they were deported to german prison camps one month before the allies liberated that part of france. the world war ii museum hosted this event. alex kershaw: i didn't think there'd be fans of general de gaulle in the audience. i actually am, for many reasons. i would like to thank jeremy collins -- where are you, jeremy? [applause] where are you? he is somewhere abouts. these gentlemen were my co-conspirators. we actually walked along this beautiful avenue very late at night a couple of times during the world war ii museum victory in europe tour.

i thought, wouldn't it be a great idea if i could persuade a new york publisher to pay me a certain amount of money to go back and get drunk 2-3 times every year? and it worked. unfortunately, i had to ask a write a book at the end of it. i want to read you a quick quote. i don't want this to be too much of a slideshow. i was fortunate in finding some remarkable images given to me by the last living hero of my book, phillip jackson, who is 89 years old today. you will see some images of him later. a quicko just read you section, a short section. i hate reading from books because people always fall asleep. this is really the theme of the book. it is by a very distinguished and brave french man. there were many.

"we lived in shadows as soldiers of the night, but our lives were not dark. there were arrests, torture, and death for so many of our friends and comrades, and tragedy awaited all of us just around the corner. we did not live in or with tragedy. we were exhilarated by the challenge and the rightness of our cause. it was in many ways the worst of times and in just as many ways, the best of times." the best is what we remember today. i think you can say that is the entire narrative of world war ii, memory serves us in many wonderful ways. it makes the horror more diminished as we go on.

dr. sumner jackson, born in maine, poor childhood, worked in a quarry breaking rocks. finally ended up working for a doctor as his chauffeur and the doctor encouraged him to go back to college. he did so. join --ollege -- the beaudoin college. he became quified as a doctor and massachusetts general hospital. this is him on the left. he joined as a volunteer the harvard medical unit in 1916, on his way to france to serve as a combat surgeon. this is another picture of dr.

jackson, 1917. if you look at the back of the photograph, if you look at the guy at the head of the table, operating, that is jackson. some people say that the woman beside him to his right is his future wife, toquette jackson. this is taken in 1917 in a hospital in paris, where he actually met his future wife who may be right at his side. phillip jackson, their son, told me that they fell in love while jackson was operating on severely wounded doughboys in the trenches. their first very long kiss was lyndon -- was in

closet just off the picture. phillip told me that it was a very long kiss. it is france, after all. she was a remarkable woman, very strong spirited, a fantastic tennis player and boasted that she had beaten france's number one tennis player, who won 31 championships. she was a very good tennis player. they were married in the 1920's. for 10 years, she tried to get pregnant and it didn't work out. finally, in 1929, phillip jackson, their only son, was born at the american hospital in paris. at least a crate of champagne was drunk to celebrate his arrival because she was in her

30's. here is phillip, a beautiful photograph. philip is still alive, he is 89 years old. the thing to note about this photograph is the railings photograph is the ravens behind -- the railings behind them, these are railings at number 11, avenue foch. very privileged upbringing. startedn the 1920's private practice. hemingway. treating

many of them -- that was actually taken on juneau beach, one of the landing beaches on d day. again here in the 1930's. the gentleman on the left played an important role in saving philip's life. he taught phillip to swim in the rough waters of the english channel. sumner was determined that phillip would learn to box so he could defend himself. sumner hired a professional boxer to give phillip lessons, and had phillip learn to swim in the english channel. this is the arc de triomphe here. you can see the jacksons at number 11, right at the beginning of the avenue foch.

there were two entrances -- there you go -- this is the address today. a friend of mine took this photograph. it is what is called a rez de chaussee. the ground floor apartment. that is where he had a private medical practice. he made a lot of money because if you are an expert in urology, you would have to solve issues of venereal disease. a lot of rich american businessman i came to paris and had a good time, they had it in their pocketbook just in case. importantly, there is an exit to the left, and an affront entrance -- two entrances to a

ground-floor apartment where, as people came and went all the time, to see dr. jackson. in june, 1940, sumner sent his son and toquette to the south of france as the nazis arrived in paris. he did not leave paris as parisians fled paris. hitler said in may, 1940, i will be in paris with my artists in six weeks and he was. amazingly, he was, six weeks, almost to the day. this gentleman here is one of america's first spies.

before the second world war, there was no foreign intelligence service. that was the job of people who worked for the state department. hoffner was a princeton graduate in 1929, a volunteer ambulance man volunteering in normandy during the blitzkrieg. he witnessed this huge, terrifying onslaught of armor and steel in the spring of 1940. he was an ambulance driver. he was working for the americans and recording the impact of the blitzkrieg. he found his way to paris in 1940, dropped off at the hotel bristol by none other than george kenneth. he then found his way to the

american hospital of paris, where he went to the office of dr. sumner jackson, and said to him, i need to hide for a while. the theory is that he was being hunted by the gestapo, that they were on to him and knew he wasn't an ambulance driver, he was a spy. sumner jackson -- hoffman was interviewed and said that only one person hid me, sumner jackson. he added that after a week, false papers were found which allowed to have him get to the south of france, then spain, then back to the u.s. he was sent to north africa in 1942, and went on to have a distinguished career in the cia.

in allowing him to hide, jackson took his first great risk of world war ii. avenue boche, the most vicious and depraved and most cultured and malevolent of the germans in paris, they chose the nicest place to live, i am talking about the ff and the gestapo. when they came to avenue foch, named after the world war i french general, they literally chose the nicest residences. the mansions owned by the rothschild family -- they all lived on avenue foch. by the fall of 1940, it was known by parisians as avenue

boche because there were so many nasty gestapo officers living in the finest houses in paris. you will see that the arrow is pointing to number 72, that is the residence of helmut knochen. he is 37 years old. he has a phd in medieval english literature, speaks four languages. he arrived in disguise as a military policeman because the seniors did not want these black bastards anywhere near power in paris. they had seen what they had done in warsaw and elsewhere, and they wanted to have a very nice war, thank you very much, and

occupy the most beautiful city in europe. they did not want men like this terrorizing. he is the nemesis of my book. i found him to be incredibly interesting. he was an intelligent agent involved in one of the great coups of counterintelligence during the early days of the second world war. extremely cultured, extremely sophisticated, really, highly functioning operator. in the winter of 1940, the jacksons were wealthy. they had a country home in enghien. there is phillip on the right. he was a chain smoker, snowed

all of the time. they were cutting wood in the backyard. i actually went to the backyard one year ago and they were cutting the wood because of very cold winter in paris -- the coldest winter on record, over 100 days when the temperature went below freezing at night which is unbelievable when you think about it -- it is paris. phillip told me that he loved this photograph because it was one of the few occasions when he got to spend time with his dad, he he euro -- who hero-worshiped. his father was very busy and doing things like this bonded them. in 1942, if you go on youtube you can find the newsreel for this image. it is a truly horrifying image. when you look up here at the planes, when you think about what this means, it means the defeat of the black bastards,

three of the most evil operators in nazi europe. this is reinhardt heidrick, the architect of the holocaust. at least 15 million to 20 million people died in europe as of him -- because of him. jews, you name it. anybody that opposed him, his life mission was to kill, destroy, or deport them. to the right, you have helmut knochen, king of paris. greeting his boss just outside paris. on the left you have ss general carl oberg, who arrived with

heidrick to take control of the ss in france. they got into a mercedes to visit helmut knochen's favorite haunts, where heydrich stayed for a week. there, they planned the murder of french jews. they also are responsible for killing 90,000 resistences. heydrich, he is 38 years old here. what struck me about these men is that they are so young. i'm 49.

at 37 and 38, they have the future of entire civilian populations in their hand. heydrich is assassinated in prague three weeks after this photo was taken. bad news for knochen, dr. bones in german. heydrich is his protector and mentor. there had been a nasty incident when knochen have blown up several synagogues and harrison -- tried to make it look like french men have blown up the synagogues to create a wave of anti-semitism. it was discovered by the senior commanders and they had him sent back to berlin. heydrich sent knochen back to paris.

during the weeks that heydrich spends in paris, meeting various mademoiselles, they talked about what they would do in france. the plan was that the ss would take complete control of france. when heydrich was killed because of the shuffling that went on with a revolving door of the senior command of the gestapo, knochen becomes head of the gestapo in paris, the most powerful man in paris in the most powerful man within the gestapo -- the german secret police. under the control of ss general karl oberg. at the american hospital, sumner jackson has been waging his own

war against the nazis. he falsified several documents for pows so they did not have to return to prison camps, they went elsewhere. he became involved in a state anin and escape -- in escape line belonging to the liberation movement. this is a document -- it is the escape and invasion report from a 19-year-old gunner who flew on one of those up there. magnificent, magnificent machine. shot down in july, 1943. phillip jackson delivered it to his father and saw this huge air battle above paris on bastille day, 1943. he finally made it back to

england for months later, completing what was called a home run, around 300 americans managed to get back to england and made a home run. when he got back, he was interrogated for one week a british intelligence. here, he reports having been kept for three days at 11, avenue foch by dr. sumner jackson. the penalty for aiding found airmen was instant death. you were shot on the spot. this is one documented example of one of the airmen that sumner jackson helped. he was taken to the american hospital where he met sumner jackson, sumner jackson then took him back to his home on avenue foch. in 1943, the french resistance becomes more active, it looks as if the war is turning against the germans.

many communist and others in france joined the resistance. incidences of bombing and assassination start to rise quite alarmingly. more than ever, even more gestapo and ss have set up headquarters on the avenue foch, waging an unrestricted war against the resistance. by 1940 three, the gestapo had the gestapo had only one mission, and that was to destroy all opposition to german rule. assassinations, killings, they hired career criminals, emptied jails in paris, had gangs of assassins working for them, all designed to undermine the french resistance. here, you have number 84, an ex-policeman. very good at tracking down british agents.

on the fifth floor, you have the creme de la creme of british intelligence. many tortured, some killed. most of our british agents or gestapo, andhe that is where you ended up, on the fifth floor of number 84 where they had torture chambers. you can notice the gestapo symbol all along the avenue foch here. in august, 1943, this gentleman lived just literally as a neighbor of jackson's. he grew up next to the family. in august, he walked out of his

front door, took a step to the left, walked four yards, and knocked on the door of the jacksons. toquette invited him inside. he said, i belong to the resistance network. can we use your home as a dropbox for intelligence and a meeting place for resistance agents in paris. it is a perfect place, it is a doctor's office. people come and go, there are two exits. he told me when i interviewed him that when he asked toquette if he could use the house, she did not hesitate for a second. from the summer of 1943 until the summer of 1944, several high profile allied agents deposited information at 11 avenue foch. it was used as a dropbox, became

an important part of the network that spread throughout france. toquette was the main instigator. she was the one that organized activities there. sumner was often busy at the hospital. this is a beautiful shot -- i wish i could make it bigger -- i really don't care because it is a henri cartier shot. i shouldn't be using this, but anyway. it is taken from the stairwell at 72 avenue foch, knochen's office after he left in a hurry. paris was liberated on the 25th of august, 1944, by the french second armored division and the fourth american infantry division that landed at utah beach. the french did not liberate

themselves entirely. veterans from utah beach actually fought on the streets of paris. by august 25, the jacksons had been deported from france. they were exposed and betrayed two weeks before d-day, arrested by the paramilitary police, taken to vichy, handed over to the french gestapo, and the gestapo in the south of france and then split up. toquette was taken to paris, deported on august 18, 1944, literally a week before the americans in french and arrived. she could hear the sound of american artillery as she waited

to be deported. phillip and sumner were sent into germany to a concentration camp, a labor camp where they spent most of the winter of 1944-1945. this is a picture of ravensbruck, a bestial place. unknown thousands of women. the bravest of the brave. political prisoners, people who opposed nazis. women were sent to ravensbruck. toquette was 58 when she arrived there. she and several other americans who were imprisoned with her as well as other french women clubbed together and became a tight-knit group and managed to survive the winter of 1944-1945.

these women are shown wearing the uniform of the camp. this is quite unusual. most of the women in her group were forced to construct an airfield in december and january wearing summer dresses. many of them died from hypothermia, disease, typhus. by the spring of 1945, toquette herself was admitted into the infirmary, seriously ill. she was given a couple weeks to live. this is toquette, 59 years old. look at her face. from her chin to her breasts, thousands of scars from life,

which she had for the rest of her life. 59 years old, 10 or 20 years older than anybody else who survived ravensbruck. this was taken as she comes off the boat on the 29th of april, 1945. she was rescued by the swedish red cross. she and 200 other women were taken in white buses and escorted across the baltic to malmo. this is a shot of her taken on film, where she is coming off a boat, looking into the camera. phillip and his father were placed on a prison ship on the baltic. there were three prison ships on the fourth of may, 1945, that set out into the baltic. over 9000 concentration camp

survivors. phillip was aboard the thielbek. there were almost 2500 people stuffed onto the boat the length of this building. conditions were horrendous. hundreds of people died in the three days he was aboard this prison ship. raf, under945, the orders to sink any ship in the baltic, sank the thielbek and two other boats killing almost 9000 people. it is the greatest maritime disaster of world war ii. from his ship, only 250 people survived. he told me when he was in the hold of the ship, he climbed up a metal ladder because he wanted fresh air.

he was gagging. an old german guard took pity on him and said you can come onto the deck. he stood on the deck and saw the typhoon, a beautiful plane, coming towards them. he saw a rocket fire. he was a brilliant mathematician, a very good engineer. he became a very accomplished engineer. he thought the angle of the rocket was slightly to the left. it is not going to hit me. he watched the rocket come down and it hit 50 yards away. he saw three more rockets come, and they hit the ship. he managed to jump off the boat. he told me he spent up to five minutes as the ship sank looking for his father, trying to find sumner. sumner was in the hold. he did not live.

phillip jumped into the baltic and had about a mile to swim to shore. he will tell you today the best thing that ever happened to him was when his father had someone teach to swim in the english channel rather than swimming pool. he knew how to swim in open water. he was picked up by a craft, a german craft. they thought he was a german sailor. they recognized his head had been shaved. they realized he was an inmate, and they allowed him to stay on the boat. the ss machine-gunned people from the beach. they killed as many of the people who got to the beach as they could. i should add, and this is what is disturbing about world war ii still today, the german civilians also went out on the

beaches of the baltic and also killed these survivors. the rage, the madness, the terror, the bestiality, was so intense towards the end of the war. this was phillip. he was lined up against the wall naked with 200 other survivors. the ss mounted a machine gun. he tells the story that as they were mounting the machine gun, they heard tank fire. and british arrived a few minutes later. the ss being smart decided to scamper. that is how phillip jackson, age 17, survived. he was taken in by the british army and became a translator the summer of 1945. you can see the american star. he also was involved with the americans interrogating germans.

he could speak german very well. finally, his mother, toquette, who had survived in paris, said, phillip, where are you? come home to paris, i want to be with you. she had lost the love of her life. she had a son. she wanted him to return. phillip told me he did not want to go back because going back would be to confront the loss of his father and what he went through. eventually, he went back. phillip is a highly decorated veteran of the french resistance. you can be highly decorated simply because of the suffering you endured because you opposed nazism. you might not have made a difference in battle, but a year in prison qualifies you as a member of the resistance. phillip on the right looks

remarkably like his father. people have always commented to him he is the spitting image of his father. a bit of the back woodsman in maine is in him. he is testifying at a trial for the ss. nine men, all were hung after phillip's testimony. he pointed to each one of them, faced them in court, he said i saw all of them do this and this. everyone he named was hung. these guys were not hung. knochen on the right, this is 1954 in paris. knochen ran the gestapo in france. he was directly responsible for

the deportation of the jacksons. he was found guilty of war crimes by the french. the british had sentenced him to death beforehand for the murder of troops in august of 1944. this is the first day of their trial in paris for crimes against humanity. both were sentenced to die. both were released 10 years later because of the cold war politics. we commuted, sadly i believe, we commuted a lot of the sentences of convicted ss war criminals because we wanted to keep the germans happy. it was the cold war. we treated them with kid gloves.

knochen was finally pardoned in 1968 by general degaulle, of all people. he went back to germany, worked in insurance, and died a wealthy man in 2003. he said the greatest regret of his life is that he had been involved in the holocaust. but he did not know what was going to happen to the people he deported to the east. he had no knowledge of auschwitz. he knew nothing about that. but he was very sorry he was involved with the people that sent them somewhere else. a very skilled fabulist to the very end. karl oberg also lived to see retirement in prosperous west germany. that is phillip, taken in 2014. you can see the blurred image

behind him. that is where phillip lives today surrounded by other highly decorated veterans of not just the second world war but also indochina. any highly decorated french veteran gets to live there, which is where i interviewed him several times. that is the dome. under that dome is napoleon's tomb. from napoleon's tomb. at the risk of making you wince, this is me and phillip. this is phillip's favorite restaurant. there are some people in audience who got quite tipsy in that restaurant with me relatively recently. can you put your hands up, please, the criminals? [laughter]

it is a restaurant called pasco. i expect to eat for free now forever for mentioning that. this is his favorite restaurant. i was very fortunate to spend a lot of time with phillip. he is 89 and extremely proud of his french heritage and american heritage. extremely proud he is the son of a guy from maine that risked it all and gave his life for the allied cause in world war ii, in a war that we do not know enough about, a private war, a disturbing war, a war in which a knock on the front door could mean your death at any moment. thank you so much for being a wonderful audience. [applause] >> if there are questions, please raise your hand and i will come to you with a microphone.

starting here with the lady to your left. >> how did toquette get in touch with phillip? there were no cellphones in those days. mr. kershaw: that is a great question. phillip's daughter who lives in boston, i became very good friends with her, she was kind of my liaison. she gave me a treasure trove of letters. there are some beautiful, heartbreaking letters written by toquette to phillip and phillip to his friends in paris. phillip in may of 1945 thought his mother and father had been killed. he did not know toquette had survived ravensbruck. he writes to some friends in paris saying i am all alone, my parents died in the camps. he did not find out until june of 1945 that his mother was alive. she wrote, and he wrote to her

immediately and paris. there is a beautiful letter from toquette to relatives in maine about jack, telling the family in maine what her husband was, who he was really. it is a really beautiful letter. it is heartbreaking. >> did the two germans, oberg and knochen, why didn't israel hunt them down? were they not that important? were they not known? mr. kershaw: i think if i was french and jewish or french and patriotic and had served in the resistance, they would be top of my list. that is a good question. i don't know why they were not hunted down. i know both of them were very aware they were marked men.

they were very afraid to be tried in france. when they were brought to france, they knew it was going to be very serious. that is a good question. you would have to ask the same of the entire german nuclear physicist program. what happened to them? they put a man on the moon, basically. there were political considerations. the cold war had begun in 1945. we shook hands and danced with the russians in april of 1945. but that was the end of our so-called relationship. the cold war was really hotting up by 1946-1947, and we needed the cold war against communism in europe. west germany, we had to maintain that at all costs because

without west germany, guess what? you don't have europe anymore. we did what we had to do to keep the germans happy, that included going easy on some of their senior ss officials. i think it is unforgivable. i am not a politician in the state department in 1947 trying to get the germans to allow us to put bases all over the country, you know. >> to your left again, alex. >> i have a comment and question. we pronounce the name of the famous university in maine as bowdoin. you have an interesting group of books you have written. how do you select the subjects you write on and what you have in mind for your next book? mr. kershaw: that is a very good question.

it is getting hard now, tragically, which is why the museum's mission is so important because we can no longer rely on meeting people that were in world war ii. it is getting harder to find people. i am very much about forming a relationship and the human side of the war. not so much interested in strategy and tactics. i'm very interested in the human experience. the books i have done have been based on interviews with people. this one, i was very lucky because i had phillip, who is my main source in the book. it is getting difficult. i did meet a gentleman about three weeks ago, amazing guy. in the second world war, he was a waist gunner. he is 93 years old. he is the president of the u.s. escape and evasion society.

there were not many members because there were not many members who qualified in world war ii. these were guys who made what was called a home run. if you got shot down over berlin or brussels, making a home run meant you were ferried by the french resistance down the escape line i mentioned earlier, then you climbed over the pyrenees, went to spain, and got back to england. in his case, he made a home run and went to the base where he had taken off four months before. i'm fascinated by the story. you have a fugitive. the gestapo were chasing these guys all the time. i worked out maybe 50 people he did not know had risked their lives to help him to get back home. there is a beauty in that. they were not 50-year-old french guys with pot bellies. the beautiful thing about it is

they were usually young women. the guys in france had been deported to work or they were in the army. there were not many men around. you have these 19, 20-year-old americans trusting these women with their lives. sometimes once or twice a day. they were getting off the train and there was an 18-year-old girl there to follow. i'm fascinated by this. his plane, in his plane, they were two guys that made home runs, which is astonishing. that interests me because he is alive and a wonderful guy. he was caught twice by the gestapo and escaped twice. crossed the pyrenees with a pair of shoes one size too small in a summer suit in march at 9000 feet with blizzards.

i'm kind of interested in that, you know. anyway, yes. >> to your right. >> thank you. do you happen to know why the jackson family was deported as opposed to executed? mr. kershaw: very good question. i think there was maybe an element of politics involved. sumner jackson was an important american citizen. he was well known. by that stage of the war, may, 1944, quite a few ss officers were smart. they knew the war was not going to end well for them. being directly responsible for executing the jacksons might have been difficult to explain later. it was a general policy, the ss and gestapo would deport political prisoners. they were to disappear into the concentration camp system.

phillip told me it would not have been profitable, it would not have maximized his human utility to be shot by the ss. they would rather have worked him to death because they get free labor. this is the mindset of knochen and his kind. you don't shoot people, you make them work and then you shoot them. an amazing british agent was in ravensbruck, a superstar if you are british. 24-year-old special agent. there is a great movie about her. she was in ravensbruck. she was deported with toquette from paris in august of 1944. towards the end of the war, was taken out with three other british agents and shot in the back of the head.

the ss deported people. but right at the end, they realized in the spring of 1945, they realized they did need to get rid of these people because if they testified in a war crimes trial, they would point the finger like phillip and say it was helmut knochen. they killed them. many of the bravest british agents were killed literally days from the end of the war because the ss did not want them to point the finger. great question. >> to your far right. >> i'm interested in knowing how many other americans did he enable to escape. and also, is this going to be a movie? mr. kershaw: i would love it to be a movie because i'm tired of writing these books, you know. [laughter]

mr. kershaw: it does not have to be a big caribbean island, just a beach would be fine. i'm not going to read another book ever. what was the better part of the question? how many? i don't know. the only one i could find documentary proof for was joe manos. he is still alive. he lives in sacramento, california. i managed to ask enough questions -- i asked him five times, did you stay at 11 avenue foch? he was a bit confused. i read his report and it says he did state at 11 avenue foch. i don't know how many. for me, the great challenge of this book and one i did not succeed in overcoming is that nothing was written down.

you did not write anything down if you were in the resistance. that was rule number one. you never wrote a name down, you never talked to anybody about anybody else. everybody had a codename. the jacksons were ridiculously vulnerable because they stayed in the same place and were known as the jacksons. other people in the resistance made sure they had codenames and moved constantly. jackson never wrote anything down. he was a very smart guy. we do know he helped the escape line. we do know joe manos was taken by people in that line to the american office, sat in his office and saw sumner jackson written on the wall. he described the jacksons to me as underground. joe manos told me when i interviewed him he would not be alive without him.

he did not think he would live. to this day, he is extremely grateful the jacksons risked their lives to hide in their home on the most lethal street you could find yourself on in occupied europe. i think there were probably several, at least several, but joe manos is the only one i could actually document and interview. >> we have time for a few more questions. we will get to some over here. >> what happened to phillip? did he have a family of his own? mr. kershaw: he did. he has two daughters. i met both. barbara lives in paris. i went to lunch. phillip paid. i'm glad because the wine was quite nice. lorraine, his youngest -- oldest daughter lives just outside

boston. she came over to the states in her late 20's. she's always sort of mystified by the american heritage she had, and came over in her late 20's and decided to stay. i think she has been here over 20 years now. she has got two sons. they are all very proud of their grandfather. she has become -- she told me she felt something in her was american that she wanted to come and live here. it is nice because he has got two daughters. one locally in paris he sees a lot, and then lorraine. lorraine was able to take the book to fill up about two weeks ago. i could not find a photograph,

but i have a nice cheesy photograph of phillip with my book. phillip enjoyed what were the 30 glorious years of postwar boom in france. he joined an engineering firm. with his father's death, they had to leave 11 avenue foch. they could not afford to live there. they moved to the country home. his mother died in the american hospital. phillip worked for an engineering company. at 18, he joined as a draftsman, worked his way up to being vice president and has had, as he told me, a very lucky life. he survived a concentration camp. he survived the sinking of a prison ship. he survived very serious skin cancer in the last 10 years. survived falling on his head from 20 feet up when he fell off a ladder, and is just very grateful to still be alive.

i have one nice little story i just remembered. you remember the gentleman -- let me see if i can find him. there you go. this guy is an amazing guy, highly decorated member of the french resistance, recruited toquette. he was the jacksons neighbor all through his childhood. after the war, he never went back to the house and saw toquette. he saw her that one time only when he walked into her front room and said, will you join the resistance? what he was saying is, will you put everything on the line? not just your life, not just your husband's life, but your 12-year-old son's life?

he felt enormous guilt when they were arrested and felt terrible guilt because he felt responsible. it has been his idea to go and ask them. i interviewed him two years ago. in the conversation, i said, you know phillip jackson is still alive. i realized he did not want to have any connection with the jacksons because he felt tremendous guilt. he told me he felt tremendous guilt. he said i felt i could not face toquette after the war, i sent my father instead to go and tell her how sorry i was. toquette said you don't have to feel sorry because all of us were able to hold our heads high. we joined the resistance. we are very proud of that. a couple of weeks after i saw

him, he went to see phillip for the first time. i don't know what they talked about, but i'm sure it was quite profound. he said to phillip i am very sorry your parents and you went through what you did, and i'm sorry your father died, it was my fault. phillip said of course it was not your fault. don't feel bad about it. as an addendum to this gentleman, he is the last living survivor of the french mountaineering party that climbed k-2 in 1950. the highest mountain climbed was in 1950 by the french. he is the last surviving member of the first team to climb the highest mountain in the world at that time.

everest was 1953. he did not get all the way to the top. he was halfway up the mountain. he's a legend in france. he belongs to the team that conquered the most dangerous mountain in the world. one in three of the people that get to the top do not get to the bottom. he is an incredible guy. look at him. a lifelong diplomat and took a lot of risks. can you see the little red mark on his jacket? it is so subtle and french, but means so much to them. >> one last question in the middle, alex. >> where did you acquire the pictures of them, the jackson

family? mr. kershaw: they are all from phillip. a very good friend of mine to this picture, john snowden, he has worked with me on most of my books. phillip pulled out all of his albums. we photographed them very carefully because he would not, for obvious reasons, let me take the photographs. >> it is amazing they survived. mr. kershaw: it is a treasure trove. i was very fortunate he allowed me to use so much of what he gave me. thank you for being such a fantastic audience. [applause] you are

>> you watching american history tv. follow us on twitter at sign -- a@cspan history. and cuba normalized .-matic relations up next on american history tv. peter kornbluh and william leogrande, co-author of "back channel to cuba: the hidden history of negotiation between havana and washington" discussed the o-matic relations. between the u.s. and cuba. they also considered what the future relationship between the two countries may look like. sony andnt -- this in associates hosted this event. it is an hour and 40 minutes. thank you for having us. i want to start with several coincidences