Will have him just on audio. We will see how that goes. We hope that you can hear well enough if we do it this way and let us know in the chat box if it is not working for you. So just a warm hello to all of you, i am so happy to see that there are so many of you. My entered i am the owner and i want to start by thanking our speakers for being game to switch and for all of us this is a new way of life, we are presenting tonight in the partnership with a very good friend from the public library. I think we are all good by the precarious and frightening reality at this moment but there are so many books that can serve as antidotes and historical memory is certainly one of those antidotes. I think its another were sharing the next 45 minutes or hour or so tonight. And basically before introducer speakers more detail and step aside are many minds or whatever it is that we do these days, i just want to say quickly that davids book, here it is unmasking the angel of death is available or whatever is your nearest and dearest local bookstore. All of us in the independent bookselling world are trying to find a way to the other side of this crisis and we can use your support. It will be 10 off and shipped for free. You can place your order over the phone and we have hours and numbers that are in the chat box and on our website. That will be the easiest way for us to get to the book. Other logistics, i want to make sure that you can ask a question and how to do the and the platform is to go to the ask a question button at the bottom in the middle of your screen that is better than putting questions in the chat box. If you see a question already that introduces, the little arrow next to questions, click on the arrow and upload them and then i will see that there is accumulative interest in the question and we can focus on those a little bit. But now lets turn to what critics are considering a definitive account of the doctrine were criminal it is a biography in a detective story and you need to be prepared to tell the story. He is a nestorian and a former director of the Jewish Heritage Museum in new york city and for that he was the director of the document, also at the Justice Department office of special investigations were together with israel and germany and the u. S. Identified in the 1980s identified and unfortunately on the audio to interview david about what they said with the story and David Goldman. Hello to you david they have deeply shared interest and help me learn from the path with the atrocities. And David Goldman is a distinguished lawyer and he is the founder and chairman of the fellowship at austerlitz for the study of professional ethics. This is a very special Nonprofit Organization and through a graduate student brought it together to examine moral and ethical issues that arise from their chosen profession. In a fundamental premise of their work, i will quote some of the material, the reality governing can break down or be distorted with devastating consequences. I think with this principle and insight, we are squarely inside the story and i will let david and david take it from here. Thank you. Im hoping that people can hear me, i am disappointed that it makes it impossible to see me although i did have a tuxedo. Im disappointed. I should say that david and i have known each other for many years and the problem with that, we often finish each others sentences. So one note of warning, that is if david answers a question that im not yet asked, that will happen or i might skip asking a question that i have in mind that arity heard david answer. So the q a session will be important i am sure. I do want to say again by way of preface that i am fascinated by the perpetrators. The organization that i work with is an Ethical Leadership program where we begin by studying the perpetrator and nasi germany. In asking what we can learn from them, again prefacing my questions to david that my focus will be as perpetrator and who he was. David i would like to start making a different place than many would and i would like to start with just asking who he was, who was joseph mandala. I understand we could merely say that he was born with horns on his head and he was the evil incarnate, but we know that is not what your book is saying, so i would like to learn a little bit more about him. What kind of child was he, what was he like as a kid . I dont really know what he was like as a kid and im not tremendously good sources on that. The best source on his childhood is on his own writings and he wrote an autobiography for his family which was written in the beginning of the 60s and completed to the extent that it was finished in the 1970s and he wrote it as a novel, a fiction believing if that you are freed from the rigorous telling of facts, he could make up something, perhaps more important as a means of teaching important lessons. When he talks about his childhood, he has about a hundred pages of his verse which says something about how important he thought he was. I think in the book there is nothing in his childhood that gives any hint of the man the murder he was to become. There is nothing about his childhood that the cells are notion of what an incubator for that kind of future would have been. There is no stories of him murdering pets in the backyard or being a bully or unkind. He grew up in a prosperous family, a loving family with household help, parents who cared for him and his two younger brothers. There is nothing in his childhood that suggest or points to even the politics that he was later to adopt. What kind of student, what did he study and what kind of student was he. He went the academic route in germany, he was a middling student, i have his report cards, he was not outstanding in the classroom, part of that was because he had a serious illness as a child which played a role later on in our ability to identify his body. But it was not until he got to the university when he became a passionate student and his passion was devoted toward science, medicine, anthropology. He had an elite education, he studied at munich, vienna and frankford, he had not only a medical degree but also a phd in anthropology, he studied with nobel prize winners, and some of those will become prizewinners in the future. He was considered an extremely able student and had extremel extremely he writes in his autobiography about the impact of his teachers on him and hes quite passionate about how he was moved by not only the skill but the devotion to the science of medicine in anthropology. Anything political, anything that gives a hint to his politics while he was in a university . His University Career coincides almost precisely with the rise of the Naughty Party an assumption to power. He began his studies in april of 1930 and he came from a home that was conservative, catholic, probably an element of antisemitism but not anything that would set him on the course that he eventually took. Hitler believed the positions were extremely important to carry out his worldview and to have the socialism is simply biology enacted and the fact that Josef Mengele studied the scientist with the new status it is extremely important it means that one has a symbiotic relationship with the state to have a fundamental support for the nazi worldview and also benefited from the kinds of things of funding from the elevation of status. Thats extremely important and the fact that Josef Mengele became a physician. Was at rogue science or rogue medicine . No. And avantgarde but not unconventional but certainly both the product and the promise of german science and did to dissertations one in medicine which studied the inherited ability of the across pallet which led to support that meant that people who had cleft pallets would be subject to sterilization. And he had as his mentors anthropology and extremely famous anthropologist and the medical dissertation advisor was the head of the racial Hygiene Institute he was a promising young scientist the cutting edge and had probably a wonderful academic career in front of him. I want to get to the war in a minute but married . Children . Yes. He married a woman that he met right before the beginning of the war. There was no real married life together since the war came and he had other things to do. He had one son who was born march 161943. Do we know anything about his fate on faith . How religious he was . s mother was a devout catholic and he writes about that in his memoir. He chose to have the Church Wedding which is unusual for the ss officer. Weather that was out of respect for his mother or a nostalgic sense to the catholic church, but he was not regularly observant although it had an impact on him and when she dies he reflects on his catholic upbringing. They give the background. I will jump around so when did Josef Mengele become part of your life . And i was with the department of justice as a historian for the office of special investigations. And the work of the office which is investigating does nazi war criminals living in the United States but i was also responsible for special projects in the office. Working on the case in 1983 what it was alleged working for Us Intelligence and in fact that was true and published. And in 1985 that are too complicated to go into, Josef Mengele was the subject of intense Public Interest in the attorney general asked my office to investigate certain allegations that Josef Mengele was used by entered by the americans and then used by the americans. We are asked to investigate then that became the International Manhunt joined by another office of the Justice Department the german prosecutor and the us marshals and the israeli government. How did Josef Mengele get out of germany . How to that happen . Woman to be assigned to another camp and when that camp was liberated by the soviets, he made his way back to germany and came upon a Field Hospital in the area in czechoslovakia. And it just so happens one of the people was a former colleague of his and asked if he could join the Field Hospital and took off the ss uniform and donned a uniform and this ended up being in an area of southeastern germany and checklist of ikea. And was unoccupied for six weeks between the beginning of may and the middle of june because the front lines of the red army and though we can in the east and the west were frozen. So Josef Mengele had a chance to join the unit to build a convincing cover story with the ss uniform. So at some point they needed to surrender it would have been wise so they drove to the american minds and then were taken into custody and Josef Mengele spent two different us pow camps. Likely under his own name at least at the and was released under his own name. There are three reasons why he was released by the americans even though he was on the wanted list the first is that it was inefficiently distributed and they did not receive them. Second, Josef Mengele had no longer was part of the unit was well integrated but the most important reason is that Josef Mengele didnt have the ss tattoo on his arm they did that so that if they were wounded medics with the what type of blood to use for transfusion. He did not have that blood type tattoo which removed the most common telltale mark of someone in the ss. So he passed through extremely effective test to have the intern soldiers take off the shirts and show both arms so that he could be released by the us without any further interrogation. He then secured the papers under another mans name and lived for four years on a farm doing manual labor in a small farm and then made the way with help of his family overland and then by ship where he arrived in argentina the summer of 1949. Is there any evidence of complicity with any of the allies to get them out . There is no evidence of any contact with American Forces and the reason for that that the family had choreographed a roost that he had died and in the files of the nuremberg war crimes trials there is a card file that is an indication Josef Mengele had died. The family could maintain that and with the means they had they could help Josef Mengele out of germany without any official help they could purchase the services of experienced guides that were very practice to get people over the border and purchase effective false identities. The book tells the detective story and then to discovered what life was like in south america and then to come back to that. To make sure we spent time in auschwitz. And the entree into this, you and i have talked is you are writing the book and at one point you said to me you are quite anxious how this could be received and how people could take the book. So why did you feel that . That may help us understand how you feel about his work at auschwitz. So working on the case back in the eighties and i believe the common picture of Josef Mengele as a Mad Scientist or someone that was motivated by a grotesque interest and a sadistic interest to come across a document on another case where he had the head of a 12 yearold boy to the lab and then being placed in formaldehyde. It with that great deal of curiosity what his science was about that i accepted this caricature which came along with tremendous support from popular culture. And then the deputy and then i had seen a number of these films and then to portray as this type of prototype of evil. But i also knew that we didnt even know all that much about what he did at auschwitz. There are no records or very few that illustrate the exact nature of his experiments. So all we had is the testimony who by and large were young in traumatized children and their encounter with Josef Mengele. Also we have the testimony of physicians recruited by Josef Mengele meaning they have been forced to help him with his scientific work. He founded a Research Institute to be associated in frankfurt and berlin and a great medical talent all over europe. And then to keep an eye out for talented physicians and pediatricians and medical illustrators and photographers so he could assemble a team that could assist him in the work so we have the testimony of these positions who were operating and assisting him and then forced to do it and that testimony by and large that Josef Mengele did did not describe the intent of the exact nature of the experiments. The only record we have in that funded that was he was engaged in and we have a very careful work of german historians that was not available to us in the eighties. And then the picture emerged to be at odds with the testimony that about the trope of Josef Mengele work it wasnt clear the testimony that came from the survivors. And then it certainly didnt match up with a career and the training and his own personal ambition to impress his mentors and to pursue academic work. So i was concerned so to reject the testimony of this tragic and dramatic encounter and then to make less horrific white Josef Mengele was involved in but to come up with a different answe answer, i think somehow it is easier to describe Josef Mengele as a monster then those things that are the product and the promise of enshrined institutions are able to do thats a more unsettling picture than the monster and working in those primitive motives. And then doing those experiments and the other thing about Josef Mengele work at auschwitz and that there is no question of criminality. So the extent and extent of the crimes and that he admitted to in his own discussion and with those selections of auschwitz and then to arrive at the camp and those that were pulled to make this binary decision if they should die. So i understand the crime of the selection choosing to murder people. If we go back to the experiment why was he doing that what excited him for part of it was with no moral or ethical boundaries. One of the and meet positions the exceptions of people who claim to note the purpose said that Josef Mengele was involved and then to discover the secret of members to apply that to the german population and to secure the future and this is not true and it ignores first of all the population that Josef Mengele was interested in he would be equally interested in parents themselves and showed no interest of the parents of twins they were often sent to the gas and the twins were sent to the barracks where they were used as unwilling subjects also ignores the long tradition of twin experiments within germany. During the not see. That is the Gold Standard of Genetic Research that has to do with comparing the incidence of disease and with those fraternal twins and that is a result of nature and nurture and environment. Josef mengele work at auschwitz was the work of germany before the war and of course at that time he didnt have the same supply of Research Material because when it ended the Young Children and then to make it older most children move to the countryside with the full cost of the war with the human infrastructure made it very difficult to continue research so there we had before him an extreme member of twin subjects. But for him Josef Mengele, auschwitz was a cornucopia of possibility because it offered the opportunity to continue the twin Research Conducted by the institute without any of the safeguards that were present in germany for research on human beings. So this is a fantasy and that this would be a crime against science if they cannot carry on those experiments. If he would have been asked but that admonition to do no harm, what do you think he would have said . I talking about how the medical profession was able, through moral and ethical and sleightofhand to be consistent with their own view and also carry on that racial hygienic that was required as physicians in nazi germany. They simply substituted the patient who deserves their care but rather in this german trend. And the Racial Community that you have to do no harm to the Racial Community so there is a cancerous cell in the body you destroy the cell to help the body. So for Josef Mengele to harm jews was not an issue because he didnt consider them to be worthy of that consideration. It sounds like he was motivated by antisemitism . That is racial with racial all hygiene. And say that some deserve to live in some down. And then to come back up on the screen and then because i see some questions into this particular moment of the conversation then these important questions i just want to get to some of the questions and then following on up self deception and then you start to talk about here and and also to feature in the book about that. I and the book with an epilogue which talks about the confrontation that Josef Mengele had that was not available to his victims or those who sought to prosecute him, competition with his son born 1844. He saw him as an infant and once as a toddler or maybe a few times and then once again when Josef Mengele visited from south america in 1856 when he was 12 years old. And then he only knew Josef Mengele as his uncle and tell the trial when the Josef Mengele name was known and the auschwitz trial was being conducted. His name became much more wellknown in germany. So at that time he began an awkward interim his point of view and then for many years and then not to understand each other. And with those progressive politics and then to have the intellectual battle and decide on undecided rather than continue with those conventions. And then swiped a friends passport it went under security precautions. And then to challenge him about his racial theories. But then Josef Mengele says which is quite emotional and even weeping saying is so hurtful his own son would believe what was written in the papers about him actually he was helping some a little bit longer and very emotional conversation. And Josef Mengele writes a letter later your the end of his life to say i was glad i was able to meet you. To my family and then he uses this term my Racial Community. Which is exactly the same language he mighty used in the summer of 1944. So there is number remorse and he is frozen in time and a sense in the way he looks at the world. Yeah, lets connect to a question the other people have about other aspects of his life life in argentina and whether he continued his medical experiment at all in any way or any ultimate form. His life in argentina, first of all he spent his four years on the farm that very hard physical labor and when he got to argentina it was a rich cultural life so we could go to libraries and bookstores and go to the theater and became involved with the community and summer which rightwing and some nasis, he did publish an article that i believe theres very good evidence on genetics in the german language journal published in buenos aires in 1953, he then later invested in a Pharmaceutical Company in buenos aires which produced the medicine for tuberculosis, by the time it got going, he had to leave argentina and went to paraguay. So he did satisfy his interest in science a bit in terms of his work in the Pharmaceutical Company where he was a chief scientist. But he did not carry on as far as i know in medical experience. Is sobering when you pick about part of his life. Two questions here, the question with one being the capture and what the relationship there might be in the question of whether they knew him in south america or whether theres anything you can say about what he thought of him. They met apparently three times, they came from different social backgrounds and they were prosperous and the middleclass family and interestingly contrast when he was waiting to make his way to take a ship to argentina he stayed in a hotel and at a different time but under similar circumstances he stayed in a monastery because he didnt have the money to stay in a hotel and that illustrates in it was intellectual in a sense and he was not so they did not get along very well. They were not friends. Its a misconception that they were still in buenos aires when he was captured. Returns he left argentina at the end of the summer of 1958, he got word that the German Justice was interested in him in that moment he began to find a new place to live and from the Pharmaceutical Company he gave his life, his power of attorney and he went to paraguay in the late fall of 1958, he then moved to paraguay for good in 1959 in the spring, in 1960 when he was captured in buena saris, he was long gone. The capture team they believed he was still in buena saris and they made an attempt after he was in the safe house and they interrogated him and they went to former addresses that they knew if and could not find him. But he could not of been captured because he was not there. Yeah, i wish we had time for all the questions, i dont think we will, theres another one that asked about his legacy and whether there is a scientific legacy in terms of the experiments that he did with his research or his writing having been taken up by any country in any way in the Scientific Community whether there is an afterlife about all. We dont know we dont have any medical files, we dont know what his experiments are, we know one experiment that he did which was a disease which was an oral cancer were the faces eaten away by gangrene the disappeared in a developed world we still found among some people with immune systems that were jeopardized but this disease came back with great force in the gypsy camp in 1943, they sought to find a cure for this disease and they found a worldfamous Jewish Division with another part of the conflict and had them brought over to and they began a series of experiments and new treatment protocols and founder treatment that cured the disease. This was written up by an inmate physician who worked with mark and the london in 1946. She wrote about what he had done in the treatments that were used as successful treatments for noma. The irony of all of us, the grotesque irony was a product of itself of nutrition per sanitary condition. That is one irony. The second one is none of the children who were cured of the disease survived the cancer because they were murdered. That is one part of the experiment in scientific worker that found its way out into the Scientific Community through the writings of the inmates. Interesting. I was just going to give you the last question. Thats a lot of pressure. Why did mangalore become mangalore, do you have a theory. Why did he become the symbol of the holocaust of ou off all h and the people who create popular culture. I think i have a google alert on my phone which gives me a message several times a day, every time mangalore is mentioned in the world press or on any tv show. I got won this morning that one of the great german actors who pretrade in some film died yesterday. Every single day he is promoted as either in a historical sense, mostly inaccurately but hes invoked or lately with the coronavirus, there is lots of metaphors or comparisons, whether we need him there to help us find a solution or whether trump will replace ouc ouchi. But more often than not it has a benchmark if there is a bad manager in a bank. It certainly has one scholar said its been separated from his person and part of what i tried to do in the book was to explain who that person was. You most definitely have, the biography and a detective story but its also a Research History book, it is an amazing book and i encourage all of you to get a hold of it and let me just think david and david. Im so sorry David Goldman we cannot have you on screen but im very happy that somehow this improvisation worked anyways. I admire your calm, you are a good guide through all of this. I believe it was everybodys good fortune so it worked out perfectly. It did. All good conversations are ones that could continue on and i feel that way about this one. Maybe i could say a couple of more practical things and wrapping up. Just to remind you, this is one of many events that the bookstore is hosting both together in with the public library, we do separate events enjoyed over the two can sign up on our website or follow us on facebook, whichever way you can follow us on this podcast platform and they get notifications when we have the next thing. I also want to take a second to mention something that David Goldman was into office, romanized in topics that are related to tonights conversation and you can find out more about those and you can register for those on the website which is fast for ethics. Org and so these will explore in particular the ways in which professional ethics and Ethical Leadership in the current pandemic are irrelevant in questions to consider. So dont forget to buy davids book from independent bookstore. And the labyrinth books ideally but any independent bookstore, if you want to get it from labyrinth, the best ways to give us a call, the phone number is on the website and the phone is tuesday through saturday 11 00 a. M. To 4 00 p. M. Maybe ill invite saying we have been so moved and hardened by your response from a sermon who is recognizing that the local businesses are businesses that value their lives and supporting them. Im closing by thinking most particularly david and david. Goodbye, be well, be healthy and until next time cspan has unfiltered coverage of congress, the white house, the Supreme Court in Public Policy events. From the president ial primary through the impeachment process is another federal response to the coronavirus. You can watch the Public Affairs programming on television, online or listen on our free radio app. Be part of the National Conversation to receive cspan daily Washington Program or through the social media feet. Cspan, created by americans Public Television provider. The president from Public Affairs. Available now in paperback and ebook. Biographies from every president by noted historian from best to worst. And features perspective into the lives of our nations chief executive and leadership styles. Visit our website, cspan. Org thepresident to learn more about each president and historian feature and order your copy today wherever books and ebooks are sold. Longtime Technology Journalist and author Stephen Baker is the coauthor of this new book called hop skip and go. You write this is the coming age of mobility, what do you mean by that . Its an information revolution and weve been watching it for the last halfcentury. His bread into computers and overwhelm media and advertising. And then it spread into telephones and we were carrying around internet wherever we went. In the next stage, the