive archive surrounded by government agents. so peter black through the translator said i am doctor black and this is doctor white we are here representing the us department of justice. [laughter] all the agent started to smirk they are thinking this cia has no imagination. [laughter] these must be government spies. but they go into the dusty archives. and barry white pushes back her chair at a piece of paper runs over and says i found something it turns out they found out a roster from 1945 that listed the name of 700

men who had participated in one of the most lethal operations in occupied poland. some of them were here in the united states they recognize some of the names. and at the heart of this sheet book it's 865. sources i talked to barry white i knew this is my next book so i will give you some background. the prosecutors are the heroes of the book. i have spent 25 years of my life as an investigative reporter so documents intrigue me i love documents. the historians to find documents from all over eastern europe they went to

moscow and kiev and prague all of this evidence about men who were living here in the united states and i found that absolutely intriguing as the investigative reporter there were men and women who spent their career in this obscure alcove of the us department of justice was stained carpeting and apsley determined and i found that inspiring so now a little bit of background.

as you all know. poland had more jews before the war than any other country except the united states and it was also considered a strategic stronghold because they wanted to turn over to ethnic german settlers with a very strategic area for the right what do you do with the jews? so that idea of mass murder was very interesting and intriguing.

so he was tasked what to do with the jews of occupied poland. so they were busy fighting on the soviet front and needed manpower and he needed help to annihilate the jews of poland. so was proving from the soviet pow camps and likely they face death and actually recruited them and how to fight for the enemy. and we brought them to a little farming village south of warsaw.

and what's interesting to be an incredible location that connected this village to other key points in occupied poland so he recruited 5000 men to this camp which was a school for mass murder they were trained in nazi ideology they were empowered, armed german marching commands and dispatched in a little farm village to the jewish ghettos of occupied poland and participated in shooting operations and they manned the

killing centers in occupied poland they forced the jews to the gas chambers the man essentially became the manpower for the ss they did the bloodiest jobs in occupied poland and those that survived is more brutal and vicious than even members of the ss they were the third reich and that was their base camp where they were armed and trained and issued order to go across poland to annihilate the jews and doing the bloodiest jobs

in occupied poland and this was a school for mass murder set up by dss. in fact one of the historians call the men the foot soldiers of the third reich that is what they did often known by the jews as men wearing the black coats and black hats some call them the ukrainians because some were from ukraine or that region but there were many others. the ss came up with the incredible system because they were given wages and housing and food and service medals for work done well and vacation and all kinds of honors if they died they received proper burial. especially coming from soviet

pow camps serving the enemy seemed like an option because of some other horrible death. this camp was set up in the first deployment as a historical and religious center for thousands of polish jews more than 40000 jews live in poland in 1939 and held leadership positions on the council meeting members of the business community just a thriving jewish culture in 1939 when it was here two of the main characters in my book met.

they were just children in many ways those born in the same town their family was friends and his father was an interpreter before the war the other was an architect before and these two teenagers were put in along with their friends and neighbors. so 40000 jews were put into this ghetto of starvation, you name it water shortages food shortages. and for all kinds of reasons with mass deportations in this ghetto as all survivals to - -

studies it is absolutely astounding. but here they were one day men in black coats and hats surround the perimeter of the ghetto and demanded every family come outside within the ghetto 1500 jews to be deported east for resettlement in the east. over a period of weeks in her teens had everybody deported. friends and neighbors and extended family. everyone they knew, they lost it turns out they were taken

to a killing center and gassed upon arrival but the people who did this for men in black help - - coats and hats and they were described to be more vicious and violent to the and the ss going to the jewish hospital and went to bed you wish orphanage and murder the children along with the staff members who refused to leave the children behind. walking into the woods and shot jews at the edge of a ravine and these men that were trained at the school for mass murder. this was so important to the ss house leadership came to visit felix and lucy escaped the ghetto and took a train to warsaw because they didn't

have any place to go because she had an uncle there and they decided they needed to get out of the ghetto so in the weeks before the uprising they escaped the warsaw ghetto saving their live lives. what they didn't know at the time is that they followed and worked side-by-side with the germans to suppress the german uprising in the warsaw ghetto they survived warsaw and lucy and felix ended up in a small village and were hiding in plain sight and became a

teacher for the local village never told anyone obviously he was a jew and then we heard tanks running toward the village and then to crawl out into the woods to see the soviet tanks coming liberation. liberation walking into the building felix said i am a teacher the commander said okay for the first time in many months i'm also would you. the commander said to him that's not possible all the jews are dead you must be a spy. he said no i made you. the commanders called over a jewish soviet soldier and said you are and you he is a jew speak hebrew to each other.

so felix did not speak much yiddish he was very assimilated his father brought a rabbi to the house to teach him a little bit and felix would wait until a rabbi dozed off and skip to the last page when the rabbi woke up he would say here you go i finish my studies. [laughter] so now he's proving he is dead you which could be a life or death moment so on the back of his memory in mind he remembers though holiest prayer in jewish religion insights this they said oh my god you really are a jew. that is how felix was able to assess how they survived the

war so going home to see if anybody was left before the war there were 40000 jews living only 200 survived including felix and lucinda. because to lucinda in particular every rock had blood every one was a stranger by then. so they went to vienna and they became a doctor and in 1851 they came to the united states but what they didn't know until years later and what many if not most did not know for a few years later is that the men followed they slipped into the united states to lie about their activities during the war and cave in large part which was meant to

bring in war refugees people escaping from communism and jewish survivors moving to the united states hiding in plain sight in cities and suburbs across the country men leaving in ohio in new york and even here in chicago area. and what investigators found the us department of justice there were a dozen men living in the united states. imagine knowing that the very same man who persecuted and had a hand in killing everyone you ever knew was living in the united states side-by-side with holocaust victims with their defendants and war veterans and what that must

have felt like knowing that was the case when the tribe be key men came they were naturalized citizens and pledged to defend the constitution and would have social security benefits and pensions and went to churc church, married, and children, naturalized americans living side-by-side with a very seem - - same people i had a hand in killing. so the people at the department of justice didn't know very much about trippy key it was known to those in the east but not in the western theater because the department of justice the western investigators did not have access to the archives in eastern europe for a long long time. son then were no john was a

man and that's where he was trained as a base camp we knew of this camp but not the role of the murder to those who occupied poland according to historians there is no way the ss could have killed one.7 million jews over to summers there is no way they could have killed that many that quickly without brute force on the front lines of the mass murder in occupied poland and this is one of the most interesting pictures i found of the tranny key men.

>> trawniki one of them is playing a mandolin. one of the most trusted trawniki commanders found living in the united states citizen 865 the subject of the book everybody's given a dog tag number that is ss identification number and this is what the personnel record looks like acquired by the department of justice in its investigation. this is also his personnel file uncovered by investigators jacob reimer

started a potato chip franchise in new york city. one found in chicago years earlier was the crackerjack company they were living very ordinary lives in ordinary americans. again the social security card and pension and retirement jacob reimer retired to the shore of lake carmel and living there essentially undetected for years and years. to bring these men to justice is what drives this book that's the drama behind this book this is what they found in prague in 1890 with jacob's name on it and his identification number. this is what led them to understand more about trawniki

and the perpetrators. this tiny unit inside the justice department faced an incredible set of challenges they were racing against time because the witnesses were growing older and survivors were growing older. when started by an act of congress in 1879 everyone thought they had done their work in a handful of years five years tops because surely there couldn't be that many people living here on us soil the work went on for 30 years they found concentration camp commandants others that participated in the persecution of jews and those that they were looking at where the men of trawniki so the first challenge is to not only understand part of the

history of the holocaust not well known in the west but to identify men some change their names so how do you prove what they did 70 years ago? this is a great challenge to the investigators and historians and prosecutors inside this unit of the justice department perhaps one of the biggest challenges explored in the book was the political pushback this unit faced by prominent people in the united states then like pat buchanan that what's done is done leave the old man alone you will send them back into the hands of the soviets. we cannot trust soviet justice so pat buchanan and other prominent people pushed to shutter the unit for years

another challenge they faced is once they found these men and he naturalized them and convince an immigration judge to be deported and removed from us soi soil, germany and austria would not take them back in fact there is a discussion where one of the heads of the unit germany said we don't want to take your garbage back the head of the unit said it's your garbage they just moved here but they could not convince germany or austria to allow the united states to remove them we could not force it. there was no way to do that. in 1988 a prosecutor in the office of special investigations a young man

decided to fly to austria to convince them to take the perpetrators he had two young children and lived in bethesda maryland and was a storied prosecutor in this unit and had a way of convincing every defendant on his roster to settle. he was brilliant and austria around that time said maybe we will take some of your defendants back they were ready to make a deal with the state department to take back austrian born not the perpetrators found in the united states the only thing they needed was a signature so he volunteered to go he flew to austria just before

hanukkah 1988 and managed to get the deal done even if you wanted to get home to celebrate hanukkah with his children his daughter was seven his son was for off he goes and calls his wife and his boss is as i want to get home earlier i will switch my flight pan am flight one oh three which was blown up by a terrorist bomb over lockerbie scotland the bomb was wrapped in baby close and stuffed inside the suitcase. so he died in the line of duty one of the most tragic situations and to this day a

picture of michael sits on the desk of eli rosenbaum who ran the unit for years and years as the top prosecutor that this pushback not only for pat buchanan but other countries with an ongoing scuffle so was convincing judges two d naturalized men who look like ordinary americans remember doctor black and doctor white now the world's foremost expert on trawniki and doctor white they still joke about that but one of the hardest things for a prosecutor was to convince a judge far removed

from the holocaust men looked ordinary should lose their citizenship citizen 865 was taken to court in new york 1998 high top sneakers and a sweater and in fact a couple of people in the courtroom said who is this survivor who was the criminal? it's hard to tell the difference so many years after the war. so convincing judges they should not have been here in the first place was a great challenge faced by the nazi hunters but in jacob's case they knew he was a trusted collaborator at the cam camp. he led a platoon of men, a

very violent liquidation of the ghetto. then he had gone to help suppress the jewish uprising during the warsaw ghetto uprising. they knew those things but the other thing they found out about jake up he thought he could get away with his history so he showed up in new york without a lawyer and didn't think he needed one. went to the us attorney's office and met with a couple of prosecutors from the nazi hunting unit and under questioning admitted he had taken part in a mass shooting operation somewhere in the woods outside of trawniki jewish men women and children were lined up against the edge of the ravine and shot the bodies were dumped into the ravine the next truckload

would come in and on and on witnesses said blood on the forest floor when it was done under questioning jacob admitted to shooting at a man in the ravine pointing to his head almost as if he was begging for mercy under questioning jacob admitted to this i will play a little bit now. >> something about the man we finish them off. >> i'm afraid so.

>> so off they go to court with jacob on the witness stand so now they have all the records including what they found in prague, a bunch of other documents about jacob and his confession and off they go to court but judges resisted all the time because what they were seeing was a man who looked like anybody else was very hard in this unit to convince judges to de- naturalize these men. so i went to four countries and retraced the steps of the historians. but i could go to the ghetto to retrace the steps i could

go to the concentration camp where many people were taken to die. i actually could see the site of a mass shooting described by jacob to us investigators. and i could actually find the original nazi records found by doctor white and black. they make you put on white gloves so the oil five your fingers don't seep into original documents. this book took me three years to report and write to have a new understanding of the holocaust than what i had studied growing up talking to my grandparents i thought i knew a lot about the holocaust but what struck me first how many people it takes to kill

so many so quickly and how many collaborators people who are not part of the nazi party were members of the ss and people that got away with it many thousands of people. the syndicated columnist covering the jacob hearing in 1992 actually calls them a cog in the wheel how many people it takes to kill brick i never thought about that as much as they did in writing this book. also really intrigued by how easy it was to indoctrinate the enemy in the trawniki training camps and how easy it was to turn people around. some trawniki men deserted the unit rather to die a good

person than live as a killer that jacob and many others stayed on in fact jacob was given paid vacation and allowed to go visit his family in the ukraine. unescorted and then turn back the training camp and was so loyal he received citizenship in nazi germany 1944 at the end of the war that would retire moving into nazi germany and lived there as a decorated war hero. so i was fascinated by the idea of choice of who stayed and who left and how easy it was to convince the enemy to fight for you. i was also fascinated by the germany ostia resistance one -

- austria resistance the last man reported was just deported 2018. last year he lived in queens new york for 50 years this little middle-class neighborhood that i visited retired, drawing attention social security he had been ordered removed from the united states 14 years ago but the department of justice and state department could not find a country willing to take him back. they all refused. which allowed this man to essentially live in the united states so the people in this unit desperately wanted to move him they didn't want to allow him to die in peace on american soil. so in 21 - - 2018 after 14

years pressing foreign governments to take him back they finally convinced germany to take this man back and was flown back to germany and then died a few months later at the age of 95. i asked the people inside the justice department is this revenge? it comes up a lot retribution. what is this? their response is these men were never supposed to be here in the first place. they were not supposed to get a visa they were not supposed to be admitted into the united states so we are taking back what they should not have had to begin with they should not have been allowed to live here. and they are doing it because that's is our law.

they do it because on behalf of the holocaust survivors on behalf of the war veterans who help to free them in the defendants of holocaust survivors. why should these men be allowed to die in peace on us soil cracks the justice department doesn't consider it revenge but justice. even delayed justice is better than no justice at all. and perhaps that is more important now than ever to show the rest of the world that war criminals have no place you want - - living on us soil and they question why are you going after them?

leave them alone. they are little old man barry white would say if years later we found one of the terrorist that blew up pan am one oh three would we say 30 years has passe passed. let's let them go? of course not so why should it be any different for perpetrators of war crimes in the holocaust? so they really were doing this in the name of justice and successfully the justice department was able to prosecute more of these men 1990 on than any other country in the world including germany. as they continue to do their work although the unit now has expanded to include other parts of the world like bosnia and other war-torn countries.

unfortunately they are as busy as ever. so for me as a writer, i was really moved and inspired by the men and women. but this was a different kind of story that even though it was about darkness and dark moments i found it about light that the men and women in this book were inspiring and lucinda and felix night after night and would listen to their accounts and i was so moved by there will to survive and what they went through and

lucinda would go to her synagogue and look at her whole family filling up the pew and said look what i produced when once there was nothing look what i produced. i'm so honored to let you know their family is here today. please stand up. [applause] that's why it's a story about darkness but also light i hope you will take a chance to read the book thank you for having me in half or two --dash happy to answer questions. [applause]

>> the nazi files kept in austria? prague? why didn't they destroy them? bank that's a question i get at every book talk. they did destroy a lot of records obviously. but trawniki training camp was considered mundane in their eyes it was a training camp. so as the soviets were coming into poland and then their leader escaped one of the places they went to was prague and took records with them and they were stashed but the ss

didn't necessarily destroy them because it is considered a mundane operation as a training camp that was not high level. >> but they were terrorizing the jews. these people were not part of that group they were a different group. >> that's right they were not germans that jacob was born what we now know as ukraine his family migrated their years earlier so either though he was ethnic german he was not a part of germany. there were 5000 men but collaborators but not part of the ss or not see party one -

- not see party. >> i assume you read the disaster next-door but in this case we let them in willingly and how do we correlate that. >> i did read that book i'm doing a talk in miami next week. he wrote about operation paperclip which was the fact the cia let in certain nazi because that had been written about before i did not focus on that others had been written about not see on - - not see hunting but i focus on the men of trawniki because nothing had ever been written to this extent on the training camp and i was fascinated with

the idea they could recruit an army of 5000 men to do the dirtiest job in poland but the cia did not been in but because that had been covered before and written about i went to different way. >> great talk so far i look forward to buying your book for sure. thanks for taking a picture with me prior. i have read accounts of the hunt for the remnants nazi war criminals and other books and it seems like that the judges were not interested. do you think the us missed any

chances? that the law did not permit them to prosecute themselves? or do you think justice was served by merely deporting them cracks that the whole country had the insurance to prosecute them or this is just another way to die or maybe they wanted to live anyway.