Her book is citizen 865. [inaudible conversations] i didnt even have to say anything. You are a welltrained bunch. Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen. Good afternoon and welcome to the Illinois Holocaust Museum and education center. My name is Lillian Polus Gerstner and is director of programs i get this privilege on age regular basis. We thank youou so much for being here with us today. We hope you would return on other occasions. Usually i play a game and dont do it very quickly. Is this yourt first visit . Lees raise your hand. Rate it higher so i can see. Thank you, thank you, thank you. Our presenter must have a knack. Thank you. In the interest of equality, so that the rest that you can exercise one of your arms, if you are a regular, if you ten programs all the time, if youre one of ourr members please raie your hand. Thank you so much. Thank you. The folks who raised your hand the first time around please dont take my word for it alone. Ask anyone else around you who sent with the second time why to support this institution, why they come on a regular basis, what i know many of them by the first thing. Those whose first name i have learned i will do my best to learn them. Also im going to suggest for those who of you are not as a note to pick up one of our quarterly calendar brochures. This will let you know about all of our upcoming programs. I wont steal more of the time this afternoon to list them all but i will tell you that we have a program this coming thursday evening. Its going to be an exhibition opening for a brandnew exhibition we just mounted, and that on this thursday the 21st 21st. Next sunday with another program. We. We have a film and discussion in ways tangentially related to the subject matter today. Were going to be showing the film memories of the iceland trial which was an israeli made documentary that interviewed survivors and others who were witnesses or who attended the trial. One of those witnesses was henrik ross whose photographs are featured in a special exhibition right now, memories and earth. Those are just a few of the reason for you to return and i hope that you will. At the conclusion of todays program our presenter will be available to sign copies of her new book, citizen 865 the hunt for hitlers hidden soldiers in america. So as a courtesy to ask you to please allow her to exit the stage and the auditorium, and continue your conversation with her over in c the vicinity of or legacy shop. Some of you may notice that we have some additional apparatus i in the room today. We are very excited that this afternoons program is being preserveds and take her future broadcaststs by cspan, cspan booktv. We are excited to have an author whose work commands such important attention as it should because the subject matter will never go out of style. You a little bit about our presenter. Debbie cenziper is associate professor and director of investigative reporting at Medill School ofou journalism northwestern university. She oversees the material Investigative Lab or investigative, ill have to learn where you put the syllable emphasis. She is a Pulitzer Prizewinning Investigative Reporter and Nonfiction Author who writes for the washingtongt post. She 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 hearings and led to changes in federal and local laws. In her class at mcgill, she at her studentsil focus on investigative reporting. She has won dozens of awards in american print journalism including the robert f. Kennedy award for reporting about human rights and the goldsmith prize for investigative reporting from harvard university. She received the pulitzer in 2007 at the miami herald for a series of stories about corrupt Affordable Housing developers who were stealing from before. A year before that she was the Pulitzer Prize finalist for stories about dangerous breakdowns in the nations hurricane tracking system. Debbie is a frequent speaker at universities, writing conferences and book events. Our first book, love wins, the lovers and lawyers who fought the landmark case for Marriage Equality published in 2016 was named one of the most notable books of the year by the washington post. Her second book, the recently released hot offw the presses citizen 865 the hunt forid hitlers hidden soldiers in america is her topic of conversation with us today. She is based on the washington d. C. In campus working with undergraduate and graduate students on investigative stories, and were delighted to present to you this afternoon Debbie Cenziper. R. [applause] thank you for that lovely introduction, lillian. I very much appreciate it. Im so happy to be with you here today, though i am based in washington, d. C. For this First Quarter at northwestern, i have been here at evanston learning all about evanston and northwestern and chicago, and its been a lot of fun and am so happy to be here to be talked about this book project. Let me tell you why this book that started. Very loud disco music playing in the background and he had had enough but i ended up having a conversation with a woman we were dealing with we never met before. She was a lawyer from the Us Department of justice and over this long, unexpected conversation, robin gold start telling me about this littleknown unit deep inside the Us Justice Department that had spent three decades hunting nazi war criminals on us soil and no way spent a decade on staff at the washington post. I knew little about this unit and i remember thinking two things. Asking myself two questions after this two our conversation. Number one, how is it possible that so many years after the war, 70 some years after the holocaust there were still nazi perpetrators and war criminals living here on us soil. I could not understand that and was fascinated by the idea that that was even happening here and more than that, who were the women at the Justice Department who spent the bulk of their careers hunting for these perpetrators and how were they 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 go home at night to their wives and husbands, how do they go home to 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. In the department of justice. After i rounded up my husband from a Cocktail Party he was sitting outside hunched over reading the National Post waiting for me for quite a long time. A week later i called up the historian to work in the nazi hunting unit. I asked barry to talk to me about what she was doing here and recounted a story that prompted me to write this book. Soon after the collapse of communism, barry white and peter black, you already got my joke and i havent told you my joke yet. Already got to the punch line. They went communism had collapsed and they knew that the nazis had stashed a lot of records in progress, war documents and they could never get to them because the communist government wouldnt allow them inside the archives but after the collapse of communism they could get in and this is a treasure trove of information for these historians. Imagine what we might find. It would shoved across germany, in the middle of the night. The russian caretaker was very upset barry white was not there with her husband. She was pregnant at the time addressing caretaker very much wanted to be there for breakfast. That was not a good thing for barry who was very early on in her pregnancy but ended up inside this massive archive. And very black said im doctor black and this is doctor white. We are before the department of justice. All the agents started to smirk and thinking the cia has no imagination. These must be government spies. Off they go into the dusty archives in this Office Building in prague and soon enough barry white pushes back, looking at this piece of paper, runs over to peter black, said i found something, the nazi rafter from 1945 that lifted the name of 700 men who participated in one of the most lethal occupations in poland and some of those men they knew were here in the United States living on us soil. They recognized some of the names. Was a turning point in an investigation that spanned 15 years and is at the heart of the book citizen 865 the hunt for hitlers hidden soldiers in america. As soon as i talked to barry white i knew this was my next book, this was a story i wanted to tell. Let me give you a little bit of background. I focused heavily on historian so prosecutors are the heroes of this book as well. I focused heavily on historians, i spend 25 years of my life as an Investigative Reporter. Documents intrigued me. I love documents, historians were able to find documents from all over eastern europe, inside communist party. They went to kiev, fraud, poland, and all this about men in the United States. I found that absolutely intriguing as an Investigative Reporter that there were men and women who spend their careers in this obscure outpost in the us apartment of justice with sustained carpeting in the window that faced mcdonalds. Here they were hunting nazi war criminals in us soil and were absolutely determined to bring them to justice no matter how much time passed. I found it really inspiring as a journalist, as a mother, a wife, a human being. These are the people who in part drive this 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 accept the United States. It was a thriving hub for jewish life and it was also considered a strategic stronghold for the right because there was less farmland, they wanted to turn over to german settlers. Poland was a strategic location of a strategic area for the right and what do you do with the jews . She experimented with gasing in germany. That idea of efficient mass murder was very interesting and intriguing to the Police Leader of the district. A man known i will botch his last name. He was tasked with deciding what to do with the jews of occupied poland. They were fighting on the soviet front, needed help to annihilate the jews of poland and so he ended up recruiting from soviet pow tents who captured soviet soldiers, they were put in camps where they likely faced death. She recruited them and essentially taught them to fight for the enemy and recruited lithuanian, latvians, polls and other recruits and brought them to a farming village south of warsaw. He was an incredible location, rail lines that connected village to other key points in occupied poland. He recruited 5000 men to this camp. It became a fool for mass murder. These men were trained in nazi ideology, they were armed, they were empowered, they were taught military drills, german marching commands, they were dispatched for mass murder. And to the jewish ghettos of occupied poland where they liquidated together. They were brought, they participated in shooting operations through occupied poland and they forced jews to the gas chambers in occupied poland. The men essentially became the manpower, they were the men who did the bloodiest jobs in occupied poland and the jews who survived describe the men as more brutal and more vicious and more bloodthirsty than even members of the ss. The footsoldier of the third reich, and he became their base. This is where they were trained and issued deployment orders to go across occupied poland and help the ss annihilate the jews. These are the men who did the bloodiest jobs in occupied poland. One of the historians said they were the foot soldiers of the third reich. They were often known by the jews as the men wearing black coats and black hats. Some of the men were from ukraine or that region but there were others, many others, lithuania and latvia. The s s came up an incredible system because these men were given wages. They were given housing, given food, given service metals, they were given vacations, they were given all kinds of honors, they received proper burials. In soviet pow camp serving the enemy, seems like a decent option, likely starvation or death or some kind of horrible death. The first deployment was to the city that you can see on the map, lube and with the historical, cultural and Religious Center where thousands of polands 40,000 jews lived in poland in 1939, held leadership positions on the town council, leading members of the business community. Just a thriving jewish cultural hub since 1935 and it was here that two of the main characters in my book met and they were just children in every way at the time. Friends and families were friends. Lucindas father was a Court Interpreter before the war, her mother was a dentist. And his father was an architect before the war and these two teenagers were pushed into the lubeland get a by the nazis along with friends and neighbors in every major member of their extended family. 40,000 jews were put into this ghetto. Everything, water shortages. For all kinds of reasons, Lucinda Felix was able to survive mass deportations in this ghetto. The survival stories like all the survival stories i heard, it took my breath away as a writer but they were in this ghetto in lubeland, one day men in black coats and black caps around the perimeters of the ghetto put on floodlights and demand every family come outside and in this ghetto, 1500 jews a day are supported east. Lucinda and felix felix was about 19 or so. Friends and neighbors and extended family, they didnt know where they had gone. They were men in black coats and black caps and they were described as more vicious, more violent than the dreaded ss. They went to a Jewish Hospital and murder the patients and doctors and nurses, they went to a jewish orphanage and murdered the children along with Staff Members who refused to leave the children behind, they went into the woods and shot jews at the edge of a redeem ravine and these men, they were trained at the school for mass murder. This school was so important to the ss the top leadership came to visit including himmler. Felix and lucy escaped, they escape the lubeland ghetto and at the cover of night took a train to warsaw because they didnt have any place to go, inside the jewish ghetto of warsaw because she had an uncle there and decided at the last minute they needed to get out of the ghetto. In the weeks before the uprising with the help of the polish underground, they escaped the warsaw ghetto, probably saved their lives because they escaped just before the uprising. What they didnt know was the men followed, worked sidebyside with the germans to suppress the jewish uprising, they survived warsaw, out ran the men and lucy and felix at the end of the war in a small village near krakow. They were hiding in plain sight and felix became a teacher for the local children in the village, never told anyone, obviously he was a jew. It the end of the war, soviet tanks rumbling toward the farm village. He crawled into the woods on hands and knees. Liberation, liberation, a russian commander walked into the building approached phoenix and felix that i am a teacher here. For the first time in many months, the commander said to him, all the jews are dead, must be a spy. The commander crawled over a jewish soviet soldier and said you are a jew, he is a jew, speak hebrew to each other and felix came from a very assimilated family in lubeland, did not speak much yiddish and brought in a rabbi to the house to teach him a little bit of his history and felix would wait until rabbi does off, skip to the last page and when the rabbi woke up, i finished my study. Now he is faced with proving he is a jew in what could have been a life or death moment, somewhere in the back of his memory, the back of his mind he remembered the holiest prayer, the soviet soldier said lets really are jim and hugged felix and that is how felix and lucinda to assess how they assessed how they survived the war, they went to lubeland to see if anyone was left before the war, there were 40,000 jews living in lubeland, only 200 survived including felix and lucinda. They needed to get out of lubeland because every rock had blood on it. Every neighbor was a stranger by then and felix finished his medical degree, became a doctor. In 1951 they came to the United States. What they didnt know until years later and what many and most jewish survivors did not know until years later is the men followed, they slipped into the United States by lying about their whereabouts during the war, came in large part due to the displaced persons act, bringing in war refugees escaping from communism and jewish survivors. Hiding in plain sight in cities and suburbs across the country. They were living in new york, florida, ohio and in the chicago region. What investigators found that the department of justice is there were more than a dozen living in the United States. Imagine knowing the very same men who persecuted and had a hand in killing everyone you ever knew were living in the United States sidebyside, with holocaust victims, their descendents in war veterans who crossed an ocean to free them. Imagine how that felt knowing that that was the case. When they came here many of them became naturalized citizens, pledged to defend the constitution and living here with Social Security benefits, they married, had children, they were naturalized, that they had a hand in killing. People at the department of justice didnt really know much about travely. It was known to the east but not western investigators, they did not have access to the archives. Some men were known. Does everyone know john that is where he was trained, that was his base camp. American investigators knew but didnt understand his role in the murder of the jews of occupied poland. According to historians, no way the s s could have killed 1. 7 million jews in fewer than 20 months, the span of two polish summers, no way they could have killed that many that quickly without brute force on the front lines of this mass murder operation in occupied poland. This is one of the interesting pictures, standing over the bodies of the dead in the warsaw ghetto. Here they are at the Extermination Centers in occupied poland. One of the guys is playing a mandolin. The most trusted commander found living in the United States is jacob reimer, age 65, the subject of the book, every man was given a dog tag number, his asbestos Identification Number was 865 and this is what his personal record looked like, acquired by the department of justice in its investigation. That is a familiar face to some of you, this is his personnel file. He worked for the ford motor company. Jacob reimer started a potato chip franchise in new york city, one man found in chicago years earlier works for the crackerjack company. These men were living ordinary lives, they looked like ordinary americans, with Social Security cards, pensions, retirement. Jacob reimer retired to the shoreline of lake parnell in new york. And was living undetected for years and years and years. The push to find these men and bring them to justice is what drives this book. That is the drama behind this book. This is what the historians found in prague in 1990 with jacob brimers identity on it in his Identification Number. This led them to understand more about trawniki and these perpetrators. This tiny unit in the Justice Department faces an incredible set of challenges. 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 had done their work in a handful of years, five years tops because surely there couldnt be that many People Living here on us soil. Their work went on for 30 years. They found concentration camp commandants living here. And of course a subset of the people they were looking at where the men of trawniki. The first challenge they face was racing against time, to understand part of the history of the holocaust that was not wellknown in the west, to identify men, some of them changed their names. How do you prove what they did 70 years ago, 60 years ago. It is a great great challenge to investigators, historians, and prosecutors inside this unit in the Justice Department. One of the Biggest Challenges explored in the book is fascinating to me was the political pushback. It is faced by prominent people, repeatedly called to shutter his nazi hunting unit. What is done is done. It is in the hands of the soviets, we cant trust soviet justice, pat buchanan and some prominent people pushed to shutter this unit for years. Once they found these men and d naturalized them and convinced an immigration judge to order them deported, removed from us soil, and could not take him back, germany, a discussion recounted in the book, germany said we dont want to take your garbage back. They just moved here. To accept these men to allow the United States to remove them. There is no way to do that. In the office of special investigation a young man named Michael Bernstein. To help the austrians to take back nazi perpetrators. Just outside of washington, he was considered a storied prosecutor in this unit. He had a way of convincing every defendant on his roster to settle the case and agree to leave this country without ever taking the guy to court. Austria around that time despite existing for years, maybe take your defendants back. Austria was ready to ink a deal with the state department to take back austrian born nazi perpetrators found living in the United States. The only thing we needed was the signature. Michael bernstein volunteers to go. He flew to austria just before hanukkah in december of 1988 and managed to get the deal done and stay until the ink was dry, to celebrate hanukkah with his children, and his son was 4 years old and off he goes, and he calls his boss and decides the Justice Department, and he switched it to pan am flight 103. In lockerbie scotland, bombs wrapped in baby clothes. Michael burstein died in the line of duty, 40 years at that time or so after the holocaust. It was one of the most tragic situation faced by people in his nazi hunting unit, a picture of Michael Bernstein sits on the desk of Eli Rosenbaum who ran the unit as the top prosecutor. This pushback not only from people like pat buchanan but other countries was an ongoing struggle. So was convincing judges to d naturalized men who looked like ordinary americans, one of the historians, doctor black and doctor white, there is doctor black, one of the foremost expert in there is doctor white on the front and they joked about doctor black, doctor white thing. One of the hardest things for the prosecutors inside this office was to convince the judge far removed from the holocaust, men who looked rather ordinary should in fact talk about their citizenship. Jacob reimer, citizen age 65 was taken to court in new york in 1998 and wearing hightop sneakers and the sweater. A couple people in the courtroom said who is the survivor and who is the nazi war criminal . Hard to tell the difference so many years after the war, so fighting or convincing judges these men should not have been here in the first place was a great challenge faced by the nazi hunters in this book. In Jacob Reimers case they knew that he was a trusted collaborator in Training Camp, he had gone to loopwith violent liquidation where their families lived and then had gone on to help suppress the jewish uprising. They knew all of those things with the other thing they found out was under questioning, he thought he could get away with his history, his background so he showed up in new york without a lawyer, didnt think he needed one, went to the Us Attorneys Office from this nazi hunting unit and under questioning, he had taken part in a mass shooting operation somewhere in the woods outside trawniki were jewish men, women and children were lined up against the edge of the ravine and shot, their bodies dumped into the ravine, the next truckload dumped in and on and on like this, witnesses said there was blood on the floor when it was done so under questioning jacob admitted to shooting at a man who was in the ravine pointing to his head almost as if he wanted to be shot. He was begging for mercy. He wanted to end it. Under questioning reimer admitted to this. Play a little bit of it now, take a second to hear it. Something about the man who pointed to his head. What you couldnt hear was reimers last line i finished him off. Something about the man who pointed to his head. And so off they go with jacob reimer on the witness stand. They have all the records including the records they found in prague, a bunch of other documents about jacob reimer and his confession and off they go to court but judges resisted all the time. A man who looked like anybody else but it was hard to convince judges to d naturalized these men. To tell the story, i went to four countries. I essentially retraced the steps of the historians in the book. That is jacob reimer as he was coming to court in his sneakers one day. I was able to go to the lubeland ghetto, retrace the steps of felix and lucy and went to the concentration camp in lubeland, where jewish people were taken to die. I was able to see the mass shooting is described by jacob reimer to us investigators. I was able to go to prague, the original nazi records found by doctor white and doctor black in 1992, they made you put on white gloves so the oil from your finger doesnt seep into original documents. This took me three years to report and write and came away with a new understanding of the holocaust which i studied in college, studied growing up, talked to my grandparents, i thought i knew a lot about the holocaust but a couple things really struck me. The first is how many people it takes to kill so many so quickly. How many collaborators it took. People on the ground, people who were not part of the nazi party, not members of the ss. People who probably got away with it, many many thousands of people. The syndicated columnist george will covered the jacob reimer hearing in 1992. He called them cogs in a wheel. And i was intrigued by how easy it was to indoctrinate the enemy, how easy it was, might make them loyal foot soldiers. They deserted cnet, to die as a good person than to limit the killer. Many others stayed on. Jacob reimer was given paid vacations, was allowed to visit his family in ukraine unescorteds and returned to the Training Camp to continue service to the ss. In nazi germany, in 1944. And moving to nazi germany and lived there. I was fascinated by the idea of choice, who stated who left. I was fascinated by the germany and austria the last known trawniki man ordered deported from the United States was just deported in 2018. He lived in queens, new york for 50 years, the middleclass neighborhood i visited in queens, new york, draw a pension, trying Social Security. He had been ordered removed from the United States 14 years ago but the department of justice and state department could not find a country willing to take him back. They all refused, austria, germany refused which allow this trawniki man to live in the United States, he was stateless but he was here. For people in this unit desperately wanted to move him because didnt 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 convinced germany to take this man back and he was flown back to germany where he died a few months later at the age of 95. And so i asked the people in the Justice Department is this revenge . That comes up a lot. Their response really fascinates me, that these men were never supposed to be here in the first place, they were not supposed to get a visa, not supposed to be admitted into the United States. Taking back what they shouldnt have had to begin with. They should not be allowed to live here and they are doing it because that is what the law, that is our law, doing it because on behalf of the holocaust in the United States, on behalf of the war veterans to help freedom, on behalf of the descendents of holocaust survivors, why should they be allowed to die in peace on us soil . The people in the Justice Department dont consider it revenge. They consider it justice. Even delayed justice and that is more important than ever to show the rest of the world, no place living with us soil. Every time people in the Justice Department, why going after these guys . It has been years. They are little old men. Barry white would say if years later we found one of the terrorists who up pan am 103, 30 years has passed, lets just let them go, of course we wouldnt. Why so different for perpetrators of war crimes in the holocaust . Why should it be any different . They did it most successfully, the Justice Department able to prosecute more of these men, and and in other parts of the world, guatemala and bosnia and other wartorn countries. They are still as busy as ever. As busy as ever doing their work. For me as a writer i was really moved and inspired by the men and women doing this work. As an Investigative Reporter i spent so many years writing about government corruption and mismanagement. I worked in miami and washington. I am never short on stories but this was a different kind of story. This was a story that even though it was about darkness. I found it a story about light. I found the men and women in this book where inspiring, the story of lucinda and felix, i remember sitting at my desk night after night listening to their accounts, i was moved by the will to survive, and what they went through. And she would go to her synagogue and look at her whole family filling up you in a synagogue, where once there was nothing, look what they produced. I monitor let you know their families are here today. [applause] that is why i say this is a story about darkness and also late. I hope you have a chance to read the book. [applause] high. The nazi files that were kept in progress, why werent they destroyed . Why did the nazis keep them at all . That is the question i get at every booktalk. The nazis did destroy a lot of records. The Debbie Cenziper to the trawniki Training Camp is considered mundane in their eyes, it was a Training Camp. As the soviets were coming in to poland, the men of trawniki and their leader sk but, one of the places they went was prague so they likely took a lot of records with them and they were stashed in prague. The ss didnt necessarily destroy them because it was considered a mundane operation at the Training Camp. It wasnt a high level. What they a group that was terrorizing the jews, these people were not part of the group. They were different groups. They were collaborators, not germans. They were a number of ethnic germans but jacob reimer had been born in ukraine, what they know is ukraine, his family migrated there years and years earlier. Even though he was ethnic german, he wasnt a part of germany. There were 5000 men but they were recruits and collaborators but not part of the ss. They were not part of the nazi party. I will assume you fled the nazis next door. In this case we needed a miracle. We led them willingly. And doing it talk in miami with the writer of that book and eric mcneil is the writer. He wrote about operation paperclip, the fact that the cia let in certain nazis, had been extensively written about before. Other books had been written about nazi hunting, very good books about nazi hunting. I focused on the men of trawniki because nothing had been written to this extent about that Training Camp. And they could recruit an army of 5000 men to do the dirtiest jobs, the cia as we all know let them in and because it was covered before and written about i wanted to set it right. I look forward to buying your book for sure, thanks for taking a picture with me. It would seem, i read accounts of the remnants of nazi war criminals, in other books like hitlers furious by wendy lower and it seems like many of these hunts were ineffectual and they werent interested. Do you think the us missed any chances . The law did not permit them to prosecute themselves. Was justice served . The home countries had an interest in prosecuting them . In many cases a way for them to die where they would have wanted to live anyway if there wasnt backlash after the war. Good question. Thank you for asking it. The people inside the Justice Department, a war crimes trial, the Justice Department did everything in their power to do. Everything the constitution allowed them to do. Cannot try people for war crimes on us soil but the crimes werent committed to here. The constitution didnt allow that, would have taken a long long time and great political will to change the law and they dont have the time. They were racing against time. People were growing older, witnesses, defendants, they did everything they could in civil court, took these men and convinced judges to deal natural lies them of us citizenship which they shouldnt have had in the first place. Then they would take them to Immigration Court and convinced an immigration judge to order them deported in this process took years, i mean years to pull everything together, and even then, even when they had done all that they couldnt often remove them. A number of them were able to die on us soil because no country would accept them. All of that being said, the people in this unit would tell you they did everything they could with Great Success to hold these men accountable. They did everything they could under the law. And for the historians, wasnt just a matter of tracking these men, also a matter of correcting history. Especially in the case of trawniki. The story is trawniki existed but they didnt understand its role in the murder, the destruction of the jews of occupied poland, they didnt understand how it works so they were able to correct the record of history and have them accountable as best they could. I they still prosecuting nazi, former nazi ss and whatever. How many do they think are still in this country . I wish they would tell me that but they dont tell us that until these cases are made public. I suspect there might be a couple pieces coming up but a gut instinct on my part. The nazi hunting unit which is called the office of special investigation has become a speaker unit in the Justice Department with a Broader Mission to look for war criminals in other parts of the world, the case they had been working on for years and after 14 years overnight, the trawniki man was sent back to germany, 95 years old. Why they havent been tried, but in my minds, and people were sent to israel and tried their. That is the second question i get asked every booktalk. My mother said the same thing, where was israel. They were not necessarily israeli witnesses. They did you have do you know the story of john the series on television about it now. For the trawniki death camp. He was found guilty in israel, found guilty in israel as the case unraveled, john was trawniki man and served in a death camp. It was in occupied poland. The israelis knew this and declined to prosecute so he was allowed to come back into the United States, return to his life. And though he served in that death camp. Until the nazi hunting unit decided to prosecute him a second time which is a huge hurdle. The head of the nazi hunting unit, Eli Rosenbaum, had to go to janet reno, the attorney general at the time, and ask for permission to take this case back to court a second time. They successfully prosecuted him a second time. Germany took him back and he was convicted in the murder of 27,000 or so jews. To answer your question, israel did take him back there was not a lot of interest from israel over the years to take back more, there just wasnt. When their citizenship was taken away from them, how could they live . Were they entitled to Social Security, to get medicare . How could they support themselves and take care of themselves . They were stripped of their citizenship and eventually considered stateless men but they were still here, still part of the country, still living here, paying mortgages, drawing pensions, all of those things. Olivet continued, all their privileges continued . As if Nothing Happened . That is why it was the single biggest problem faced by this nazi hunting unit for years was they did all this work, proved their cases to the point where judges, in some cases these cases were appealed to Appellate Court up to the Us Supreme Court so court after court what are fruman these decisions. And couldnt remove them from us soil. In a number of cases they struggled to the point where men were able to tie here. Have there been any studies into the personalities of these men, the background of these men, you describe them, worse than the s s. That is a generalization, a lot of them came from Eastern European countries. Antisemitism, for generations before the war had been ingrained in their societies. A lot of them were more brutal than the ss and the jews of occupied poland in large part came to fear them more than the ss. They were greater in number. The ss staff detailing centers, really the trawniki men were boots on the ground, they were the ones who operated the gas chambers the forced jews from the trains directly into the gas chambers. In all these places i miss pronounce because i cant do the polish thing, they were not concentration camps. They were death camps. They didnt have barracks because jews didnt stay alive there. They were taken right from the train into the gas chambers because the trawniki men were doing that work so jacob reimer said in court he was a victim of the nazis. Like so many others said that. He had the fire pointing at his head because if he didnt show loyalty to the ss he would have been the next one shot. What the department of justice argued in that case is yes but you got four service medals, did so well you are granted citizenship in nazi germany, received paid vacations, came back on your own accord to continue fighting alongside the ss, you could have deserted but you didnt, and that was their case. Why did you do it . Some men deserted trawniki and did not come back. They served with great loyalty. I think they did but it was by and large not a huge number of people who deserted, not a huge number. A lot of these men after the war because they came from the soviet union they were caught, tried by the soviets after the war and convicted by the soviets of fighting for the enemy. We just didnt know that because we werent talking to the soviets about these things and it took years and years for american investigators to realize the soviets themselves prosecuted trawniki men. When we were able to get our hands on those records it helped to build cases in the United States. I forgot the name of the proper names of the units. Office of special investigation. It has been around a long time. Do you know how many people were in this office of special investigation . The work they did was tiny, they started with investigators, more like little investigators who worked in the federal government and ultimately they started using historians because they realized they desperately needed that kind of context. But for many years we didnt do a lot of nazi hunting in the United States. It took until the 70s for there to be political will to do this kind of work. K. Debbie, thank you for your work. How do we learn from history, how do we have generations not allow mass murderers that is a very profound question that i think, i mean, we can all talk about for hours. I think the first step is to show that we draw a line, and that no matter how many years have passed in this country, you will be stripped of your citizenship if we find out that you are in a war criminal. So the people in the special investigations especially the lawyers spend their whole careers here. They couldve gone on to more lucrative careers. Its not funy to be a federal government servant, right . Eli rosenbaum has a law degree from harvard. These are top, top top lawyers who spent their whole lives working in this drab government office. The first office, they had mice across the floor. These were not high profile prosecutors that would make a headline in the New York Times and the washington post. They did this work because they were on, they felt was right thing to do and that has to be a line no matter how many years have passed, were going to come after you if we find out that you are, that you done something wrong, no matter how many years have passed. But i dont know about how do we present in the future. One of them were depressing thoughts to me this unit is just as busy as ever. One more question. 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 im 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 jacobs 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 hardworking 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 dont 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 wouldve 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 people who are scientists and other things and they were not only allowed but profiteer knowing what they had done. That is something that is unthinkable. For those of you who didnt hear, this woman was talking about the fact that the u. S. Government, cia had recruited nazi scientists to come in after the war, at that is incredibly outrageous. I hear what you are saying. This book focused on a totally different thing than that, but i understand your point. Ladies and gentlemen, i know we could stay here the rest of the day asking daddy questions i think some of your questions will be answered and her book and i do o want to thank you for being here with us today. Join once again in thanking Debbie Cenziper. [applause] debbie would be happy to continue the conversation out in the vicinity of our shot. The museum remains open until 5 p. M. So please take advantage of the time to say many of our exhibitions. The use senate will meet today. Majority leader Mitch Mcconnell added today session in anticipation of an agreement on the next round of coronavirus economic relief. Reports are a deal has been reached. The next economic stimulus is expected to be about 500 billion. It will include more funding for the Small Business loan program that ran out of money last week as was funny for hospitals, at a national covid19 testing program. You can watch the senate live today at 4 p. M. Eastern here on cspan2. You are what you special edition of booktv airing now drained with four members of congress are in their districts due to the pandemic or tonight we look at foreign affairs. Television has changed since cspan began 41 years ago. Already this year we brought you primary election coverage, the president ial impeachment process, and now the federal response to the coronavirus. You can watch all of cspans Public Affairs programming on television, online or listen on our free radio app and a part of the National Conversation through cspans daily Washington Journal Program or through our social media feed. Cspan, created by private industry, americas cabletelevision company, as a public service, and brought to you today by your television provider. Right now were joined by author al romero. He has self published a book called revolution how the
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