captioning sponsored by newshour productions, llc >> woodruff: good evening, i'm judy woodruff. on the newshour tonight, guns in america-- the biden administration announces new initiatives to curb firearm violence and invest in the communities most affected by it. then, getting the vaccine-- many evangelical leaders work to overcome reluctance to receive inoculations among their followers. plus, an under-told story-- the jewish women's resistance movement within nazi run ghettoes and the auschwitz death camp. >> now i cannot look at the story of the holocaust without seeing it as one of a constant battle of resistance and resilience.

>> woodruff: and, a day with gabby giffords-- grit, joy, music, and a drive to end gun violence. all that and more on tonight's pbs newshour. >> major funding for the pbs newshour has been provided by: >> grandparents. >> let me guess, change in plans? >> at fidelity, changing plans is always part of the plan. >> the kendeda fund. committed to advancing

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>> woodruff: recent mass shootings in georgia and colorado have once again put gun reform in the national spotlight. nearly 20,000 people died of gun violence last year, and another 24,000 from suicide. today president biden unveiled steps he is taking to curb what he calls an "epidemic" and an "international embarrassment." >> the idea that we have so many people dying every single day from gun violence in america is a blemish on our character as a nation. whether congress acts or not, i'm going to use all the resources at my disposal as president to keep the american people safe from gun violence, but there's much more that congress can do to help that effort. >> woodruff: some of the actions the president announced today include curbing so-called "ghost guns"--home-assembled firearms that often lack serial numbers and don't require background

checks; tightening regulations on stabilizing braces, which can turn an a-r style semi-automatic pistol into a rifle. the justice departmentill create a model for states to enact what are called "red flag" laws, which allow judges to seize firearms from people deemed dangerous; and the department will also release a report on firearms trafficking; in addition, president biden nominated david chipman, an adviser at the gun control group "giffords," to head the bureau of alcohol, tobacco, firearms and explosives. we turn to adam winkler of the u.c.l.a. school of law, an expert on gun policy. adam winkler, thank you so much for being here. as we were saying, gun deaths off the charts, mass shootings happening every day. there was one in south carolina yesterday, another one today in the state of texas. how much difference can these steps president biden is announcing make?

>> well, these steps are modest steps. they certainly don't tackle all of the major issues in america's gun violence problem. however, they're not insignificant steps. take, for instance, the rule regulating ghost guns. these are do-it-yourself, homemade gun kit that have become increasingly popular. and with the advance of technology, increasingly easy to use. anyone can buy one of these kits, even if they are prohibited from buying a firearm, and make their own gun. and we know that these guns are being used more frequently in crime. in california, for instance, one in three guns recovered from crime scenes are do-it-yourself guns without serial numbers. >> woodruff: and we also mentioned making it easier for states to enact the so-called redrflag laws. and you were telling us, investing in communities, trying to discourage gun violence can make a difference, too. >> well, that's right. these red flag laws have become popular, and there's even some bipartisan support for red flag

laws. they enable family members or law enforcement to temporarily take away someons firearms when they're going through some kind of crisis that poses a threat to themselves or to others. and what the biden administration is proposing to do is come up with some model, some guidelines, best practices, if you will, for how to do this right. and so, that could be an effective tool that some family members who see another family member in crisis can use to prevent the next mass shooting. >> woodruff: and, adam winkler, we know that this all reminds us that president biden is not pushing legislation through congress right now. it's a reminder of how difficult that is. how much influence does the gun-rights lobby have, organizations like the n.r.a., right now, with american lawmakers, versus the influence of groups that want to see gun reform? >> well, ironically, we're seeing both sides very strong in america.

no doubt, the n.r.a. is suffering from a major financial setback. they're in bankruptcy. they're being investigated and prosecuted by the new york attorney general. they've got major lawsuitses on their hands. but the power of the n.r.a. has always been about the power to influence the single-issue, pro-gun voters there are out there, and they're still out there, regardless of what happento the n.r.a. at the same time, the gun-control movement in the last 10 years has been really reinvigorated. we have new organizations that have arisen, a lot more money being spent on gun safety reform, and it's become an issue that's really at the top of the democrat party agenda, some place it was not 10 years ago. >> woodruff: but still uphill to try to get meaningful legislation passed. >> well, right now, it's not just a gun issue. meaningful legislation in the senate requires 60 votes, and it's hard to imagine 60 votes for almost any controversial issue these days. certainly going to be difficult to get 60 votes on significant

gun reform. >> woodruff: and what about the views of the american people? what do we know about that? >> well, there's a huge difference between the views of the members of congress and the views of the american people. we see things like universal background checks having over 80% report. the restriction on ghost guns, we see-- polls show about 75% support. and, yet, these laws can't get adopted through congress itself because, let's face it, the republican caucus is 100% opposed to gun control, and there's probably even some swing-state democrats who would vote against significant gun reform, too. >> woodruff: we heard president biden say today if he had one thing he could get done it would be the ability to sue gun manufacturers over gun deaths. would that make a big difference? >> it could make a difference in the long run. the gun makers were able to get a law passed by congress back in the second bush administration to restrict the ability of

people to sue gun makers when their guns are used in crime. as a general matter, a gun maker is not going to be liable if a criminal misuse his firearms. but we have seen in other industries these kinds of lawsuits can open the door and open the window to see how these gun makers are operating, how they're marketing their weapons. and it may be that they're marketing them in ways designed to appeal to people who have violent desire to use guns offensively. it would be a tough road but not impossible. >> woodruff: adam winkler with the u.c.l.a. school of law, thank you so much. >> thank you. >> woodruff: president biden's announcement comes on the heels

of yet another mass shooting, this time a man in south carolina killed five people before taking his own life. authorities confirmed the shooter was 33-year-old phillip adams, a former professional football player with a history of concussions. the victims in yesterday's attack in rock hill were a prominent local doctor, his wife, two of their grandchildren, and a worker at the house. police are still searching for a motive. >> we don't have anything right now. there's nothing about this right now that makes sense to any of us, and that's why we're working so hard to try to get more information. >> wdruff: a sixth person was hospitalized in critical condition with gunshot wounds. the number of children arriving at the u.s.-mexico border hit an all-time high last month. u.s. authorities apprehended nearly 19,000 minors in march. that's five times the number recorded last march. and, it is well above the previous high of more than

11,000 in may 2019. separately, texas officials are investigating three reports of abuse and neglect at a san antonio facility housing more than 1,600 migrant teenagers. u.s. employers are still cutting jobs even as more americans get vaccinated. the labor department reported unemployment claims rose unexpectedly to 744,000 last week. but that is down sharply from the start of the pandemic. still, the u.s. economy is strengthening, with 916,000 jobs added in march, the most since august. today's testimony at the trial of former minneapolis police officer derek chauvin centered on the perspective of medical experts. they spoke of how george floyd died from a lack of oxygen as chauvin knelt on his neck and back, and not from drugs or health issues. special correspondent fred de

sam lazaro has our report. >> reporter: prosecutors began the ninth day of the derek chauvin trial with testimony from pulmonologist dr. martin tobin. a chicago-based critical care physician and lung specialist, tobin testified today that shallow breathing led to george floyd's death. >> would you please tell the jury what that opinion or opinions are? >> yes, mr. floyd died from a low level of oxygen and this caused damage to his brain that we see and it also caused a pea arrhythmia that caused his heart to stop. >> reporter: tobin said several main forces led to floyd's shallow breathing: his prone position, being handcuffed and pressure from chauvin's knees placed on floyd's neck back. illustrations and photos of the events, tobin concluded that chauvin's knee on floyd's neck caused narrowing of the

hypopharynx, a critical area for getting oxygen into the lungs. >> i want to go to the period of time when mr. chauvin was on the back and neck of mr. floyd. did you see him get off of the back of mr. floyd by the nanosecond, by the millisecond, by any seconds in the 9 minutes and 29 seconds that you saw him on it? >> no i did not. >> reporter: tobin testified that chauvin's knee remained on floyd's neck another 3 minutes and 2 seconds after floyd took his last breath. >> you can see he's conscious and thenou can see he isn't. that's the moment the life goes out of his body. >> reporter: the defense has argued floyd died due to poor health and drugs, including fentanyl, in his system. but prosecutors tried to undercut that argument today. dr. daniel isenschmid, a forensic toxicologist with a private company that analyzed floyd's autopsy, testified that the levels of methamphetamine

and fentanyl in floyd's system were not a factor in his death. that finding was supported by both tobin earlier and the day's final witness, kentucky police surgeon dr. bill smock. for the pbs newshour, this is fred de sam lazaro. >> woodruff: west virginia democratic senator joe manchin has insisted that under 'no circumstance' would he vote to kill or weaken the filibuster. he did so in an op-ed for "the washington post," and also voiced opposition to a process known as reconciliation. that, or an end to the filibuster, would allow democrats to advance legislation without republican support. manchin's vote is key in the evenly-divided senate. in sudan, the death toll from days of tribal violence in darfur has reached 132. looting continued today in the provincial capital of west darfur, where a shooting on saturday triggered the conflict. tensions between arab and non- arab tribes have posed a challenge for the country's

transitional government to bring lasting peace to the region. myanmar's military rulers are now limiting internet access and confiscating tv satellites in an effort to crackdown on anti-coup protests. meanwhile, demonstrations continued in dawei, even after security forces killed 11 protesters overnight. over 600 people, including 40 children, have died since the military's takeover in february. violence is escalating in northern ireland over post- brexit trade rules. at least 55 police officers have been injured this week. new trade barriers and political party tensions have led to growing frustrations between protestant and catholic communities in belfast. last night, a bus was hijacked and set on fire. crowds of mainly young adults from both sides attacked each other and police with gasoline bombs and bricks. and, back in this country, gains

in the technology sector pushed stocks higher on wall street today. the dow jones industrial average climbed 57 points to close at 33,503. the nasdaq rose 140 points, and the s&p 500 added 17 to close at a new all-time high. still to come on the newshour: the cost of the president's infrastructure plan prompts questions about tax increases. some evangelical leaders work to overcome resistance to covid vaccines among their adherents. how former representative gabby giffords uses music to continue her recovery from gun violence. plus much more.

>> woodruff: one major way that president biden and his team propose paying for his as amna nawaz reports, the plan would both raise tax rates and go after the ways some large companies record profits overseas. >> nawaz: judy, in 2017, republicans and then-president trump reduced the u.s. corpora tax rate from 35% to 21%. president biden wants to raise that to 28%. he's also calling for an international minimum tax rate of 21%. that is meant to keep big multinational companies from doing something many have done for years: use offshore loopholes to pay fewer taxes. all told, the various tax provisions would raise two and a half trillion dollars over 15 years. jesse drucker covers taxes and tax havens for the "new yo times" and joins me now. jesse, welcome to the newshour. and thanks for making the time. these loopholes, these tax maneuvers, a lot of companies

use them-- google and amazon and facebook and apple. what does that mean for what they actually pay? >> historically, they've generally paid somewhere around half of that. it's always a lot less than that. google for years was paying taxes at a rate of 2% or 3% on the majority of its profits around the world because it was putting them into a mailbox in bermuda. so the theory behind the biden plan is to provide a minimum rate for the profits they're pushing offshore. >> nawaz: and what does all that mean in, quote, unquote, lost revenue for the u.s. treasury over the years? >> there's an economist at reed college, the top international tax official at the treasury department, and she mated years ago the u.s. was losing somewhere on the order of $100 billion a year because of companies moving profits offshore. you can see the numbers adding up very quickly, where that get you to around $1 twillion in a

decade. >> nawaz: what about the 2017 tax cuts? did they make it easier or harder or more likely the companies would engage in these practices? >> it's an interesting question. overall, the tax cuts meant the corporations were paying a lot less in taxes than they did before 2017. you know, the tawx burden for u.s. companies is much less than it was. but at the same time it did introduce the kind of kernel of a concept of doing a minimum tax offshore at a much lower rate than what the biden focs are talking about. but it was the first time the u.s. introduce aid concept like that. >> nawaz: we heard from treasury secretary janetielen this week backing the plan, here's what she had to say. competitiveness is about more than u.s. headquartered companies fare against other companies in global merger and acquisition bids. it's about making sure the governments have stable tax systems to raise sufficient revenue to invest in essential public goods. jesse, first of all, could any of these proposals go through

the treasury in forms of legislation or do they all have to go through congress? >> no, what they're talking talg about are all things where laws need to be changed. there are plenty of things the treasury could do to improve things in this area, but what thear seeking now requires a new law. >> nawaz: republicans have come out against it. also the u.s. chamber of commerce has come out against it. they said this plan would hurt american business and cost american jobs. jesse, what's the evidence here? is there any data to back that up? >> well, we have a fair amount of data sort of going in the other direction. in other words, over the years, in 2004, and then again in 2017, the u.s. gave enormous tax breaks to companies to bring back money that they had stowed offshore in places like the caymen islands. and the service pretty convincing there that they did not use that money to build new plant or hire workers. they used majority of the money to buy back shares from their investors to increase the stock price of the company, which of

course enriches the executives most of all. at the same time, a lot of those companies were laying off tons of workers that they were bringing money back. there's lots-- there's a very substantial body of evidence to the contrary, that the tax cuts have not had an impact on investment, have not had an impact on hiring. >> nawaz: jesse, i have to ask, you have covered this issue. is there something in proposal that strike you as different, as something that could actually curb these practices that have been in place for so long? >> oh, yeah, having a 21% minimum tax-- you know, we call them "overseas profits." that's sort of the wrong way to describe it. i mean, the best way to describe tbest way to think of these things they're trying to tax, are tax haven profits. these are the profits companies push into bermuda and the caymen islands and switzerland or luxen burg, and claim are being earned overseas. if all of a sudden companies, instead of having those pfits tad at 2% or 6%, which is what we've seen with the kind of

googles and apples and bristol-myers of the world, if now there's a minimum tax of 21% on those profits, that's a very big change and a very big difference and would probably both raise a lot of money and would probably curb a lot of these transactions that move profits into tax havens. >> nawaz: jesse drucker of the "new york times" joining us tonight. thank you for your time. >> thanks for having me. >> woodruff: as of today, more than 66 million americans are fully vaccinated against the coronavirus, and many others are eagerly waiting for their shots. but among white evangelical americans, interest in the vaccine still isn't as widespread. john yang speaks with one evangelical leader about why that is, and what can be done to

change it. >> yang: judy, among religious groups, according to the pew research center, white evangelicals are least likely to say they intend to get the covid vaccine. in pew's latest survey, conducted in mid-february, forty-five percent of white evangelicals said they definitely or probably would not get vaccinated. that compares with 30% of all americans and 33% of black protestants. according to pew, about 17% of adult americans identify as white evangelicals. the reverend russell moore is president of the ethics and religious liberty commission of the southern baptist convention. reverend moore, thanks for joining us. first of all, let's get this out of way. have you gotten the vaccine? >> yes, i've had both shots. >> yang: from what you can tell, this skepticism among the polling is capturing, among people who identify as white evangelicals, does this have anything to do with religious

beliefs? >> no. this doesn't have anything to do with religious beliefs. it's instead about the mistrust and distrust that's evident in american society right now, and plus, think some of it has to do with the fact that we've been isolated from one another in lots of ways for over a year. and much of the way that misinformation and disinformation gets combated is with people in conversation with one another. and that's why lots of us are doing what we can to say vaccination is not only something that's acceptable for christians. it's something we ought to thank god that we have the technology for because it's going to get us back to doing the things that we need to do quicker. >> yang: we reached out to some evangelicals in our viewership to ask them about their attitudes towards the vaccines. one person we heard from is billie brian, 49 years old, a teacher in memphis, tennessee. he said he's young and healthy and in his view what he sees as

the potential risks of the vaccine outweigh the risks of khomeni. let's take a look at what he says. >> my real hesitancy is i just don't really want to see the government or anybody force people to do something that those people feel like is not in their best interest, you know. i think if people are comfortable with it, i think the more the merrier, but it does seem like a logical decision to old off, at least to me individually at this time? >> yang: how typical is that what he had to say and how do you respond to it? >> i think we have to make very clear the government isn't forcing people to get vaccination veax. instead, this is something that's in not only our own best interest but that of our neighbors. we have really good scientific data on the vaccines. and i think some of the hesitancy we saw in that clip may be overcome just as people start to see their neighbors being vaccinated and to see the

fact that this isn't scary. this is, in fact, something that's helpful, and helpful to protect the people who are the most vulnerable around us. so it's not just about protecting one's self. >> yang: the people we heard from also said-- this is obviously a small sample-- but they said their pastors and their churches aren't encouraging them to get the vaccine. they say it's up to them. it's a personal decision. do you think ptors and churches should be encouraging it? >> well, i think there are a lot of pasters who are. they're doing vaccination drives in their congregations. they're helping people to understand what can be gained. so, for instance, many evangelical churches have vacation bible school every summer. to say we'll be able to gathering together for vacation bible school, to do mission trips, to do youth community outreach, and so forth. and to minister to the elderly among us, who are often the most isolated in assisted living facilities and nursing homes and other places. we want to get those

grandmothers and grandfathers together with their grandchildren. and so i think talking about the positive aspects of vaccination is the way to go, rather than seeking to scold people. >> yang: is there-- for instance, when you got your vaccine, was there any backlash or any negative reaction from friends and other pastors? >> not from friends and other pastors. there's always going to be some people online, and i think a lot of this is driven by social media, where people are going to suggest, "oh, this is part of some dark conspiracy," or "this is going to get someone sick" we have adequate data on all of that. and that's one of the reasons why one of the things that i did early on was to do a webinar with francis collins, director of the national institutes of health, just going through every conceivable sort of conspiracy theory and every conceivable sort of fear to counter those

things. and so i think there are some people who are not anti-vaccine. they just hear some of the rumbles going on around on social media, and they wonder, "is this all right? is this safe?" many of them, i think, will eventually come around. >> yang: francis collins, of course a christian himself, a very fervent christian himself. i take it from what you're saying that a government push to try to reach evangelical christians could actually backfire. >> well, it could if it's too heavy handed. i think that the emphasis ought to be on what's possible. if we get vaccinated in large numbers, the way we actually can get back to-- we disagree on so many ningz american life right now, and we're at each others' throats on so many things, that there are actually some things we can agree on, and part of that is we want to be together again. we want to be able to get as close back to normal as we can. and that's probably especially

true for people who are religious communities, because we believe we ought to be congregated together. and so i think emphasizing the positive is the best way to go. >> yang: the reverend russell moore of the southern baptist convention. thank you very much. >> thank you. >> woodruff: we and many others have spent much time covering the struggles of health care workers during the pandemic. but there's been far less attention to the deaths of doctors, nurses and other support staff. a major reporting project has been gathering crucial information and looking at the impact on these frontline workers. william brangham has more. >> brangham: judy, throughout the pandemic, the federal government didn't track this kind of data.

but a joint project by kaiser health news and the "guardian" called "lost on the front line" created its own database to do so. their teams found that more than 3,600 health care workers in the u.s. died during the pandemic's first year. two-thirds of them were people of color. a third were born outside the united states. and more than half were younger than 60. but the project wasn't simply about data. reporters also tried to capture something about these individual lives, and how their loved ones left behind are coping. christina jewett of kaiser health news was one of the lead reporters and joins me now. christina, great to have you on the newshour. and this is really a terrific piece of journalism that you guys have been doing. this is, obviously, a huge slice of-- a huge number within this one slice of the workforce that lost their lives. i mentioned something of their demographi. but who were they in the-- in the medical setting? who were these people, broadly speaking? >> well, what we found was about

17% were doctors, but the bulk were actually workers who really spent more time in the room with the patients. it was the patient care technicians. it was your certified nursing assistants. it was your nurses. when you take to aerosol scientists and they talk about sort of how aerosols accumulate, like a cigarette cloud in a room, and you think about who is spending the most time in that room, that's what we really saw was those workers who were really close up with the patient for, you know, lengths of time were the ones who lost their lives, by and large. >> brangham: 3600 people is an enormous number, but are there particular stories that stand out to you as memorable, that you think of as sort of emblematic of this crisis? >> you know, there's a couple. one is george nako. when his wife talked to me, of it entirely through tears, and she recounted a 35-year love story that started in their native albania. they won an immigration lottery to come to the u.s., and it was

just your classic story of really hard work which brought him to be a dialysis technician at beaumont health. and, you know, she said, "leave the machine outside in the hall. let the nurses handle it." and he wouldn't hear of that. he took it in the room. he made sure the patients were comfortable. he got them water and talked to them. and he got the virus, and he died. and this is a man who had spent years telling everyone his son would be a doctor, and when his son had that white coat ceremony, welcoming him into medical school, his dad, you know, had passed. and that loss was greatly felt. and so it's stories like that, that really stick with me, the incredible sacrifices these families have made. >> brangham: there's a man named walter be biele who you represented on. can you tell us a little bit about him? >> walter biele had a grandson who had a developmental delay, and he worked at a facility for people outside of chicago who

had developmental disabilities called ludamman, and he really cared for those patients. he would barbecue them for their birthdays. he made them a birthday cake. he was a super hero to his wife, that's what she told us. and they raised four children together. this was another love story where she recounted, you know, the last moment she saw him pull down his oxygen mask in the ambulance to mouth, "i love you." and this is someone who had been working with gloves, no respiratory protection at all. he had gloves. and he died, and we found in one of our investigations that his death and several others at that facility, were not even reported to workplace safety regulators, as were dozens of others. >> brangham: in addition to those types of cases, your reporting also shows that a lot of reason these people got infected and then died was in part because of our misunderstanding early on about how the coronavirus was

spreading. >> you know, that's right. the guidelines were written early on, and they weren't changed. and what wsaw was there was this notion that the intubation was considered an aerosol-generating procedure. and the doctors, the staff around for that procedure would get the very best p.p.e., if there was a shortage. beyond that, people caring for covid patients could wear a surgical mask. what we later learned was that this is an airborne virus and that a cough, just a simple cough generated actually 10 times more aerosols than an actual intubation procedu. the researchers are sort of looking at that now, and there are some who are saying the guidelines that are really in place still all over the world are a house of cards that has fallen. and that's, you know, still debating within the medical field, whether this virus requires sort of that higher level of airborne protection

with the nn95 mask, or whether it's okay for healthcare workers in surgical masks to be caring for covid patients. >> brangham: you and your colleagues are closing out this project, partly because these deaths are declining-- which is, course, good news. it's also partly because we all can sort of see the light at the end of the tunnel with these vaccines, which is also great news. i wonder, though, if you worry, if we move too quickly past this, that we won't do a really good reckoning of what went wrong that cost all these people their lives. >> that's right. un, a lot of research we have seen has come from really elite academic medical institutions, and that is just not where we saw people die. so, you know, i think the question of sort of what happened in the third-best hospital in the midsized metroregion? what happened inside a nursing home? you know, why did some people not fall ill and keep their

lives, and why did some lose theirs? i mean drilling down outside of boston, outside of johns hopkins, so we are better prepared, better able to protect people if this ever happens again. i think that work, to some degree, still needs to be done. >> brangham: all right christina jewett of "kaiser health news," thank you very much for this tremendous piece of journalism. >> thank you for having me. >> woodruff: today is holocaust remembrance day, now 76 years since the end of the war in europe. a new book out this week, "the light of days," by judy batalion, details acts of heroism by jewish women in the ghettoes of eastern europe, and even withithe death camps, who risked their lives to challenge

the nazis. she concentrates on female couriers, who hand-carried crucial messages, weapons, and ammunition as part of the resistance in besieged jewish ghettoes. here's special correspondent malcolm brabant. >> reporter: 76 years since the auschwitz birkenau death camp was liberated and its rail head of industrial slaughter neutralized, ghosts of the holocaust are coming to life in new uplifting stories. one of the wartime heroines portrayed in this book is bela hazan, seen here with her son yoel on the right. yoel, a brain scientist in jerusalem, wants the world to know what his mother did in the war to compensate for the torrid reception she received in israel after surviving auschwitz birkenau. >> they used to say she went like sheep to the slaughter and she was treated as such. why didn't you resist? i mean, this was a question. what did you do that meant you weren't killed? did you collaborate with the nazis?

were you bartering sex for food? were you a prostitute? i mean, these were questions that were put to her. >> reporter: how angry does that make you that your mother's first period in israel was so awful? >> i'm extremely angry. and this is, of course, one of the reasons why i'm trying to tell her story. >> reporter: this picture testifies to bela hazan's courage. she's between two other jewish underground couriers. what makes the photograph extraordinary is that it was taken by a nazi at a gestapo christmas party. bela worked as an interpreter for the gestapo. the job gave her a great cover story which enabled her to travel to cities like vilnius in lithuania where the jewish resistance operated, aged just 19 and masquerading as a polish catholic she became a brilliant spy. her luck ran out at this railway station in poland. despite being arrested, tortured and sent to auschwitz, she never confessed her true identity.

>> she interacted with the gestapo people. what she did was to steal official papers, to put stamps, official stamps on these papers, and she delivered these materials together with information that she gathered when she was in that place, she delivered it all to the headquarters of the underground. >> they were walking around with cash in their garter belts and dynamite in their underwear. >> reporter: the bravery of women like bela hazan in hitler's ghettoes was buried in an old yiddish book that author judy batalion stumbled upon in the british library in london. she has spent 14 years researching women whose exploits have been neglected by history and who she believes should be revered. >> when i first began this project, i too had a kind of subconscious understanding what they call the myth of passivity. and which is why when i first found this material by accident, i was blown away. and now i cannot look at the story of the holocaust without

seeing it as one of a constant battle of resistance and resilience. >> reporter: batalion's book concentrates on couriers like chasia bielicka, eulogised by her granddaughter hadas. >> you could see it in the holocaust, of course, the way she wanted to save people and help people and help children. and she didn't just want to survive. that wasn't her mission. she wanted to do much more than that. >> reporter: chasia bielicka's ability to evade nazi patrols and check points made her a key player in the jewish insurgency in bialystok, these days an ultra conservative town in north east poland renowned for its hostility to gays. 80 years ago under the nazis, it had a ghetto where jews were corralled before being dispatched to death camps. >> the courier missions was to bring ammunition to the partisans the partisans were fighting in the forest. they needed ammunition.

the women that she was with tried to find always places where they could steal ammunition, bring it to the forest or to the ghetto sometimes. >> reporter: as long as they appeared sufficiently aryan, women could move more freely around occupied poland than men, who were supposed to be working during daylight hours. the couriers exploited a naive german belief that women were incapable of sabotage and subterfuge. >> the biggest militaries in the world couldn't defeat the german army, but that didn't matter. what mattered was the fight for justice and liberty. >> reporter: zivia lubetkin left poland when germany invaded. she could have stayed outside the country, but came back to >> zivia lubetkin was ultimately a leader in the warsaw ghetto.

she helped get young jews out of slave labor. she helped them find food. and she fought in two ghetto uprisings. she fought in the warsaw uprising alongside the polish resistance in 1944. >> reporter: the 1943 warsaw ghetto uprising lasted almost a month as heavily outnumbered jewish fighters kept crack german forces at bay. ultimately, they were overwhelmed and some partisans died by suicide rather than surrendering. today only a small portion of the ghetto wall remains, but zivia lubetkin's deeds live on. >> she escaped through sewers, sewage water up to her neck. and even after the ghetto was raised and she was in hiding, she helped administer rescue organizations that helped thousands of jews in hiding. >> reporter: although most of the characters in batalion's book are couriers, she couldn't resist telling the story of anna heilman, a member of the auschwitz resistance.

how on earth do you resist in auschwitz? >> a this is such an incredible story. again, one of those. how did i not know about this? >> reporter: only one crematorium remains at auschwitz birkenau. all but one were destroyed by the nazis as they fled from the advancing soviet red army. the other one was blown up by anna heilman's co-conspirators in october 1944. she helped steal gunpowder from a munitions factory two miles from birkenau and smuggle it back in the hems of her clothes. >> it was this very elaborate system where the people that worked in the room where they packed the powder would take little bits and put it in a wastebasket on the side. another round of women would collect that waste, go to the bathroom, take out the gunpowder and hide it in fabric. >> reporter: and here is anna heilman, in her own words, in canada in 1996. >> they used this gunpowder and

manufactured little hand grenades made out of metal around boxes of shoe polish with a wick and filled with gunpowder. and when you lit it, it exploded. >> reporter: the crematorium was destroyed during a brief rebellion by so called zonder commandos, jews, forced by the nazis to dispose of bodies from the gas chambers. >> all the sonderkommando people were killed. but the crematorium was destroyed. >> reporter: in retribution, anna heilman's sister was executed. >> i heard this collective groan and i knew what happened. i didn't witness it with my eyes, but i was there. >> reporter: in jerusalem, bela hazan's son yoel yaari is grateful that light is now being shone on this aspect of the holocaust. >> i think it is extremely important because the story of the couriers is almost unknown

worldwide and also in israel. >> reporter: the new book may help elevate these women to their rightful place in history, especially as the author is now working on a screenplay for steven spielberg, oscar-winning director of that legendary holocaust movie "schindler's list." for the pbs newshour, i'm malcolm brabant. >> woodruff: president biden reached out and fist-bumped former arizona congresswoman gabby giffords at the white house rose garden event to curb firearm violence which we reported on earlier in the program. in 2011, giffords was shot in the head outside of tucson. eighteen others were also shot. six died. in the years since, giffords has become known as a fierce advocate to end gun violence, and for her own quest to build a very rich life and rewire her

brain in spite of the traumatic brain injuries she suffered. the newshour was invited to see a day in her life in a story that connects science and music with pure grit and joy. jeffrey brown reports for our arts and culture series, canvas. ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ >> brown: a recent lesson on the french horn. it's known as a difficult instrument to play and master, and for this amateur musician, it represents a kind of miracle. when did you start playing the french horn? >> i was 13 years old. >> brown: and why did you choose the french horn? >> it's so difficult. i loved the challenge. the music filled me up inside. >> brown: ten years ago, gabrielle ¡gabby' giffords was shot at close range at a meeting with constituents outside a supermarket. the bullet entered near her left

eye and passed through the left side of her brain before exiting at the back of her skull. she survived and was transferred to the institute for rehabilitation and research, called "tirr" for short, at memorial hermann medical center in houston. chief medical officer dr. gerard francisco oversaw her care. >> the important thing to remember is that the impairments that will result from a traumatic brain injury, from a gunshot wound to the head, is a function of the location that has been damaged. >> brown: in gabby giffords' case, that was the left side of her brain, which controls language and speech ability. in addition to paralysis, she suffered an impairment called“ aphasia”, also seen in many stroke victims. >> aphasia is a very complex disorder of speech and language. >> brown: characteristically, giffords herself is much more blunt:

>> aphasia really sucks. the words are there in my brain. i just can't get them out. i love to talk. i'm ¡gabby'. >> brown: fun-loving, quick- witted, smart as they come. she understands everything. but the words themselves don't come. the neural connectors that translate thoughts and ideas into speech and language were damaged. and that's meant a decade of near constant therapy and exercises, to re-train her body and brain. her partner throughout: her husband, astronaut mark kelly, the newly elected u.s. senator from arizona. she's made remarkable strides, but enormous challenges remain. >> we've spent a lot of time trying to build the things she wants to say into things that are more fluent and easy for her to achieve and it takes a lot of

work. >> lend me her mittens. >> brown: fabi hirsch kruse, a speech pathologist and expert on aphasia has worked with giffords since the shooting. to get a sense of just how difficult speaking is, consider our short interview. we were asked to provide questions well ahead of time, not standard journalistic practice, then to pose them in a precise order. >> we worked for several weeks preparing the questions and the responses to that gabby was able to express herself as best she could. her ability to take information in is very strong. she has her difficulties with aphasia, her strengths and her struggles. >> brown: one thing that helps giffords: her love of singing and music. last august she gave a rousing

speech titled “summoning hope” at the democratic national convention. just 90 seconds, hirsch kruse says it took months of preparation. and she sketched in musical and other notation on the script to help giffords with the delivery. one line in particular gave giffords trouble. >> i put one foot in front of the other”, which was a really difficult line to master. and i just remembered hearing that in a song when i was young. so i found lyrics and music and we just incorporated that into our sessions. and she used the music to help her get to the words. >> one foot in front of the other. >> brown: giffords also played“ america” on the french horn. she'd picked up the instrument again after the shooting and

incorporated it into her regular regime of therapy and rebuilding. how often do you practice nowadays >> five days a week. >> brown: five days? a lot. >> a lot. >> brown: did you have to relearn to play? >> not really, it's just, it's-- not really. it's all still there in my brain. reading the music is hard! >> brown: and not just reading music, but even learning to hold the instrument again and get the fingerings right. but play, she does. >> at parties she loves to play. she's played for a recital. and she never gets nervous like everyone else does. >> brown: carolyn sturm, a retired professional french horn player and teacher now living in tucson, heard about giffords' love of the instrument and volunteered to work with her. >> most of the progress has been reading the music, but it's just

been incredibly slow. she has a beautiful sounds. but it's the technical side of things and the logistics, all of that. >> brown: music may be doing even more than offering pleasure and stimulation for giffords' motor functions. early on, during her time at t¡' tirr' rehabilitation center in houston, her caregivers used what's called “neurologic music therapy”. >> we also used neurologic music therapy because we are firm believers that the language center is connected to other parts of the brain that can help recover not only speech, it can also help recover cognition and movement as well. >> brown: the music function-- the ability to understand pitch, intonation, rhythm and the words in a song-- is spread through various parts of the brain. is the idea of the therapy in

general to somehow reconnect all these connectors that have been broken? >> that's an excellent question, because our premise is that neurologic music therapy works because it can help induce brain plasticity or, very simply, the healing of the different connections between brain cells. >> brown: just how it works, he says, remains unclear. the therapy and research, though around for decades, are still in early stages. >> it's one of the most popular therapies that we have here. they sometimes use the long hallway outside of my office and sometimes i will hear a boom, boom, boom. i used to be concerned what that is. >> brown: in 2015 giffords visited the hospital and offered dr. francisco and other caregivers emotional proof of her progress. in addition to her personal therapy, gabby giffords continues her longtime political and legal advocacy to stop gun violence...

>> he had left the gun. >> brown: ...through her work at the national non-profit“ giffords.” >> enough is enough. enough is enough! background checks now. >> brown: what do you tell yourself when things are difficult? >> move ahead! ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ >> brown: and, keep playing. for the pbs newshour, i'm jeffrey brown. >> woodruff: just wonderful. i am speechless. thank you. and thank you, gaby giffords. and online, as coronavirus case numbers rise, william brangham spoke with three public media reporters from georgia, mississippi, and tennessee about the challenges their states are facing to distribute vaccines - and what can be done to improve the process. watch their conversation on our website. all that and more at: pbs.org/newshour. and that's the newshour for tonight. i'm judy woodruff. join us online and again here tomorrow evening.

for all of us at the pbs newshour, thank you, please stay safe, and we'll see you soon. >> major funding for the pbs newshour has been provided by: our u.s.-based customer service reps can help you choose a plan based on how much you use your phone, nothing more, nothing less. to learn more, go to consumercellular.tv >> the ford foundation. working with visionaries on the frontlines of social change worldwide.

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[upbeat music] - hello everyone. and welcome to amanpour & company. we're looking back at some of our favorite interviews. so here's, what's coming up. - there is a reasonable path to citizenship. - [christiane] let's l try again. president biden is the latest to promise comprehensive immigration reform as more than a hundred migrant children are reunited with their parents. we speak to the congresswoman pushing a bold new bill and a frontline immigration lawyer. then. - [nancy] since when did we start locking people up a matter trial in this country. - [christiane] we continue our look at a guantanamo detainee held for 14 years without charge. we'll talk to his real life lawyer and nancy hollander and the oscar winning actress who portrays her jodie foster. plus. - we've inaurated an alternate form of citizenship for people with criminal records. - [christiane] how does prison follow people