>> welcome to this live broadcast one of our speakers has had trouble with his computer. so we are doing a little improvisation and work around and have him just on audio. we will see how that goes. and then let us know in the chat box if it is working for you. hello to all of you. so happy to see there are so many of you. i am one of the owners of

labyrinth books. i want to start by thinking david and david to switch to this for all of us. and in partnership with a very good friend at the public library. and with that moment but there are so many books that can serve as an anecdote and certainly with one of those anecdotes it's in the spirit that we are sharing the next 25 minutes tonight. and then to introduce our speakers and i just want to

say quickly and then to be available and with the local bookstore. and then to find a way through to the other side of the crisis. if you do want to buy this book it will ship for free. and then to honor that. that's an easy way to get through the book. >> with the logistics to ask the question and then go to the ask a question button.

but then if you see that question and with that cumulative interest and then focus on that a little bit so now let's turn to what critics are saying the definitive account to the not see doctor and war criminal. and the detective story and uniquely prepared to tell the story as a historian and director of the jewish heritage museum.

and then also worked with the office of special investigations and then to identify and then to interview david is david goldman. watching on audio. they have a deeply shared interest in the past with not the same atrocities. and as a distinguished lawyer

and with this study of professional ethics. this is a very special nonprofit organization and graduate students have been brought together and auschwitz to examine moral and ethical issues that arise and that fundamental premise and then to break down. for the first principle and insight so david and david take it from here. >> i hope people can hear me.

i know makes it impossible to see me although i did have a tuxedo. [laughter] you have a radio face, david. >> thank you. david and i have known each other for many years. but the problem with that is we finish each other's sentences. so one note of warning that if david answers a question i have not yet asked or i may skip asking a question i have in mind i've already heard him answer. the q&a session will be important. and by way of preface by the perpetrators. and with that programmer we begin by studying the perpetrators of nazi germany.

and so then to be focused on josef mengele's perpetrator and who he was. i would just like to start asking who he was. and then to merely say he was born on his head and evil incarnate but that's not what the book is saying. i would like to learn a little bit more about him. what kind of child was he what was he is a kid? and to have tremendously good sources.

josef mengele wrote an autobiography with his family written in the sixties and to the extent it was finished in the seventies. and wrote it as a novel and fiction believing if you are free from the rigorous telling of facts that is more

illustrative and important as a means of teaching important lessons. and then to spend 100 pages. that says how important he thought he was. and then the murder that josef mengele was to become nothing about his childhood that fulfills the notion as an incubator and that future and then to murder the pets in the backyard and to grow up in a prosperous loving family with household help for those who cared for him and the two younger brothers. and that suggest to the politics. >> what kind of student was he? >> he went to academics in germany and with the's report cards. part of that was because

having a serious illness as a child but not until he got to the university when he became a passionate student and his passion was devoted to science and medicine and anthropology and had the elite education to study and then frankfurt and also with a phd in anthropology. for those who would become in the future and was considered an extremely able student and

he writes in his autobiography of the impact of his teachers on him and passionate about how he was moved to not only the skill but the devotion and to give a hint to politics? >> and the university career coincide almost precisely of the not the party and the ascension to power. and in the summer semester of 1930 came from a home that was conservative, catholic and an

element of anti-semitism. and on the course that he eventually took. >> what was he studying medicine he was focused on? >> it's important to remember that josef mengele interest in medicine racial high aging in the anthropology came at a time and with that meaning for the state. hitler believed that is important to carry out his worldview and that national socialism was biology enacted. and the fact and they began to

study the scientists. that they have a symbiotic relationship with the state and with that support for the nazi worldview and it also benefited from what science benefits from, funding, the elevation of status and the fact that josef mengele became a physician. >> was at rogue science or road medicine? >> now. the science was mainstream. and not unconventional but

certainly the product and the promise and then did to dissertations. and with that in heritability of the cleft palate which led to support with those sterilization laws that meant people who had cleft pallets where subject to for sterilization. as a extremely famous anthropologist and his medical

dissertation for sure was the head of the racial hygiene institute at the university of frankfurt and then in berlin. and a promising young scientist on the cutting edge of german science and had a wonderful academic career. >> i wanted to get to the war in a minute but and married? children? he married her right before the beginning of the war. they had no real married life together since the war came. and had other things to do. he had one son when he was born. march 16, 1943.

>> do we know anything about his fate? - - his faith? >> the mother was a devout catholic. he writes about that in his memoir. he chose to have a church wedding which was unusual for the ss officer. out of respect for his mother and nostalgic sense of belonging. although it had an impact and writes about it when his mother dies and reflects on that with the catholic upbringing. >> i will jump around a little bit thank you for that background. when did josef mengele become a part of your life?

>> with the department of justice in washington as a historian for the office of special investigations. in the normal work of the office investigating and prosecuting that was also responsible is responsible for special projects and working for us intelligence and that was true and published in the summer 1983. in 1985 to complicated to go into this conversation he was the subject of intense public interest in the attorney general asked my office to investigate certain allegations that josef mengele was interned and then used by the americans so we were asked

to investigate those allegations and that became the international manhunt and the another martial service and the german prosecutor with the justice ministry and them aside. >> so josef mengele, how did he get out of germany? how did that happen? >> he left auschwitz 1945 and assigned to another camp and by may when that camp had been liberated by the soviets, he found making his way back to germany and came upon a field

hospital in the area in czechoslovakia. and it just so happens one of the people in the field hospital in frankfurt and asked if he could take off the ss uniform that marked him immediately of someone of intense interest and donned a uniform. and his unit is in an area between the advancing red army of southeastern germany and

czechoslovakia. and it was unoccupied for about six weeks from the beginning of may and the middle of june because the front lines of the red army in the east and west had frozen. josef mengele had a chance to join the unit and build a convincing cover story no longer clad in the us is uniform and still decided wisely at some point they needed to surrender to the soviets and then end of area and then took into custody and with those pow camps and likely at the end was released

under his own name. there are three reasons why he was released even though he was on the wanted list created was very interestingly distributed in the second reason is that josef mengele and was part of the unit to be well integrated but the most important reason is that josef mengele didn't have the ss tattoo under his left arm of the blood type of their soldiers so that if they were wounded than medics would know what blood to use for transfusion. he did not have that blood type tattoo and then to pass through and to have them take

off the shirts and then josef mengele could be released without any further interrogation. and false identity papers and then to do manual labor of a small farm in bavaria and then and then shipped by argentina where he arrived in the summer of 1949. >> is there any evidence of complicity with the americans to get him out? >> there is no evidence of

contact forces. and the reason for that i say in the book and in the files and in that cardfile was the indication he had died and with that prosperous news that they had they could help him out of germany without any official help to purchase the services of experienced guides that were very practiced getting people over the border and willing to purchase effective false identities for him.

>> the book tells a detective story and others and what his life was like in south america. and then to spend time in auschwitz. and you and i talked and that you are anxious how it might be received. you are concerned how people might take the book. so tell us why you felt that that might help us understand how you feel about his work at auschwitz. >> yes.

working on the case back in the eighties i believe the common picture of josef mengele as a mad scientist motivated by that grotesque interest of statistic interest and in twins and came across a document in another case to have the head of the 12 -year-old boy to the lab for fixing slides made and being placed in formaldehyde. and i did have a great deal of curiosity what science was about and that character which came along from tremendous support from popular culture

and i read the deputy and i had seen a number of the films that portray him with the prototype of evil that we didn't really note that much of what he did at auschwitz there are no records that illustrate the exact nature of those experiments and those goals and procedures that he used. and the testimony of his victims by a large who were

young and traumatized children to encounter with josef mengele and we also have the testimony and then to be recruited by a josef mengele and forced to help him with his scientific work. josef mengele established in auschwitz a research on the pattern he was associated with. and a great medical talent on the ramp at auschwitz and he kept an eye out for talented physicians and pediatricians and medical illustrators and photographers and users nurses. so he could assemble a team who could assist him in his work he has the testimony of

inmate physicians operating with josef mengele assisting him because essentially they were forced to do it and that testimony by and large describes some of the things that josef mengele did and then to describe that intent of those experiments are that exact nature and the only records we have with the german research foundation and we have a very careful work of german historian science over the last ten or 15 years so i

sat down and read all of this stuff and the picture emerged to be at odds with the testimony that was trope about josef mengele work. and the testimony and alleged that they simply did not match up with his career and training and his own personal ambition to impress his mentors and proceeded academic work. and these rejects and testimony of people have this

tragic and dramatic encounter that i must be understood and apologizing or trying to make less and to come up with a different answer. and to describe josef mengele as a monster is easier than to recognize the monstrous things that people who are the product and the promise to enshrined institutions are able to do. . . . . didn't belie

crimes but he admitted to in his own discussions was his role in the selection both those arriving at the camp and those who were called where he made this decision about whether they should die immediately. >> i understand the crime of the selection where he was choosing

to. if we go back to the experimen experiments, why was he doing this, what excited him, what motivated him to cough him up a three-day? >> guest: he found himself in a situation with no moral or ethical boundaries or limitations imposed on him. one of the positions of those that claim to said he was involved because he wanted to discover the correct of twin births so he could use that knowledge to apply it to the german population and secure an

area by increasing the birth rate in germany. this is not true and it ignores first of all the proposition that you would be equally interested in appearance a the s in the twins themselves. and he showed no interest. they were sent and used as unwilling subjects. it also ignores the long tradition within germany there were 200 dissertations written based on twins research during the nazi period. it was considered the gold standard of genetics research and i won't go into the theory behind it but it has to do with comparing the incidence of disease between fraternal twins.

to tease out the result of nature and the environment. it was an extension of the work that he was doing in germany and at that time he didn't have the same so-called supply as research material. when the war started the research ended because of the fact young children and most research they diverge in their lives. most were moved to the countryside into the whole cost of the war in terms of human infrastructure made it difficult to continue the research. then he had before him a nearly unlimited extreme number of

subjects. for him, auschwitz was the kind of cornucopia of possibilities because it offered the opportunity to continue his research and between research that was being conduct at without any of the safeguards. for him it was a kind of fantasy and he mentioned to one of his colleagues that it would have be been a crime against audience to not have been able to carry on the experiments. >> host: if he would have been asked whether he was complying, what do you think he would have

said? >> guest: i talk in the book about how the medical profession was able through a kind of moral, ethical sleight-of-hand to be consistent with their own view and also carry on the kind of racial hygienic work that was required. they simply substituted the patients no longer was the individual attention they deserved their care, but rather the racial community, that you had to do no harm so if there's

a cancerous cell in the body or destroy the cell to save the body. it wasn't an issue because he didn't consider them to be worthy of consideration. >> was he motivated by anti-semitism, what yo would yos work was motivated by anti-semitism? >> guest: th they had these qualities in a somewhat better than others and some deserve to live and some don't. coming back up onto the screen here because i'm keeping an eye

on the time and because i see some questions that feed into that particular momenthe partice conversations and then if you have another question by all means ask that also. i just want to make sure that we get to some of the questions that i see in the queue. both before and after 45 maybe you can say something about th that. >> guest: i end the book with an epilogue to talks about a kind of confrontation that

hadn't been available. it was a competition he had with his son who was born in 1944. he was seen once as an infant and maybe a few times as a toddler and then once again when they visited in 1956 when he was i think 12-years-old he only knew him as his uncle and then when in mengele's name became much more well known in germany and his stepfather decided to

let him know who his real father was at that time he began an awkward correspondent. many years they would argue and they didn't really understand each other. he was a child of the 60s, radical progressive politics and didn't have any kind of connection to his father but had a kind of intellectual battle and he decided he would come from the father rather than continue the kind of tapered conventions of written correspondence or some security they had a confrontation where he challenged him about

auschwitz and has racial theories. i don't want to spoil the whole thing, but mengele essentially says, he gets emotional even weeping saying it's so hurtful that his own son would believe what was written in the papers about him. he was simply helping some people live longer and eventually this emotional and after conversation just ends and they both decide it's no longer useful to keep up. then he writes a letter and near the end of his life says i'm glad i was able to meet you, but

it's a long letter and in the end, he says that i don't need to justify myself to you or anyone else. i've already explained what i did in clear terms and my patience has a limit and that is where i feel a threat to my family and then he uses the term biracial community which is the same language he might have used in 1944 so there is no remorse on the part of mengele and he's kind of frozen in time in the way that he looks at the world. >> host: a question other people are also having about other aspects of his life wondering whether he continued his medical experiments at all

in any way or in the ultimate form. >> guest: i started talking about his life in argentina. he spent four years on a farm with very hard physical labor and when he got to argentina in buenos aires that had a rich cultural life he could labor is in the bookstores in the theater and he became involved with the german community some of which were right-wing and some nazis. he did publish an article on genetics in the german language journal published in 1953. he then later invested in a pharmaceutical company in buenos aires which produced a medicine for tuberculosis. it was a short-lived enterprise because by the time it really got going, he had to leave argentina and went to paraguay

so he did to satisfy his interest a bit terms of his work in the pharmaceutical company where he was kind of the chief scientist, but he didn't carry on as far as we knew any medical experiments. >> host: two questions here, we've got the concerns one being whether they also captured mengele and what the relationship there might be and then the question of whether mengele knew him in south america or whether there's anything you can say. >> guest: they met and played

three times and came from social backgrounds. he was a prosperous middle-class superfamily and eichmann was not. interesting contrast, when mengele was making his way through to take his ship to argentina he stayed in a hotel and under similar circumstances he stayed in a monastery because he didn't have the money to stay and that kind of illustrates the differences. it is a common misconception that he was still in buenos aires when eichmann was captured. it turned out that he left at

the end of the summer of 1958. he then moved in 1959 in the spring so by 1960. they made an attempt after he was safely in the state house and interrogated him and part of mengele.

i wish we had time for all the questions. whether there's a there is an af that at all. >> this kind of cancer where faces eat away by kind of a

gangrene that had been disappeared in the developing world among some that were jeopardized came back in great force and he sought to find a cure for the disease and found another part of the complex he began a series of experiments and found a treatment that cured the disease. this was written up by an inmate physician that worked with doctor eckstein in 1946 when

they wrote about the treatments that were used. none of the children survived but that is part of the experiment that did find its way out into the community through the writings of. >> caller: why did in angola

mengele become mengele? >> guest: a lot of it has to do with an attractive to care for people who create popular culture. i have an alert on my phone that gives me a message every time he's mentioned in the world press or any tv show or per trade in a crazy film. every single day he is promoted as either in the historical sense mostly inaccurately that

we played with the coronavirus there's metaphors and comparisons whether he will replace him as an advisor but more often than not the kind of benchmark for evil if there's a bad manager and a bank. he certainly has as one scholar said has been separated from and part of what i try to give them this book is explain who that person really was a.

of >> host: it's such a thoroughly researched history book and i would encourage all of you to get a hold of it. i'm so sorry we couldn't have david on screen but i am happy somehow there was this improvisation. >> guest: >> caller: >> host: you were a good guide for all of us. >> guest: i believe that it was everybody's good fortune, so it worked out. >> host: all the conversations are ones that could continue on. maybe i can say a couple more practical things in wrapping up

which is just to remind you we do separate events and joint events that you can find those on the website or follow us on facebook and also get notifications. i want to take a second convention.

also in the current pandemic they are relevant and important questions to consider. the phone numbers on their website and the hours are tuesday through saturday 11 a.m. to 4 p.m.. we have been so moved and heartened by the response by so many right now that are

recognizing. i will close by saying thank you to all of you. goodbye, be well and be healthy and until next time. >> thank you.

i would like to thank all of the supporters and everyone for their outpouring of love for the book tour. especially now we are hoping to support your needs of educational supplies, books to help ease your mind and to stimulate your mind all offered to anyone. we are happy to be able to bring the message. we are proud to be offering copies of the book to be ship