director public programs. i have thehe privilege of doing this on a regular basis. we thank you so much for being here today. twe hope you will return on other occasions. usually i play a game with my audience and i'll decide very quickly. y is this your first visit? please raise your hand. raise it higher so i can seeoo it, thank you, thank you, thank you, over hereto. thank you all in the intercity quality so the extra rest of you can exercise one of your arms, if you are a regular and attend our programs all the time please raise your hands. thank you. thank you. the folks you raised your hands first time around, please don't take my word for it alone. asknd anyone else around you who hand went up the second time why they support this institution. why they come here on a regular basis, why do i know many of them by their first name. and for those whose first names i have not learned, i will do my best to learn them. o also i might suggest for those who are not as familiar with our organization to pick up one of our quarterly calendar other bret vents and brochures. you will find them the information desk. it will let you know about all of her upcoming programs. i won't steal more of the time this afternoon to list them lall, but i will tell you we have a program this coming thursday evening, it's going to be an exhibition opening for a brand-new exhibition we just mounted. and that's on this thursday, the 21st, and the next sunday we have another program. we have a film and discussion and await tangentially related to the subject matter today. we are going to be showing the film of the memories of the eyes and row which is a documentary of survivors and the others were witnesses who attended the eyes and trial on one of those witnesses is henry ross who is featured in one of our special exist submissions right now the large photograph of henry roth. those are just a few of the reasons for you to return, and i certainly hope you're well. at the conclusion of today's program, our presenter will be available to sign copies of her new book, citizen 865, the hunt for hitler's hidden soldiers in america. so as a courtesy i ask you to please allow her to exit the stage and the auditorium, and continue your conversation with her over in the vicinity of our legacy shop. them of you may have noticed we have some additional apparatus i in v the room today. we are t very excited that this afternoon's program is being preserved and tapes for future broadcast by c-span, c-span's book tv. so we are excited to have an author, whose work commands such importance at attention as it should. because the subject matter will never go out of style. let me tell you a little bit about our presenter. debbie cenziper is associate professor at medill school of journalism and northwest university. she oversees the investigative lab. i'll have to learn how where to put -- she is a pulitzer prize-winning investigative reporter and nonfictional author who writes for the "washington post". has spent three years at george washington university before joining the faculty at mcgill. over the years her investigative stories have expose wrongdoing, prompted congressional hearing, si and let changes in federal and local laws. in her classes at medill for students focus on social justice on trim justice investigative reporting. debbie is one dozens of words including the robert f kennedy for reporting on he human rights in the goldsmith prize from harvard university. sher received a pulitzer in 2007 at the miami herald for a series of stories about corrupt affordable housing developers who are stealing from the poor. your before that she was a pulitzer prize finalist for stories about dangers breakdown and that nation's hurricane tracking system. debbie is a frequent speaker at universities, writing conferences, and book events. her first book, love wins, the lovers and lawyers who fought the landmark case for marriage equality published in 2016 by william mauro, was named one of the most notable books of the year by the "washington post". her second book that recently released half the presses citizen 865, the hunt for hitler's hidden soldiers in america's or topic of conversation with us today. she is based on medill's washington d.c. campus working with graduate and undergraduate students on investigative stories and we are delighted to present to you this afternoon debbie cenziper.bb [applause] >> thank you for that lovely introduction, lillian. i very much appreciate it. i'm so happy to be here with you today. i am based in washington d.c. for this first quarter at northwestern, i have been here in evanson learning all about evanston, northwestern, and chicago and has been a lot of fun and i'm so happy to be here to talk about this book project. let me tell you where this book got started. this book actually started just in the final moments of 2016 when i was at a new year's eve party in maryland with my friends and my husband. my husband wanted to leave because it was very loud disco music playing in the background, and he had had enough. but i ended up having this conversation with a woman we were having dinner w with whom i've never met before. turned out she was a lawyer from the u.s. department of justice. and over this long, unexpected conversation, robin l gold started telling me about this little-known units, deep inside the u.s. justice department that had spent three decades hunting nazis criminals on u.s. soil. she spent a decade or so on the staff of the "washington post". i knew very little about this units and i remember thinking two things. askingng myself two questions after this to our conversation. number one, how is it possible that so many years after the war, what 70 some years, after the holocaust, there were still nazis perpetrators and war criminals living here on u.s. soil. i just could not understand that and was really fascinated by the idea that was even happening here. and more than that who with the men and women at the justice department that had spent the bulk of their careers hunting for these perpetrators. and how are theyra able to spend day after day, year after year, inside some of the darkest moments in recent history? how were they able to do that and then go home at night to their wives and husbands, how are they able to go home tonight at their children? take vacations and live normal lives when during the day they were hearing about and reliving some of the most horrible, horrific moments in holocaust history? gi really wanted to get to know the people behind this not see hunting unit and the u.s. department of justice. after i rounded up my husband from this cocktail party he was sitting outside hunched over reading the "washington post" waiting for me for quite some time, i knew that i had the beginnings of another book. about a week later i called up a historian who worked in this nazis hunting unit and that u.s. department of justice. doctor barry white. i askedar barry to talk to me a little bit about what she had been doing here and she recounted the story that prompted me to it write this book. in 1990, soon after the collapse of communism, barry white and another historian named petern black. [laughter] you already got my joke and i have not even told you my joke yet. you already got to the punchline. they went to prague, because communism had collapsed and they knew that than nazis had stashed a lot of records in prague. war documents, not the rosters, and they could never get to them because the communist government would not allow them inside their archives. but after the collapse of communism in 1990, they could get in and it was a treasure trove of information for these historians. imagine what they might find there. they flew into germany, they rented a little car that chugged across germany into prague in the middle of the night. they ended at and a little rented apartments and the russian caretaker was very upset that barry white was not there with her husband, she was in fact they are on the job. she was actually pregnant at the time and the russian caretaker very muchee wanted to feed them pork cutlets and beer for breakfast. that was not a good thing for barry who was very early on in her pregnancy. they ended up inside this massive archive, and prague, surrounded by government agents with guns and everything else.th doctorpe peter black, through his translator said i am doctor black and this is doctor white. [laughter] and we are here representing the u.s. department of justice. all of the government agents are just mark and they are probably thinking the cia has no imagination. [laughter] these must be government spies. but off they go into the death the archives this office building in prague. soon enough, barry white pushes back her chair, she is looking at this piece of paper runs over to peter black and says i found something, turns out they found a not see roster from 1945 that listed the name of 700 men who had participated in one of the most lethal operations in occupied poland. in some of those men, they knew were here and the united states living on u.s. soil. they recognize some of the names. and that was a turning point in an investigation that spanned about 15 years. and it is at the heart of this book, citizen 865. so as soon as i talk to barry white, i knew this was my next book, this was for sure a story i wanted to tell. and t so let me give you a little bit of background. i focused heavily in this book on historians. so prosecutors are historians of this book as well. i have spent about 25 years of my life as an investigative reporter so i love documents they intrigue me. historians were able to find documentss from all over eastern europe. inside what were once communist countries, they went to moscow, theyhe went to kiev, they want to prague, they went to louisville and poland, and they found allll of this evidence about men who are living here in the united states. i found that absolutely intriguing as an investigative reporter, that there were men and women who had spent their careers in this obscure outpost of the u.s. department of justice with drop ceilings and stained carpeting, and a window that faced mcdonald's. here they were hunting nazis criminals and u.s. soil. and they were absolutely determined to bring them to justice, no matter to her how much time it passed. i found that really inspiring as a journalist, as her mother, as a wife, as a human being. these are the people who, in part dried the story. a little bit of background, as you all know, poland had more jews before the war than any other country in the world, probably except for the united states. it was a thriving hub for jewish life. it was also considered a strategic stronghold for the reich because there is a lush farmland and strong economy that they wanted to turn over to ethnic german settlers. poland was a very strategic location of very strategic area for the reich. but what you do with the jews? what you do with the jews? they had experimented with gathings and germany through mobile gas vans. and that idea of kind of blood lust, efficient mass murder, was a very interesting and intriguing to the police leader of the leuven district. a man known as dealio a blush that, anna bosch's last name. he was tasked with deciding what to do with the jews of occupied poland. nwell, the ss was busy fighting on the soviet front and they needed manpower. he needed help to annihilate the jews of poland. so we ended up recruiting from soviet pow camps, men who were captured soviet soldiers, they were put in soviet pow camps where they likely faced death. and he actually recruited them and essentially taught them how to fight for the enemy. he also prudent lithuanians, latvians, polls, and other recruits. he brought them to a little farming villages south of warsaw known as trust nikki. you can see from the map, what's interesting that this is an incredible location because it had rail lines that connected this village to other key points in occupied poland. he ultimately recruited about 5000 men to this camp. it became, and a sense, a school for mass murder. in this camp, these men were trained in nazis ideology, they were armed, they were empowered, they were taught military drills, german marching commands, and they were ultimately dispatched from this school for mass murder, and this little farm village to the jewish ghettos daof occupied poland where they liquidated the ghettos. they were brought to -- they participated in shooting operations throughout occupied poland, and they man to the killing centers in occupied poland including treblinka and supper poor. force them into gas chambers. the man essentially became the manpower for the ss. they were the men who did the bloodiest jobs in occupied poland. and the jews who were survived, described the men as more brutal and more vicious, and more bloodthirsty than even the members of the ss. these were men who essentially for the foot soldiers of the third reich. and because nikki was their base camp. this is where they were arms, this is where they were trains, and this is where they were ordered deployment orders to go across occupied poland anded help the ss annihilate the jews. these were the men who did the bloodiest jobs in occupied poland. and trust nikki was a school for mass murder in occupied poland is set up by the ss. in fact one of the historians in the book called them the foot soldiers of the third reich. that is what they did. they were often known by the jews as the men wearing black coats and black hats. some jewish survivors called them the ukrainians because some of the men were from ukraine or that region. but there were others, many, many others. from lithuania and latvia. the ss really came up with an incredibleme system because these men were given wages. they were given housing, they were given food, they were given service medals for work that was done well. they were given vacations. they were given all kinds of honors. if they were died they received proper burials. so for these men, especially men who came from soviet pow camps, serving the enemy seems like a decent option because in the soviet pow camps they'd faced likely starvation or death, or some other kind of horrible death. this camp was set up in the first deployment was to the city of louvre lens which you can see on the map it was a historical cultural and religious center for thousands of polish jews. more than 40000 jews lived in poland in 1939, they held leadership positions on the town council, they were leading members of the business community, there were religious schools, there is just a thriving, thriving jewish culture have their 1939. and it was here louvre led the two of the main characters in my book met. and they were just children in many ways -- in every way at the time. felix and lucinda were born in louisville and, they were friends and their families were friend. loosing his father was a court interpreter before the war and her mother was a dentist. felix's father was an architect before the war. and so these two teenagers were pushed into the loveland gateau by the knot sees along with theirir friends, neighbors, every member of their extended family. 40000 jews were put into this ghetto. there was starvation, you name it, everything -- it was terrible water shortages, food shortages and for what ever -- all kinds of reasons, lucinda and felix were able to survive mass deportation in this ghetto. their survival a story like all survival stories i have heard in researching this book, were just absolutely astounding. it took my breath away as a writer. but here they were in this ghetto in the louvre lens and one day men anden black coats and black caps o surrounded the perimeters of the ghetto and they put on floodlights, and they demand that every family come outside. in this ghetto, 1500 jews at day would be deported east for resettlement in the east. over a periodd of weeks, listen you and felix were barely -- the sinuous in his teens and felix was 19 or so. tell everyone they knew deported. their friends, their neighbors, their extended family. everyone they knew, they lost. h they didn't know where they had gone. it turns out they were taken to the killing center and gassed upon arrival. the people who did this were men and black coats and black caps. and the jews of louisville and described them as being more vicious, more violent than the dreaded ss. they went to a jewish hospital and murdered the patients, the doctors and the nurses. they want your jewish orphanage and they murdered the children along with thewi staff members who refused to leave the children behind. they went into the woods and shah jews at the edge of a ravine through mass killing and shooting operations. these men for the chesney key men who werein trained at the urschool for mass murder. thiss school was so important to the ss that top leadership came to visit including hitler. felix and lucy escapes. they escaped the labeling ghetto and under the cover of night, took a train to warsaw. they slipped inside the jewish ghetto of warsaw because lucinda had an uncle there. and they decided at the last minute they needed to get out of the ghetto. so in the weeks before the uprising with the help of the underground they escaped the warsaw ghetto probably save their lives. because they escaped just before the uprising. what they didn't know at the time, is that the men followed and work side-by-side with the germans to suppress the jewish uprising in the warsaw ghetto. so they survived, out ran the men, they survived warsaw, outran the men, and lucy and felix ended up at the end of the war in a small rural farming village near kraków. and they were essentially hiding in plain sight and felix became a teacher for the local children and the village. never once told anybody, obviously he was a jew. and at the very end of the war they heard soviet tanks rumbling towards this farm village. and felix got down on his stomach and crawled out into the woods on his hands and knees and could see these soviet tanks coming, liberation liberation and a russian commander walked intoma the building, approached felix and said who are you and felix said i am a teacher here. and the commander said okay, for the first time in many, many months, i am also a jew. and the commander said to him, that is not possible. all the jews are dead. you must be a spy. and felix said no no, i am a jew. so the commander called over a jewishie soviet soldier, and said you are jew, he's a jew, speaking yiddish or hebrew to each other. and felix came from a very assimilated family and did not speak much yiddish. in factr his father brought in a rabbi to teach him a little bit of his history, and felix would wait until the rabbi dozed u off, he would take his books, skip to the last page, and when the rabbi woke up he would say here you go i finish my studies. so now he is faced with proving he is a jew and what could've been a life or death moment towards the end of the war. and somewhere in the back of his memory, and the back of his mind he remembered the shema. the holiest prayer right in jewish religion, and he recited it for this soviet soldier. the soviet soldier said oh my god you really are jew. and f how do felix, and that is how felix and lucinda were able to -- that's how they survived the war. so on foot they went w home to lubin to see if anyone was left. before the war there were 40000 jews living in lou blinn. only 200 survived. including felix and listen you. they needed to get out of lubin because to lucinda and particular, every rock had bled honest. l every neighborhood was a stranger by then. so they went to vienna, and felix finished his medical degree, he became a doctor. in 1951, they came to the united states. what they didn't know until years later, and what many if not most jewish survivors didn't know until years later, is that the men followed. they slipped into the united states by lying about their whereabouts and activities during the war. they came in and large part under the displaced persons act, which was meant to bring in war refugees, people who were escaping from communism and jewish survivors. and theyn moved to the united states, hiding in plain sites, and cities and suburbs across thes country. so they were living in new york, florida, ohio and yes even here in the chicago arregion and ultimately what they found at the department of justice, is there more than a dozen living in the united states. imagine knowing, the men the very same men who persecuted and had a hand in killing everyone you know was here living in the united states, side-by-side with holocaust victims, their descendents, and war veterans who had crossed an ocean to free them. imagine what that must've felt like c knowing that was the case. when the trazegnie men came here, many of them became naturalized citizens. they pledged to defend the constitution and they were living here with pensions, social security benefits, they went to church, they married, they had children. they were naturalized americans living side-by-side with the very same people they had had a hand in killing. and d so the people at the department of justice didn't really know much about trazegnie. it was known about the people in the east but not the western investigators because the department ofst justice and western investigators did not have access to the archives in eastern europe for a longop time. and so some men were known, disses anyone of jon mignon jo. he was a trazegnie man. thatat is where he was trained, that was his base camp. we knew, american investigators knew of trazegnie but they did not understand its role in the murder of jews of occupied poland. without the men of trazegnie, according to w historians, there is no way the ss could have killed 1.7 million jews in fewer than 20 months. the span of two polish summers. there is no way they could have killed that many, that quickly without brute force on the frontlines of this mass murder operation and occupied poland. this is one of the most interesting pictures i found of trazegnie men standing over the bodies of the dead and the warsaw ghetto. here they are at one of the extermination centers in occupied poland, you can see one of the guys is playing a mandolin. perhaps the most trusted trazegnie commander, found living here in the united states, is jacob reimer who is a "citizen 865", the subject of the book. every tree and man was given a dog tag number that followed them through the war, his ss identification number was 865.er this is why his personal record look like. this is his ss personnel record acquired by the department of justice in its i investigation. there is a perhaps a familiar face to some of you, this is also his trazegnie personnel file that was uncovered by u.s. investigators. he works for the ford motor company. jacob reimer started a potato chip franchise in new york city. one trazegnie man found in chicago years earlier works for the crackerjack company. so these men were living very ordinary lives. they looks like ordinary americans, again with social security cards, pensions, and retirement. jacob reimer retired to this little house on the shoreline of lake carmel and new york and was living there essentially undetected for years and t years and years. the push to find these men, and to bring them to justice is what drives this book. that is the drama behind this book. this is theia roster that the historians found in prague in 1990 with jacob reimer's name on it and his identification number. this is what led them to understand more about trazegnie and the perpetrators. this tiny unit inside the justicest department faced an incredible set of challenges. for one thing, they were racing against time because witnesses were growing older, survivors were growing older, when this unit was started by an act of congress in 1979, everyone thought they would have their work done in a handful of years, a couple years, five years tops. because surely there couldn't be that many people living here on u.s. soil. their work went on for 30 years. they found concentration camp commandant's living here. other men who participate in the persecution of jews, and of course a subset of the people they wereor looking out for the men of trazegnie. so the first was a race against time to not only understand the part of the history of the holocaust that was not well known in the west, but then to identify men, some of them change their names. how do youid prove what they did 70 years ago? sixty years ago? how do you do that? it was a great, great challenge to thehe investigators, to the historians, and the prosecutors insidee this unit in the justice department. perhaps onee of the biggest challenges, which was explored in the book and is fascinating to me, was the political pushback this unit faced by prominent people in the united states. men like pat buchanan repeatedly called to shudder this nazis hunting unit. what's done is done, leave these old men alone. you arere going to send them back into the hands of the soviets. we can't trust soviet justice. so pat buchanan and other prominent people push to shudder this unit for years. another challenge they face was once they found these men, and nadine naturalized them, and they convinced an immigration judge to order them deported and removed from u.s. soil, germany and austria would not take them back. they would not take them back. germany -- in fact there is a discussion recounted in the book or one of the heads of this unit said, germany said we don't want to take your garbage back -- kind of thing. ahead of this unit said your garbage, they just moved here. but a they could not convince germany and austria to accept these men, to allow the united states to remove them. we couldn't force it, there's no way to do that. and so in 1988, a prosecutor in the office of special investigations, a young man named michael bernstein decided to fly to austria to help the austrians -- to convince the austrians to take back not the perpetrators. michael bernstein had two young children, he lived in maryland just outside of washington, and he was considered a story to prosecutor in this unit. he had a way of convincing every defendant on his roster to settle a case and to agree to country without ever taking the guy to courts. he was a brilliant lawyer. austria, around that time despite resisting for years said you know what, maybe we will take some of your defendants back. austria was ready to ink a deal with the defense department to take back austrian born not the perpetrators found living the night states. the only thing we needed was a signature. so michael bernstein volunteered to go. he flew to austria just before hanukkah, and december 1988, and managed to get the deal done. and stayed until the ink was dry even though he wanted to getnd home to celebrate hanukkah with his children because his daughter was about seven and his son was four years old. off he goes, and that is he's about to come home he calls his wife and he calls his boss inside the justice department and says i really want to get home earlier i'm going to switch my flight. any switch to active pan am flight 103 which was blown up by a terrorist bomb over lockerbie scotland. if you remember a bomb was wrapped in baby close and stepped inside a samsonite suitcase. so michael bernstein died in the light of duty some 40 years at that time after the holocaust. it was one of the most tragic situations faced by the peoplee in this nazis hunting unit. rninto this day a picture of michael bernstein sits on the desk of eli rosenbaum who ran the unit for years and years as a top prosecutor. but thishb pushback, not only from people like pat buchanan, from other countries with an ongoing struggle for the people of osi. so was convincing judges 2d naturalized men who looked like ordinary americans. jacob reimer is a subject -- that's one of the historians. there's eli rosenbaum on the laughter member doctor black and doctor white's? there is doctor black who is now the world's most foremost expert on the trazegnie training camps. there is doctor white on the front. they still joke about the doctor black, doctor white thing. but one of the hardest things for the prosecutors inside this office was to convince a judge, far removed from the holocaust, that men who look rather ordinary should in fact be stripped of their citizenship. jacob reimer, citizen 865, was taken to court in new york in 1998 and he was wearing hightop sneakers and a sweater. in fact, a couple of people in the f courtroom said who was the survivor and who is the not nazis war criminal. it was hard to tell the difference so many years after the war. convincing judges that these men should not have been here in the first place, was a great challenge faced by the nazis hunters in this book. and jacob reimer's case, they knew that he was a trusted collaborator in this training camp. he had gone to lou blown and lead a platoon of men in a very violent liquidation of a low blend get out were felix and lucinda's families lives. then he had gone on to pratt's the jewish uprising during the war sose ghetto uprising. they knew all of those things, but the other thing they found out about jacob reimer is under questioning, he thought he could get away with his history here, his background. so he showed up in new york without a lawyer, did not think he needed one. he went to the u.s. at attorney's office in new york, he met with a couple prosecutors fromnd this nazis hunting unit. in under questioning he admitted he had taken part of a massive shooting operation somewhere in the woods outside the woods of trazegnie or jewish men, women, and children were lined up against the edge ofst a ravine and shah. their bodies were dumped into the ravine, the next truckload came in and on and on it went. witnesses of shootings like this say there wasid essentially on the floor when it was done. under questioning, jacob reimer admitted to shooting a man who was in the ravine pointing to his head. almost as if he wanted to be shah. he was begging for mercy he just wanted to end it. and under questioning, reimer admitted to this. i will play a little bit for you. it will just take a second to hear. >> there's something about the man you haven't told me? yes. you finish them off? >> wade couldn't hear was reimer's last line, i am afraid so like finish them off. and so off they go to court with jacob reimer on the witness stand. so now they have all of the records, including the records they found in prague. they have a bunch of other documents about jacob reimer and they have his confession. off they go to court, but again judges resisted all of the time because w what they were seeing was a man who looks like anybody else. it was very hard for this unit to convince judges to d naturalize these men. to tell the story, i went to four countries. iei essentially retrace the steps of the historians in this book. that's jacob reimer by the way as he was coming to court in his sneakers one day. but i was able to go to the lupine gado, retrace the steps of felix and lucy. i was able to go to the concentration camp in loveland where many people from low blend -- jewish people were taken to die. i actually was able to see the sights of a mass shooting like the kind described by jacob reimer to u.s. investigators. and i was able to go to prague and actually find the original nazis record found by doctor white and doctor black in 1992. they make you put on white gloves so the oil from your finger doesn't seep into original documents. this book took me about three years to reports and rights. i came away with the new understanding of the holocaust, which o i had studied in college, i had studied growing up, i had talked to my grandparents. i thought i knew a lot about the holocaust, but a couple of things really struck me. the first is, how many people it takes to kill so many so quickly. how many collaborators it took, people onpl the grounds, people who are not part of the nazis party and not part of the ss. people who got away with it, many, many thousands of people. the syndicated columnist george will, covered the jacob reimer hearing in new york in 1992. he actually called them cogs in a wheel. just how many people it takes to kill. i had never really thought about that as much as i didn't writing this book. i was also really, really intrigued by how easy it was to indoctrinate the enemy in the trazegnie training camp. how easyn it was to turn people around and make them loyal foot soldiers. some trazegnie men deserted. they deserted the unit, better than to die as a good person than to live as a killer. the jacob reimer and many others stayed on. in fact, jacob reimer was given paid vacations. he was allowed to go visit his family in ukraine, or the area of soviet ukraine unescorted. and he returned back to the trazegnie training camp to continue on with his service to the ss. he was so loyal, that he receives citizenship and nazis germany and 1944. the end of the war, he would then retire in return to nazis as a decorated war hero. so i was really fascinated by the idea of choice, by who stayed in who left, and how easy it was to convince the enemy to fight for you. i was also really fascinated by the german austrian resistance. the last known trazegnie nine man ordered deported from the united states was just a port in 2018 -- last year. the guy had lived in queens new york for 50 years on this little middle-class neighborhood that i visited in queens new york. retired they're drawing a pension, drawing social security. he had been ordered removed from the united states 14 years ago, but the department of justice and the state department could not find a countrye willing to take him back. they had all refused, germany and austria both refused which allowed this trazegnie man to essentially live in the united states. he was stateless, but he was here. and so the people in this unit move himly wanted to because they didn't want to allow him to die in peace on american soil. in 2018, after 14 years of pressing foreign governments to take this man back, they finally convince germany to take this man back. he was flown back to germany where he'd died a few months played later at the age of 95. i askeden the people inside the justice department's, is this revenge because that comes up a lot. is this revenge? is this retribution? what is this? and their response really fascinates me. their responses that these men's were never supposed to be heree in the first place. they were not supposed to get a visa, they were not supposed to be admitted into united states. so we are taking back what they should not have had to begin with. they should not have been allowed to live here. and they are doing it because that is what our law -- of that is the american law that is our law. they are doing it because on behalf of the holocaust survivors that they were living side-by-side with for years in the united states. on behalf of the war veterans who had crossed an ocean to help free them, and they are doing it on behalf of the defendants ofvi holocaust survivors who are here. why should these men be allowed to die in peace on u.s. soil? so thehe people inside the justice department don't consider it revenge. they consider it justice. ands even delayed justice is better than no justice at all. that is perhaps more important now than ever, to show the rest of the world that this kind of -- that war criminals have no place living on u.s. soil. every time the people inside the justice department were question, why are you going after these guys? it has been years? leave them alone it's their little oldte men. barry white would say if years later wean found one of the terrorists who blew up panhandle 103, when we say well, 30 yearst' has passed. let's just let him go? of course we wouldn't. so why should it be any different for perpetrators of war crimes in the holocaust? why should be any different? and said they were really doing this the name of justice, and they did it most successfully. the justice department were able to prosecute more of these men from 1990 on than any other country in the world, including germany. and to this day they continue to doo their work, although the unit has expanded now to include war criminals from other parts of the world, guatemala, bosnia, and other war-torn countries. and unfortunately they are still as busy as ever. as busy as ever doing their work. so for me as a writer, i was really moved and inspired by the men and women doing this work. as an investigative reporter i've spent so many years writing about government corruption, and mismanagement, i worked in miami and washington. as you can imagine i am never short on stories. but this was a different kind of story. this is a story that even though it was about darkness and dark moments, i really found that the story about lights. i really found that the men and women and this book, more inspiring. the story of listening and felix, i remember sitting at my desk, night after night listening to their accounts, and i was so moved by their will to survive. and what they went through. and in fact, loose enya would go to her synagogue and look at her whole family filling up you in a synagogue and say look what i produced. where once there was nothing, look what id produced. i am so honored to let you know that their family is here today. [applause] would you stand up to felix and loose enya? [applause] that is why i say this is a story about darkness but also about lights. and i hope you have a chance to read the book. thanks for having me here and i'm happy to take your questions. [applause] [background noises] >> hi, the nazis files that were kept in reset austria? prague. why weren't they destroyed? why didn't they keep them at all? >> that's a question i get it every talk i give. nazis destroyed a lot of records. trazegnie training camp was almost considered mundane in their eyes. it was a training camp. and so is the soviets were coming in to poland, the men of trazegnie and their leader escaped and one of the places they went was prague. fand so they likely took a lot of the records with them and they were stashed in prague. the ss didn't necessarily destroy them because it was really considered ade rather mundane operation, it was a training camp. it wasn't high high level. >> were these people part of the group? they were terrorizing the jews when they came into t town. these people were not part of that group, they were different group is that right? >> that's right, they were collaborators and notor germans. there were a number of ethnic germans, but jacob reimer had been born in ukraine and what we now know as ukraine. his family had migrated their years in your earlier. so even on his ethnic german, he wasn't part of germany. there were 5000 men, but they were recruits and collaborators, but they were not part of the ss. they were not part of the not see party. >> i forgot the name of the author that i would assume you've read -- nazis next door. at this case we let the men willingly how do we correlate them? >> i did read that book and in fact i'm doing a talk in miami with the writer of that book next week. eric is the writer and he wrote about operation paperclip, which was the fact that the cia led in certain trazegnie because that have been extensively written about before, i didn't focus on that. other books have been written obviously about nazis hunting. there are good books. i focused on the men of trazegnie because nothing had ever been written to this extent about that training camp. i was fascinated with the idea that they could recruit an army of 5000 men to do the dirtiest jobs in poland. but yes, the cia as we all know did let men end, but because that has been covered before and written about i went a different way. >> it's a great talk so far, i look forward to buying your book for sure. thanks for taking a picture with me before this. i was wondering, it would seem i have read accounts of the hunch there for the remnants of nazis war criminals, and other books such as hitler's fury by wendy and it seems like many of these hunts were ineffectual and the judges weren't interested. do you think the u.s. missed any chances via not, what was said that the law did not permit them to prosecute any of these criminals themselves? do you think justice was necessarily served by merely deporting them? you think their home countries had an interest in prosecuting them? or do you think this was in many cases a just another way for them to die where maybe they would have wanted to live anyway if there wasn't backlash after the war? he met good question and thank you for asking q it. the people inside the justice department obviously -- a war crimes trial would have made sense, right? the people inside the justice department did everything that was within their power to do could do, everything the constitution allowed them to do. they could not try people for war crimes on u.s. soil because the crimes weren't committed here. the constitution did not allow that. would have taken a long, long time and great political will to change the law. they didn't have the time, they were racing against time. people were growing older, witnesses, defendants, suspects, so they did everything they could in civil courts. they took these men and convince judges to de- naturalize them them, to strip them of u.s. citizenship. which they should not have had in the first place. then they would take them to immigration court and convince an immigration judge to order them deported. this process took years to build these cases, pull everything together waiting on judgment, and even then, even when they had done all of that, they couldn't often remove them. a number u of them were able to die on u.s. soil because no country would accept them. all of that being said, i think the people inside this unit would tell you they did everything they could end to great success, to at least hold these men accountable. they did everything they could under our law. for the historians, it wasn't just a matter of tracking these men, it was also a matter of correcting the record of history, especially in the case of trazegnie. historians new trazegnie existed, but they did not understand the role in the murder and destruction of jews in occupied poland. they did not understand just how it works. they were able to correct the record of history and find these men, and hold them accountable as best they could. >> are they still prosecuting known trazegnie men or other naziss refugees -- former nazis ss known in this country? how many do they think are still in this country? >> that's a great question and i wish they would tell me that. but they don't tell us that, especially german journalists until these cases are made public. i suspect there might be a couple of cases coming up that i have no -- is just a gut instinct on my part. as i said the nazis hunting unit which is called the office of special investigation u has become a bigger unit inside the justice department now with a broader mission to look for war criminals on the other parts of the world. that will see if there is another one. the case in 2018 they had been working on for years. and suddenly after 14 years, overnight that trazegnie man was sent back to germany. ninety-five years old. >> i was wondering this whole time, why they haven't been tried as war criminals. you answer to that, however in my mind, i'm thinking of israel, how they were able to try these people who were said to israel and they were tried there. why didn't that happen in these quick cases? >> that's the second question i get it every book talk and i'm glad you asked it. i remember my mother said the same thing. i don't think israel had great interest in taking back these men. there were not necessarily israeli witnesses. they didsa take back jon dim men yoke, the trazegnie man. he was accused of being a man named ivan the terrible. in fact there's a series on television now. he was accused of being ivan the terrible of the camp, a vicious man. he was found guilty in israel. so they did take him back. he was found guilty they are, the case unraveled. he was a trazegnie man and served in a death camp it was a different death camp in occupied poland. israeli news this and declined to prosecute. and so jon was allowed to come back into the united states, returned to his life here, even though he had served in the death camp. and until the trazegnie hunting unit decided to prosecute him assigned second time. this was a hugeec p hurdle, elia rosenbaum had to go to the attorney general at the time and o ask for permission to take this cast against him back to court the second time. they successfully prosecuted him a second time. germany took him back. and he was convicted in the murder of 20000 or so jews and the death camp. but to answer your question, israel did take him back. but there is not a lot of interest from israel over the years to take back more, there , this man is a nazi war criminal and they cannot move them from the u.s. oil and some cases. in other cases they did but a number of cases they struggled to the point where the men were able to die here. [inaudible] >> yeah. have there been any studies about into the personalities of these men into the background of these men because you described them as being brutal beyond brutal so even worse than the fx. so can you -- >> that's a generalization but these men, a lot of them came from eastern european countries and from semitism. for generations before the war. they have been ingrained in their societies. so yes, a lot of them were more brutal than the ss and the jews that occupied poland and a large part came to fear them more than the ss. they were far greater in number, the s ss had a killing center bt they were boot from the ground and the ones that operated the gap under gas chambers that forced jews from the trains directly into the gas chambers. i can't do the polish thing but they were not concentration camps, they were death camps. they were from centers and did not have barracks because jews did not stay alive there, they were taken right from the train into the gas chamber because the men were doing that work. so jacob reimer said in court that he was a victim of the nazis. that he like so many others said that that he had to fire at the man pointing to his head at the rear beam because he did not show loyalty to the ss he would've been the next one shot. so the department of justice argued in that case, yeah you got for service models, you did so well you were granted citizenship in nazi germany and you receive paid vacations, you came back on your own accord to continue fighting alongside the ss you could've deserted but you did not and that was the case, why did you do it. [inaudible question] >> yeah, some men deserted because he key, they did not come back but 5000 and so others came on and served a great loyalty. [inaudible question] i don't know, i think they did but it was by and large not a huge number of peopl people who deserted. not a huge number. a lot of these men after the war since he came from soviet union, they were tried by the soviets after the war. and convicted by the soviets of fighting for the enemy. we did not know that because we weren't talking to the soviets about these things and it took years and years for american investigators to realize that the soviets themselves have prosecuted these men. when we were able to get her hands on the records it helped build cases in the united states. >> i forgot the name of the american the nazi hunting. >> the special investigation. >> i know it's been around a long time but anyone time do not many people were in this office of social investigation. >> for the work they did it was tiny. maybe 40 or 50 people or so. they started osi with investigators more like criminal investigators who worked inside the federal government and ultimately they started using historians because they realized they desperately needed that context. but for many years we did not do a lot of nazi hunting in the united states, it took until the 70s for there to be political wealth to do this kind of work. >> debbie, thank you for your work. how do we learn from history, how do we have generations not allow mass murderers to not only have the risk of citizenship being stripped, we have got to figure something out, there has to be justice in the world beyond what there is. >> that's a very profound question that i think we could all talk about for hours. i think the first step is to show that we draw a line and no matter how many years have passed in this country you will be stripped of your citizenship if we find out you are a war criminal. so the people in the special investigation especially the lawyers spent their whole careers, they could have gone on to more lucrative careers, it's not exactly fun to be a federal government survey, eli rosenbaum has a law degree from harvard, these are top top lawyers who spent their whole lives working in this government office and they had mice crawling across the floor, these were not high-profile prosecutors that were making headlines in the new york times and the washington post. they did this work because they were on, they felt it was the right thing to do and there has to be a line no matter how many years have passed, we will come after you if we find out that you've done something wrong no matter how many years have passed. i don't know how to present it in the future. one depressing thought is that the unit is still just as busy as ever. >> one more question, i was struck by your comment having going back to poland and how it took a country, not just an army would you comment on that. >> the people, it took the people of poland. >> i am sure many of you have been to poland, i can imagine many, many people have been there. it was my first visit to poland and i found poland to be a wounded country, it was occupied by the germans and by the soviets. there were a lot of people in poland, the polish underground that helped save jews. including felix who i told you about, there were a lot of people who helped and a lot of people who collaborated a really when you qui country. >> maybe i can shed some light about how some of the war criminals and the characters come into this country. i am a survivor and liberated. after i was liberated i was 15 years old and i was dumped into a displaced person camp. in the displaced person camp not only has this place people who are jewish but they would come together with other people who never had a country to go too so we flood. it took a while before the commander or the forces of america to finally come to grips and separate me to displaced persons from the one to try to hide and i remember before i was allowed to come to america, it took me three or four years of vetting of the cic and papers and all kinds of investigations from the americans for my relatives to come to america. and then i'm sure -- [inaudible] >> he was saying that in a displaced person camp he was saying there was probably a lot of people that participated that managed to slip in and jacob's case the book is called his id number, jacob reimer was vetted by the military in the u.s. army and he was listed on his immigration papers that he had served in this training camp. but we did not know what it was at the time, the u.s. army investigators had no idea that it was a mass murderer in occupied poland. he was given a recommendation by a red cross supervisor at the time and spent the post war years so free american gis to hollywood movies, he worked for the u.s. army andy kaman with a supervisor recommendation that called him a loyal and honest and hard-working man who would make a great american or great u.s. citizen. so to your point you are right. they did not know enough to let them in despite the vetting. he was vetted. here when he was in the united states the u.s. investigators caught on to him and he said yeah i was there but i was the paymaster in the administration, no blood on my hands very mundane work in the u.s. department of justice did not know any better until they started investigating and figured out what the camp actually was. >> you said our state department was reticent about getting involved, is that correct, what is your perspective on that, what did you learn in opinion. >> the justice department could not necessarily to official channels and go to other countries and say take your nazis back. they were relying on the state department to do it that is a state department job. though i don't have an opinion on this, i think the people inside the justice department might say that some of the state department pushed harder than others. but i will say from my reporting that last year in 2018 the state department and the justice department came together to deport this nazi war criminal in queens, new york. but for a long time i think the department of justice would tell you they could not get as much traction as they would've wanted to get with the state department. we hear the gentleman over here who had to wait all these years before he could get out. in the center government allowed to come here in the truth of the matter is our government recruits nazis to come here knowing their nazi past to help in the cold war and scientists in other and they not only allow but brought them here knowing what they did and that something that is unthinkable. >> for those of you who did not hear the woman was talking about the u.s. government and cia had recruited nazi scientists to come here after the war. and that is incredibly outrageous. i hear what you're saying, this book focused on a totally different thing than that i understand your point. >> ladies and gentlemen i know we could stay here the rest of the day asking debbie questions but some of your questions will be answered in her book and i want to thank you for being here with us today and join me once again and thinking her. 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