there. thank you for coming tonight. i am nick goldberg. have judge lucky to buergenthal here tonight. as louise said he has a law professor and a jurist. he has worked on the world court and the inter-american court for rights. he has done all kinds of extraordinary and wonderful things with his life but today we will talk almost exclusively about things that happened to him before he was 11 years old. judge buergenthal was born in czechoslovakia they gear after hitler's came to power in germany. his family fled to poland where not too longre afterwards he was confined it to the ghetto there. he was ultimately transported to auschwitz. of the auschwitz on one well-known death marches and he was finally liberated think in august of 1945. his story is a pretty extraordinary one. there are two really powerful themes that come out in this book in my view. one is this idea of luck and chance. the book is called a lucky child and there is an awful lot in the book about being in the right place at the right time or in the wrong place at the wrong time and how important those things become in a time of utter crisis the one the judge lived through. the second theme that i got from respond topeople extraordinary situations in all kinds of different ways. some people become beasts. some people become cruel. some people are survivors at any cost to other people. some people become selfish understandably and some people do not give up their basic humanity. there are stories in this book that are stunning in both directions, that show people as utterly animalistic and show people as a stirring lay human. i hope we will talk about -- as human.gly it is important that we are hearing judge buergenthal because to have a first-hand recollection of the holocaust at this point, you have to have been at least 10 years old or 11-year-old or 12 years old in 1945 when the world ended, which means is the absolute youngest you could have been is judge buergenthal's age. you are born in 1934. that means that my children will hear very first -- very few first-hand memories of the holocaust. we should all be interested to hear someone come and tell the stories that will not be around for that much longer. me get started. what i am going to do is ask the judge to tell us a little bit about his experiences and then we will get to some of the bigger thematic questions afterwards. why don't you start out -- by inling us about the ghetto -- you describe its walls and fences and what it sounded like. how did you end up in the ghetto and what was day-to-day life like? judge buergenthal: i was born in czechoslovakia, sort of a historical accident because both my mother and father decided in 1933 to leave germany. my father bought a small hotel in czechoslovakia. time to gett was out of czechoslovakia and go to poland in 1938. tohad been promised v says go to england in 1939 -- v says to go to england in 1939. to go to england. when theed the visas germans decided to invade poland. the british council tried to get us out through the balkans, put us on a train. bombed and we thed up in a town close to ghetto. we were told there was a r.g. jewish community there -- a large jewish community there so we started walking. it was a primitive ghetto. they moved most of the jews into the area of the city, a poor area of the city and then andually the walls came .uards protected it what happened in the ghetto is it was a quite normal life, but the germans would come in, the ss and the police and it just randomly shoot people. they would pull people out of their houses. as child i had friends. we would play. there was one german who had the habit of coming into the ghetto, shootingn, and just somebody. we children knew -- it was like a telegraph system in the ghetto. ghetto."n the kids knew to disappear. it was normal for most of the people who lived there, and for us refugees it was quite difficult. judge buergenthal: i like -- mr. goldberg: i like the story of the box of tefillin that you found. judge buergenthal: we found a tefillin, which is the phylacteries. we had been told that if you opened it, god was going to strike you down. but if you managed to get the little parchment that was in it under your arms, you could fly. 1 judge buergenthal: -- [laughter] judge buergenthal: we debated long and hard but our curiosity won out. we opened it and we looked up to see what was going to happen. us, we -- the oldest among there were three of us -- put it under his armpit and it tried to take off. nothing happened. it went to like this until it came to me. nothing happened. he ran as fast as we could to get back home for fear that god would follow us. judge buergenthal: -- the judge comes from a secular family, so secular where in the ghetto, where there was no one who is non-jewish, there was no one to perform the duties of the shabbos going, who is a , wholigious -- shabbos goy is a nonreligious person who lights the lamps for jewish people on the sabbath. judge buergenthal: i was the shabbos goy. i got to see how people lived and i would also give -- get some food. -- my motherfather and father and i would get invited to the shabbos. i had never really seen jewish -- really religious jews. life that was unfortunately lost now, the jewish culture of eastern europe was right there in the ghetto. of course it is all gone. as a child, it was an eye-opener to see all of this life. judge buergenthal: but you also's -- mr. goldberg: but you also saw your first killings there. judge buergenthal: when the ghetto was liquidated as the germans would say, my father actually had -- my father at the end ran a workshop that was taylors,ngs, had farriers, other people who had to perform work for germans and -- my father saved a whole group of his workers. on the evening when he came out of the workshop with us, and the polish youngaw two -- got intotried the ghetto and started stealing -- the ss were beating them terribly and it shocked them. this i see white shoes -- one young man was on his knees trying to prevent this shooting from taking place. all i could remember was seeing this man's a white shoes. i was eight years old at the time. that was my first killing. mr. goldberg: one of the most moving stories in the book was one ghetto inmate who had to be hung by another can you tell me -- can you tell that story? judge buergenthal: the ghetto -- --n the ghetto was lit liquidated, we were moved to a camp. terry -- a work a number of youngm men tried to escape. they were caught, beaten very badly, and hung. we had to watch the hanging. the cruelty consisted by the essayists -- ss taking some of their friends to help them hang them. the young men -- to this day i can still see it -- because one of the young men had to put the noose over the head of his friend. his hands were shaking, he could not do it. hangedson who was to be kissed his friends hands and put his head through the noose and jumped off the chair, not to give them the satisfaction of doing it. those are the things that stay with you. finally about the ghetto, i wanted to ask you about your friends, which you tell a very sad story in the book. i know it is possibly difficult for you to talk about it, but if you comfortable -- judge buergenthal: at one point in one of the smaller ghettos where we were moved to, they decided to take all of the children away. eventually they took the cemeteryto the jewish and i am told killed them with hand grenades because the children were running away. work inof my father's the workshop, he was able to me. my mother and as we were walking in the direction of the place where we knew we were going to be saved rather than be sent to treblinka , to mothers of our neighbors, just pushed children, one boy and one girl toward my mother and my mother took them. we had the children -- they were sort of my younger brother and sister, which i never had. they were taken from us a year later. one of the hardest things in writing this part of the story thenot -- other than reunion with my mother -- those were the two spots where i had to stop writing because i knew what happened. visited --i mr. goldberg: they ultimately liquidated the ghetto and you were sent to a work camp. ultimately you were sent to auschwitz. in 1944. can you tell us about the arrival at auschwitz? what are the things that happened to you there? what does a 10-year-old boy see and feel? judge buergenthal: what was striking about auschwitz, we had heard rumors about auschwitz. heard rumors about treblinka. treblinka,in everyone was exterminated upon arrival in -- it was basically an extermination cap. we thought the same would happen in auschwitz. the morning when we arrived, looking out through the railroad car, we saw people walking -- working and people said well there are human beings and auschwitz, which means it cannot be as bad as it we thought it was. just seeing people in auschwitz in the work camp was a surprise, -- i sayhappened then that i was lucky to get into auschwitz and people look at me and say, "this man is totally crazy." i was lucky to get into auschwitz. usually when you arrive at auschwitz or birkenau, there immediately bna selection. all people, sick people -- ba selection. old people, sick people -- a selection.e old people, sick people, kids would be taken and killed. because we came from a work camp i guess they thought there was no one like that left. mothereparated from my but i was able to stay with my father. then we went to the regular the strepthe haircut, uniform. -- striped uniform. the thingsg: when of you described that was very haunting is the reddish-brown color of the sky from the smoke from the crematorium's. you said that was always there. did everyone know what went on in those crematorium's? judge buergenthal: oh, yes. the stench and this smoke that came from the crematorium was such that there was no birds in auschwitz during this. -- during this time. know what grass grow. the first time we went back in may of 91, i said to my wife, "look, there is grass and there are birds." you have a feeling that the grass is covering up what happened in that terrible place. day withmagine, a may grass, birds, everything in this terrible place. the water that came out -- we had a wash place -- it was rusty water. the soil was always mud. -- always mud in the summer and ice mud in the winter. always. color, the sky, even the furthest away from the crematorium, you would still be able to smell it. i was relatively close. i was first in the gypsy camp. they held thousands of gypsies, whole families are killed in the gypsy camp just to make room. that was relatively close to the crematorium. mr. goldberg: when you were in the ghetto you described this strange contradiction that at the one hand people are being killed around you. on the other hand you are a nine-year-old or 10-year-old boy. you're playing. was there that in auschwitz? judge buergenthal: that all went away. day in day out, you made sure that you had a little piece of bread, and that you are not caught by the angel of death in the selection program -- process. there was no playing anymore. a verys syria -- different life. were you familiar with him? did he stroll around the camp? judge buergenthal: i was asked to describe a guard at trial in the u.s. and i realized i never dared look at them, so i could not -- mr. goldberg: you could not make eye contact? judge buergenthal: i could not make eye contact. we knew he was in the camp. recently there was a french magazine managed to get hold of him were on the cover. i would not have recognized him. mr. goldberg: talk about the separation from your mother. when you first arrived at auschwitz, she was taken away. there was one moment at the camp where you did see her. how did that come to pass? judge buergenthal: i was first separated from my mother but still together with my father, then at one moment i was separated from my father. my father was sent to another camp. i ended up in what was known as a children's block in another camp in the birkenau. collectingre of garbage from the other camps. at one moment we were sent to a camp that was close to the women's camp. somehow there were two friends of mine who also came. from kielce. we knew the women were also in the sea camp in birkenau. we were pitching our harborage -- garbage wagon -- we were pushing our garbage wagon. we started yelling over the fence, "tell the women from kielce to come out." wasother came out and it the first time i had seen her since we were separated. a woman cap oh came into disorders -- dispersed -- cappo came and dispersed them. i did not see her again until december of 1946. 2.5 years after we were separated. mr. goldberg: the camps were run by the ss, that these cap owes -- cappos were inmates? were auergenthal: there lot of jews among them, some polls --iminals, some poles . -- toors from 1942 survive during that. cappo means that you had to help beat and kill fellow inmates. mr. goldberg: what did they get in return? judge buergenthal: they survived. these were people -- when i came to auschwitz, there was somebody who had been a friend of ours. we were together refugees in poland. he was a dental technician. when we got to auschwitz, he was a cappo and it treated petey -- people accordingly. mr. goldberg: i'm sorry to move quickly through this, but tell us a little bit -- when they camp as finality liquidated and there is this death march as the russian troops are coming towards it, tell us what your experience was on the march? judge buergenthal: this was a three day march in january of 1945. if anyone here knows what the winter in poland can be like, and we hadnuary '45 hardly any close on. i had a little like it over my prison garb. i went back on the anniversary of that day once with coats, jackets, and i was freezing. here i survived that, except i lost some toes in the process. it was three days march. ended up in a temporary camp in upper salacious and from there fallujah andpper from there it was a 10 day march. when we first got into the railroad car i could hardly breathe because it was so tight. by the time we arrived where we were going there were not more than 15 or 20 people who had survived. the bodies out of the moving railroad car. mr. goldberg: when of the extraordinary stories that you tell about the march is in the middle of this three day long march, the children start to get weak and they start to not be able to keep up with the rest and the ss basically kills all were with you.at because you and a friend were lagging behind, you were not killed. that is one of the exceptional pieces of luck in your story. judge buergenthal: we were tired and getting cold. originally some of the children had been put at the front of the column. told renoir slowing things down, so we decided the way to rust -- rest was to stop and let everyone pass us by. and we got to the end of the column, we would run forward again. during one of those stops, they decided to take all the children off and they said they would put them in a monastery and they would be safe. we decided we did not trust them so we remained where we were even though people were trying to push us out -- "go, go, you will be safe." but we had a lot of experience with that safety. stories ofg: back to little acts of kindness and little acts of cruelty. me extraordinary story to was the cup of coffee on the train. last buergenthal: in these 10 days where we were moving to germany, we had an ss guard who would be changed who would -- these were upper railroad cars. you can imagine the snow and ice. he would sit in one of these cabins into they would change. in the freight railroad station in berlin, he gets out, slams down, and comes back with a cup of coffee. we were freezing. drink have just tried to this from his cup. he hands me the cup of coffee. he goes back to get himself another cup of coffee. at almost the same time, i her a german woman who walks by say -- jews.inks again of you have this juxtaposition of this stormtrooper giving me a cup of coffee on this civilian -- and this civilian person reacting that way. that is something i have not been able to reconcile in my mind. >> and other thing that happens on the train trip is the train is taking you from poland to germany, it has to go round about two because so many of the train tracks have been destroyed. as you pass through czechoslovakia, you pass under a bridge and people are throwing loaves of bread down to feed the people in the open railcars. >> we -- how the checks knew that the trains were coming through and had organized, obviously the resistance must have organized to that and the bread came down. the first to loaf that my toends caught and told me hold onto was stolen from me. i was so cold -- it was so-called that i was sitting on it and i lost it. the bread it saved me and many other people. when you think of manna from heaven -- i should tell you about this event because when i was asked -- i used to be on the board of the holocaust museum in washington and i was asked on one of the anniversaries of the death march to talk about it. as i prepared my speech, i said, "did this really happen or did i imagine it?" ago and theong time parallel with manna from heaven and all of this. eventually i decided, no, it happened. i gave this speech and there were some survivors. i could hear people in the audience saying, "yes, yes i remember!" you tell these extraordinary stories about the ss officer who gave you the cup the jew who ise hanged in the ghetto and he kisses the hand of the guy who is hanging him or the people who drop the bread and then you ask this question -- what is it that gives some people the moral strength not to sacrifice their dignity at the cost of themselves while others become murderously ruthless to ensure their own survival? this is the theme that reappears throughout the book. you never quite answer that question and i am certain that i don't know the answer. i wanted to give you the opportunity to try. judge buergenthal: that is why i keep asking the question, in the hopes that i would get the answer. if we knew the answer we could possibly prevent some of the terrible things that we humans do to other humans. it is incomprehensible to me. beginry people suddenly -- i do not to say act like --mals because i do not know the answer. the questions been that i cannot answer, a perennial question. as i wrote it, it reappears. it kept following me. , onhen you finally came in thereain you were taken, you met a man. can you tell us about him? he has another one of these extraordinary people you came across. you were in the infirmary because of your amputated frostbitten toes and that is where you met him. wonder, here is a concentration camp and here im as a child in the infirmary and i get operated on -- here i am as a child in the infirmary and i get operated on. they had a well-stocked hospital with doctors. when they cured you you ended up very often being killed one way , usually if you stayed more than four weeks the chances were that you will never get out of the infirmary. that is why i was afraid to go to the infirmary, but i was there and i had my toes amputated. day, a norwegian was visiting another norwegian. there were quite a number of norwegians and danes as political prisoners who had opposed the germans when they invaded their country. this one man came over to me. he was one of the cofounders of unicef after the war. gotnorwegians and the danes food packages from the -- sweden. he started to talk to me, asking where i came from. every few days he would come and bring me cookies and things to eat. one day he came to me and said, "we have to leave, i tried very hard to take you with us, but i was not allowed to. here is my address in norway. after the war we have to get together and you have to write to me. do not lose this piece of paper with my address and name. " of course i lost it. what he had done, not only did he bring me food, but he gave cigarettes and tobacco to the --" save of the room the boy and there will be more coming." he saved my life. after the war, when i told my mother. i told my mother there was this norwegian whose father was very famous. person who created the passport after the first world i forgot his name but he was a wonderful man and his father was very famous and his father's picture even appeared on the cooker jar -- cookie jar. mustther said, well, he have been a cookie manufacturer. that a man had published a diary in a ancentration -- from concentration camp. she encouraged me to write to i was see if you knew who looking for. i do not know his address of course -- nothing happened for six weeks and then the doorbell rang in germany where we lived ended the norwegian military tremendoused with a crate of food, including chocolate collected by schoolchildren in norway for me. it turned out to that i had become famous in the norway. his diary, which he had written in the camp had some chapters written about me and was dedicated to me and other people, assuming i had not survived the war. norwaybig excitement in when they found out i had survived. we kept in touch regularly. as -- i was with his children very recently. he was a wonderful man. he then wrote a book called tommy about 20 years later about my experiences. he interviewed my mother. it was also the man who influenced my thinking about because reconciliation when i first came to germany when i was reunited with my mother, i had this notion whether germans on weekends would pass by. my father had been executed and did not come back. i wanted to do to them what they had done to us. this norwegians entire life had been based on the fact that hate anywhere. you he gave all the proceeds from his book to german refugees. i thought why would he do this. had a tremendous impact on my own thinking, and the need to put an end to hatred. >> you said in the book that your experience as a child continues to have an impact on the person that you have become. later on you said "i would never quite liberate myself." how has your experience in the holocaust shaped your life? >> first of all, you really cannot have seen what i saw getting tremendous respect for human life. strange that i should put it that way. when you have seen the terrible killings that i have seen and at the same time feel how important human life is and that we should do everything to protect human began to think that, i do not know, but that has been -- that was something that came from the camp and probably also my subsequent work in the human rights area, the feeling that we have to prevent these things from happening again to others, what has happened to us. about the be cynical lack of success we have and preventing further genocide. -- the natural tendency would be to say, in the bosnia. have rwanda and some people say "nothing we can do will prevent it." you have to try to prevent it regardless of they setbacks that are going to happen. not one to say that i have felt a tremendous urge to work in human rights as an obligation. into it probably because i felt that that was the one way and which i could contribute. i also thought that if i had been better in science i would have become a doctor. this way i had to become a lawyer. mr. goldberg: you have done work relations ton massacres in honduras. yourthis bring back experience to you each time? judge buergenthal: yes. three memberr of a u.n. commission for el salvador. we had to investigate what happened during the syllable war -- civil war and el salvador. one of the terrible things that --pened was a massive curve massacre. the only survivor of that massacre, when we -- when she started to speak, in a minute or two i could have finished her story. it brought back what happened when -- at the liquidation of kielce. some of the other things i have always thety is same. we are not very creative. it is always the same. el mozote was the same. when i got to el salvador, i thought nothing could affect me anymore, when you see the skeleton of a mother with a baby skeleton in the womb, that was more than i could take. in goldberg: he has a line the introduction to your book, he says that when we read accounts of the holocaust, at first they all seem the same. it was as if the same tormentor did it 6 million times. judge buergenthal: it is true in other places and other genocides. mr. goldberg: we are running out of time and i want people to ask questions, but there are two quick things i wanted to ask. you write as late as when you were in college, you could still feel like what it felt like to be hungry, you could remember the pain you felt when you were separated from your parents upon arriving at auschwitz, but as the years passed those feelings have doubled. is that true? did writing the book bring it back? feel buergenthal: i do not the hunger anymore or the cold. i wrote a story in college about and in 1955, 56 when i reread it in order to talk about the death march at the holocaust museum, it was as if it was a different person writing the story. it changed totally. i did not feel it anymore. , the immediacy. if i had kept those feelings through 50 years or more and the detail of the cruelty, the hunger, i would probably be locked up someplace, one has to -- it is much easier to write the book in this sense because writing the book was reflecting i react to what has happened to me at the time, how a very to it now as different person. i think that is probably all for the good that it happened that way. it would have been a terrible book if i had ridden it shortly after the war. shortly after the war. first of all, i would not have been able to write it in english. the distance was very valuable and that is why people often ask me," why did it ask -- take you so long to write it?" for 50 years i said i would write the book and it took me 50 years to actually sit down and do it. mr. goldberg: there are many parts of this book that we have not had the chance to discuss. one of the most delightful, and there are not many delightful thes of the book, is after liberation, you are basically picked up as a mascot of the polish army and they gave you a little miniature polish army uniform and a little gun of your own and you rode around on tanks for a week. judge buergenthal: i should interrupt you for one moment because i think you would enjoy this. i book came out first in germany. inn i was interviewed germany on german television, i would say "i actually helped because irlin," actually did help. i was with the polish and soviet berlin.s we entered i slept in a german tank for the whole thing. last questionthe i wanted to ask because it is uplifting is after you left the polish army, you went to a jewish orphanage and you are there for a while. you're thinking of emigrating to palestine because as far as you know you did not have any surviving family. but then you are reunited with your mother. judge buergenthal: the strange thing as a child, here i am having seen everything i have seen and it never occurred to me wouldy mother and father not have survived the war. i just assumed that they had survived. no question. not only that, but i assumed that they would find me. i did not even look for them, not that i could have. through an unbelievable set of circumstances, my mother found me. should i tell the story? jewish orphanage in poland that was run by the jewish bund. was a socialist group. by orphanage was infiltrated and at youth group , "do you one day said want to go to palestine?" why not, i should go -- i have been everywhere else, i should go to palestine. she said they had a system there where every few weeks when of getsds "runs away," picked up around the corner, and is taken to palestine. last told to "run away" because i had been interviewed i was thenews because only one there who came from a camp. my name appeared on the list that she put together and --ented to the jewish agency and sent to the jewish agency. someone is sitting at a desk in tel aviv saw that my mother and mother's brother in the united states were looking for me and their child was on the list -- on a list at an orphanage in poland. that was how we got together. it is a miracle. unbelievable. a big worry of my mother was that i would forget my name. with that, let's stop and open it up for some questions. [applause] mr. goldberg: a man with a microphone there and men with a question there. >> thank you. my question has to do with your role in the international court of justice. the united states has to find a way to deal with the prisoners at guantanamo and i wondered if you had any ideas of what what sort of court of law they could be tried in so that we could once and for all deal with it and get it behind us. it couldn'tnthal: be in the international court of justice. there would have to be some ad hoc court set up to deal with this. countries. and other agreed to do that. hocould be done in an ad tribunal. the problem is less finding a court to deal with the people a law that really applies to them that could be used in a tribunal like that. it is not all that easy. warn youerg: i should that if people ask questions about contemporary events you could run into things that the judge cannot talk about because they may come before the court at some point. >> you mentioned about some children on the death march and i wondered if you knew how any of the other children managed, how they were in auschwitz and survived both initially. i think you mentioned the nazis eventually killed the children. manage toable to survive? judge buergenthal: most of the children in auschwitz were older than i was. some of them came in the same way that i came into auschwitz. po, a was a german cap person in charge of a barrick, a political prisoner i think -- , a politicalrrack prisoner i think. he saw that children were being hunted down and he said that he could put them to good work if they would allow him to run a k in decamp.arrac dat is what happened -- in camp. that is what happened. there was this children's birkenau- in decamp in camp in birkenau. most of the children were 14 or older. in auschwitz, did you meet muslim men? judge buergenthal: oh yes. muslim men were not people. i do not know where the name comes from? people were so starved from not eating that they were basically eventually just skin and bones. usually when you saw them, you knew they would not survive. i describe in the book somebody who i knew, who i called uncle, who had been with us in poland became one. people who just died of starvation basically. i mentioned in the book that it was like watching dead people walk. that is what they were. >> it is a privilege to listen to you. thank you. i have two questions -- the deprivations of your childhood, have they had a lasting effect on your health? second, how do you cope with the people who deny the holocaust? judge buergenthal: i have been fortunate in terms of deprivatio. it does not seem to affect me at all. when yoully strange think that i starved as a child and now i have to be on a diet. that part i do not know how to handle. [laughter] judge buergenthal: the holocaust deniers, i have always had this sense that they are trying to kill us twice. hand, i cannot take it very seriously. i cannot take it seriously when someone tells me as some person said recently, a bishop, that there could not have been more than 15,000 -- what is that? .50,000 people who died i do not think we should overdo it. we know what happened. it is important to repeat what happened, not let these people become in the center of our attention. the more we focus on it, the more they will do it. me once anded always was the bishop of oslo when there will -- when skinheads were going to march, the bishop of oslo said, "just turn your backs to them as they marched past." that is the way you deal with these people. do not take it too seriously because that is what they want. case -- a casehe came before the world court and you recused yourself. the case involved and holocaust denier. there are laws in france that you may not deny the holocaust. do you think a law like that is a reasonable law? judge buergenthal: this happened when i was a member of the u.n. human rights committee, not the court. it really depends on the country. i would think in the united states i would not want a law like this because we do have other ways, all kinds of social pressures to prevent some of these -- to deal with it. ofsome countries, because the politics of the country, it may be important to have some laws. for example, in germany i think it was useful after the war to have laws that prevented any glorification of hitler's system -- the way the the way this it -- the way the country reacts. a member of a u.s. government delegation to a meeting of the helsinki process in oslo actually. my instructions were to make sure that nothing was adopted at that conference that prevented whateverf expression, it could be. i tried to follow my instructions of course. that was shortly after the wall came down. representative came it isand said, "maybe easy for you in america to take this position, but we are living in a country with all these different ethnic groups." i thought to, "this is a full extra mark, he doesn't understand." and then you saw what happened in bosnia. it depends where you are. mr. goldberg: this woman down here has been very patient. all the way in the corner. first of all i wanted to say thank you. what a privilege. being a brit born just after the war, married to a german, and it lived in germany, i want to know if you have children and how you feel going forward? do we have good opportunities to have learned from these bad experiences and hopefully turn them into good experiences daca inc. you again. -- into good experiences? thank you again. i am amazednthal: at how germany has changed. it is something we should admire and appreciate. i just spoke about -- i have been in germany quite a lot and you see the generation of changes. the current generation of current and in the political system, there are skinheads and things, but the country has learned a tremendous amount and it gives you faith that it is possible for a country to transform itself as germany has. i think the best europeans today are the german young people in germany. that is very gratifying. >> thank you, also from my heart. ability tor have the face any of your captors or any of the capos after the war? or have a desire to do so? the answer is no, to both. no, fortunately i did not have that opportunity. possibility, and wouldn't have wanted it either. witnessce asked to be a in the justice department. in the trial where they wanted to deport somebody and take his citizenship away as a guard. to talk about this man, because i didn't know him at the time. just to go through all of this is not something that i would enjoy. that part i wanted to leave behind. ok.olas: >> my mother was from a small .heck town that you may know she was taken to auschwitz when she was 13. she was in birkenau and was on the death march also. so, i share not in your aserience but in your legacy she lost her brother, my uncle. both of my father's parents were killed in the war. he was in a prison of war camp. i still have to ask you a question. is howdon't understand we people that had experienced such horrific screaming nation could establish a secular discriminates against those of not like mind? do you want to take that on? you arei take it speaking about israel. i sometimes ask myself the same questions. -- in light ofis what is said is happening in israel is being said by people who i don't think realize what is happening. it is not always truthful. at the same time, i find it sad that are of the things happening in israel are happening. my fellow jews that are doing that. some of it also can be understood, given the problems that they face in the country. it is not a real situation, but it is sad for me to see. i haven't been in isn't -- in israel very long. i have done human rights work in any parts of the world, and i have intentionally stayed out of dealing with israel because i felt i could not be objective. i always thought that when i , i was moved by the same consideration. that he felt i couldn't judge him. nicholas: but you participated in the world court case involving the war -- involving the wall? thomas: i dissented. i was the sole dissenter in that case because i felt -- while i felt that parts of the wall were not justified as a matter of self-defense, i thought some others work. as a matter of fact, the israeli supreme court -- this is something that is not known when we talk about israel -- the israeli supreme court using, basically my approach has pushed back the wall in quite a number of places. there are about 100 cases that are still pending to deal with this issue. that is not something you would find in many countries in this situation. i dissented, and i should tell you a funny story about this. on the court after we discussed it and they had position, ird my said to my colleagues, we are iing to -- my wife peggy and -- are going to be gone from this city once the decision comes out, because we have no security, no protection. the israelis had brought a bombed out bus in front of the court. the arabs and palestinians were protesting outside and we thought it was dangerous to be around. we were ready to leave, as i walked out of the courtroom that afternoon my ejection colleagues said, tom there is no reason for you to leave. i said why? he said i just watched al jazeera. they said the american judge dissented on every point. then they showed the picture of our dutch colleague. [laughter] we went anyway. -- nicholas: another question? >> into so much for being here. i am almost lost for words. i will be able to live with myself if i don't say this. thes a privilege to be in presence of such a joyous, humble, wise man. i hope your message goes on and on. is, itquestion for you was said earlier this evening that you were from a family of secular jews. is that still the situation? where are you spiritually? i am glad what she said in the beginning. my wife is here and heard it. [laughter] believe in a personal god. some people came out of the camp as great believers. i came out the other way. more i thought about this, the more i just -- what i saw saw ist god, presumably something i did not want to get myself to believe in it. i am a great admirer of people who can believe. we only have time for one more question. this woman here. >> thank you so much for sharing your experience. as a grandchild of holocaust survivors i have a question for you as a global citizen. when we are witnessing genocides, when i hear about my say,parents' experience i how could people have seen this and not done anything. as a global citizen, what is it we can do most effectively when we see genocides happening around us? thomas: we have to let our government know and people that they have to act. and dida we sat there not do anything until it was too late. there were instances where other governments where we could do something and now we have this of september 11 and because of guantanamo. us wes very difficult for feel we should not try to of human in violations rights. i think that is very bad. we should continue to want to have an impact on what is and not sit by and do nothing. does not mean we should do it on our own. that is sometimes a mistake. we should play a very important role, as we did in the 40's and 50's. in other countries, working with other countries. with people and other countries. a lot of work is being done. there are lots of things happening. i believe if we had the human rights institutions that we have now both at the u.n. and the regional human rights mechanisms that exist, if that had existed in the 30's we probably could have prevented what happened. we need to strengthen these institutions and support the governments and people who are pushing for that. and not to give up. nicholas: i am afraid we are out of time. backll be signing books at if you have a final question you can probably ask it there one other thing i wanted to say. free, but it is not free to put it on. anyone who would like to help support this program can do so afterwards. you can find louise and give her your wallet or give her your pocketbook and she would be happy to take it. then you should take a few dollars out so you can buy judge bergdahl's book. thank you very much for coming. i want to think the judge for coming. it was really moving. the book is extremely moving and the whole thing was inspirational read thank you. [applause] thomas: thank you. >> this is american history tv on c-span3. her each weekend we feature 48 hours of programs exploring our nation's past. >> this sunday at 3:00 p.m. on american history tv, the historical museum of iowa hosts vertical scientists who discuss the history of iowa was presidential caucuses. and examine how and why the iowa caucuses have grown in importance since the middle of the 20th cent three -- century. he was a preview. >> in 1980, really one of the super bowl campaigns, stefan talk about carter and kennedy. stefan: there is a parallel between what is going on today and what happened in the 1980. there were two candidates who were strong, visible, good name recognition. ted kennedy, of course. the blue blooded massachusetts senator. and jimmy carter, who, as we were just told, was jimmy who came out of all of this and was president. between,ecame a battle should we elect someone who is safe and is president and is named jimmy carter, or should we move the party to the left-hand become thennedy standard bearer? fight insideicult the party. what it did was essentially cleaved the party into two factions. we see some of that happening today. today isthe discussion about moving left or staying safe in the barack obama, joe biden middle. peaked at the democratic convention in madison square garden. the fight became visible. ted kennedy was struggling to get enough delegates. it is not very often you have an incumbent president successfully pushed -- successfully challenged. we know eventually jimmy carter prevailed. and was on a course to until -- well, another historical moment that has parallels today. time is it? the iranian hostage crisis broke out. the radiant radicals who had -- the iranian radicals who it overthrown the shah overthrew the embassy. took americans hostage. they were marched out of the embassy. some of my students here don't remember that. it was dramatic. it was as dramatic as if you watched cnn today, what is going now. iran and iraq >> learn more about the history of the iowa caucus this weekend on american history tv. >> on june 8, 1972, the associated press photographer snapped a prize-winning image of nine-year-old kim phuc who was severely injured in a friendly fire napalm attack by south vietnamese chats. the napalm girl is now a goodwill ambassador. up next, mark boughton and a jazz composer who performs parts of a musical response to the on theoined kim phuc national constitution center stage to discuss the legacy of the war. [applause] >> ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the national constitution center.
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