Transcripts For CSPAN2 Key Capitol Hill Hearings 20150102

Degree of control during the war and took many of these commands decisions by himself, like linda lease which is extraordinary when you think about it. Again, employees the right people, understand how to use people and motivate them. Part of capacity, one of the three cs crisis, character, capacity, knowing who to pick and how to use them. Thank you very quick. Thank you. [applauding] [applauding] [inaudible conversations] tell me how you came to write about this. Several years ago i wrote a history of vaccinations a vaccine against typhus developed for american soldiers during world war ii because there was typhus and north africa and europe. In poland they made vaccines but i did not do much digging into it, but it stayed in my mind. It is one of the Amazing Stories that has never been told about world war ii, particularly about science during world war ii and the holocaust. Holocaust. And it ended up being a book that is really about the doctors and scientists, some jewish some polish, some german and the kind of moral choices that they made in these incredibly difficult circumstances. Yes. [laughter] so we did research in france and germany. In germany. In poland i had friends who translated things for me and in ukraine also. Give us a bit of what you came across. Sure. So dr. Weigl was a kind of do it your self genius who figured out a way to make a a typhus vaccine by growing typhus germs inside individual by injecting typhus germs into individual life with a whole a whole array of crazy little machines that he made and injected it into millions and millions of lives which then fed on human blood who would ever want to do this . But during world war ii in the most horrendous circumstances there were 150,000 jews murdered by the nazis and polls were being killed every day people were happy to have a job in this laboratory that was in a sense protected. If you had a card that said i work at the typhus lab they were like typhus, stay away from me. It was like holding up a card saying i have been exposed to a bowl. The soviets tried to erase the polish and jewish history of the city and now if you go there are the people there have no idea that it was a polish city. Particularly the soviets who raised soviet history and they accused him of being a nazi collaborator witch and the sense he was all the while committing sabotage