Transcripts For CSPAN2 Jack Fairweather The Volunteer 20240712

Jack fairweather a former reporter in iraq and afghanistan and the author of a war of choice and the good war. He served as a bureau chief for the Washington Post in afghanistan and interviewing jack today is doctor Robert Jan Van pelt curator and one of the main authorities on the history of auschwitz from 97 to 98 he presided over the team that drew the master plans and participate as an Expert Witness in the case against the british historian and author david irving. Robert has published and served as a historical advisor on numerous films and curator exhibited at 2016. Before we get started i want to make a few quick housekeeping notes. We will have about 15 minutes or so for audience qanda at the end of the round so make sure to hold your questions for the end if you can and we will try to get to as many as possible. This program is being recorded and it will be available on our Youtube Channel within the next few days or so and i will follow up with an email probably tomorrow with a link to the buck for purchase and video recording and todays program. That is it from me and without further ado i will turn over to jack and robert. I will be interviewing jack today tha but he is first goingo give a presentation in ten minutes, 15 minutes basically presenting some of the ideas and themes of the book and so i think it will probably be best to if once we are done we can start talking. Its all yours. Thank you to the museum of jewish heritage. Its great to have this opportunity to share the story of truly remarkable man and i think in some ways the best ways to begin telling you about e. Witold pilecki was im going to do that by taking you on a little tour through his life so that they start by sharing my screen. I hope you can see that. There we go. Super. So, id like you all to begin picturing the scene with me. 1940 just after dawn of the polish underground operative Witold Pilecki is sitting in the district of warsaw, and this is the Apartment Building that he was sitting in on the third floor. Here he is sitting to the left in this photograph. Witold pilecki is 38, a reserve officer in the calvary, farmer, devout catholic, father of two. Heres a couple images of his kids, his wife is a School Teacher and the two of them, Witold Pilecki and their life on theiwife ontheir wedding day, oy favorite images. Before the war, poland had been one of the societies of europe over a tenth of the population is jewish. That was the scene of course for when the forces invaded. [inaudible] [inaudible] the construction of poland by eliminating its professional classes come its intellectuals that meant rounding up lawyers, doctors, journalists, writers, even the countrys top chess player. Heres some images from the city in october 1939 showing a typical round up and i emphasize this point the germans were arresting catholics and jews alike. It was an indiscriminat indiscre roundups in many respects. Over 50,000 polish nationals were killed in the first few months of the german occupation. Absolutely staggering figure. The following year in may, 1940, the germans began a new concentration camp inside of the country, the camp they called auschwitz. Here we can see the map and Witold Pilecki came from eastern part of the country. The arrow points to that. The southern areas where it points to the town the germans called auschwitz. Little was known about what was happening inside the camp but he had learned from informants that there was a round up that very morning in the district. In fact that was why he was there because his mission for the underground was to infiltrate the camp and to gather evidence of nazi crimes. Lets get back to the apartment. Now imagine the sound of trucks pulling up outside shoveling, gunshots following. Theres a knock on the door. Its the building caretaker. He says get out while you still can. He doesnt. His mission is to remain. Its hi his sisterinlaws apartment and hes in the room with his nephew and 3yearold little boy. He notices the teddy bear has fallen on the ground just as there are sounds of footsteps on the stairwell outside of the door, he reaches down, picks up the teddy bear and hands it to the boy seeing that he was scared and needed reassurance. Then the instinct he must have had, he turns towards the german soldiers that have entered the apartment and steps into captivity. Three days later, he arrived in auschwitz. Here is the gate to the camp. The terrible words that we all know. And here is Witold Pilecki now as a prisoner. Over the next two and a half years, he forged an underground army in auschwitz and sabotaged facilities, assassinated officers and plotted the uprising. He was arriving at the beginning as a concentratio the concentrao nationals plus he witnessed the steps by which the nazis conceived of the final solution. He was the first person to seek to warn the world about the horrors of the camp and the first to try to stop them. Three years before the allied commanders publicly acknowledged the role, he was already calling on them through secret messages smuggled out of the camp to destroy auschwitz. For all of his exploits in auschwitz, his story is almost unknown. I only heard of it by chance. I met up with a friend of mine in 2011 and we were talking about our experiences in war zones trying to make sense of our experiences and my friend had just come back from a trip to auschwitz and learned about the resistance in the camp and like a lot of you, the idea that resistance was possible in auschwitz is so startling and surprising to me, i knew i had to find out more. They answer many of the questions that himself could not have known the answer to such as what happens toward the intelligence he smuggled out of the camp, why was that the allies did not respond to his desperate pleas for action against our shreds, its like a moment where i can posit and show you for many decades after the war and after small the polish underground study trust in one of the great mysteries about his story was revealed as i began to dig into it, which is why had we not heard about this man before and the answer is, after the war poland was taken over by soviet backed communist and he fought on against them just as much as the knock these in ou captured, executed and all trace of his record given away into a single report of his was smuggled at the end of the war. And in this archive, it was not publicized for decades for fear of sparking arrest back home because pretty much anyone in the polish underground was persecuted by the communist after the war as possible resistance in it to decades for his story to emerge in poland and here is a copy of that report that was kept under wraps for all those years and you can see his handwriting around the edge and this is the cabinet at the polish underground study trust where that report sits today, the second shawl from the top you can see it sitting perpendicular to the shelf and that is the report, im always a little bit amazed to see because in my mind its a National Archive and its remarkable document, telling the story of the experience in the camp. Jack, nothing from the chat, many people dont be able to see the pictures, i dont really know what happened. I can see it but we can have another go at reloading it it would be a shame if you cannot see these images. We will stop sharing. Pray lets try this. Is that any better . It seems to be better, im getting some people saying that we can see it, yes perfect, im able to see them just fine. Im so sorry to inconvenien inconvenience. Here is the fun cabinet where that report has sat. So having acquainted myself with the report, having seen historical mysteries contained in it, the questions about what happened to intelligence that he gathered and i think also the personal challenge that i felt from below see story to try to understand what would make everything such omission and i also had a wife and two kids when i began the search and i want to understand what would drive someone to risk everything on such a mission. Also with those questions i set off to begin gathering and in 2016, the third person i wanted to meet im sorry again. You cannot see anything . All right. I think you just ended or turned off your powerpoint, i see you but not your powerpoint. Im going to try again. There it is. That looks good so i flew to meet markedly, to meet his son andre, his father was executed and decades hed been told that his dad was the enemy of the states and was not until the andre was starting to learn details about his fathers mission and from the lighting of his fathers story, he was lied to write the mans biography but i should not have worried about meeting andre he was the most delightful chat i had hoped to meet, he and his apartments he was engaged, compassionate and curious and he said to me jack, im not sure what youre going to find out about my dad or where you should start looking. So i look to andre and i said im starting with you because when so little is known about your dad and his thinking, anything you can tell me is going to give me an insight. I write in a style called narrative nonfiction which means if it reads like a novel, everything in the pages of the book has to be true and that means that insights andre could give me into pileckis thinking would be so helpful for me being able to write what drove pileckis actions in the camp. One thing that stunned me upon arriving was how many people were still alive who had known pilecki and in some cases even fought alongside him and even better was when i would meet these gentlemen and women and take them to the places where pilecki had informed some of these in one of the key places i want to go to was the apartment where he volunteered for his mission. This is a few days after meeting andre, im on the third floor and we found the door and we knocked to see inside the historic space and i lost my research in a suggested as we were there, we might as well record some audio as marching up the steps and banging on the door which was a good jolt that we did because thats what it took to wake rather sleepy inhabitants inside, it was a student and by midday they were still fast asleep and completely unaware that this apartment was the scene over historic moments in history. That is the room in which he volunteered for his mission to auschwitz. We seem to have the same problem. People cannot see it or maybe i should stop intervening. It is hard to comment on whether its a localized issue or whether everyone i think at this point im nearing the end so we should probably go one. I see it but im im describing the images so everyone can get a sense for those who cannot see it in pilecki had his mission a very untidy studio apartment. So one thing they ought to do was bring someone who had been in that apartment back there and you may remember that child that pilecki had comforted moments before he was arrested, here he is sitting on his knee in 1939 and it turned out he was still alive and is a gentleman on the banks of the river and i took him back to the apartment and showed him around, its the first time america came back before the war and returning in the layout of the different bits of signature in the room he also spoke about the moment that pilecki are there any men . Yes. The same moment im told, ask what is going on, what is going on. He was ready to go and yet his jacket on . He was prepared because he has time. What was he saying, did he say anything, do you remember . That the video describing and Walking Around the apartment when the germans bursting in the video shows him tearing up at the end and by the end of that visit he was in tears remembering his engagement with his family that was part of my approach to telling the story, i wanted to follow in his footsteps as much as possible, find those who had known him, take them to the places that they had seen him in action but i knew i would need hundreds of thousands of details and worry knew the book would be possible is arriving at the archives with the state museum and discovering over three and half thousand of testimonies, hundreds of which describe pilecki in action or moments that he wouldve witnessed. So i was able to stop building up and testing his own writing for accuracy in creating an immersive experience in the camp. And for being alongside pilecki, i want to leave you with a small antidote about how this approach also help me solve one of the great mysteries, that i begin the project with and what happened to pileckis support that he smuggled out of the camp and pilecki describes his first report in 1940 a few weeks after his time in auschwitz any already witnessed a incredibly brutal atmosphere, they were starved to death or brutalized the. Under prisoners who emphasize were polished nationals were jews in all polished nationals, he witnessed all this and he knew he had to control the world, he gives us the name of his messenger, alexander, he said no more, no doubt he was concerned that if he had said more in his writing that perhaps after the war the communist wouldve tracked him down and arrested him. With that name my research was also there to find alexanders family, his son and here is a picture and he had no idea his dad with his his first messenger from the camp and he did know his dad had stayed with and the research to go back to that study trust and they track down a folder in which was contained the story of how his report carried out alexander from the camp and occupied europe and i describe the incredible journey in the book, i wanted to leave you today with the remarkable message that he wanted to tell the world in october 1940, heres what he wanted to say, we begged the polish government for the love of god to bomb the camp and into our torment, it would be a relief with given conditions, this is urgent while considered request sent on behalf of conrads further witness. That is be told and when i heard those words i had a response because they are pretty much verbatim what he made alexander memorize while he was in the camp and its a stunning idea to think what mightve happened had the allies intervened and i went on to trace up to ten of his reports, each time i was there to find using a process of productive reasoning and family members and retracing journeys and find how these reports made their way to london and the reason why i argue in the book and why am so passionate about history, the reason why its so important is that he charts the steps through his writings by which the nasis turned auschwitz into a concentration camp into the final solution in his reports are there witness in this extraordinary way to be different steps and is one of historys, what wouldve happened had the world listen. I would like to leave it there and reconnect with you in my sincere apologies for the failure of the screen sharing but hopefully we can enlighten you instead of images. So thank you very much. Thank you jack, i would like to clear up chronology, story that chronology is everything. So pilecki was to a half years and he and escaped in april of 43 . Yes. So theres two major cases in the history of the camp that he sees, he sees the original, the formation of a concentration camp in the nationalist and the hostages and so on and then already in 41 there is something of a tradition than russia starting arriving there in the first gassing takes place and also you get a mass murderer in describe it in some detail of the prisoners who are not deemed to be useful anymore in sent originally to gas chambers in germany itself and used for the killings of people who are murdered part of the program and the program to kill the disabled and finally in the spring, they started arriving in auschwitz and initially there put in full gas chambers in their dressed for the gas chambers, they are completed and taken into 42 and that the time the pilecki leaves. I just wonder because there is an extent of literature from auschwitz and that focuses very much on the reports that came out in 1944. So most famous report is a report that they scale from the camp and the hungarian boost the had not been transported to auschwitz and then london and washington and in the summer of 1944 as res in the air force if it should be blocked. This is particularly the bombing of the crematory of the chambers. And im interested in the report in the request of 1940 when is still spoken in concentration camps in the final solution does not mean at that moment in important, and 44 in the bombing at the time. I wonder if you could reflect i dont want to say compare and contrast but about in 1940 in london in 1944, the states credibility of those reports and credibility, if you maybe could play a little bit about the. Thank you, thats a great overview and i think it helps show the trajectory of the story. We all know about the debate in 1944 whether or not to bomb auschwitz and its become a similar to all of us to what we shouldve done to try to stop the holocaust, but of course what pilecki story does is focus the attention on his request many years before that in 1940 and there are distant under different circumstances it is important to understand the context by which his report by the camp is considered valley high commands in december 1940, 1941, britain is under attack by the blitz, the number of operational bombers that the raf have is below 200, there is no immediate allies or help from the americans and the person was very much alone and in some ways and as they came to uncover the discussion and the demands in the air marshal in his subordinate which appears, i still came to appreciate some of the concern and i debated whether or not to bomb auschwitz and they took on board his request very seriously but richard actually said something that was quite interesting and he recognized it would be impossible to reach with british warplanes into auschwitz. There was no radar at this stage, wouldve been the Longest Mission ever undertaken by the ref, it wouldve pushed the bounds of possibility and richard says it would be credible difficult to do, but it would potentially be a political symbol and away he wants ultimately had lectures and would order it but the ideas really interesting, the raf decided against auschwitz in early 1941 for those reasons but i came to feel during the search that had they tried, it wouldve been a political symbol, a powerful one into existence of auschwitz which is one of the crazy things about the camps history, how long its names with hardly known among the allies and also wouldve created a president of trying to stop atrocities and that is a Crucial Point because two years later the americans were on board and to expand heavy bombers in lancaster that were more than capable then hitting auschwitz and when they became bombing the camp to stop the atrocity, they actually referred back to the first debate in their files to argue why they should not bomb auschwitz, they said it would just be a political symbol and the debate 1944 was being informed by the first request by pilecki and i think thats why its so important to understand the context and for the decision regarding his request and also to see how it plays out in allied thinking, a constant taken back from taking action. The interesting thing, one of the great problems in geography of the allied response to the holocaust in a talk about the holocaust, from 1942 onward, we always said the english and the records had to deal with it in their own population and then any intervention which was explosively to be done on behalf of the jews was considered to be unpopular and make the warmer difficult to fight because it would become a war to save the jews and that was not something that many people would agree with. And then of course in the 1940 the debate of our shorts did not really exist yet, it was primarily a polish camp so then in some way i would say there is a possibility of an interesting look at how the prejudiced in this case the military in england which were propolish in 1940, they thought they were heroic and very deserving people and of course an ally even if they didnt had supported the much in 1959 and came to work on their behalf and that wouldve faded their discussion in a way that in 1944 when it was really about the jews and it mightve got into a different direction. I have not compared these discussions from the perspective but i think probably it would be a very interesting way to look into the souls of the military men and who could refer to this. I came to the conclusion and in the book im a huge part of his story is having his experience in the camp contrasted what was happening in the ally in response to what he was telling them, i came to the conclusion that while it was understandable dollars response or the british response in 1941 to the first request by late 42 and 43, the audio material from pilecki from many sources really made action, the lack of action unconscionable in a taken approach to history that we shouldnt seek to judge or override our experiences onto those at the time and i tried to let everyone have their say is what represents their thinking, it does become a damning indictment of failure to take action. There is something else, i have the pleasure of writing the fourth biography of a person, a young man who ultimately was killed in the holocaust because i had to rate his diary and an 80 page biography to understand the diary and there is a moment that it clicks, theres a relationship that you fall in love with the character and you suddenly get to the core of what the demand is in my case a man was a man, i would like to know in the beginning he is a figure into what is the moment that you really thought i know who you are, i think they really understand you and then you get a sense that theres a relationship between you and him and as you look forward to some way shaking his hand to the afterlife. Very nice thoughts. I think a lot of it was in pursuit of your subjects and often feels like you are playing catchup but i definitely remember the first time where i really felt that i did arrive at same point in times and that was when i had every creation of his amazing escape from the camp and thats why wanted to read the book because he had escaped from marsauschwitz an escape from any concentration camp, he wrote about in his report and he also wrote about the expense dont and the two narratives together and they experience and escape the camp and wanted to follow in his footsteps and escaping in the same hour, the same day in decades later, that meant 2 00 a. M. , i started in crossing over the same railroad bridge that pilecki had done and the stops that he described in his report that when the sun starts to rise and he makes the dashboard across the field to where to show him and he describes a hundred mile journey across southern poland and he named some of the villages but doesnt say much more into turnout and say where is the obvious person here and on several occasions i was introduced to families who sheltered him and his two fellow escape verse and it was a really lovely moment reaching the safe house for pilecki spent time to recuperate safe from the nazi camp and here is his two fellow escape verse. This is the man i am so sorry, here is the man here is his host, he was at that house today when i got to visit it. Thats a table where pilecki sat down and started writing as a camp as a free man and it was a moment where you really felt like i had reached my subject and i think you could share in that moment with amazing hospitality with my host and that moment when i get to reflect on pileckis experience and as he had done at the same spot. If you were to meet him now, what would be the first question you would ask him . I think for those of you who read the book through his associate when he returns to his family, after escaping, he really struggles to connect with his family and is a real sense of tragedy, there is good reasons that poland after the war was subjected to a communist takeover which is worth improvising for everyone here, we think and that was not an experience and he was plunged into this new struggle, within the struggle, his family could not engage with him and that was brought home to me by a detail that his son told me that he had never spoken to his wife maria about his experience in the camp and in the years after words and that really touched me and that he wasnt able to share it, one of the last things he wrote as a free man was also one of his most beautiful and it was talking about sitting with friends in the camp, knowing they were going to be executed the next day and reflecting the great regret in life they had not shared more with those that they loved and that was pileckis final thought to the freeman and i would see him and ask him whether he felt that he could at that point Start Connecting with his family again. I think everyone is having the experience of stress and turmoil, we know how that can drive wedges between those that we love and think there is a possibility of redemption in the opposite and something maybe we can all take away from his story. I am looking at the q a and the questions that have been read, im just picking up, one question which came, its about the title, the book the volunteer in the question is to what extent would a volunteer in the sense that he was a military professional and that he saw his task as part of a continuous war and he fought in the war as an officer before the polish army and the government never capitulated and that this is a continuation into what extent can you really talk about the volunteer if he was a volunteer because of a certain moment that would suggest that he had a choice. Andy had a high sense of duty and professionalism and in some way you might suggest that he was not a volunteer in a relationship to his own superego to speak. Thats a great question, there are songs about one of the great escape was in the book and hello i love your work, the book is called the volunteer in that sense an image of him raising his hand saying i will do it. The story of how his mission was conceived is such an important one because it really cuts to the heart of some things about pilecki that informs so much of his time in the camp, pilecki doesnt like much about politics other than to say he doesnt like politics and politicians in the way that they use it to divide people but there is one great fact in his life, that is when he stands up to his boss in the underground, this is shortly after the germans have occupied indias taking of the fight against them, his boss wants to publish a manifesto that is nationalistic, defines poland in catholic and only for catholic polls and it is clearly divisive, he takes a stand against his boss enhances the defined up with the polish underground to have a more inclusive agenda, his boss does enduring it and he volunteers pilecki for a mission to auschwitz and its such a scene in the book because it tells a lot of who he was and taking a stance and it was inclusive in which everyone banded together to fight the nazis. And of course he still had to decide to take the mission as one thing that has boss said to him which is pretty dangerous and going to have to ask you to volunteer and being told as a mission, to believe it was an impossible decision for pilecki, he felt avoided the first round up as he was struggling but in the end of course he did go and that is the essence of the choice and the presentation into step aside and decided to leave behind his family and his immediate circle in order to begin this extraordinary journ journey. One of the people course who is very famous as a man with the holocaust and one of the reasons he became very famous is because of his appearance where he gives incredible testimony and is very important in the movie, one of the interesting things, the beginning of the testimony and when he goes into the ghetto and hes invited by jewish leaders to see for himself what is happening inside the ghetto in 1942 so in some way when he goes to the capital, i can bear witness to something ive seen, this is hearsay, and very interestingly, hes a polish and he admits against, it was actually quite wonderful because the jewish leaders the outside of the ghetto were like polish gentlemen in the moment they go into the ghetto, they flip through the door in the wall and things like that and suddenly became true, they were amongst themselves and its very interesting, there was credible love i think it would be a good thing for a moment to consider his relationship to what was known as a jewish problem in the way he struggles with that. Thats a great question, it is one that i thought i needed to tackle in the book, straightaway, pilecki in poland which was ethnic, diverse, a large Jewish Population in the world, also its a mounting part of ideas and culture, it was and also is seen of antisemitism and i think one thing in my search, its important to a distinction between publish antisemitism prework and that of the nazi, you tend to think about of nazi ideology, that was not what life was like in prewar poland, there were nasty material appearing in the press, there was a campaign to have polished jews emigrate to israel and there were various different types of discrimination and pilecki, that was partly his world, conservative, catholic background, i found evidence that he had antistomach jews. Views. What made it so important is that he left behind in his journey to the camp and he found a way to reach beyond his immediate circle of friends and beyond his immediate conception of being polish and who we was in order to risk his life for crimes against soviet and then crimes against jewish families brought to the camp for extermination, that to me broader question that is irrelevant to all of us today, which beyond our immediate concerns in order to empathize with the suffering of others, that is pilecki challenge to us and what the story can really teach us. Again i have a question for you, as always. This is such a beautiful and i was about to end, but if you have one question for me, fine. I think many of you here will know his name and is quite celebrated in his remarkable polish career and news of the holocaust as it was unfolding and he did such an incredible job of bringing that to the allies. He had celebrated the United States in the museum and a wellknown name, we know of course many reasons why tran tribes name is not wellknown because of the surette entrance impression during communism but i am just wondering why since the 90s when his material has been widely available, why is he not being celebrated in the same way, until now that were finally talking about this remarkable man . My sense, this is through speculation that i think if we are looking at the history of research at the museum, they have a really Good Research department and excellent historians, my sense is a little bit that there was not in a enormous amount of emphasis in their Research Department, resistance in the camp in the 1970s and 80s and that in some way, many publications appear at a time that pilecki cannot be mentioned. I think that in some way the emphasis on resistance in the communist era in the Auschwitz Museums and it was some way the core of Much Research done on auschwitz and it was what the Research Department was doing and when the name of pilecki becomes more known and that leads to the museum and in some ways, Research Focused and in some way the focus of the museum has shifted away from the issue resistance, i think in some way in the discovery of pilecki they came to the natural flow of what the Auschwitz Museum was and what material they were working on. It does not mean that the research, new focus on research in their work would certainly probably center on pilecki, there are many things when looking at the kind of flow of themes and research of the holocaust where were looking at Different Things today and we look 20 years ago. Nowadays of course, gender studies are very much in forming our idea and we realize a certain moment in the 1990s after looking for 40 years on the history of auschwitz, people realized that only lichtman and only looked at women in auschwitz. At a certain moment and a time that leads the focus to get basically for the work to be done. I strictly think that it is probably time a generation later for a new kind of consideration of the question of research and i think there are many unanswered question in a Catholic Christian Resistance Group with jewish Resistance Groups in the relationship between the resistance in auschwitz in the main camp in auschwitz there is still a lot of notification around the relationship and i think certainly once resistance comes back on the agenda that he will be a central character in all of that, that would be my explanation. I must admit with the first book i wrote, it was really conceived of the 1980s and the early 1990s, pilecki is not mentioned in the book and later he is mentioned but certainly after your book, he will become a greater character and in future of auschwitz. We are at a little after three, i think if we stop for everyones time, i would like to thank you very much for this excellent presentation even if we have some issues and am going to give it back to you samantha. Thank you, just to echo what robert said this is an incredible presentation and thank you jack for the word that you have done and please go out and buy jacks book, we have a lot of questions that came in that we did not get time to get to today but hopefully you can find your answers to your question in jacks book, it is available on politics and prose and on amazon. Com, ill send out those links in the coming days and more information about jack and more information about her upcoming public programs, we are continuing to do these programs twice a week tuesday and thursday afternoons eastern times. So stay tuned for more and think you guys again. Weeknights this month we are featuring book tv programs of whats available every weekend on cspan2. Wednesday at eight eastern the theme is technology, wired Magazine Editor stephen reports on the creation, growth and future of facebook. Then Princeton University professor benjamin and university of pennsylvania professor Dorothy Roberts on how the new technology reinforced racial discrimination. Later authors william and michael are on the impact of Artificial Intelligence and virtual worlds. Enjoy book tv on cspa cspan2. Book tv on cspan2 has top nonfiction books and authors every weekend, coming up saturday at 5 30 p. M. Eastern author elizabeth, robert, taylor and cornell west talk about the black lives matter movement, on sunday and 9 00 p. M. Eastern on after words, university of california berkeley law professor and Deputy Assistant attorney general in the george w. Bush administration, john used with his book defender in chief like the president ial powers in the u. S. Constitution. He is interviewed by mark roselle, author and George Mason University founding dean of the school of public. Watch book tv this weekend on cspan2. Sunday night on q a, journalist and author on the womans hour about the ratification of the 19th amendment in 1920 which granted women the right to vote. And passes the house by a margin very small and passes the senate with only two boat margins. If there are senators who are sitting after the house passes this in 1918 and it takes until june of 1919 before it passes both houses. Then the senate knew they were sending it out for ratification in the states which is called an off year which most state legislators are not going to be in session and that was purposeful to make it more difficult, they had to convince 30 governors to call their legislators back into special session to consider the amendment. And lane, sunday night at 8 00 p. M. Eastern on cspan q a. Author and vanity fair contributing editor howard on the field nasty plo nazi plot at meeting they attended in 1943, the Virtual Event was hosted by books and books in florida, it is 30 minutes. Now without further ado, lets