Debbie Cenziper: America's Hidden Nazis

[Applause] good afternoon thank you so much for having me I really really am happy to see such a great turnout at what looks to be an incredible festival so thank you very much so a little quick introduction I have been an investigative reporter for 25 years at major American newspapers most recently The Washington Post or I still do stories for the investigative team and over 20-some years as an investigative reporter I really focused on the worst in human nature imagine that corruption greed incompetence mismanagement so I've written about cities and counties and federal agencies that promise to deliver programs to serve the poor and never produced I've written about nonprofit groups that promise to help people with HIV and AIDS never produced I've written about affordable housing developers that promise to use government money to build homes from the poor never produced so this is what I've been doing for 25 years but as an as an investigative reporter I look for what's gone wrong as a nonfiction author I look for people who move and inspire me essentially I look for the best in human nature I look for ordinary people that do extraordinary things in the face of great adversity and so it's been a really nice for me as a writer and a journalist a great change of pace to look for people that are doing good things in this world and not just people in agencies and programs that kind of mess up so that is a little bit about me I've worked at the Miami Herald in the Washington Post and I spent a long time in North Carolina and then I turned to writing books and I am here at Northwestern as the director of investigative reporting for Madill just started six weeks ago incredible program well thank you thank you so this search for the story behind the story is what led me to my latest book citizen 865 it got started at the dawn of 2016 at a New Year's Eve party in Maryland where I live and I was at this party and as we all do in our 40s 50s and 60s we thought we were super cool dancing to disco music all night long and I got into a conversation with a woman who happened to be an attorney a prosecutor for the US Department of Justice and though I had spent 12 or so years in Washington DC I had never heard of this tiny little unit inside the Department of Justice called the Office of Special Investigations and over this long intense conversation at this New Year's Eve party Robin Gould told me about the mission of this unit which was to hunt Nazi war criminals who slipped into the United States in the years after the war they were essentially hiding in plain sight in America's cities and suburbs and this unit was set up by Congress to hunt them down to denaturalize them and ultimately to deport them back to Germany Austria or other countries in Eastern Europe and I had no idea this unit existed and so Robin and I spent about three hours talking over the dinner table at New Year's Eve about the Office of Special Investigations and I looked at the clock it was after midnight I Ric realized I had a husband who was there I went to look for him sitting out on the stoop reading his iphone waiting for me but I told him it's okay Jeff because it's leading to my next book and I know that this is what I want to write about and so within the within a couple of days I knew I had a book I knew I had a story I really wanted to know two things number one how was it possible that 70 some years after the end of the war we had on US soil Nazi collaborators commandant of concentration camps men who essentially served as Hitler's helpers living here in the United States among not only Holocaust survivors and their children but also among War veterans who had crossed an ocean to save them to free them how was it possible that in the United States we had these men and in some cases women living here openly in our communities the other thing I wanted to know was who were the people inside the Office of Special Investigations inside the Criminal Division of the Justice Department who had dedicated their entire professional careers to hunting these collaborators down and what is it like to live inside some of the war's darkest moments day after day month after month how do you live in that place in that space talking to survivors but not just survivors but to killers which is probably worse than talking in some ways to survivors to hear a killer talk in such technical terms about mass murder how do you live in that place day after day month after month year after year and still go home and have dinner with your wife or your husband and Rock a newborn to sleep and take your kid to the soccer game and take an anniversary trip how do you separate yourself from that kind of darkness and go on to live your life and so I was fascinated by his men and women who gave up in some careers as lawyers in the private sector to take on this hunt for Nazis on US soil and I wasn't just interested in the prosecutors I was really interested in the historians who worked behind the scenes to find these men I think I was interested because I'm an investigative reporter so I relate to the idea of digging up dusty records that no one Annette has ever seen and finding these records and the archives of Eastern Europe scattered all over the place finding see rosters and all kinds of stuff and I was really really fascinated with the historians who did this work because one thing I know now having written this book about history is that it's not good enough to know what happened between 1939 and 1945 you have to have context in order to create in order to bring Nazi purpose perpetrators to justice these people the Department of Justice had to recreate the world of Nazi Germany they had to understand the way it worked they had to know the context so that they could successfully denaturalize and ultimately deport these men and so I started on this book project and I really found at the end of my journey that this book wasn't just about darkness it was also about light I it's really about the pursuit of Nazi war criminals on US soil and what it means to have justice even delayed justice in this case it was 50 60 70 years delayed and why this matters today in our world and it matters as we all know because we're too often confronted with hate and intolerance and anti-semitism and this us-versus-them mentality and it leads to violence and so this kind of justice matters even today and so I wrote this book thinking gosh I'm gonna live in some dark moments with it with these guys but really at the end of the day I was feeling very hopeful and very inspired so other books have been written about the Office of Special Investigations just to give you a little bit of context this little-known unit in this obscure wing of the Justice Department with offices that face a mcdonald's and frayed carpeting and drop ceilings with water stains and and you name it just your classic run-down shabby government office is home to was home for a long long time to these prosecutors and to these historians and over about thirty years they tracked down more than a hundred Nazi collaborators who were living on US soil and they deported many of them back to Germany and that is their greatest accomplishment and so other books have been written about this unit some of you might have heard the name John dummy on yoke right yeah so he was one of the people that they successfully prosecuted unsuccessfully the first time successfully the second time but I wasn't interested so much in the broad mission of the unit as I was in one particular investigation and that is the search for the men of travnik II and so in the West even people who know a lot about the war had never really heard of trve McKee and in fact even historians here in the United States knew that trav McKee existed but they didn't understand the scope of travnik II or its role in operation Reinhardt which was the Nazi plan to exterminate the Jews of occupied Poland and so I really like this idea of well what is travnik II and how is it that 50 60 70 years after the war we've never heard of cranek e so this is what I decided to study and this is the subject of the book so Poland as you probably know was home to millions of Jews before the war and there was this the idea that what are we going to do with the Jews of Poland how are we going to relocate the Jews of Poland and so a man named Otilio gu blood nick the SS commander who had been appointed by Himmler to eradicate the Jews of Poland was absolutely fascinated with the idea of gassings of mobile gas vans that the Germans had used in Germany to and so armed with this information they had confessions they had rosters and records from Prague and from all over Eastern Europe they took Jacob Reimer to court in New York and they sought to strip him of his citizenship and ultimately deport him they were successful at the first part they were able to strip him of a citizenship it took the judge four years to rule on this case and the people at OSI believe that the judge wanted to just wait it out so that Jacob primer got to die on US soil and peace and so it was it was a four-year wait until he was ultimately deported and at the end of the day Jacob rhymer got to die on the US soil because before they could deport him he died in Pennsylvania in fact Germany had already refused to take him back and the number of trafficking men were able to die on US soil because of this pushback because of the blowback but ultimately OSI and the Justice Department felt that justice had been done to the extent that they could see justice done it had been done because the record of tremie key the history of this school for mass murder became part of the public record it was memorialized in a federal court and Jacob rhymer ultimately lost his citizenship and he spent the rest of his life as a stateless man but they couldn't get him deported because Germany wouldn't do it so for me as a writer as I said at the beginning I came away with this having written this heart this is the story about darkness but I came away from this story feeling hopeful and and surprised for a number of number of reasons one though I had studied the Holocaust in college and as a you know it's a kid and as a grown-up I didn't quite realize how many people it takes to kill how many millions of collaborators there had to be for the Third Reich to kill that many people George will in covering the Jacob Reimer trial called it cogs in a wheel cogs in a wheel you can't kill 1.7 million people in fewer than 24 months without having a massive operation without having a lot of people on the ground willing to help you out in one capacity or another I also found it fascinating that the Germans were able to indoctrinate the enemy so quickly and so successfully Jakob primer was able to take paid vacations as a trap Nicky man go home to see his family in Soviet Ukraine without even though he had been a recruit you know technically a prisoner of the Nazis and he was able to go home and he still came back to travnik II to serve the Third Reich and so to me some of the trafficking men deserted but so many of them stayed on and it was fascinating to me to think why why why why wouldn't you just try to run if you can if you have the possibility to desert why not desert because they receive paid vacations they received health benefits they receive death benefits Jacob primer in 1944 was made a citizen of Nazi Germany so he was essentially promised a future in this utopia and you know in Germany and so it was you know even though he was indoctrinated I was still fascinated that many many more didn't run when they had the chance to run I was also moved as a journalist as a mother as a Jewish woman as as as a human being by the power and the will to survive and how sometimes through luck through strategy through just sheer effort the will to survive can trump the best efforts of evil of evil men and so I'll tell you the epilogue to the Felix in the Senya story and I always tear up so if I I'll do it again I'm sure but they were able to come to the United States Felix became a doctor served many generations of children had a family of their own and had grandchildren and I am so honored to tell you they're here today would you please rise and and the senior often said were once there was nothing look what I built look what I don't so I was so honored that they let me share their parents story in this book it really meant a lot it really meant a lot to me and that is probably the biggest reason why I say citizen four six eight sixty five is a story about darkness but it's also about light and I think the message here in this world right now with what we're seeing here and abroad is more relevant and more critical now than at any other time in recent history so I hope you'll pick up a copy of the book at some point I'd be I'd love to love to know that we're getting this message out thank you very much [Applause] [Music] thank you so much Debbie we're going to go ahead and open it up to questions from the audience before we get started though please a few things do speak into the microphone so that everyone can hear please keep your question brief so that we can get to everyone and don't forget to pose your question as a as a question and not a statement so we've got mics circulating on either side of the room go ahead and raise your hand and Hallie and I will come to you with the microphone let's start right back here in the middle we're gonna pass the microphone to you sir thank you I'm curious did the people from Cho Aniki in the United States keep their original names how available were they to be found so Jacob rhymer became Jack rhymer you know they definitely took on American names they were able to find them initially through all kinds of different different ways they didn't really know they were here but they might have been searching or investigating another concentration camp commandant and then they got some names this way and they thought well who are these guys but they they knew they were here they just didn't necessarily know how to prove a case so one of the last known trauma key men was named Jackie Pauly he lived in Queens New York on this little middle-class Street in Queens New York for more than 50 years and 14 or 15 years ago a judge ordered him deported he was denaturalized and deported because he liked jacob rhymer had helped liquidate the Lublin ghetto and also served as a guard at travnik II when the Germans shot 7,000 Jewish prisoners essentially every Jewish person who was in a forced labor camp next to travnik II so even though Jackie Pauly had been ordered deported 14 years ago the Germans won't take him would not take him back and only last year the Trump White House managed to convinced Germany to take back Jackie Pauli and so they deported him at 95 years old yeah he died pretty quickly after he was deported but they knew in some cases they were here they just didn't have the evidence to prove it they just didn't and in fact through my reporting process I was able to retrace the steps of doctors black and doctor's what doctor white and go back to the archives in Prague and look at the original Nazi rosters that they looked at that really was a breakthrough in this tribe making investigation they make you put gloves on your hands so that the oil and your fingers don't get on original original documents but they knew they were here they just needed things documents like this here you can see Jacob primer and his number that's essentially his dog tag number issued by the SS that followed him throughout the war he was 865 or citizen 865 but as part of my reporting I was able to go back and retrace their steps and see what trauma he looked like today okay we've got a question right down here we're coming to you with the mic so I just read a book called the Nazis next door and he talks a lot about the CIA and the FBI bringing people over purposely to spy on the commies I was curious what you found when you were doing your research yes which was a wonderful book because he covered that topic the issue is is that there is evidence that was uncovered that the CIA recruited and brought over Nazi scientists in the years after the war and so he Eric Lichtblau who was a former near Times reporter wrote this book the Nazis next door I stayed away from that subject completely in the book for two reasons one it had been written about before - there was some criticism about the book and I'm not want to weigh in on that because I respect Arab spoke and he has a new one coming out but the Office of Special Investigations and the Justice Department disputed some of the statistics in the book but for me I stayed away from it mostly because it had been done before and it didn't apply to the men of truck Niki that's pretty much the biggest reason yeah we've got a question right down here in front to what extent were you able to determine when these people came over that the u.s. knew of their role during the Holocaust but let them in anyway yeah so we did not US army investigators and the people who were assigned to admitting displaced people after the war had never heard of travnik II they did not know what it was it was a tiny little farming village in Poland and so there was almost no way for them to know who they were letting in with these men of travnik II they some of them Jacob rhymer never served in a death camp he never served in a death camp he deported people from the Lublin ghetto he helped suppress the Warsaw Uprising but he wasn't he didn't put on his documents Sobibor or Belzec or Treblinka or things that would have raised red flags in fact Jacob Reimer had a recommendation from the Red Cross his Red Cross supervisor right after he ditched his truck making uniform he went to Munich and got a job with the US and a truck with gas to kill a number of people so he was fascinated by the idea of bloodless mass murder highly efficient mass murder and so they started building death camps three in particular in Poland not concentration camps concentration camps had barracks there were forced labor sections of concentration camps Jews and other prisoners could survive there for weeks or months on end even in horrific conditions death camps were built solely for death there were three of them Bell Zack and Sobibor and Treblinka and they were scattered in remote places in outside major cities or urban areas in Poland and Jewish prisoners were essentially taken right from the trains right to the gas chambers there were no barracks because they died upon entry of this gas station of these death camps and so Otilio goo blood Nick decided that this would be the most efficient way of getting rid of the Jews of Poland and there were millions and millions of them and so he needed manpower he needed help because all of the Germans were busy fighting on the Soviet front so he needed help he needed foot soldiers and so he did something that was very interesting he recruited from Soviet POWs camps he pulled Soviet soldiers out of POWs camps and he sent them to this little farming village in travnik nee Poland which is just south of Warsaw and he you can see on this map you can see that war cells to the north Lublin which is where the book is based is kind of in the center and travnik E is just kind of south a little bit south of Lublin and what you can see on here is travnik e is linked to the rest of Poland through railway lines that was a very strategic location so what good blood nick did is he recruited five thousand men Eastern European recruits men who had fought for the enemy the Soviets and he brought them to travnik e and he trained them at essentially what became a school for mass murder it was a school for mass murder he armed them he empowered them they listened to Nazi ideology on the loudspeakers there were some reports that they were forced during training operations to shoot a Jew to prove loyalty to the Third Reich and so these men who had once fought for the enemy became loyal foot soldiers for the Third Reich and then they were dispatched or deployed all across occupied Poland to do the dirtiest jobs in the war the absolute dirtiest jobs in the war they operated the gas chambers at the three killing centers they helped with very violent horrific deportation operations from ghettos all across Poland they fought the uprising in the worst during the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising they conducted horrible shooting operations in the woods and so these men these travnik II Men or travnik II guards were actually known among the Jews of Poland as being more ruthless and more violent than the dreaded SS they were absolutely vicious in fact some Jewish prisoners called them Blackie's because they were dressed all in black they often wore black coats and the Jewish prisoners didn't know who they were they just knew that they were Ukrainian Latvian Lithuanian they could tell by their accents and they knew that they were absolutely more violent in some cases than the SS and so that was what the travnik II camp's mission was and they did all kinds they went to all over as I said they went to well I should start here this is Himmler visiting travnik II this was an absolutely critical component of operation Reinhard the plan to exterminate the Jews of occupied Poland Karl Strobel was one of the Commandant of the camp he was a regular drunk strolled the camp and black leather booths absolutely violent and the first place travnik II men were deployed to was the city of Lublin which was a thriving cultural hub in Poland for the Jews thriving religious cultural hub Jews served in government offices they held they held they controlled factories it was this really vibrant a vibrant community and then one day moblins 40,000 Jews were put into this ghetto which was just horrific as we all know ghetto starvation disease lack of clean water and in this ghetto the truck making men were deployed on their very first mission they had to round up about 40,000 Jews put them on trains that would take them right to the gas chambers of the Bell Zack kill killing Center and so the travnik t guard guards were told to shoot on the spot so the elderly and anyone who resisted the sick were shot on the spot they went to the Jewish orphanage and they shot all of the children and their wards at the orphanage they the adults didn't want to leave the children so they stayed and died with them they went to the Jewish Hospital shot and killed all of the patients along with the doctors nurses and staff there so this was an absolutely bloody mission they were then deployed all over Poland including to the bells to the Warsaw Ghetto during the uprising and they worked alongside German police and other fighters to suppress the uprising thousands of Jews died as we know in the warsaw ghetto not a lot of pictures of truth mickey guards it really was not a well-known thing at least here in the West for a very long time one of the pictures that I find most stunning is this one these are travnik e men we can tell by their uniforms standing over the bodies of the dead in the warsaw ghetto so they were a very very violent violent force five thousand men strong the historians at the Office of Special Investigations called them the foot soldiers of the Third Reich here's one taking a break at the Bell Zack extermination Center playing the mandolin just to take a little bit of break of a break ultimately the travnik II men helped the SS murder 1.7 million Jews in fewer than 20 months that's the span of two polish summers 1.7 million Jews it's almost impossible to wrap your head around but the Germans could not have done it without the men of travnik II this is citizen 865 this is Jacob primer and he is the subject of the book one of the subjects of the book and he was one of the most trusted leaders at Treme key he's a former POWs soldier recruited and because he had language skills they took this service photo when he started at trav Mickey they filled out his service record and he became a platoon leader at trve Mickey and so these five this is John Damiano by the way for those of you know you know John Danny Anya before he served at the Sobibor killing center he was a traumatic art that is where John Daniel trained and that is his SS service photo so what happened to these men after the war well the platoon as the Soviets were coming in to Poland the platoon split up the men ditched their Nazi uniforms or their SS uniforms ditched their weapons and they scattered all over Europe they essentially started hiding in plain sight in Europe and not for a number of years but many of them slipped into the United States on the same ships US ships naval ships and other ships that brought over other displaced people from Europe including Jewish survivors brought over these travnik II men including Jacob primered onto me on yoke and at least 14 others that we know of one was just deported from Queens New York last year in 2018 so these men were able to come over to the United States and essentially form lives in middle-class America Jacob primer who we just saw actually became a wise potato chip salesman in New York City John dummy on yoke I think worked at an auto for Ford or a car dealers car manufacturing so they lived in plain sight they had social security cards they had pensions they went to church they got married they became naturalized citizens here in the United States and they really looked like the most ordinary Americans and they lived that way essentially in peace many of them never saw the inside of a courtroom never had a traffic ticket nothing they lived that way for years until the Office of Special Investigations especially this historian Peter black realized that they were here so how did he find out what do you do how do you start investigating one of the biggest obstacles that they faced was that most of the records were locked behind locking cave by in the archives behind the Iron Curtain they couldn't actually get to the records that they needed because the communist governments wouldn't let Western historians and investigators in so a lot of the records in Prague for example in Moscow in Kiev they couldn't get to for years and years so they suspected these men were here and in some cases they knew it they didn't really understand the scope of travnik II just how bad it was because the records were locked away they also had a lot of trouble here at home politically because the Office of Special Investigation was going after old men men who had aged gracefully peacefully in the United States and they faced incredible political backlash from top top people including Pat Buchanan who tried to shut down the Office of Special Investigations many times both while he was a columnist and when he was Reagan's communications director in the White House a number of prominent journalists wanted this unit closed so they not only couldn't get to the records because they were behind lock and key in Soviet controlled archives they then faced backlash here at home from people including very prominent people who said why are you prosecuting old men let this die they also faced backlash from Germany in Austria because once they identified these men Germany said we don't want our Nazis we don't want these Nazis back you keep them you know and so the State Department had to get involved in the Office of Special Investigations spent years trying to convince Germany and Austria to take their Nazis back in fact one of their prosecutor ism Michael Bernstein from Bethesda Maryland G is to two movies at night and he went to dance halls and had a great time in post-war Munich and then he realized well the Congress of the United States has passed this displaced persons act they're letting in war refugees so he essentially masqueraded as the war refugee and because US army intelligence we had did not know about travnik II he was led in and in fact the US government in the years after the war wasn't really big on looking for Nazi war criminals on US soil they really weren't they were too busy fighting the Cold War not enough interest it really wasn't until the late 1970s that a Jewish congresswoman in New York pressed the government to start searching for war criminals Nazi war criminals on US soil and not only to start searching but to create a unit inside the criminal division of the US Department of Justice so she threw the weight of the Criminal Division of the Justice Department behind this effort but it did not start until the 1970s late 1970s in fact the thinking among Peter Black and Eli Rosenbaum and the other people in this book was that they would have they be on the job for a year or two they find the people they needed to find in a year or two later they'd be done and looking for work they lasted 30 years looking for Nazi war criminals 30 years racing against the clock because witnesses were growing older and dying the people they were trying to prosecute were growing older and dying and so they thought it would be a one or two year thing it was 30 years and they eventually were able to prosecute well over a hundred people but to answer your question they didn't know about trafficking let's head right up here right in the middle once they found that Nazis living here in the United States why was it so important for the Office of Special Investigations to deport them rather to bring them to justice here in front of all the survivors they couldn't is the short answer Constitution prohibits the Constitution prohibited the Office of Special Investigations from bringing criminal charges against war criminals for crimes committed on foreign soil so they couldn't go after them in Criminal Court they could not have a war crimes trial in the United States would have required a change in the Constitution there was not a lot of push for that at the time and they were racing against the clock so the only avenue they had was to take these men to court in a civil denaturalization and deportation case that was the only avenue they had they would have loved to go after them in Criminal Court and the goal was to deport them and have countries like Germany Israel Austria try them there wasn't a lot of will for that especially in Germany in Austria just not a lot of well so the only avenue they had was to remove them from US soil and they had mixed results because of the pushback we've got a question right down here in the second row is the office of special operations under the Justice Department still operating under the present administration it it merged with a broader War Crimes Unit and so now there there might be another Nazi investigation going on that I don't know about but they they broaden their mission to include war criminals from other countries so Bosnia Guatemala other hotspots around the world and it's kind of sad if you think about it they were trying to do this to show the world that there is going to be justice if you come to the United States we will track you no matter how many years have passed they did this because they were hoping to show the world that you know there's accountability for horrific acts and yet they're just as busy as ever just as busy as ever trying to get more criminals from other countries removed from US soil they're no longer called the Office of Special Investigations it's a broader unit now they've expanded their mission post World War two right back here your subject matter brings to mind a Simon Wiesenthal organization and the absence of you're referring to perhaps you could amplify what they've done in your relationship with them yes so Simon Wiesenthal is of course considered the most successful Nazi hunter in the world and early on he provided a tip to the Justice Department that helped fueled the push in the United States to create a Nazi hunting unit he found that there was a woman living in New York who had once been known to she she had worked at the Madonna concentration camp right outside of Lublin and she were these special boots with like studs under them because she would kick prisoners and beat them to death with her boots they called her stomping mayor and she she did horrific things to children very brutal things to children and she ended up marrying an American GI and living as a housewife I think in Queens New York Simon Wiesenthal tracked her down passed along the tip to the Justice Department and that led in part to the creation of the Office of Special Investigations we've got a question in the back over here a hundred men were deported their families remain on US soil correct and there are they known of has anything been done in terms of just identifying these people because I would think that in many cases there were some foreknowledge as to what they had done that's a very smart you know the Office of Special Investigations really tried to keep the families especially the children out of it in a lot of cases the children didn't even know about their parents histories there in some cases like in the John DiMaggio case the best known case in the United States his children got involved and worked very very and very forcefully to defend their father but in most of these cases at least remained quiet they didn't even know about the histories and the Office of Special Investigations focused on the perpetrator not their families and we've got a question all the way over there Hallie's coming to you with the mic first of all let me thank you for the work that you've done my wife is the daughter of a Polish Jewish Holocaust survivor and every day I look at my children I think how can we keep history alive and how can we continue to educate people on how quickly hate can spread so thank you my question is to what extent has this has OSI worked in cooperation with the State of Israel and gotten assistance from the State of Israel and their investigations and prosecutions they did at times get a lot of cooperation from Israel especially in the beginning in the John Damiano case which is a long winding story they they thought he was a ivan the terrible' of the Treblinka death camp they got it wrong Israel tried to prosecute ultimately dropped the case against a me on yoke but they did get cooperation over the years from Israel but mostly it was a us-based operation in other countries like Canada actually modeled Nazi hunting units after the Office of Special Investigations so other countries were modeling the work of the Office of Special Investigations but it was mostly a us-based operation and their operation took off after communism collapsed and they were able to get into Kiev and Moscow Warsaw other cities and look at these troves of Nazi records that no one had ever seen before we have time for one last question afterwards please join us in the lobby for a book signing with debbie let's go right back here yes many of us are aware of the Nazis from the concentration camps but how about the new surge of Nazism in this country today what are we doing about that that's quite a question to end on and I appreciate that question because it's an important one I think yesterday was just the the one year out of one year of the tree of life and in Pittsburgh and we all know that there is a rise in anti-semitism in the United States there's a rise in hate crimes in the United States not just against the Jewish community that the immigrant community and other communities here and so you know I don't know that I can answer your question but I can tell you that I was moved by the Nazi hunters in this book because they had no tolerance for intolerance they had no appetite for it and they spent their entire lives trying to root it out of this country and they did that because as we all know history repeats and they wanted to make a statement that this is not a country that will accept that no matter how many years has passed and so like this gentleman over here with with children I I wrote this book for my kids for my children it's it's a new day and there are things that they need to know about and be aware of this country is definitely shifted a little bit and I hope that books and books like this will will will do some good I hope you'll read it thank you everybody thank you [Applause]

Channel: Chicago Humanities Festival

Views: 4,230

Rating: 4.3333335 out of 5

Keywords: chicago humanities festival, chf, humanities, chicago, festival, holocaust, nazis, nazi germany, investigative journalism, american history, hate crime, hate speech, crime stories, world war ii, world war 2, war crime

Id: gv6YtiKwSto

Length: 44min 48sec (2688 seconds)

Published: Tue Dec 03 2019