♪ on this edition for sunday, january 12th, another step forward on the deal that will curtail iran's nuclear program. in our signature segment, nearly 70 years later germany is still trying to prosecute former nazis because of their role in the holocaust. >> because of their age these men may never reach trial or go to prison but it is just and right that we go after these cases. and five decades after the surgeon general's first health warnings, new concerns about the dangers of smoking. next on pbs "newshour weekend."

blaf . > the corporation for public broadcasting. and by contributions to your pbs station from viewers like you. from linc center -- lincoln center in new york. >> gachb good evening, thank you for joining us. they announced they have overcome the last procedural agreement and the institute the nuclear deal, the deal effective january 20th freezes much of iran's nuclear program for six

months. in exchange the west will ease some of the economic sanctions on iran. secretary of state john kerry called it a significant step forward in efforts to prevent iran from getting a nuclear weapon. the two sides set to resume negotiations on a broader long-term deal. in paris today, kerry met with european and arab foreign ministers in an effort to get a western-backed syrian opposition group in the talk. the talks in switzerland week after next. syrian opposition deeply divided with rival groups fighting one another and battling assad regime. it's led to estimated 130,000 deaths. in israel ariel sharon's body taken to the parliament building where hundreds lined up to pay respects to the late military and political leader. he died yesterday at 85 after eight years in a coma. vice president biden among dignitaries kpebted to win memorial service for sharon

tomorrow. at the vatican pope francis named 19 cardinals including four from latin america, two from african, one from haiti and another from the philippine. the appointment of non-european cardinals reflect the pope's belief that the church should be for the poor. cardinals under 80 select a new pope and help set new policies for the world's 1.2 billion catholics. there was a very late christmas delivery in space. six astronauts aboard orbiting space station used arm to capture a space capsule with equipment and christmas presents. the space capsule provided by a private company was to have launched last month but it was delayed by repair work done on the space station, a solar storm and then cold weather at the launch site. an estimated 300,000 west virginians went with little or no drinking water for a fourth

day today after a major chemical spill in the capital city of charleston. officials say 7500 gallons of industrial chemical spilled into a river there thursday morning. local residents relying as best they can on water delivery. fema said it sent a quarter million gallons of water to the affected area. joining us now from charleston via skype, the state house reporter for west virginia public broadcasting. so you've been living through this for the past few days. what's it been like? >> i have been living through this. i will say this morning was the first time i got the opportunity to take a shower since thursday morning, had to drive about half an hour to find a hotel. luckily on a public service district that's a lot smaller. i think that's the experience that a lot of people are having, having to drive 20 30rks, 40 minutes to find another water system. >> how are people in the area dealing with this? are tempers rising? >> i think we're starting to see

them slowly, collectively rise. i experience add lot of frustration at the hotel i was at offering free showers to people. obviously people are grateful for what these businesses are trying to donate. but at the same time you can't drink the water, you can't bathe, you can't do dishes, you can't do laundry. i think all of that is starting to build up and really be frustrating for the people in the area. >> what's happened to all the businesses in this area? we're talking about hotels and restaurants that can't stay open because people can't wash their hands, right? >> at this point, the county health department in nine affected counties have ordered all businesses, restaurants closed. now, yesterday they started taking applications for you to be able to open during this time. what you have to do is show you're using a secondary water source. so this morning in the capital city of charleston, we have

about four restaurants able to open so far using bottled water, paper plates, hand sanitizers in rest rooms. at this point those are contingency plans. the public health department is taking those in, reviewing applications, doing on-site reviews before anybody can reopen. obviously that's a long process to get anybody to be able to open their business again. >> all right, west virginia public broadcasting, thanks so much for your time. >> thank you. . and now to our signature segment featuring original in-depth reports from around the nation and around the world. tonight we take you to germany. there nearly 70 years after the end of world war ii, the government is intensifying efforts to educate young germans

about nazi war crimes and still pursuing those who committed them. just this week prosecutors brought murder charges against an 88-year-old man, a former member of an ss armored division that slaughtered more than 600 french villagers. our correspondent traveled to ludwig germany. there the search goes on for war criminals who got away with mass murder. >> reporter: from the outside, it looks like a beautiful old estate. but this is no private residence. inside investigators for the german federal government are pouring through decades old records, searching for the last remaining nazi war criminals who might have escaped justice. this is part of a much broader national effort under way in germany to wrestle with the legacy of the holocaust. it includes construction of memorials and museums at a record pace. the revamping of the nation's curriculum so that all german school kids get a full understanding of the nazi era. perhaps few are as crucial to the effort as this man.

he runs the central office in germany still trying to bring former nazis to justice. >> translator: right now only murder is punishable. all other crimes have passed the statute of limitations and can no longer be published. >> reporter: 41 years ago he was a prosecutor. when this history buff heard of an opening in an investigative office for war criminals he jumped at the chance. soon after a conversation with one holocaust survivor drove home the importance of his work. >> translator: i met an elderly jewish lady in new york at the end of the 1980s who survived war. she said i've been waiting more than 40 years for a german official to be interested in my case. she told me it doesn't matter whether this person is put on trial or goes to prison. the most important thing is that you listen to my story. >> schrimm would like to see the

man he's investigating prosecuted. establishing their guilt in court has been complicated. following world war ii to quibt a german soldier of murder prosecutors had to prove a direct personal responsibility for the killing of an innocent person. sell year ago germany successfully prosecuted 91-year-old retired ohio auto worker with being an accessory to the murders committed while he was a guard at the nazi death camp. now he's hoping to use that legal precedent to prosecute dozens of others including guards who worked at the auschwitz camp. to build their cases, they have not only talked to survivors but drawing on the nazis own meticulous records and maps of the camps, investigators tried to determine if guards or even low level workers like cooks knew about or witnessed the genocide. >> translator: for these cases we went to auschwitz personally

and looked at the whole camp and saw whether from the kitchen you could see new people arriving or the gas chamber. >> after the investigation, his office recommended 30 guards, men in their late 80s and 90s, be prosecuted as accessory to murder. >> given many of these men are in their mid to late 90s, many of them may not live to see a trial, let alone a prison cell, how much of this do you believe is symbolism and how much is justice actually being served? >> translator: i think on one hand it's important for survivors, victims, that cases are investigated. on the other hand it's also important for germany. during the war, germany committed such terrible crimes that after the war germany had a terrible reputation. we try to improve that reputation by prosecuting these cases. >> translator: the current generation no longer has to

directly confront what happened. in my opinion, the trial, and these 30 or however many names were found, they have a function to explain to people what happened the crimes of that period. >> reporter: an 81-year-old holocaust survival. as a child growing up in munich, he and his family grew up next to the synagogue which was eventually destroyed. he and his family went to a camp. he says the priority today must be to understand the roots of those crimes not just prosecuting the perpetrators of them. >> as someone who witnessed these crimes firsthand, you must have a very emotional connection to them. >> translator: given that apart from my parents, all our family was killed, it goes without saying it's always a difficult

moment for me. the older i get, the more emotional an impact it has on me. but it can't be about that. we want the words we say make sure these crimes don't happen again. the emphasis should be on the time running up to the war and, of course, what's happening today. >> what's happening today is the rise of what he believes are frighteningly similar prejudices in society, what he experienced as a jewish child 70 years ago. according to the german government, there's been a sharp rise in neo-nazi crimes in germany in recent years, most of them targeted at germany's growing immigrant population, turks, and others called gypsies. in a high-profile case members of a neo-nazi subgroup are on trial for 10 racially motivated murders across the country. last year german chancellor angela merkel felt the need to apologize for these racist

crimes calling them her country's shame. later merkel visited dachau concentration camp and again warned of the growing extremism in her country. for his part he counters the extremism by visiting classrooms and reminding students there are echos of the past all around. >> translator: what shapes my life today are childhood experiences of being ostracized, being mocked for being a jew, being isolated for being a jew, being attacked for being a gypsy as people said at the time. this is something that must be and i believe can be conveyed to young people. that's what drives me to be so active today. >> this ongoing remembrance of the holocaust is hardly limited to few remaining survivors of the world. germany put up holocaust museums in historical exhibitions in all

major cities. the nation's schools required to teach in-depth lessons on the nazi era to middle and high schoolers. almost all german students have visited a concentration camp or holocaust museum. comes in more personal ways. >> i hope it will never happen again. if it would start again, it would start anywhere but here. in our streets in our city, in our village, in our school. >> reporter: an artist in munich, the city which adolf hitler called the capital of the nazi movement, one city often criticized for downplaying its role in the rise of the third reich. while munich saw the opening of the jewish museum in 2007 and is currently building a major center on the history of naziism, critics argue the city still doesn't do nearly enough to acknowledge its past. for example, at one of the city's major landmarks, there's

barely a sign that it was the center stage for many of hitler's large nazi rallies or this was where nazi youth had notorious book burnings. >> they want the city very clean for tourism, to invite people from all over world to come to munich. and it's all nice and wonderful and pretty and it's so marvelous and bavarian. the black marks, the dark points of history. >> among many works he's defied authorities by burning black circles as a symbolic reminder of book burnings 70 years ago. his project has been to tell the stories of particular jewish families who lived in munich during the 1930s and who were sent to concentration camps by the nazis. to do so he paints these suitcases similar to the ones

victims carry to the camps and places them outside the very buildings where the families lived. >> owns this shop. this is my house. i'm living here in the second floor. there lived the family and they were killed. >> why? >> if you see a girl, a face, a story, a history of her sitting on your place before, it's another feeling. it's another feeling. history comes near. >> in the end, germany is doing what few nations have done before, not celebrating its greatest accomplishments but building monuments to its darkest time, determined to keep history clearly in sight. >> translator: nowadays it's

about communicating how it came to pass that such things could happen. what happened before auschwitz, buchenwald, what happened before dachau, that's one aspect. that's okay, but what's that got to do with me today? >> translator: according to german law, we are committed to prosecuting these cases. it's true because of their age, these men may never reach trial or go to prison. but it is just and right that we go after these cases. >> his work has gotten results. monday those convicted two former ss officers, one in 1992 and another in 2002. learn about a new music app german police using to track neo-nazi. visit missic hour@pbs.org. first anniversary of 1964

report by then surgeon general warning about the dangers of smoking. that report and policies that followed were widely credited with saving millions of lives. for more on the government's current efforts we're joined on rear admiral, acting united states surgeon general. thank you for being with us. i just wanted to start with where are we on this tobacco war against smoking considering the long time we've had in fighting it? >> over these 50 years incredible things have taken place. our society has changed. changed in terms of tobacco use, in terms of its acceptance of smoking in public establishments, in restaurants, in bars. things have changed for the better. in addition our smoking rates have come down in the united states. we went from 43% of adult smokers in the united states to 18% currently. that's really made incredible headway. i have to emphasize the battle isn't over, the war isn't over. 18% of americans, adults who are

still smoking, basically 40 million people in our population. we have to realize also of that whole group we're going to have roughly a half million people every year dying from smoking related diseases. although we've made progress in a half century, the reality is we still have a lot of work to do. >> we increasingly see tough advertisements on the air against smoking. are these ads working? >> i think they are working. in particular the cdc, center for disease control and prevention came up with a series of advertisements called tips. that was effective reducing the number of smoebers. in addition there's various policies that need to be implemented and further implemented in order to make us a tobacco-free society. we really have to work at the idea of using media, using those advertisements. we have to look at really concentrating on the youth of america to make it more difficult to get cigarettes. in addition we have to look at the idea of pricing cigarettes appropriately so that ultimately

becomes a hardship to use those products. >> lets talk a little about packaging when it comes to hardship of using those products. other countries have much more graphic detail of potential dangers of smoking. i know the u.s. court struck down one of the plans here. what's next? do we change packaging? >> we're currently working closely. the office of the surgeon general working closely with food and drug administration, specifically the center for tobacco products and reanalyzing the whole role of the idea of warning labels and how graphic it would be. there's probably more information on this coming out in the future. >> does it make sense to increase taxes on cigarettes? >> in terms of one of the effective methods of us decreasing the number of smokers in america, oddly the price of cigarettes. rather than in the form of pricing of cigarette pricing, that is an effective measure. although this does become, i used this term before, a

hardship. in reality my role as surgeon general is to make sure we're doing the right thing, which is to decrease the number of smokers in america. yes, pricing is an effective way of dealing with this problem. >> one of the things i wanted to ask and a lot of people asking when we said we were going to interview you. this shift to e-cigarettes. what does the surgeon general on e-cigarettes, deleterious effects to the rest of us or even those people still using them. >> yeah, the e-cigarette movement certainly has become strong. there's more people using e-cigarettes. right now we're gathering data. i don't feel comfort with e-cigarettes being a substitute at this point. the reality is they are still an addictive product in e-cigarettes introduced to the body via respiratory track, via breathing. the reality of the situation is we're still waiting on gathering more data. again, working with food and drug administration, center for tobacco products, looking much more aggressively at the

e-cigarettes issue. >> another question we had from a mother in colorado where marijuana has recently become much more accessible. she's saying what about the impact of secondhand marijuana smoke, anything the federal government going to be doing to try to keep her kids safe. >> from a public aspect, marijuana has been big, certainly legalization in colorado. either of concern to me acting surgeon general of the united states. that being said it's on several front. one of which is marijuana is addictive. secondly, once again something that's breathed in. i'm concerned about the respiratory effects of marijuana. third, it does alter one's cognition, one's thought process. on those three realms, my concern is not only secondhand smoke but primary user and affect on that individual. >> acting surgeon general, thanks so much for your time. >> great. thanks so much.

>> this is pbs "newshour weekend" sunday. now to an occasional segment featuring your thoughts about our program, what we're hearing from viewers like you. a few of you who visited the "newshour" website last night complained about a graphic we created for yesterday's program. it accompanied an interview we did. hold on, folks you can't compare that to inflation. candid one replies to bernie. for those of us who have been along for the ride for the past century, chuckle, we didn't need the graph to know the story. that graph, since corrected on our site, followed our signature piece about a single mom on long island struggling to make ends meet despite having a fulltime job. the piece prompted a vigorous

conversation on the "newshour" website about poverty in america. these are some of the comments but those who visited the page. sea shell 59, in today's world one can work their fingers to the bone and not be able to cover basic cost of living on their wages. purple bouquet said what we need to do differently is stressing the link between economic hardship and single parenthood. we need to be more honest about that connection even if it might not be politically correct. on facebook, we heard from marsie who wrote us poverty didn't win the war, we just stopped fighting it. our correspondent on the story has been answering questions on facebook from viewers since thursday when we post add clip of her poverty piece. just a reminder, an active conversation happening right now about several "newshour" pieces. feel free to send us your thoughts either through the comments section below our stories at "newshour".pbs.org or facebook page or tweet us back at "newshour."

join us tomorrow on the "newshour" on air and online. we'll report on the supreme court as it hears arguments over the president's power to make appointments while in recess. that's it for "newshour weekend." thanks for watching.

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female narrator: truly california is a kqed production presented in association with: [upbeat music] ♪ next on truly california... in one of san francisco's grittiest neighborhoods, an artist captures the spirit of the neighborhood... - i don't do these hall of fame type murals where everybody or everything in it is a great and good thing. i try to just tell the story the way i see it. narrator: and paints a picture of radical change... next on a brush with the tenderloin.