and career from the look of hope and history.

[inaudible conversations] c i didn't even have to say anything. you are a well-trained bunch. good afternoon ladies and gentlemen. good afternoon and welcome to the illinois holocaust museum and education center. my name is lillian and i'm the director public programs. i get the privilege under regular basis. we thank you so much for being here with us today. we hope you overturn on other occasions. usually i play a game with the audience and i will do it very quickly. is this your first visit? please raise your hand. raise it higher so i can see it they thank you, thank you, thank you. over here too. thank you.

in the interest so the rest of you can exercise one of your arms if you are a regular and if you attend programs all the time and if you are one of our members please raise your hand. thank you so much. thank you. the folks who raised her hands the first time around these don't take my word for it alone. ask anyone elset around you whoe hand went up a second time why they support this institution and why they come here on a regular basis and why i'd know many of them by their first names. those whose first names i haven't learned i will do my best to learn them. alsoil i'm going to suggest for those of you who are not familiar with the organization to pick up one of our quarterly calendars of events and brochures. you'll find them on the information desk. this will let you know about all of our upcoming programs. i won't steal more of the time to list them all but i will tell you we have a program that's coming thursday evening.

it's going to be an exhibition opening for a brand-new t exhibition we just started and that is this thursday the 21st and next sunday we havet another program. we have a film and discussion in a way to judge labor related to the subject matter today. we will be showing the film and israeli made duck imagery that interviewed the survivors and others who were witnesses or who attended the trial and one of those witnesses was eric ross whose photographs are featured in our special exhibition right now memory on earth. .. return and i certainly hope you will. at the conclusion today's programmer presenter will be available to sign copies of her new book "citizen 865" the hunt

for hitler's hidden soldiers in america so as a courtesy i ask you to please allow her to exit the stage and auditorium and continue your conversation with her in the vicinity of our legacy shop. some of you may some of you may noticed that we have additional apparatus i in the room today and we are very excited that this afternoon's program is being preserved and taped for future broadcasts by c-span. c-span book tv. we are excited to have an author whose work commends such important attention as it should because the subject matter will never go out of style. let me tell you a little bit about the center. debbie is associate professor and director of investigative reporting at the [inaudible] western university. she under sees the investigative lab.

she is a pulitzer prize-winning investigator reporter and nonfiction author who writes for "the washington post".tiio she spent three years at washington university before joining the fact ability. over the years her investigative stories have exposed wrongdoing, prompted congressional hearings and led to changes in federal and local law. in her classes she and her students focus on social justice in pakistan have reporting. debbie has one dozens of awards in american print journalism including the robert f kennedy report reporting about human rights and the goldsmith prize for i investigative reporting fm harvard university. she received the pulitzer in 2007 at the miami herald or a series of stories about corrupt affordable housing developers who were stealing from the poor. a year before that she's appealed surprise finalist for

stories about dangerous breakdowns in the nation's d hurricane tracking system. debbie is a frequent speaker at the universities writing conferences and book events andv her first book love wins, who fought: case for marriagee equality published in 2016 by william morrow was named one of the most notable books of the year by "the washington post". her second book recently released, hot offos the presses, citizen 865 the hunt for hitler's soldiers hidden in america is the topic today. she works with undergraduate and graduate students on investigative stories and we are delighted to present to you this afternoon debbie. [applause] >> thank you for that lovely

introduction, lillian. i very much appreciate it. i'm soo happy to be with you hee today though i am based in washington dc for this first quarter at northwestern and i've been here in evanston living about evanston and northwestern and chicago and it is been a lot of fun and i'm so happy to be here to talk about this book project. m let me tell you where this book got started. this book actually started just in the final moments of 2016 when i was at a new year's eve party in maryland with my friends and husband and my husband wanted to leave because there was very loud disco musicp playing in the back around anded he had had enough. i ended up having this conversation with the woman were having dinner with who i had never met before. turned out she was a lawyer from the u.s. department of justice and over this long unexpected conversation robin gold started telling me about this little-known unit deep inside

the u.s. justice department that had spent three decades hunting nazi war criminals on u.s. soil. though i had spent a decade or so on staff at "the washington post" i o knew very little aboup this unit and i remember thinking to things, asking myself two questions after this two hour conversation. number one, how was it possible that so many years after the w war, 70 some years after the holocaust, there were still nazi perpetrators and were criminals living here on u.s. soil. i just cannot understand that and really was fascinated by the idea that that was even happening here and more than that who were the men and women at the u.s. justice department that had spent the bulk of their careers hunting for these perpetrators and how were they able to spend day after day,

year after year inside some of the darkest moments in recent history and how were they able to do that and then go home at night to their wives and their husbands and how are they able to go home and night to the children and take vacations and live normal lives when during the day they were hearing about and reliving some of the most horrible, horrific moments in the holocaust history. i really wanted to get to know the people behind this reidel -- nazi department injustice. after up around in my husband from this cocktail party he was sitting outside hunched over a stone reading "the washington post" waiting for me for quite a long time and i knew i had to begin another book. so about one week later i called up the story who worked in this nazi hunting unit in the west apartment injustice, doctor

barry white and i asked barry to talk about what she had been doing here and she recounted a story that prompted me to write this book and in 1990 soon after the collapse of communism barry white and another historian named peter black went and you had already gotten my joke and i have not even told my joke at and you already got the punchline but they went to prague because communism had collapsed and they knew that the nazi had stashed a lot of records in prague, war documents, nazi rosters. they could never get to them because a communist government would not allow them inside their archives. after the collapse of communism in 1990 they could get in and it was a treasure trove of information for these historians and imagine what they might find there. they flew in to germany and they

rented this little car that chugged across germany into prague in the middle of the night and they ended up in a little rented apartment and their russian caretaker was very upset that barry white was out there with her husband and was, in fact, they are on the job and was pregnant at the time and their russian caretaker very much wanted to see feed them pork cutlets and beer for breakfast and that was not a good thing for barry who was very early on in her pregnancy. but they ended up inside this massive archive in praguena surrounded by government agents with guns and everything else and doctor black, peter black who his translator said i'm doctor black and this is doctor white. we are here representing the u.s. department of justice. well, the government agents started to smoke and they

probably were thinking the cia has no imagination. right? these must be government spies. but often they go into the dusty archives in this office building in prague and soon enough barry white pushes back her chair and she is looking at this piece of paper and runs over to peter black and says i found somethi something. turns out they found a nazi roster from 1945 that listed the name of 700 men who had participated in one of the most lethal operations in occupied poland. and some of those men they knew were here in the united states living on u.s. soil. they recognize some of the names. that was a turning point in an investigation that spanned about ten years and is at the heart of this book, citizen 865.

as soon as i talked to barry white i knew that this was my next book and this was for sure a story that i wanted to tell and so let me give you a little bit of background. i focused heavily in this book on historians. prosecutors are the hero of this book as well and i focused heavily on historians because of spent about 25 years of my life as an investigator with a reporter so documents intrigue me and i love documents. these historians were able to find documents from all over eastern europe, inside what were once communist countries and they went to moscow and went to kiev and went to prague and they went to poland and they found all of this evidence about men who were living here in the united states and i found that absolutely intriguing as an investigative reporter that there were men and women who had spent their careers in this

obscure outpost of the u.s. department of justice with dropped ceilings and stained carpeting and a window that faced a mcdonald's and here they were huntingre nancy -- nazi wee criminals and they were absolutely determined to bring them to justice no matter how much time had passed. i found that really inspiring as a journalist and as a mother and his wife and as a human being. these are the people who, in part, drive this story. little bit of background.d. as you all no, poland had more jews before the war than any other country in the world, probably accept the united states. it was a thriving hub for jewish life. it was also considered a strategic stronghold for the rights because there was less farmland and a strong economy that they wanted to turn over to

ethnic german settlers so poland was a very strategic location from a very strategic area for the right but what do you do with the jews? what do you do with the jews? so they had experimented with [inaudible] that idea of bloodless efficient mass murder was very intriguing, was found to bee very interesting and intriguing to the police leader of the k lynn district, a man known as [inaudible]. so he was tasked with deciding what to do with the jews of occupied poland. well, the ss was bitty busy fighting on the soviet front and they needed manpower and he needed help to annihilate the jews of poland and so he ended up recruiting from soviet pow

camps, men who were captured soviet soldiers and they were put in soviet pow camps where they likely faced death. he recruited them and essentially taught them how to fight for the enemy. he also recruited lithuanians, latvians, polls and other recruits and he brought them to a little farming village south of warsaw known as [inaudible]. you can see from the map what is interesting about this map is that [inaudible] was an incredible location because it had rail lines that connected this village to other key points in occupied poland. and so he ultimately withdrew 5000 men to this camp and it became, in a sense, a school for mass murder. in this camp these men were

trained in nazi ideology and armed and empowered and they were taught military drills, german marching commands andy they were ultimately dispatched from thispa school for mass murr in this little farm village known as [inaudible] to the jewish ghettos of occupied poland where they liquidated the ghettos and they were not to, they participated in shooting operations throughout occupied poland and manned the killing centers in occupied poland. this included tripling the end [inaudible] and they forced you to the gas chambers in occupied poland. the men essentially became the manpower for the ss. they were the men who did the bloodiest jobs in occupied poland and the jews who survived described the men of [inaudible]

is more brutal and more vicious and more bloodthirsty than even members of the ss. these were men who essentially became the foot soldiers of the third reich and [inaudible] became their base, base camp. this is where they were armed and this is where they were trained and this is where we were issued deployment orders to go across occupied poland and help the ss annihilate the jews. these were the men who did the bloodiest jobs in occupied poland. trawniki was essentially a school for mass murder in occupied poland set up by the ss. in fact, one of these historians in the book called the men of trawniki a foot soldiers of the third reich. that is what they did. they weree often known by the jews as the men wearing black coats and black hats.

some jewish survivors called them the ukrainians because some of the men were from the ukraine or that region but there were others, many, many others, lithuanian, latvia. the ss really came up with an incredible system because these men were given wages and were given housing and given food and they were given service metals for work that was done well. they were given occasions and they were given all kinds of honors that if they died they would receive proper burials. for these men, especially men who came from soviet pow camp, serving the enemy seemed like a decent option because, in soviet pow camps, they likely faced starvation or death or some other kind of horrible death. this camp was set up in their first appointment was to the city of lou blinn which you can see on the map.

lou blinn was a historical cultural and religious center for thousands of poland in do. more than 40000 jews lived in poland in 1939 and they held leadership positions on the town council and they were leading members of the resistanceoo community and there were religious schools, there was just a thriving jewish cultural hub there in 1939. it was here in lublin that two of the main characters in my book met and they were just children and many ways, in every way, at the time. felix and lucy and you were born in lublin and they were friends and their families were friends and her father was a court interpreter before the war and her mother was a dentist. felix's father was an architect before the war andnd these two teenagers were pushed into the

lublin ghetto by the nasis along with their friends, neighborsir and every member of their extended family. 40000 jews were put into this ghetto and there was starvation, typhus, you name it, it was terrible, water shortages, food storages and for whatever or for all kinds of reasons luciana and felix were able to survive mass deportations in this ghetto. their survival story, like all the survival stories, i have heard and researching this book is absolutely astounding. it took my breath away as a writer. here they were in this ghetto in lublin and one day men in black coats and black caps surround the perimeters of the ghetto and they put on floodlights and they demand that every family come outside and in this ghetto 1500

jews a day would be deported east for resettlement in the east. and so, over a period of weeks luciana and felix and luciana was in her teens, felix was about 19 or so, everyone they knew deported. their friends, their neighbors, extended family, everyone they knew they lost but they did not know where they had gone and turns out they were taken to the killing center and gassed upon arrival. but the people who did this were men in black coats and black cap cats. the jews of lublin described them as being more vicious, more violent than the dreaded ss. they went to a jewish hospital and murdered the patients and the doctors and the nurses. they went to a jewish orphanage and they murdered the children. this was along with the staff members who refused to leave the

children behind. they went into the woods and shot jews at the edge of the ravine through mass killing and shooting operations. these men were the trawniki men who were trained at the schoolra for mass murder. this school was so important to the ss that top leadership came to visit, including himmler. the -- felix and luciana escaped. they escaped the lublin ghetto and under the cover of night took a train to warsaw because they didn't have any place to go and they slipped inside the jewish ghetto of warsaw because luciana had an uncle there. they decided at the last minute theyin needed to get out of the ghetto and so in the weeks before the uprising with the help of the polish underground felix and luciana escaped the warsaw ghetto probably saved

their lives because they escaped just before the uprising. what they didn't know at the time was that the trawniki men followed and were side-by-side with the germans to suppress the jewish uprising in the warsaw ghetto. they survived lublin, outran the men of trawniki, they survived warsaw, outran the man of trawniki and luciana and felix ended up at the end of the war in a small farming village neare kraków and they essentially were hiding in plain sight. felix became a teacher for the local children in this village, never once told anyone obviously he was a jew. at the very end of the war they heard soviet tanks rumbling towards the farm village and down on his stomach and crawled out into the woods on his hands and knees and could see the soviet tanks coming, liberation, liberation. a russian commander walked into

the building, approached felix and said who are you and felix said i'm a teacher here and the commander said okay and felix said for the first time in many, many months i'm also a jew. the commander said to him, that's not possible. all the jews are dead. you must be a spy. felix said no, no, i'm a jew. the commandernd called over a jewish soviet soldier and said you arere a jew, he is a jew, speak yiddish or hebrew to each other. felix came from a very assimilated family and lublin. did not speak much yiddish. in fact, his father brought in a rabbi to the house to teach him a little bit of his history and felix would wait till the rabbi dozed off and he would take his books, skip to the last page and when the rabbi woke up he would

say here you go, i finished my studies. so now he's faced with proving that he is a jew and what could have been a life or death moment toward the end of the war and imewhere in the back of his memory in the back of his mind he remembered the [inaudible], the holiest prayer in jewish religion and recited it to the soviet soldier in the soviet soldier said oh my god, you really are a do. he hugged felix and that is how felix and luciana were able to, that's how they survived the war. on foot theyof went home to lou lynn to see if anyone was left. before the war there were 40000 jews living in lublin and only 200 survived. this included felix and luciana. they needed to get out of lou lynn because to look luciana in particular every rock had blood on it, you know, every neighbor

was a stranger by then. they went to vienna and felix finished his medical degree, became a doctor. in 1951 they came to the united states did what didn't know until years later and what many, if not most jewish survivors did not know until years later, is that the men of trawniki followed. they slipped into the united states by lying about their whereabouts and activities during the war and they came in in large part under the displaced person act which was meant to bring in war refugees, people who were escaping from communism and jewish survivors and they move to the united states hiding in plain sight in cities and suburbs across the country so there were trawniki living in new york, in florida, in ohio and yes, even here in the chicago region.

ultimately what investigators found that the u.s. apartment of austice is that there were more than a dozen trawniki living in the united states. imagine knowing that the men, the very same and then, who persecuted and had a hand in killing everyone you ever know were here living in the united states side-by-side with holocaust victims, their descendents and war veterans who had crossed an ocean to free them, imagine that must have felt like knowing that that was the case. when the trawniki men came here many of them became naturalized citizens and they pledged to defend the constitution and they were living here with pensions with social security benefits. they went to church, they married, they had children, they were naturalized americans. they lived side-by-side with the

very same people they had and in killing. this people at the department of justice didn't really know very much about trawniki. it was known to the people in the east but not necessarily western investigators because the department of justice and western investigators did not have access to the archives in eastern europe for a long, long time. and so, some men were known were known because does everyone know john [inaudible] -- does his name ring a bell? john was a trawniki man. that is where he was trained and that was his base camp. so we knew, american investigators knew of trawniki but they did not understand its role in the murder of the jews of occupied poland. without the men of trawniki, according to historians, there

is no way the ss could have killed 1.7 million jews in fewer than 20 months. a span of two polish summers paid there is no way they could've killed that many that quickly without brute force on the front linesro of this mass murder occupation -- operation in occupied poland. this is one of the most interesting pictures i found of trawniki men standing over the bodies of the dead in the warsaw ghetto. here they are at one of the extermination centers in occupied poland. you can see one of the guys is playing a mandolin. so, perhaps the most trusted trawniki commander found living here in the united states is jacob reimer who is citizen 865, the subject of the book.

jacob reimer, every trawniki man was given like a dog tag number that followed them through the war. his ss identification number was 865. l this is what his personnel record looked like and this is his ss personal record acquired by the deferment of justice in its investigation. there is john [inaudible], perhaps a familiar face to some of you. this iss also his trawniki personnel file that was uncovered by u.s. investigators. he worked for the ford motor company. right? jacob reimer started a potato chip franchise in new york city. one trawniki man found in chicago years earlier worked for the crackerjack company. these men were living very ordinary lives and they looked like ordinary americans and again with social security cards and pensions and retirement and

jacob reimer retired to this little clapboard house on the shoreline of lake carmel in new york. he lived there essentially undetected for years and years and the push to find these men and to bring them to justice is what drives this book. that is the drama behind this book and that is the historian found in prague in 1990 with jacob reimer's name on it and his identification number. this is what led them to understand more about trawniki and more about these perpetrators. this tiny unit inside the justice department faces an incredible set of challenges. for one thing they were racing against time because witnesses were government growing older, survivors were growing older and when this unit was started by an act of congress in 1979 everyone thought they would be done with

their work and a handful of years, five years tops. surely there cannot be that many people living here on u.s. soil. their work went on for 30 years. they found concentration camp commandant living here and other men who participated in the persecution of jews and of course a subset of the people ihey were looking at where the men of trawniki. the first challenge they faced was just racing against time and to not only understand part of the history of the holocaust that was not well known in the west but also then to identify men, some of them changed their names and how do you prove what they did 70 years ago, 60 years ago? it was a greatou great challenge to the investigators and the historians and the prosecutors inside this unit in the justice department. perhaps one of the biggest challenges which was explored in

the book and a fascinating to me was the political pushback this unit faced by prominent people in the united states, men like pat buchanan repeatedly called to shutter this nazi tracking veit. what's done is done, leave them alone, you will send them back into the hands of the soviets and we can't trust the soviet justice and so pat buchanan and other prominent people, some prominent people pushed to shutter this unit four years. another challenge they face is once they found these men and they the naturalized them and they convinced an immigration judge to order them deported and removed from u.s. soil germany and austria wouldd not take them back and they would not take him back. in fact, there's a discussion recounted in the book where one of the heads of this unit said

you know, we don't -- germany said we don't want to take your garbage back kind of thing. the head of this unit said wait a minute, it's your garbage but they just moved here. but they cannot convince germany and austria to accept these men and to allow the united states to remove them you cannot force it, right? there is no way to do that. so, in 1988 a prosecutor in the special investigations, a young man named michael bernstein, decided to fly to austria to help the austrians and to convince thehe austrians to take back not the perpetrators. michael had two p young children and he lived in bethesda maryland outside of washington and he was considered, he was a storied prosecutor in this unit and he had a way of convincing

every defendant on his roster to settle a case into agree to leave this country without ever taking the guy to court and was a brilliant lawyer. austria around that time, despite resisting for years said you know what, maybe we will take some of your defendants back. austria was ready to make a deal with the state department to take back austrian born nazi perpetrators foundit living in e united states but the only thing that we needed was a signature. michael bernstein t volunteeredo go. he flew to austria just before hanukkah in december 1988 and managed to get the deal done and state till the ink was dry even though he wanted to get home to celebrate hanukkah with his children because his daughter was, i think, about seven and his son was four years old. and so, off he goes and as he's about to come home he called his wife and called his boss inside the justice department and says

i really want to get home earlier and i will switch my flights. he switched it to pan am flight 103. it was blown up by a terrorist bomb over scotland, if you remember. the bomb was wrapped in baby clothes and stuffed inside a samsonite suitcase. and so, michael bernsteinon died in the line of duty from what -t 40 years at that time or so after the holocaust. and so, it was one of the most tragic situations faced by the people in this nazi hunting unit. to this day a picture of michael bernstein sits on the desk of eli rosenbaum who ran the unit for years and years as the top prosecutor. this pushback, not only from people like pat buchanan, but from other countries was an ongoing struggle for the people of [inaudible]. so was convincing judges to the

naturalized men who looked like orordinary americans. jacob reimer, the subject of one of the historians and this is eli rosenbaum on the left and missus remember doctor black and doctor why? pgh there is doctor black who is now the world's foremost expert on the trawniki training camp and there is doctor white in the front. they still joke about the doctor black, doctor white thing but one of the hardest things for the prosecutors inside this office was to convince a judge far removed from the holocaust that men who look rather ordinary should, in fact, be stripped of their citizenship. right? jacob reimer, citizen 865, was taken to court in new york in 1998 and he was wearing high top sneakers and sweaterrs and in ft a couple of people in the courtroom said who is the

survivor and who is the nazi war criminal? it was hard to tell the difference so many years after the war. and so, fighting or convincing judges that these men should not have been here in the first place was a great challenge faced by thehe nazi hunters in this book. in jacob reimer's case they knew that he was a trusted collaborator in the training camp and he had gone to lou blend and lead a platoon of men o the very violent liquidation of the duplin ghetto where felix and lucy's families lived and then he'd gone on to help suppress the jewish uprising during the warsaw ghetto uprising. they knew all of those things but the other thing i found out about jacob reimer is under questioning he thought he could get away with his history here

and his background so he showed up in new york without a lawyer and did not think he needed one. he went to the u.s. attorney's office in new york and he met with a couple of prosecutors from this nazi hunting unit and under questioning he admitted that he had taken part in a mass shooting operation somewhere in the woods outside of trawniki where jewish men, women and children were lined up against the edge of a ravine and shot in their bodies were dumped into the ravine and the next truckload came in and on and on and on it went. witnesses of shootings like this say it was essentially blood on the bar floor when it was numbered under questioning jacob admitted to shooting at a man who was in the ravine pointing w his head almost as if he wanted to be shot and was begging for mercy and just wanted to end it. under questioning reimer

admitted to this. i will play it for you. i'll play a little bit of it n now. it will take a second to hear it. >> there is something about the man pointed to his head that you have not told me. >> yeah. >> you finished him off? >> i'm afraid so. >> when you couldn't hear was reimer's last line which is i'm afraid so. and so, off they go to court with jacob reimer on the witness stand and so now they have all the records, including the records they found in prague and they have a bunch of other documents about jacob reimer anr they have his confession and off they goo to court but again, judges resisted all the time because what they were seeing was a man who looked like

anybody else and it was very hard for this unit to convince judges to de- naturalize these men. so to tell the story i did or went to poor countries and i essentially retraced the steps of these historians in this book and that is jacob reimer by the way. as he was coming to court and his sneakers. i was able to go to the lublin ghetto, retrace the steps of felix and luciana. i was a able to go to the concentration camp in lublin were many people from lublin, jewish people, were taken to die. i actually was able to see the site of a mass shooting like the kind described by jacob reimer to u.s. investigators. and i was able to go to prague and actually find the original

nazi records found by doctor white and doctor black in 1992 and they make you put on white gloves so that the oil from your finger doesn't seep into original documents. this book took me about three years to report and write and i really came away with a new understanding of the holocaust which i had studied in college and studied growing up, talked to my grandparents and i thought i knew a lot about the holocaust but a couple of things really struck me. the first is how many people it takes to kill so many so quickly and how many collaborators and took, people on the ground, people who are not part of the hezi party, not members of the ss, people who probably got away with it, many, many, many thousands of people. the syndicated columnist george will covered the jacob reimer hearing in new york in 1992 and

he actually called them cogs in a wheel, just how many people it takes to kill. i never really thought about that and as much as i did in writing this book. i was also really, really intrigued by how easy it was to indoctrinate the enemy in the trawniki training camp how easy it was to turn people around and make them loyal foot soldiers. you know, some trawniki men deserve it and they deserted the unit. better than to to die as a good person than to live as a killer. right? but take a primer and many others stayed on and in fact, jacob reimer was given paid vacations and was allowed to go visit his family in ukraine or the area of soviet ukraine unescorted and returned and he returnedur back to the trawniki training camp to continue on

withe his service to the ss. he was so loyal that he received citizenship in nazi germany in 1944, the end of the war and he would then retire or move into nazi germany and live there as a decorated war hero. i was really fascinated by the idea of choice and byna who stad in who left and how easy it was to convince the enemy to fight and to fight for you. i was also really fascinated by the germany austria resistance and the last known trawniki man ordered deported from the united states was just deported in 2018. last year. the guy had lived in queens, new york for 50 years on this little middle-class neighborhood that i visited in queens, new york, retired there, trying to pension, whatever, drawing

social security and he had been ordered, removed from the united states 14 years agoed u. but the department of justice and the state department could not find the country willing to take him back. they had all refused, austria, germany refused which allowed this trawniki man to essentially nlive in the united states and e was stateless but was here and this people in the unit desperately wanted to move them because they did not want to allow him to die in peace on american soil and in 2018 after 14 years of pressing foreign governments to take this man backgn they finally convinced germany to take this man back and he was loan back to germany where he died a few months later at the age of 95. and so, i asked the people inside the justice department,

you know, is this revenge because that comes up a lot? is this revenge. fa this retribution? what is this? the response really fascinated me. they responded that these men mwere never supposed to be here in the first place. they were not supposed to get a visa and they were not supposed to be admitted into the united states so we are taking back what theyha should not have hado begin with. they should not have been allowed to live here. they are doing it because that is what the law and that is the american, that is our law and they are doing it because or on behalf of the holocaust survivors that they were living side-by-side with four years in the united states and on behalf of the war veterans who had crossed an ocean to help free them and they are doing it on behalf of the defendants -- descendents of holocaust survivors here.

why should these men be allowed to die in peace? the people inside the justice department don't consider it revenge, they consider it justice. and that even delayed justice is better than no justice at all. and that it is perhaps more important now than ever to show the rest of the world that this kind of that war criminals have no place living on u.s. soil and every time the people inside the justice department were questioned why are you going after these guys and it's been years and leave them alone, they are little old men. barry white would say, if years later we found one of the terrorists who blew up pan am 103, would be say well, you know, 30 years have passed. let's let him go. of course we wouldn't. why should it be any different

for perpetrators of war crimes in the holocaust?oc why should it be any different? and so, they really were doing this in the name of justice and they did it most successfully. the justice department were able to prosecute more of these men from 1990 on than any other country in the world. this included germany. to this day they continue to do their work although the unit has expanded now to include war criminals from otherer parts of the world, guatemala and bosnia and other war-torn countries. unfortunately they are still as busy as ever, as busy as ever doing their work. for me as a writer i was really moved and inspired by the men and women doing this work as an investigative reporter, i've spent seven years writing about government corruption and mismanagement and they worked in miami and washington and you can imagine i'm never short on stories.

but this was a different kind of story and this was a story that even though it was about darkness and dark moments i really felt the story it was about light. i really found that the men and women in this book were inspiring the story of luciana and felix. i remember sitting at my desk night after night listening to their accounts and just, i was so moved by the will to survive and what they went through and in fact, luciana would go to her synagogue and look at her whole family filling a pew in a synagogue and say look what i have produced. where oncee there was nothing, look what i produced. i'm so honored to let you know that their family is here today. when you stand up, the family of felix and luciana? [applause]

that is why i say it's a story about darkness but also about light. i hope you will have a chance to read the book. thank you for having me here and i'm happy to answer questions. >> hello, the german nazi files that were kept in use at austria, prague, why were they not destroyed? why did they keep them at all? >> that is a question i get every book talk i gift.

they did destroy a lot of records obviously and they destroyed a lot of records. the trawniki training camp was considered almost mundane in terms of in their eyes.nd it was a training camp. and so a lot -- as the soviets were coming in to poland and the men of trawniki in their leader carl [inaudible] escaped in one of the places they went to was prague. they likely took a lot of the records with them and they were stashed in prague. but the ss did not necessarily destroy them because it was considered a rather mundane operation and a training camp. it wasn't high, high levels. >> hello, did these people [inaudible] [inaudible question] these people were not part of that group. >> that's right. these were collaborators and they were not germans but there

were a number of ethnic germans but jacob reimer had been born under or in ukraine and what we now know as ukraine, his family had migrated their years and years earlier so even though he was ethnic german he wasn't part of germany. he was -- there were 5000 men but they were recruits and collaborators but they were not part of the ss they were not part of the naughty party. >> i forgot the name of the outfit but i would assume you read the nazi next door and in this case [inaudible] we let them in willingly and how do we [inaudible] >> i did read that book. in fact, i'm doing a talk in

miami with the writer of that book next week. [inaudible] is the writer but he wrote about operation paperclip which was the fact that the cia left in certain nazi and because that have been extensively written about before i did not focus on mats. other books have been written about nazi hunting, other very good books. i focused on the men of trawniki because nothing had ever been written to this extent about that training camp and i was fascinated with the idea that they could recruit an army of 5000 men to do the dirtiest jobs in poland but yes, the cia, as we all no, did let men in but because that had been covered before in written about i went a different way. >> hello, great talk so far but i look forward to eyeing -- buying your book for sure.

thank you for taking a picture with me before this. i was wondering, it would seem, i have read accounts of the hunt for the remnants of nazi war criminals and other books such as hitler's series by wendy [inaudible] and it seems like many of these hunts were ineffectual and the judges weren't interested. do you think that the u.s. missed any chances by not, i mean, was that the law did not permit them to prosecute any of these criminals? do you think justice was necessarily served by merely deporting them and do you think their home country had an interest in prosecuting them or do you think this was, in many cases, another way for them to

die where maybe they would have wanted to live anyway if there wasn't't probably backlash after the war? >> good question. thank you for asking it. so, the people inside the justice department obviously would have liked -- war crimes trial would've made sense, right? but the people inside the justice department didng everything that was within their power to do and everything the constitution allowed them to do. they cannot try people for war crimes on u.s. soil because the crimes were not committed here. right? the constitution did not allow that. it would've taken a long, long time and great political will to change the law and they did not have the time. they were racing against time. people were growing older, witnesses, defendants, suspects. they did everything they could in civil court and they took these men and convinced judges to do naturalize them to strip

them of u.s. citizenship which they should not have had in the first place. then they would take them to immigration court and convince an immigration judge to order them deported in this process took years. i mean, years to build these cases and pull everything together, waiting on judgments and even then, even when they had done all of that they cannot often remove them in a number of them were able to die on u.s. no country would accept them. all of that being said, i think the people inside this unit would tell you they did everything they could and to great success to at least hold these men accountable. they did everything they could under our law and under the law. yet, for the historians it wasn't just a matter of tracking these men but also a matter of correcting the record of history

and especially in the cases of trawniki. awe storys -- historians new trawniki existed but did not understand the role in the murder and destruction of the jews occupied poland but they did not understand just how it worked and so they were able to correct the record of history and find these men and hold them accountable as best they could. >> are they still prosecuting ikown either turn one men or other nazi refugee, former nazi or whatever, known in this country? how many do they think they are still in this country? >> rate question and i wish they would tell me that but don't tell us that. especially journalists until these cases are made public. i suspect there might be a couple of cases coming up but i have no -- it's just a gut

instinct on my part. as i said, the nazi hunting unit which is called the office of special investigation has become part of a bigger unit inside the justice department not with the broader mission to look for war criminals from other parts of the world. but we will see if there is another one. the case in 2018 they had been working on for years and suddenly after 14 years overnight that trawniki men set back to germany. ninety-five years old. >> thank you. i was wondering this all time why they have not been tried as war criminals when you answered that however, in my mind i am thinking of israel and how they were able to try these people and they were sent to israel and they were tried there or why did that happen in these cases? >> that's the second question i get every book talk. i'm glad you asked it pretty i remember my mother said the same

thing, where was israel? i don't think israel had great interest in taking back these men. they were not necessarily israeli witnesses and they did take back john [inaudible] what does everyone the story of john [inaudible]? the trawniki man? he was accused of being a man named ivan the terrible. there's a series on television about it now but he's accused of being ivan the terrible of the trawniki death camps, vicious man and he was found guilty in israel israel did take him back. found guilty in israel in the case unraveled and john was a trawniki man and did serve in a death camp just not the trip linke death camp but another one in occupied poland. they knew this and declined to prosecute. john was allowed to come back into the united states, returned

to his life here even though he had served in the death camps until the not the hunting unit decided to prosecute him a second time which was a huge hurdle in the head of the nasi -- nazi hunting unit had to go to janet reno, attorney general at the time and ask for permission to take this case against him back to court a second time. they successfully prosecuted him a second time in germany took him back and he was convicted in the murder of 27000 or so jews in the sill the borg death camp but to answer your question, israel did take him back. not a lot of interest from israel over the years to take back more. there just wasn't.th >> when their citizenship was taken away from them how could they live? where they entitled to get social security to get medicare

and how could they support themselves and take care of themselves? >> they were stripped of their citizenship and eventually here are considered men but they were still here and were still part of this country and still living here and still pay mortgages and still drawing pensions and all of those things. >> all of that continued? >> yeah. >> as if nothing happened.as >> yeah, and that is why the single greatest frustration base by this nasty hunting unit for years is that they did all this work, prove their cases to the point where judges and in some cases cases were appealed to appellate courts t up to the u.. supreme court so court after court would affirm these wdecisions and yes, this man ia nazi war criminal and yet they cannot remove them from u.s. soil in some cases but in otherf cases they did but in a number

of cases they struggled to the point where the menhe were ableo die here. [inaudible question] >> had there been any studies about into the personalities of these men, into the backgrounds of these men because you described them as being brutal beyond brutal. ut... the fx. so can you -- >> that's a generalization but these men, a lot of them came from eastern european countries and from semitism. for generations before the war. they have been ingrained in their societies. so yes, a lot of them were more brutal than the ss and the jews that occupied poland and a large part came to fear them more than the ss. they were far greater in number,

the s ss had a killing center bt they were booths on the ground, not forced jews from the transit directly into the gas chambers. i always mispronounce those because i can't do the polish thing, they were not confident tracing camps they were death camps. they did not have barracks because jews did not stay live there. they were taken right from the trains into the gas chambers because the men were doing that work. so jacob reimer said in court he was a victim of the nasis. like so many others that said that, right? he had to fire the man and the ravines if you did not show loyalty to the ss he would buy

the next one shot. it's what the department of justice argued in that case was said yes but you got for service metals, you are granted citizenship and not to germany because you did so well, you received paid vacations and came on in your own accord and continued fighting alongside the ss. you could have deserted but you did not. and that was their case, why did you do it? some men deserted they did not come back. reimer and others stayed on and they served with great loyalty. i think they did by and large it was not a huge number that deserted. a lot of the men, after the war came from the soviet unions, they were tried by the

soviets after the war. and convicted by the soviets of fighting for the enemy. we just didn't know that because we were not talking to the soviets about these things. it took years and years for american investigators to realize the soviets themselves had prosecuted these men. when we were able to get our hands on those records that help build cases here in the united states. >> i forgot the name of the american not see unit i know it's been around for a long time so people have come and gone. did any one time do you know how many people were in this office of special investigations? >> guest: yes for the work they did it was tiny. maybe 40 or 50 or people or so. they started osi with investigators, more like criminal investigators, the gun and badge men who worked inside the federal government and ultimately they started

using historians because they rrealize they desperately needed that kind of context. but for many, many years, we did not do a lot of hunting in the united states it took untilth the 70s for us to do this kind of work. debbie, thank you for your work how do we learn from history here? how do we have generations allow mass murderers only have their citizenship stripped? we've got to figure something out there has to be justice in the world beyond what there is. >> guest: that is a very profound question that i think we i could all talk about for hours. i think the first step is to show that we draw a line and that no matter how many years have passed in this country, you will be stripped of your citizenship if we find you are

a war criminal. so the people in the office of special investigations, especially the lawyers, they spent their whole careers here. they could have gone onto much more lucrative careers.tl it's not exactly fun to be a federal government servants. right? you live rosenbaum, has a law degree from harvard. these are top, top, top lawyers who spent their whole lives working in the government offices prayed they had mice crawling across the floor, these were not high-profile prosecutors that were makingg headlines in the "new york times" and "washington post". they did this work because they felt it was the right thing to do. there has to be a line, no matter how many years have passed, we will come after you if we find out that you've done something wrong, no matter how many years have passed. but i don't know how to present in the future. one of the more depressing thoughts to me is that this unit is still just as busy as

ever. >> one more question, i was struck by -- i've listened to twice now, i was struck by your comments of having going back to poland how it took a country to bring down jews a country. it took the people of poland. >> guest: i am sure many of you have been to poland, i can imagine many, many people been to poland. it was my first visit to poland and i found it to be very wounded country. it was occupied by the germans and then by the soviets. there were a lot of people in poland, the polish underground that helped save jews. including felix who i told you about. there were a lot of people who helped and a lot of people who collaborated. it is a really wounded country. >> guest: maybe i could shed some light on how some of

these war criminals and these characters can enter this country. i am a survivor and liberated i was and also which. after i was liberated i was 15 years old and i was dumped into a displaced person camp. in this displaced person camp not only had people who were jewish but come together with all kinds of other people who never had a country to go to or so they declared. it took a while for the commander of the occupied forces of america to finally come to grips and separate me through displaced persons from the ones who o try to hide and, i remember before i was allowed to come to america, it took me three or four years of venting by the cic carefully. i had papers and i had to get affidavits from the americans

for my relatives here before i was allowed to come to america. and then i'm sure. [inaudible] >> he was saying that in a displaced persons camp he was invented very carefully, you are saying this probably a lot of people that participated khat managed within. in jacob reimer's case, it was citizen 865 that is is ss issued id number. he was vetted by the military, the u.s. army. he actually listed on his immigration papers that he had served in this training camp. but we did not know what it was at the time. the u.s. army investigators had no idea that it was a

school for mass murderers in occupied poland's. in fact, jacob reimer was given a recommendation by red cross supervisor at the time. he had spent the postwar years in munich chauffeuring american gis to hollywood movies at night. he actually worked for the u.s. army. and so he came in with this red cross supervisor recommendation that called him something like a loyal, honest, hard-working man who would make a great american great u.s. citizen. so to your point, you are right. they just did not know enough to let them in despite that kind of bedding. he was vetted. and then here when he was in the united states and the u.s. investigators caught onto him, he said yeah, i was there but i was just a pay master in the camp administration. no blood on my hands, very mundane work. and the u.s. department of justice did not know any

better until they started investigating and figured out what that camp actually was. >> you set our state department was reticent about getting involved. what is your perspective on that? what did you learn? >> guest: the justice department could notti necessarily through official channels go to other countries and say take your nazi back. they were relying on the state department to do that that was the state department's job. though i don't have an opinion on this i think the people inside the justice department might say that some years the state department pushed harder than others. but i will say from my eeporting, that last year in 2018 the state department and the justice department came together to deport this nazi war criminal and queens, new

york. but for a long time i think the department of justice would tell you they could not get as much traction as they would've wanted to get with the state department. >> we hear the gentleman over here who is a survivor and had to wait all of these years before he could get out and come here. he said our government allowed people to come here. the truth of the matter is our governmenter recruited nazi to come here, knowing there nazi passed to help in the cold war. some were scientists and other things and they not only allowed them, but they brought them here knowing what they had done and that is horrific and something that is unthinkable. >> guest: for those of you who did not hear this woman was talking about the fact that

the u.s. government, cia had recruited not see scientists to come here after the war. that is incredibly outrageous. i hear what you are saying. this book is focused on a totally different thing than that. but i understand your point. >> host: ladies and gentlemen i know we can stay here the rest of the day asking debbie questions. but take some of your questions will be answered in her book. and i do want to thank you for being with us here today to join me onceng again for thinking debbie for being here. [applause] debbie would be happy to continue the conversation outside at the table. the museum remains open until 5:00 p.m. so please take time to take advantage of see some of our many exhibits. >> the senate today approved and nearly 500 billion-dollar

fusion funding for coronavirus economic relief it's earmarked for small businesses, hospitals and further covert testing. the house majority leaders said members are poised to return to washington to vote on the member this week. watch it live on cspan2 you can watch the house on c-span. ♪ ♪ "washington journal", prime time a special evening edition of the "washington journal" on the federal response to the coronavirus pandemic. our guests are former senators for disease control and prevention director tom frieden is now the president and ceo of the group resolved to save lives. he joins us to discuss government and private efforts to combat the pandemic and beth broward of john hopkins university will be on to talk about her team built the universities coronavirus data dashboard and map which is help visualize and track data from the spread of the virus.

join the conversation, tonight at 8:00 p.m. eastern on c-span. ♪ ♪ >> sunday night on q&a wall street trader turn photo journalist on his book dignity, about the plight of those living on the margins of society in america. >> is a sunday morning or saturday it was empty because all of the semi's were gone who's in the industrial part at one point. the intelligence just came right through. we spoke for about an hour, half an hour so. she told me her life is like a cliché of everything wrong that can happen to somebody. eventually, i asked her what i asked everyone a photograph which was what is one

sentence -- how jointly to describe you give me one sentence. she shot back i am what i am a prostitute, a mother six and a child of god. civic sunday night it ate on c-span's q&a. smack right now we are joined by author alton romero he is self published a book called revolution, how the castro slide, cheated, and murdered their way into power. before we get into this book what you do for living? are you an author? >> guest: know this is my first book. i've written screenplays before meant actor and standup comedian that's what i been doing for many, many years. this story is a passion of mine. it's inspired by my family, by members of my family. i wrote it as a screenplay first as a matter fact, and i had the option to do i a