Records the nazis kept and recorded the liberation of the camps in photos and text. Documents in the National Archives was used as evidence in the war crimes trials document the actions and thoughts of those who carried out the crimes and those who discovered the result what of the stories of those trapped within the camps . In todayd featured book we have nearly 600 of their stories, including that of my sisterinlaws mother, authored without commentary, the recollections show us the up folding persecution through the survivors eyes. Since the end of the war we have been urged to never forget. Books like, our crime was being jewish pie ensure we do not. Anthony pitch is a journalist of note. Who long ago abandoned his native england for the united states. Of his many nonfiction books the two im most familiar with are they have killed papa dead the road to fords theater, abraham lincolns murder and the rage for vengeance. And the british invasion of 1814. Some years back i remember reading in the Washington Post that tonys war of 1812 book was one president bush packed for summer reading. Tony pitch has been featured on previous cspan tv shows, as well as on the history channel, National Geographic tv, booktv, npr and pbs. At a journalist he covered stories in england, africa, and israel. He has been a broadcast editor for the Associated Press and a senior write are to the u. S. News and World ReportsBook Division itch met him in the 1990s when i took one of his walking tours in washington. I can also attest that tony gives a first class walking tour of sights associated with lincolns assassination. Ladies and gentlemen, please welcome, tony pitch. [applause] thank you very much, rod. I want to pay tribute to rod, who helped me enormously in my previous books, and even the one coming out in march next year, on lynch, got away with murder. A very good archivist, and also to the other archivists. Without whom i cooperate have written any of these books. The crime of being jewish, our crime was being jewish is it marvelous title. It was taken from one man razz interview. My crime was being jewish. Sums it up. You may think this book is about the horrors horrors of the holo. Actually its really about heritage. The importance of knowing what happened in the past, and to survive people of all faiths that guts and wits can outflank savagery. Where all the nazis leaders theyre all dead. Gone by the act by their own hands of suicide, hitler gurge what about the survivors . They said that their third reich would last for a thousand years. Didnt last two decades. What about she survivoroff inside they were not liquidated. They were descended from a long line of jews who had faced hatred and conquest, explosions, forced conversions, and then the greatest aflix of all aflix of all, the holocaust. The tormenters included the pharaohs who enslaved them for years, babylonians, persians, romans, and then people of many different shades. And they survived. Now as im in my closing years of life, its time to sum up, and i am enmore convinced that the survival of the jewish people is phenomenal. And if anything if we judge the past of what they survived in the past, i am absolutely convinced that they will overcome this current rise of antisemitism that has raised its had worldwide so soon after the holocaust. That is what it surprises me. That within a generation, the rumblings of it would surface again. Now, my hope is that this book will be read by people of all ages and all faiths, so people who learn nothing or little about the holocaust, for people who are ignorant of the heritage, and for those who dont realize that if antisemitism is taken it to extreme, it must result in the contentses of this book. For this book i researched the interviews of the Holocaust Memorial museum, the foundation, the International Military tribunals in neuralburg, the eichman trial in jerusalem. Hearings before the u. S. House of representatives, and even personal memoirs, so i got a very good view through the hundreds of interviews in this book. You dont have to read hundreds of books. Its all in this one. And i think that the survivors have a right to hold their heads high because they recount in their own words the enormous number of atrocities, the whole range they had to confront and survive, and you get a good sense of what its like. That might frighten some people and shock others to read this put you cant write about the holocaust without writing exactly as it was and thats what did. In their words. My preface but the rest is their words, accepted to show these atrocities. You will not find a chronology in this book because i wanted to its a reflection, really, of their shatters lives. And i didnt write an index because many poem who should have been included were silenced by murder. Always remember what a holocaust survivor told another one who said to her, i cant watch holocaust movies or read books about them because its too sad. And the survivor said, dont expect me to pat you on the back. If we could live it, you can watch it. And there is so much wisdom in this book. And not my wisdom but theirs. The interviews, you just its so amazing what they wrote about, and as you go through, as i go through now, some of the excerpts, youll see the wisdom that comes out of it. This book was really prompted by revolting despicable antisemitism in france, epit immediated by the an techs of a socalled comedian, cameroonian father, french mother, and he has one skit where he ridicules the holocaust, and he later makes fun of halimi, an innocent frenchman who was kidnapped, tortured and murdered, only because he was jewish. And the audiences roar with laughter. Its on youtube. You can see them. And they he cannot you cannot say that is justified by this late coming. Says all these things when he wasnt even there and i think that the best answer i could give him would be the words of those who came out alive. Now, jews have always defied the odds, even though they were targeted because they were jewish. Theyve defied the odds. These were people who bequeathed a triumphant heritage of endurance. Thats what its all about. And my book testifies to this everlasting resilience. Many antisemites say the holocaust never hand but cannot answer a survivor who told me shortly before his death last year, if the holocaust didnt happen, then where is my family . And you have to listen to a lutheran, who helped liberate a concentration camp, and after seeing the creamer kareem creamer toa, the bloodstained walls and the piles of corps he said i was there i saw it with my own eyes. I can testify. Another man had nothing but cop tempt for deniers. He said they should have been there, seen it with their own eyes, then they would find out it really happened. And and one saw a roomful of 500 bodies and saud you dont forget Something Like that. You cant. Another american soldier saw Railroad Cars packed with dead bodies, and he said, i wish id never seen anything like that. I hope i never see it again. Some people managed to hide, finding refuge in the city sewers. Thats where children played with rats. Just like those abroad fondle dogs and that where man drowned in a sudden flashflood why looking for something to drink. Where a woman suffocated her baby to death rather than let its cries betray their whereabouts. Shortly before they fled in 1938, a mother took her children to a park and she wanted them to see the sign at the entrance gate, and she told them never, ever to forget what was written there. And the words read jews and dogs are not allowed in the park. And then hatred of jews was displayed without any shame. There was a distinguished lawyer who went to the same viennese coffee house for more than 20 years, and he sat at the same table, served by the same waiter, and after the holocaust, after the union of greece and im sorry germany and austria in 1938, the waiter came up to him, showed him his lapel, segue any identifying membership in the nazi party,saying i dont wait on dirty jews. Why didnt they bolt . Time seem to be on their side. Perhaps they were too ensconced in the culture and they didnt appreciate the peril to their lives. There was a doctor in berlin who told his son that he would not be taking up a position in a hospital in brazil because he said, nazi war will not last. The germans wilt will not stand forked. And another man told his daughter why he turn down a position in 1936. He said i am the the germans will not do anything to me. I am a war veteran. I have the iron cross. And another man brushed off nazi rule by comparing it to rain, where people open their umbrellas and wait for it to stop. So, the only dismissed wholesale accounts of mass murder, some believed but the majority did not. A man escaped from a train going to auschwitz, and when he got back to poland and spoke about the massacres, they said he was lying and frightening everybody. Then another man escaped in the same area from a train going to germany, 1942. When he got back to his relatives in warsaw, and told them the slaughter ahead, they said to him, its far fetched, and they didnt believe him. So, even the events of failed to influence many people. That was the night of broken glass. On the 9th and 10th of november, 1938, the nazis burned many synagogues across germany, and they destroyed or ransacked jewish homes, offices and shops. They rounded up a lot of jewish men and send them to concentration camps and murdered others, and one memorable incident, a man who had befriended a jewish child while he was a boy, even eaten at the juice home, now led a group of stormtroopers and threatened the boys parents and then trashing their home. So, you have to consider all that was background, and then war broke out in september 1939. And persecution intensified. That was when hundreds of thousands of jews were packed into cattle cars for the torturous journeys to the death camps there was no room to move. No space to feed babies. No medication to take. And little air to breathe. They had to make do with one bucket to defecate and urinate in and that soon overflowed. Imagine standing like that for three or four days with little or no food, and soiling your clothes because there was nowhere else to go, and if you were unfortunate enough to come from greece, that train journey took nine days. There was panic broke out in one train, when a rumor spread they would all be burned alive. A female doctor cut open the veins in the wrists and legs and did the same for 30 women who preferred to commit suicide. When they arrived, there they were tired and hungry and gasping for anything to drink. Nobody was there to rid them of the smell of their bowels or step of the rotting dead. Instead they were met by booted nazis, screaming at them, to line up for selections where they would either be forced into slavery or gassed. And lagardes were shot on the spot, and ferocious dogs bit those who were too daysed to know what was going on. The cruelest part of all was that theyd done nothing wrong. They were being degraded and beaten, starved and murdered, only because they were jews, and an entire people was being annihilated simply because day were jewish. Antisemitism has reached such a crescendo that the nazis considered them vermin. They had no weapons, and they were facing fanatics who thought nothing of exacting reprisals and nothing pained the jew more than the fear of repies sals against family, friends, relatives, and fellow jews, and others reacted like human beings. They expected something to turn up in their favor, even when all seemed lost. The heartache. You have to lisp now to some of listen now to some of the people who were there. The heartache of man who saw his mother, sister, and brother, being sent away to be gassed, and he said, it was no time to say anything, nothing, nothing, nothing. We were in hell. And another girl who saw her mother with a frail heart, being sent off to be gassed, she said, from that moment i lost my emotions. I didnt know how to cry. One boy, who lives in rockville now. A retired professor in engineering. He wrote for my back cover. He hid from the selections by hiding in the latrines with excrement up to his mouth, and the nazis were to merciless, that two girls hid between corpses to prevent those selections, and they were dehumanized in every possible way. Nobody was hence forth known by their names. Only by the tattooed numbers on their forearms. And they thought they were lucky. Thankful that they hadnt been tattooed on the cheeks of foreheads. Four women realized they only had one bowl between them, so they each defecated in it, then threw out the contents and half an hour later drank soup from the very same bowl. They saw people eating human flesh because cannibalism saved them from starvation. Women stopped having their periods, and others washed their hair in water served up as soup. When they went to latrines they expected to be brushed by somebody dead hanging above them, just like they expected to get wet when swimming. And if they failed to follow orders properly at roll call that were made to hop on all fours like frogs. A preteen girl awoke in the morning to discover she was hugging a woman who died overnight, and then everybody fought over the then slice of bread she must have left behind and another girl saw her mother walking off to be gassed, and she said, i am only 18. I havent even made love. A man brought into the ghetto by a nazi known as the butcher, which recognized his own mother s shoes. They considered death a luxury because the ordeal of suffering was over. Then there was the medical experiments, on people who had absolutely nothing wrong with them. Jews and dwarfs in particular suffered excruciating pain and many died from the barbarism. Women were sterilized in painful procedures and some men had their testicles removed. Teachers gave poison candy to their pupils, expecting them to die before the nazis could get them. And one man had to neil kneel before a dog and address him as heir, and then apologize for stealing food from his bowl. Witnesses to murder closeup, nobody was better positioned to talk about it than those who really saw it close up, some of the commanders. They were the people whose terrible task was to supervise the gassing and then to remove the bodies to the ovens, and they were killed, all of them, after six months, and other men brought in as replacements. It was hoped then that nobody would survive to tell about the horrors, but in the confusion of repairization, some of them managed to escape, and and their memoirs prepared some over indianapolisyers of deniers but they barely spoke to one another. They carried out these horrible tasks because as one man said, he remembered what his mother told him. Where theres life, theres hope. Now, bennettfield died last year but before he died, wrote a marvelous book and exposed the atrocities. He writes about putting the people in the gas chamber, and then when all the screaming and crying was hushed, they opened the door, and they had to wade through excrement and europe, blood and vomit. One day they heard a baby crying, and they went over and found that a twomonthold girl had survived by suckling her mothers breast, but then along came a nazi guard and shot her in the back of the head. That was the end of that one. Death was considered cheap and easily achieved if desired. And now go to the instances of bravery, of courage. There was a woman who escaped from a camp, and she was caught and brought back to the gallows to be hanged. The camp command adapt was standing next to her and said, if i forgive you, what will you do . She spat in his face and said, i will do the same thing again. So he hanged her and let her dangle for days, and then five boys who were arrested for stealing cigarettes meant for german troops, so that they were thrown in a cell for a week without any food or water. And then they were taken up to the gallows. With nooses around their necks, give the germans a chance, one, the reasons for their fate was being read out. They jumped off the stools to commit collective suicide. Now, this is a story that i think is the best of all in the book. The nazis gave one man 30 minutes to offload a truck or he would be shot dead. He happened to be a concert cellist, and he knew the concerto took 20 minutes to play so he hummed it to himself and he finished ahead of schedule and saved his life. There was a rabbi who went to his synagogue and walked up to the ark, and addressing god he said, many time is have come here and ive asked you to forgive the sins of my community. Now, as i stand before you, i dont think we will forgive you your sins, and then there was another man who look at his neighbor, who was praying, and he said to him, why are you praying . Cant you see weve been abandoned in miserable conditions, and the man replied and said, you dont understand. Im praying to god to thank him for not making me like a murderers around him. You see the wisdom of this. It comes from a lot of stories. One man arrived at a concentration camp, very, very religious, but then he saw how long these people had suffered for, and he said, i can understand the jews are penalizedded for days or weeks, maybe months but no year after year, im angry with god. I have a problem with him. Then others who died with dignity and spirit, and a rabbi saw other people waiting to be gassed like him, and he said to them theres nothing to be afraid of death. Well die as martyrs so they danced as they went through the door to their deaths. How did they pick up the lives when the rest were freed in the spring of 1945. A woman who was freed but 38 years later was on the west coast of america and found out she was sitting next to a soldier who had helped free her camp. So, she went up to him, she some shrieked his is hysterically and grabbed his arm. And one said why did you bring children into this world if auschwitz was so terrible. She said hitler wanted to eliminate us. I got my revenge by saying, look, we are here. And then another lady compared her concentration camp to the pain of having she said it was like the pain of having babies. You always remember the beauty, never the pain. Otherwise women would never have babies. And their odile ordeal never ended. Man came from auschwitz to washington, dc, got a job at a famous restaurant in connecticut avenue, and one day he heard that the leader of the american nazis would be addressing people on the mall. He decided to go but he swore to himself that he would not be like many jews in europe who he said prayed the minute the nazis burst in. So, he went down and he was horrified to see swastikas and people with crossed arms just like the gestapo, and then he approached a marine who turned nazi and he said, didnt we suffer enough under hitler. And the marine said, who are you to say that . Then he showed him his tattoo and said i got this in ash witness. The marine said youre lying, how much did you pay have to it put on . Were going to build bigger and better gas chamberes than natz eu sunday ever had. Whats thin david yeager jumped over the rope and started a riot, and the marine tried to unguard his eyes but he managed to tear off the marines ear.