telling the story the polish jewish refugees that escaped the nazis and settled in iran. >> we have a lot of things in common.

and this is a lovely opportunity for us and i knew nothing about and i thought i knew just about everything. but also an explanation into the unexplored side of this incredible history. and so much of that time of those refugees and then in the beginning of the book. >> thank you so much. thank you for inviting me.

so cheryl said it's not what i expected. i think it's not what people expect is i tried to tell a very intimate history of the daughter and father of just my life and relationship with other people as well as scholarly footnotes were everything is researched very carefully and begins with an intimate introduction and this is and introduction about my life. so i will just jump in and then we can talk some more. >> my parents, siblings and maternal grandmother were at home.

we used to call the woman with wrinkly skin and sharp blue eyes like my father's, my father had been separated for him his mother during the war and then years later lived with him then with my mother and him and then with all of us. as long as i could remember until her death in 1881 she lived in the little room off the kitchen in our quiet apartment. we did not speak much to her and she spoke little in general spending most of the days in her room or listening to the radio. my mother who cooks and cleans for her and washed her close resented her. my father who would lash out at my mother and sometimes treated her always with kindness. at times she would spend all day and not venture out until he came home i remember fights

between my father and mother nothing except that deep delicate harmony there were always two camps. when i was six or seven it had just learned to write i composed a letter i asked why he loved his mother more than us. when he found the letter he was furious that he never would have dared write such a letter to his father i remember the guilt and the shame i wish i could take those words back. he did not speak a word to me for a long time after that the lifetime the shared moments many of them happy follow but we were never completely at ease together again. and with this formative moment in my life that i later tried

to explore many decades later. >> my mother survived the war with her mother and she lived with me. and my mother and her mother that it were these relationships that were untenable. so asking why he loved his mother more but i think that the war and what they had gone through had to find what they were but we did not know because they never talked about it. >> that's right. >> so tell me how this book actually started. is not the father and how did

they work for the book? >> my publisher said what if you do, you cannot call it a memoir. it's fiction historical books so the title of my father that was out. but the book began i live in israel, not sure if i was going into the army, law school i did the internship and then i came here for a vacation. that was 1993. and then the way people end up in new york and i really

wasn't thinking about this for a long time but then i teach at city college and had a party there and they said what about jewish children of refugees? i said yes if you remember 2007 when they were in power and accused of holocaust denial and with complicit with the nazis during the war that said no you are not complicit and then to say that's my father and he said how did he get there? i said i have no idea. so that is how it started.

the dead on a deeper level, because you write about these issues about the war and the legacy something that is in the back of one's mind that i go through and explore it. >> your father died relatively young so he's not here to talk about it did you ever talk about his experience during the war or the grandmother? >> nothing. zero. >> i knew three things. i do know there was a town in poland. i knew he came with these children from palestine. but to me he was not a survivor and that's one of the issues of this book is that no polish to survive in the soviet union and soviet union

in the middle east but they are not considered survivors typically speaking. we never went to commemorations and there was a declaration an agreement so he didn't speak about it the only thing that happened is he died from degenerative brain disease that mad cow disease actually found out later was probably related to what he age but on his deathbed he started talking polish and was calling his mother's sister in polish and that's the first time i ever heard him speak polish. here and there i would speak a little bit of yiddish to his

mother. >> one thing i did not know about with the polish jews who went to the soviet union were deprived conditions but i didn't know the cancer polish and polish people can you describe the journey that you went on to discover your father? >> yes. and then i have this big map and then you say oh my god. and then in poland across half the world. >> then to be there for a

while and then to be assimilated somewhat and then they had a choice and they left some money but at the beginning of the war that was rational but what happened so you could briefly describe what happened and how they wound up in the soviet union. >> so 1939 poland gets divided between soviets and germans. those people including my family flee from the german side to the soviet side so the beginning of the forties one.5 million polish jews in about a million and a half and up on the soviet side and then they fell with the soviet

occupation and then one third get deported through labor camps or labor settlements not exactly a gulags but they are penitentiaries that you don't go through soviet reeducation you just work. and the soviets were needing laborers so they were supportive. so then they end up to the north but year and a half later, they are released by amnesty and we can talk about that but basically giving it to their citizens. and to all the stands like turkmenistan and as pakistan

and some of them the polish jews and that is to be evacuated to iran and palestine, lebanon, syria, palestine, lebanon, syria, and then they evacuated through palestine. and then founded the israelis. >> and with your investigations. >> not at all i only knew the last leg, the leg in which they came from iran to israel.

but didn't think of them living in tehran are those places. and with those refugees and then going from point a to point b. it wasn't like that. it was arbitrary. so they stay wherever they can. they stayed in iran. people were released from siberia and the amnesty and then they said okay. so no,. >> and then i keep fixing this because it keeps falling. >> what is the horror of the deportation?

and the conditions were atrocious. and then the division between the catholic polls and the polish jews. and that the tensions between poland and polish nationalism in the jews that were patriotic in the polish army , who has a treatment that we belong to. >> so the story is so these are the unknowns in washington.

but they haven't collected it in the sense of auschwitz and we know why it happens and we know what they went through. so we had to piece this togethe together. because we are talking about working as the archaeologist so of communist indonesia and ideology. so this is a political story. not just of what happened but of how hard it is to discover what has happened. and the polls, especially now

tell a very different story so yes, this is a story that is very politically motivated. and then to have christian and jewish polls in the soviet labor camp together because they share a language with the ukrainians and the soviets and now the polish nationalism is very strong. and then the jews have all of this as they start educating these children. and then to speak to nationalism.

>> how does the work on that influence? >> i didn't know this but but then it was in part it with these communities and in the beginning and that formed in the book and then something happene happened. >> and research and the holocaust and the person that mediates with the traumatic

past and after that initial meeting he was very interested. i will not write a book about my father. >> and then he was expelled after the revolution. >> that's right and what it meant to be expelled from your homeland. >> so he was a child refugees separated from his parents so that was a parallel. i was very happy to hear the story as a writer and then thought maybe we word work on this together but it couldn't be any worse and then that does not go so well. but then you work on your own history and then to become more possessive.

so the parallels fall it's not exactly a parallel it is an exile but as horrible as the history was to be a child refugee in los angeles or use pakistan were there is no food. zero. nothing. and also that is the number of people working with somebody. and those areas of research and then to talk to you. so we could not even go as the independent researcher.

and i had this research assistant working on the side with the presbyterian minister who was in danger for helping m me. 's all these people have their own history and forays and he will hate me but not as the iranian nationalist or how to put it much more connected to the identity and critical than he was when we started out. and with that russia and oligarch that is great because otherwise with somebody powerful helping you.

so sometimes we word have a geopolitical disagreement of the position of the past and the present and we have relationship still. a very complicated relationship. that currently the deputy minister of culture on the polish government. she was just a historian but my ignorance was the best thing that i had. and then to realize that catholic nationalist and then we are still in touch and it's a complicated relationship and we are a great friends. i don't think so i don't think they would support that. [laughter]

so the friction around these political questions. >> how big is the book? >> but my polish friend has not read the book and played a big part in it. you saw my twitter but i am besieged by polish nationalist that are having very aggressive tweets and then the new york times ordered a review one week ago and i just started to get it immediately at 9:00 a.m. that day. i wrote her and told her i will send you are book i will don't think you'll like some parts of it you will see that i care for you and i appreciate your healt health. we will see what she says.

>> because the pitcher you are painting in the book is very complex it is good and terrible so to see these gulags concentration camps is very different. but there is strife everywhere even when your father comes to israel between the people that are born in the refugees and there is always a religion of history. so tell me what happened with the government position with

the holocaust in the war to change everything. >> it basically said it's illegal to write anything about the polls doing any kind of damage and don't be prejudiced against the jews. which is unbelievable and then that's out it seems to be that we talk about but it's not that complicated but all of the survivors are dying. so according to the politics then you get caught up in the middle of it. >> it took a long time, after a while, i really shed as much as i could. i started out so the first reaction was when the children

were in iran, yes. of course it was complete the basically taken over by israel to make it sound like a story but then i would is revising myself this woman reached out to me it wasn't even a place. i didn't know anything about it i didn't care. and then i found out my family were there for a generations so it's one generation and now i am here. her family hailed from my father's hometown and said this is our hometown. this is where your father and my father went to school together.

i was brought into the narrative a little bit. and maybe actually it is more complicated. but again by this action there is a very physical story with the jewish polls with the 1930s during the war. i don't know if i got to the truth but i tried to represent in a as complex and truthful way possible. so i really talk a lot about the suffering of christian polls. and i just wrote one twitter message. read the book first. jews don't care they are polish suffering.

so my books talk about these issues and whatever horrible things i document and have a footnote. >> i knew nothing about the political ping-pong that was playing between germany and russia at the end of the war. >> and they were playing games with these territories to remove citizenship and then caught in the middle. and then those that have rewritten the history of the people according to their own needs. >> and then you have life itsel itself. then you are a jewish chil

child, then you will become but there was no other option to them. but then they grow up and my father was a socialist who grew up in this extremely blew joao home and that there was no relationship. [laughter] so they word work and milk the cows, and be secular even though they grew up in a very religious homes.

and through that identity. and then to find that place as well. and thinking with my father to use pakistan. and then interviewed her.

and identify as a jew on community so how word you summarize? she said it is a good life. it started off very badly. i met a nice man. so that is her identity. she is a polish girl born in a town just like my father. >> that you were raised with around israel and a lot of denial that through the seventies and eighties they didn't have yiddish libraries are people from speaking the language so then you had to take the israeli name of your father is in the air force so she kept it until they told him he needed to change it. but then you can't look back. so then you are in that environment you are strong and then they are searching for this book. >> this is been a decade-lo t the the ghost like toni morrison's mother of dead aunts and uncles and nobody mentioned those people at all. and with that a little bit. and then to study but then they are ready to do this stuff. >> where it is the most surprising things you encountered? >> there is a lot of surprising things even that there are eight generations in this town and i discovered a lot of things and some ways to be the very that one - - a pneumatic person. and then to get the key to

understanding that example from mushroom hunting. now we don't have any mushrooms but sometimes in the winter. and then to be happiest when you are doing that? and then every saturday in poland? but then on the larger level i set out to write a memoir of a man and end up writing a book about polish survivors. and those who survived the war. so we ended up writing this big big book with a big impact.

and that also they were the majority of survivors. and 10 percent survived. 350,000 survived. out of these 250,000 from the soviet union in central asia so those refugees really hasn't been told or explored. >> and that they had a place to go to. >> and the jews had nobody to count on. and the polls at the beginning but ultimately the people that save them are jews.

>> and certainly leftist but there are a lot of moving stories including iran and individuals who intervened but on a larger level, jews help jews and american jews who tried to negotiate with a different governments and the refugees to palestine, to get

from the jews to palestine, they want to cross the border into the soviet union and help those that were stranded into central asia. they would die. they would be shot. so yes, i don't know if we have to have is real but, ultimately this is the story of jesus helping jews. >> like when your father goes to the garbage at night. all from the time of his absolute starvation it was horrifying. and then all the refugees, the nationalism we have more than enough. so it is heartbreaking. >> it is horrible. especially when it comes to children. talk about children separated from their parents with everything that they went to

and they were taken out without their parents and only children were allowed to be evacuated. and separated from their parents and then the father ended up dying they didn't see their mother until 49 and were separated for seven years. i ended up thinking that separation was the biggest trauma bigger than anything because partly because they were saved but they left the parents inside the war. and then to say that the parents are still so starving and dying? so the fact the stories of

them importing food and then they would save it in their pockets to realize they were not hoarding food for themselves they were hoarding it for the parents and saving food for their parents it comes up and memoirs so to say that we are just inflicting this and there is a reason to do it.

and then they made the decision to let the kids go and that was a decision and then that guilt that your father had about having a new life. so they remain in the camps and then the repatriation agreement but then they go back to poland the grandparents and that is when my grandfather died. and then to decide there are all kinds of stories. but really and that was the labor front of the soviet army. if they have to die than they would sell 100 percent of the food was confiscated not 99 but 100 percent. the locals find ways to hide food and also there were conditions of extreme malnutrition so people wanted to get out of the soviet union but in some cases they said whatever our phages will be our children's fate. in some cases the children ran off they were sobb and t many bt the end it is like a mystery novel with this army intelligence and so then they answer that question why do you love the grandmother more than me? so where is home for you? >> so in some ways but in new york since 93 i have to say i spend more time in israel then currently my love affair with new york has gone away.

and how hard it is to live here but intellectually this is my home for sure. i probably could not have written the book in hebrew i had to have the distance and the his other people to help me with this. but maybe my heart is in israel. >> will the book be published in poland? >> let's see. [laughter] that must get published because of the survivors and the families are there.

but just a few days ago people were there but i think eventually to be published in israel the whole thing of poland and germany we will see, and those books because those published polish on - - posters but we will see. i hope so. that is the answer. >> does anybody want to ask any questions?

>> [inaudible] [inaudible] >> that's a great question. so i couldn't really travel to iran. but a number of times i was researching so many but it is can go to the archive. we do have bits and pieces we actually found that the jewish and non-jewish and remained in

iran and one of them had a archive of these refugees. i was able to meet the son of the man who was in charge of the refugees. i have memoirs, and one then

they will be wonderful like a persian synagogue and what happens to his children. it does feel, i wish i could travel there, i think it would make a big difference, but i think it was able to know quite a lot. and basically with those who came to iran to help track the refugees. they lost things a lot of lot of records. and then they could rebuild

the did your mom help you? [laughter] >> no. it was a difficult relationship. my mom was born and palestine in 1938. she didn't know anything. they were very mismatched in a way. so even now she read the book and she is shocked but of course i had no idea. >> thank you all for coming and lead playing yes but thank you again for showing up. >> follow me on twitter and facebook. t.

see all the book tv and c-span products available. >> good afternoon. i am the director of the boston institute for international public affairs and i am so delighted to be here today to