and that's just one example of how hard this situation is and how difficult. thank you for your question. >> i suspect that you all use the unfortunate phrase. rather than saying reorient, you should probably say re-emphasize or change the emphasis. how much does the cia still -- i mean, maybe there's a few old men and women. how much does it still worry about the threat of russia and china which is still major? >> very good question. i think part of the problem with the reorientation of the cia, especially after 2001, but to some extent when the cold war ended in general was a -- as we've all talked about during the cold war the cia was overwhelmingly focused on the ussr and understandably so.

but when the cold war ended and particularly when the war in terror began, it moved so drastically away from focus on russia that i think it lost its ability to conduct operations even in conducting basic analytical work about it. there is still very good people there who deal with russian and who are experts in russia. but it's drastically shrunk from what it was. and i think now that russia is seen as much more of a threat over the last couple of years, particularly because of its activity -- military activities in ukraine, is that there will be some respectificati firectif thereby more effort and more personnel devoted to trying to understand russia. >> did you have something? >> just really quickly, you know

it takes time and as mark said, if you focus on it now, it takes years to develop expertise and if you are talking about human intelligence penetrating russia and putin's inner circle so it will take a while. even if they're doing it now. >> thank you very much, thank you for coming. please return tomorrow at 1:00 p.m. and we will continue. american history tv in primetime continues tuesday night with a look at african-american history. first we'll hear from historians and activists reflecting on the civil rights movement. and later a discussion from the smithsonian national museum of african-american history on the concept of being black in america. that's tuesday night beginning at 8:00 eastern here on c-span 3.

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well, coming up next on american history tv, author alex kershaw discussing his book "avenue of spies," which tells the story of the jacksons, an american family who aided the french resistance in nazi-occupied paris. the jacksons lived on the avenue fache in paris, also home to nazi officials and the gestapo. they were deported to german prison cam pds less than a month before the allies liberated that part of frabs. the national world war ii museum is the host of this event. it's about an hour. >> i'm boeigoing to say bonsoir monsieur and madam, vive general de gaulle. but i didn't think there would be many people in the audience who are fans of general de gaulle. i actually am for many reasons. first i'd like to really thank, without being too selective, i'd like to thank in particular jeremy collins who -- where are you, jeremy? hiding over here.

and larry de coeurs. where are you, larry? is he here? somewhere abouts. these two gentlemen were my co-conspirators. we actually walked along this beautiful avenue here very late at night at least a couple of times during a world war ii museum victory in europe tour, and i thought to myself, 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 at least two or three times every year, and it worked. unfortunately, i had to -- i actually had to write a book at the end of it. so i wanted to read to you a quick quote. i don't want this to be too much of a slide show, but i was very fortunate in finding some really remarkable images that were

given to me by the last living hero of my book, phillip jackson, who's 89 years old today. and you'll see some images of him later. but i want to just read you a quick section. it's a very short section. i hate reading from books because people always fall asleep. but this is really the theme of the book. and it's by a very distinguished and extremely brave frenchman. there were many in world war ii. called john-pierre levi. "we lived in the shadows as soldiers of the night. but our lives were not dark and martial. there were arrests, torture, and death for so many of our friends and comrades. and tragedy awaited us, all of us, just around the corner. but 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, and the best is what we remember today." i think you can say that of the entire narrative of world war ii. memory serves us in many wonderful ways. it makes the horror in some ways more diminished as we go on. to the left here is dr. sumner jackson, born in maine, very poor childhood. left school when he was 10 years old. worked in a quarry for a couple of years breaking rocks. finally ended up working for a doctor as his chauffeur. and the doctor encouraged him --

he's on the left here. to go back to college. he did so. bowden. i pronounced that correctly. bowden college. yeah? and then became qualified as a doctor at the massachusetts general hospital. this is him on the left and he's actually joined as a volunteer the harvard medical unit. and that's taken in 1917. he's on his way to france to serve as a combat surgeon. this is another picture of dr. jackson, 1917. and this -- if you look at the back of the photograph, i hope some of you brought your spectacles. i haven't. but if you look at the guy at the head of the table operating, that's jackson. some people say that the woman right beside him to his right is his future wife, toquette jackson. this is taken in 1917 in a

hospital in the rue pacini in paris where dr. jackson actually met his future wife toquette who may be right at his side there. phillip jackson, their son told me they fell in love while jackson was operating on very severely wounded doughboys from the trenches. and that their very first long kiss was in a linen closet just out of the picture. philip told me it was a very long kiss indeed. it's france after all. here's toquette and sumner. she was an absolutely remarkable woman, very strong spirited. she was a fantastic tennis player and boasted throughout most of her life that she'd beaten france's number one tennis player of all time. actually suzanne legaren, who won 31 championships.

toquette when she was young had beaten this woman. so she was a very good tennis player. she loved to play tennis with sumner. they married in the early 1920s. and for ten years she tried to get pregnant and it did not work out. and finally, lo and behold, in 1929, phillip jackson, their only son, was born at the american hospital in paris. at least a crate of ballenger champagne was drunk to celebrate his arrival because she was in her mid 30s and had given up hope of ever having a child. here is phillip. that's sumner. it's an absolutely beautiful photograph. phillip is still alive. he's 89 years old. the thing to note about this photograph is the railings. you can see a blurred effect of railings behind them. these are railings at number 11

avenue fache. so this photograph is taken with phillip and his father in the front garden at 11 avenue fosche. very privileged upbringing. lived on the most exclusive street in paris. sumner in the 1920s started a private practice. he specialized in urology and ended up treating hemingway, fitzgerald, the lost generation of parisians. many of them -- there's a picture of phillip and sumner jackson in the 1930s. actually, that's taken on juno beach, one of the landing beaches of d-day. the family here again in the 1930s. phillip obviously with his father. the gentleman to the left is a guy called rene lagarde who actually played a very important role as we'll discover later in saving phillip's life.

he taught phillip to swim in the very rough waters of the english channel. sumner was determined that phillip would learn to box so he could defend himself. sumner actually hired a professional boxer to come and give phillip lessons and he always had phillip learn to swim in the very difficult waters of the english channel. i point out here if you can see this. this is the arc de triomphe here. that's where the jacksons lived. avenue fosche. there were two entrances, there you go. thank you, jeremy. perfect. this is the address today. a good friend of mine took the photograph. it's the ground floor apartment. that's where dr. jackson, sumner

jackson, had a private medical practice. he made a lot of money because if you're a specialist in urology, you often have to solve issues of venereal disease. so a lot of very rich american businessmen that came to paris and had a good time, they had number 11 avenue foch and his telephone number in their pocketbook just in case. importantly there, was an exit just to the left here onto rue traktir and a front entrance. two entrances to a ground floor apartment where people came and went all the time to see dr. jackson. in june of 1940 sumner sent his son and toquette to the south of france. june the 14th the nazis arrived in paris. and dr. jackson was made the principal surgeon at the american hospital of paris. he didn't leave paris.

actually, 4/5 of parisians fled paris before the germans arrived. hitler said on the 10th of may 1940, "i will be in paris with my artists in six weeks." and he was, amazingly, with albert speer and others six weeks almost to the day in june of 1940. this gentleman here is one of america's first spies. before the second world war there was no foreign intelligence service. the americans -- you guys didn't have a foreign intelligence service. that was the job of people who worked for the state department. donald coster was a princeton graduate. this is his picture. he was a princeton graduate from 1959. a volunteer ambulance man working in normandy during the blitzkri blitzkrieg. and he wrote a very detailed story about the blitzkrieg for

reader's digest. and he witnessed this huge terrifying onslaught of armor and steel. the wehrmacht at its most violent in the spring of 1940. and was an ambulance driver. and in fact, he was working for the americans and recording the impact and the ferocity of the blitzkrieg. and he found his way to paris in early july of 1940, was dropped off at the hotel bristol by none other than george kennan, who became a great american statesman. and then found his way to the american hospital of paris, where he went to the office of dr. sumner jackson and said to dr. sumner jackson, i need to hide for a while. and the theory is that he was being hunted by the abwehr and the gestapo, that they were on to him, they knew he wasn't an ambulance driver, he was a spy. donald coster in 1981 was

interviewed and he said only one person hid me in the basement of the american hospital in paris, dr. sumner jackson. and he also added that after a week false papers were found which allowed him to get to the south of france, then to spain, and then back to the u.s. he was one of several oss agents that were sent into north africa in 1942 before "operation torch" and went on to have a very long and distinguished career, oss in the second world war and then the cia after the war. in allowing coster to hide in the basement of the american hospital, sumner jackson took his first great risk of world war ii. avenue boche it's called, in the fall of 1940. the germans, in particular the most vicious and depraved and most cultured and malevolent of the germans who arrived in 1940,

they chose the nicest place to live. and i'm talking about the ss and the gestapo. when they came to the avenue foch named after the great world war i french general they literally chose the nicest residences. so the mansions owned by the rothschild family, renault, the car manufacturer. 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 and senior wehrmacht officers living in the finest houses in all of paris. here you'll see that the arrow is pointing to number 72. that's the residence of helmut knochen. ss colonel helmut knochen. here it is. a bundes archive shot.

he's 37 years old here, has a ph.d. in medieval english literature. he speaks four languages, a distinguished and brilliant journalist. he arrived on the 14th of june 1940 in disguise as a military policeman because the senior wehrmacht generals in paris did not want these black bastards, as they called them, anywhere near power in paris. they'd seen what they'd done in warsaw, they'd seen what the gestapo had done elsewhere in europe and they wanted to have a very nice war, thank you very much, as occupiers of the most beautiful city in europe. they did not want men like this terrorizing and exerting undue influence. he's the nemesis of my book and i found him to be incredibly interesting. here is an extremely able intelligence agent. he was involved in one of the great coups of

counterintelligence during the early days of the second world war, the wenlow incident. extremely cultured, extremely sophisticated, really, really highly functioning operator. winter 1940 the jacksons were wealthy. they had a country home in enghien which is about 20 miles north of paris. they had a very nice house there. this is phillip on the right and that's sumner with a cigarette in his mouth. chain smoker. smoked all the time. they're cutting woods in the backyard. i actually went to the backyard about a year ago. they're cutting wood because it was a very cold winter in paris. it was 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's paris. phillip told me he loved this photograph and he loved it because it was one of the few occasions when he actually got

to spend time with his dad, who he hero worshiped. his father was very busy at the american hospital. and doing things like this bonded them. made him feel very close to his father. 1942, if you go on youtube, you can find the original newsreel -- the propaganda newsreel for this image. it is a truly horrifying image. when you look up here at the planes, when you think about what this museum means, it means the defeat of these black bastards. three of the most evil operators in nazi europe. in the center obviously, those of you who recognize senior ss officials, this is reinhart heydrich, the architect of the holocaust. at least 15 to 20 million people died in europe because of his plans. not just the jews. you name it. anyby that opposed nazism, his

life mission was to kill, destroy, or deport them. to the right here we have ss colonel helmut knochen, king of paris, number 72 avenue foch, greeting his boss, heydrich, on the 8th of may 1942 just outside paris at orly airport. and on the left you have ss general carl oberg, who has arrived with heydrich to take over control of the ss in france. they got into a mercedes, beautiful mercedes, and knochen took heydrich to visit some of his favorite haunts. the first stop was the ritz, where heydrich stayed for about a week. and together they planned the murder of 80,000 french jews. number 31 avenue foch was the headquarters of theodore danica, who also worked with them very

closely during that week to deport and kill over 80,000 french jews. they also are responsible, these three men, for killing roundabout 90,000 resistance, frenchmen and women who dared to resist their rule. heydrich, that's one of the last photographs taken of heydrich. he's 38 years old here. what struck me about these men is that they're so young. you know, i'm 49. at 37 and 38 they have the future of entire civilian populations in their hands at their whim. heydrich is dead three weeks after this photograph was taken. assassinated in prague. czech. two czech paratroopers rolled a bomb under his car and killed him. bad news for knochen. dr. bones, his nickname was. knochen in german means bones. bad news for helmut because heydrich is his protector and

mentor. there had been a nasty incident in 1941 when knochen had blown up several synagogues in paris and tried to make it look like frenchmen had blown up the synagogues to create a wave of anti-semitism. it was squofdiscovered by the s german commanders in paris and they had him sent back to berlin. heydrich sent knochen back to paris and had the senior wehrmacht generals removed. so during the week that heydrich spends in paris, wining and dining and meeting various mademoiselles, the heiresses, a woman called florence gould, et cetera, they talked about what they would do in france. the plan was that the ss would take complete control of france. and heydrich was killed because

of the shuffling that went on, the revolving door of senior command within the ss and the gestapo. helmut knochen here becomes head of the gestapo in paris, the most powerful man in paris and really the most powerful man within the gestapo. that's the german secret police, the nazi secret police. in the whole of france. under the control of ss general carl oberg. meanwhile at the american hospital, sumner jackson has been waging his own private war against the nazis. as a doctor he falsified several documents for p.o.w.s so they didn't have to return to prison camps. they went elsewhere. he also became involved in an escape line belonging to the liberation resistance movement. and this is a document -- i know it looks boring but it's actually quite interesting. it's the escape and evasion report from a guy called joe

manos, a 19-year-old waist gunner who flew on one of those up there. magnificent. magnificent machine. shot down on the 14th of july 1943. phillip jackson visited his father at the american hospital and saw this huge great air battle above paris. the americans bombed paris on bastille day of 1943. and joe manos was shot down. he finally made it back to england about four months later, completing what was called a home run. around 300 americans managed to get back to england and made what was called a home run. absolutely amazing achievement. when he got back, he was interrogated for about a week by british intelligence. and here, you'll see just over here, that there he reports having been kept for three days at 11 avenue foch by dr. sumner

jackson. the penalty for aiding downed airmen by this stage of the war by 1943 was instant death. he was shot on the spot. but this is one example, one documented example of one of the airmen that sumner jackson helped. manos was taken to the american hospital where he met sumner jackson. sumner jackson took him back to his home on avenue foch. in 1943 the french resistance becomes very much more active. it looks like the war is turning against the germans. sxm communists and others in france start to join the resistance. instances of bombings, assassinations, et cetera, start to rise quite alarmedly. more than ever by 1943, even more gestapo and ss have moved and set up headquarters on the avenue foch, waging an unrestricted war against the

resistance. by 1943 the gestapo had one mission and 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 of them were designed to undermine the french resistance. so here you have number 84, a guy called hans kiefer, ex-policeman, a bloodhound, very good at tracking down british agents. that's number 84. on the fifth floor you have the creme de la creme of british intelligence were tortured, some of them killed. violet szabo, from the film "carver named her pride." she was tortured at number 84. several members of the s.o.e. actually, most of our british agents were captured by the gestapo. and that's where you ended up, at number 84, on the fifth floor

where they had torture chambers. you'll notice the gestapo symbol dotted all along the avenue foch here. in august of 1943 this gentleman is still alive. he's 94. he lived just -- you see the rue tractir, literally as a neighbor of the jacksons. he grew up next to the jackson family. in august of 1943 he walked out in august of 1943 he walked out in august of 1943 he walked out his front door, took a step to the left, walked another four yards and knocked on the door of the jacksons. toquette invited him inside. he said, i belong to the resistance. i belong to the gallette fridette resistance network. can we use your home as a dropbox for the intelligence and

as a meeting place for resistance agents in paris. it is a perfect place, it is a doctor's office and people come and go, there's two exits, et cetera. he told me in paris a year ago when i interviewed him that when he asked toquette if he could use the house she didn't 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 drop box. it became a very important part of the gallette frigette network that spread throughout france. toquette was the main instigator. she was the one that organized activities there. sumner was often very busy at the hospital elsewhere. this is a beautiful shot. i wish i could make it bigger. i really don't care because it's a cartier breson shot. henri cartier bresson. i shouldn't really be using

this. but anyway. it's a photograph taken from the stairwell at 72 avenue foch. this is helmut knochen's office that helmut knochen had left in a hurry. you can see the polished boots. i don't think they're his. but you see the polished boots, et cetera. paris was liberated on the 25th of august 1944 by the 2nd -- french 2nd armored division and also let's not forget the 4th american infantry division that landed at utah beach. that's often forgotten. the french did not liberate themselves entirely by their fellow countrymen. in fact, 4th i.d. veterans from utah actually fought in the streets of paris to liberate it. not many french people will tell you that, or not many of them know that. by the 25th of august 1944 the jacksons were -- had been deported from france. they were exposed and betrayed

and just two weeks before d-day in may of 1944 arrested by the french paramilitary police, the milise, taken to vichy south of paris, handed over to the french gestapo, knochen's men in the gestapo in the south of france, and then split up. toquette was taken to paris. she was deported on the 18th of august 1944. just literally a week before the americans and the french 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 called neuengamer, a labor camp where they spent most of the winter of 1944-45. this is a picture of ravensbruck. it's an all-female camp. it's a truly bestial place.

unknown thousands of women, many of them the bravest of the brave, very, very special people indeed, political prisoners, people who opposed nazism from all over occupied europe. women were sent to ravensbruck. toquette was 58 years old when she arrived at ravensbruck and she and several other americans who were imprisoned with her as well as other french women clubbed together, became a very tight-knit group and managed -- somehow she managed to survive the winter of 1944-45. these women here are shown wearing the camp uniform. this was quite unusual for the group toquette belonged to. 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.

and by the spring of 1945 toquette herself was admitted to the infirmary in ravensbruck seriously ill. she had perhaps a couple of weeks to live. this is toquette at 59 years old. look at her face. from her chin to her breasts thousands of scars from lice which she had for the rest of her life. 59 years old, 10 or 20 years older than anybody else that survived ravensbruck in her group. this is a picture taken as she comes off a boat in malmo on the 29th of april 1945. she was rescued by the swedish red cross at the 11th hour. she and 200 other women were taken in white buses and then

escorted across the baltic to malmo, and this is a shot of her. it's taken from a film. it's a very moving film. where she's coming off a boat and looking into the camera. phillip and his father were taken from neuengamer and placed on a prisonship in lubeck on the baltic. altogether there were three prison ships on the fourth of may 1945 that set out into the baltic. over 9,000 concentration camp survivors. phillip was aboard the filbeck. there were almost 2,500 people stuffed into holds on a boat which is probably the size, the length of this building here. the conditions were absolutely horrendous. hundreds of people died in the three days that he was aboard this prison ship.

on the 4th of may 1945 the r.a.f. under orders to sink any shipping in the baltic sank the filbeck and two other boats, killing almost 9,000 people. it's one of the -- it is the greatest maritime disaster of world war ii. from his ship only 250 people survived. he told me that when he was in the hold of the ship he climbed up a metal ladder because he wanted some fresh air. he was gagging. and an old german guard took pity on him and said come on, you can come onto the deck. and he stood on the deck and he saw a hawker typhoon, a wonderful plane. not as beautiful as that but it's a beautiful plane. coming towards him. and he saw a rocket fire. he was a brilliant mathematician, very good at engineering. he actually became a very accomplished engineer. and he thought to himself, the

angle of the rocket is slightly to the left, it's not going to hit me. and he watched the rocket come down and it sure enough hit 50 yards away. he saw three more rockets come and they hit the ship. he managed to jump off the boat. he spent he told me maybe up to five minutes as the ship sank looking for his father, trying to find sumner. sumner was in the hold. he didn't live. phillip jumped into the baltic and had roundabout a mile to swim to the shore. and he will tell you today that the best thing that ever happened to him was when his father got mr. rene lagarde earlier on to teach him to -- taught him to swim in the english channel rather than the swimming pool. he knew how to swim in open water. he was picked up by a craft, a

german craft. they thought that he was a german sailor. they recognized that his head had been shaved and they realized that he was an inmate at neuengamer, and they allowed him to stay on the boat. the ss actually machine gunned people from the beach. they killed as many of these people who survived -- who got to the beach as they possibly could. and i should add -- and this is what's disturbing about world war ii still today, that german civilians also went out to the beaches on the baltic near lubeck, took their shotguns and their weapons and also killed these survivors. the rage, the madness, the terror, the bestality was so intense toward the end of the war. this is phillip. he was lined up against the wall in lubec, naked with 200 other

survivors. and the ss mounted an mg-42 machine gun. and he tells the story that as they were mounting the machine gun they heard tank fire and the british arrived a few minutes later and the ss, being smart, decided to scamper. and that's how phillip jackson, age 17, survived. he was taken in by the british army and actually became a translator for them for the summer of 1945. you can see the american star there. he also was involved with the americans in terms of interrogating germans because he could speak german very well. and then finally, his mother, toquette, who had survived, was in paris, said phillip, where are you? come home. 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 that he didn't want to go back because going back would be to confront the

loss of his father and what he'd been through. but eventually he went back. and phillip is a decorated, highly decorated veteran of the french resistance. and you can't be highly decorated simply because of the suffering you endured because you opposed nazism. you might not have thrown a bomb. you might not have made a difference in battle. but a year in a prisoner of war camp in neuengamer qualifies you as a hero of the french resistance. this is in hamburg in 1946. phillip is on the right. he looks remarkably like his father. people have always commented to him that he's the spitting image of his father. a little bit of maine, the backwoodsman in maine is still in him. and he's testifying here at a trial for the neuengamer ss. nine men all were hung after phillip's testimony. he pointed to each one of them and faced them in the court, said number one, number two,

number three, number four, number five, number six, number seven, number eight, number nine. these guys had numbers around their necks. all of them, i saw them do this, this, this, and this. every guy he named was hung. these guys weren't hung. knochen on the right here. this is 1954 in paris. carl oberg, knochen ran the gestapo in france. he was found guilty of war crimes by the french. we, the british, had sentenced him to death beforehand for the murder of sas troops in august of 1944. he was directly responsible. and this is their first day at the trial in paris for crimes against humanity.

both were sentenced to die. both were released ten years later because of the cold war politics. we commuted -- sadly, i believe, we commuted a lot of the sentenced for convicted ss war criminals because we wanted to keep the germans happy. they were our bulwark against soviet russia. it was the cold war. these guys, we treated them with kid gloves. knochen went back to -- he was finally pardoned in 1968 by general de gaulle of all people. he went back to germany and worked in insurance and died a wealthy man in 2003, and he said that the greatest regret of his life was that he'd been involved in the holocaust, but he didn't know what was going to happen to the people who were deported to

the east. he had no knowledge of auschwitz. he knew nothing about that, but he was very sorry that he was involved with the people that sent them somewhere else. very skilled fabulist to the very end and carl oberg lived to see retirement in prosperous west germany. that's phillip taken in 2014. you can see the blurred image behind him is where he lives today surrounded by other highly decorated veterans of not just the second world war but also of indochina. any very highly decorated french veteran, the creme de la creme get to live there. that's where i interviewed him several times and that's the dome and under that dome is napoleon's tomb. so he today lives a stone's throw from napoleon's tomb.

and at the risk of making you wince, this is me and phillip. and there are some people in the audience -- this is phillip's favorite restaurant. and there are some people in the audience who actually got quite tipsy in that restaurant with me relatively recently. can you put your hands up, please? the criminals that -- [ laughter ] the few over here. it's a restaurant called pasco. i expect to eat for free forever now mentioning that. and this is his favorite restaurant. i was very fortunate to spend a lot of time with phillip. he's 89 and extremely proud, extremely proud of his french heritage and his american heritage. extremely proud that he's the son of a guy from maine who risked it all and gave his life for the allied cause in world

war ii, in a war that we don't know enough about, a private war, a disturbing war, a war in which the knock on the front door could mean your death at any moment. thank you so much for being a wonderful, wonderful audience. [ applause ] >> if there questions, please raise your hand and i will come to you with the microphone. starting here with the lady to your left. >> how did toquette get in touch with phillip? there were no cell phones, nothing those days. >> it's a great question. in fact phillip's daughter lorraine, who lives in boston, i became very good friends with her. she was kind of my liaison, if you like, and she gave me a treasure-trove of letters and there's some really, really beautiful, but heartbreaking

letters written by toquette to phillip and phillip to his friends in paris. phillip in the may of 1945 thought that his mother and his father had been killed. he didn't know that toquette had survived ravensbruck. and he writes the letter -- in the book, i quote it. he writes to some friends in paris saying, "i'm all alone. my parents died in the camps." so he didn't find out until june of 1945 through a letter from toquette that his mother was alive and he wrote to her immediately in paris. so it was a beautiful letter to some of his relatives in maine that she writes to them about jack. he was always jack to her, telling the family in maine what her husband was, who he was. it was a heartbreaking letter.

>> so the two germans, oberg and knochen, why didn't, like, israel or mossad or anything hunt them down to -- you know -- were they not that important or were they not known? >> well, i think if i was french and jewish or french and patriotic and had served in the resistance, they'd be top of my list. that's a good question. i don't know why they weren't hunted down. and i certainly know that both of them were very aware that they were marked men. they were very afraid to be tried in france. when they were brought to france, they knew that things were going to be very, very serious. it's a good question. you'd have to ask the same of the entire german nuclear physicist program. what happened to them? well, they put a man on the moon, basically. there were political considerations.

the cold war had begun in 1945. we shook hands and danced to the banjo with the russians in april of 1945, but that was the end of our so-called relationship, so the cold war was really hotting up by 1946/47, berlin airlift, et cetera, and we needed a bulwark against communism in europe. in west germany, we had to maintain that at all costs because without west germany guess what. you don't have a europe anymore. so we did what we had to do to keep germans happy. doesn't matter who they were and that included going easy on some of their senior ss officials. i think it's unforgivable but i'm not a politician in the state department in 1947 trying to get the germans to allow us to put bases all over their country.

>> to your left again, alex. >> sorry. >> a comment and a question. we here in the colonies pronounce that name of the famous university up in main "bo-din." >> you say bo-din? >> yeah. question, you have a very interesting group of books that you've written over time. how do you select the subjects you're going to write on and what do you have in mind for your next book? >> that's a very good question. i've often -- it's getting really hard now, sadly, 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 so it's getting harder to find people because i'm very much about forming a relationship with the human side of the war. i'm not so much interested in

strategy and tactics. i'm very interested in the human experience, so the books i've done have been based on interviews with people. so this one i was very lucky because i had phillip. he's really my main source in the book. i did meet a gentleman about three weeks ago, an amazing guy called john katsaros and in the second world war he was a waist gunner up there and he's 93 years old. and he's the president of the u.s. escape and evasion society. there are not many members because there were not many members that qualified in world war ii. these are guys that made what was called a home run, so if you got shot down above berlin or

brussels, making a home run means you were ferried by the french resistance down the escape line, off the pyrenees. and you climbed over pyrenees, went back to spain, and then you went back to england. in ketsarros's case he made a home run going back to the very base he took off from four months before. i'm fascinated by the story because you can have a kind of fugitive. the gestapo were chasing these guys all the time. i worked out that there were maybe 50 people who risked their lives to help him get back home. there's a beauty in that. they were not 50-year-old, you know, french guys with potbellies. the beautiful thing is they were usually young women. the guys in france had all been

deported to work or in the army. there were not many men around in rural france. so you have these 19 and 20-year-old americans trusting these women with their lives. sometimes once or twice a day. they're getting off a train or walking to the end of the platform and there's an 18-year-old girl there and she nods and they follow. so i'm fascinated by this, you know. and his plane -- in ketsarros'plane there were two that made off. which is astonishing. he's a wonderful, wonderful guy. caught twice by the gestapo and escaped twice. you know, crossed the pyrenees with a pair of shoes that were one size too small in a summer suit in march at 9,000 feet with blizzards. i'm kind of interested in that, you know. anyway. yes, sir. >> to your right. >> thank you. do you happen to know why the jackson family was deported as opposed to executed? >> very good question. i think there was maybe an element of politics involved,

which is that they were -- s sumner jackson was an important american citizen. he was well-known. and by that stage of the war, may of 1944, some people, not some but quite a few ss officers were smart and they knew the war was not going to end up well for them, so being directly responsible for killing or executing the jacksons might have been difficult to explain later, but it was a general policy. the gestapo and the ss would deport political prisoners and send them into the night and fog. they were to disappear into the concentration camp system. and phillip told me that it wouldn't have been profitable, wouldn't have maximized his humanity utility to be shot by the ss. they would have rather have worked him to death because they got free labor. this is the mindset of knochen and his kind is that you don't just shoot people. you make them work and then you shoot them.

an agent was in ravensbruck. do you know who she is? she was an amazing british agent. she was a superstar british agent, 24-year-old special agent, and there's a great movie with virginia mckenna who plays her called "carve her name with pride." anyway, she was in ravensbruck. she was deported. right towards the end of the war was taken out with other agents, shot in the back of the head. but right at the end they realized in the spring of 1945 they realized that they really did need to get rid of these people because if they testified in a war crimes trial, they would point the finger like phillip did and say it was helmut knochen. so they killed them. many of the brave british agents

were killed right at the end of the war, literally days before the end of the war because the ss didn't 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? >> i would love it to be a movie because i'm really tired of writing these books, you know? it doesn't have to be a big caribbean island, just a beach and a shack would be fine. and 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 that i could nail, i could actually find documentary proof for, was joe

manoff. i could only find one documented. i interviewed him. he's alive in sacramento, california. i managed to ask him enough questions to realize -- i asked him actually five times did you stay at 11 avenue foch. did you stay at 11 avenue foch. he was a little bit confused, but then i read his escape in the invasion report and he said he did stay at 11 avenue foch. so i don't know how many -- all you have to remember, for me the great challenge of this book and one i didn't really succeed in overcoming -- and that's not false modesty -- 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's name was a code name. the jacksons were ridiculously vulnerable because they stayed in the same place and they were known as the jackson.

others made sure they had code names and they move constantly. you never wrote anything down. jackson never wrote anything down. very, very smart guy. we know he helped with the russians' escape line, we know that joe manos was taken by that line to the american hospital, sat in his office and saw sumner jackson written on the wall, and he described the jacksons to me as an undercover couple. they were underground. joe manos told me he wouldn't be alive if they didn't help him. to this day, he's extremely grateful that the jacksons risked their own lives to harbor him in their own home in the most dangerous part of paris, the most lethal street where you

could find yourselves in occupied europe. so i think there were probably several, at least several. but he's -- joe manos is the only one i could actually document and interview. >> we have time for a few more questions and we'll get to some over here. >> what happened to phillip? did he have a family of his own? >> he did. he has two daughters. i met both of them. one, barbara, she lives in paris. i went to lunch with her at pasco. phillip paid. i'm glad because the wine was quite nice. and then lorraine, his youngest -- oldest daughter lives just outside boston, and she came over to the states in her late 20s. she was always sort of mystified by the american -- fascinated by the american heritage she had and came over in her late 20s and decided to stay. i think she's been here over 20 years now and she's got two sons. they're all very proud of their grandfather.

she's become -- she told me that she felt there was something in her that was american, that she wanted to come and live here. so it's kind of nice because he has got two daughters. one locally in paris that he sees a lot and then lorraine. in fact, lorraine was able to take the book to phillip about two weeks ago. i couldn't find the photograph but i've got a nice cheesy photograph of phillip with my book. phillip enjoyed the 30 glorious years of post-war boom in france. he joined an engineering firm. with his father's death, they had to leave 11 avenue foch. they couldn't afford to live there, and they moved to their country home. his mother died in 1968 at the american hospital of paris.

phillip, he worked for an engineering company. he joins as a draftsman in an engineering company and worked his way up all the way to being a vice president. as he told me, he had 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 ten years. survived falling on his head from 20 feet up when he fell off a ladder. and he was just very, very grateful to still be alive. i have one nice little story that i just remembered. you remember the gentleman called -- see if i can flick back through and find him. there you go.