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 Reports Book 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. He then a policeman intervened, dragged off yeager, and booked him and he was fined. Now, in the nazis found out where he lived and found him and said, were going to kill you, your wife and your children so his friends protected the family while he went back to work, but then he had to go to court, and the judge said to him, mr. Yeager, you have suffered enough under the nazis. Why dont you good downstairs, get back your money, well make believe it never happened. Then there were gastly encounters with people who pretended to be gentiles. A woman went from a concentration camp back to poland to see her sister, who had been bipartisan baptized into the catholic family and said i was saved because i was a gentile, and she went to mass to atone for her parents who she said killed jesus. Thats when the sister can, the survivor, said, i have lived as a jew, i have suffered as a jew, and i will die as a jew. And then a woman passed through nuremberg on her way back to her place of residence after visiting england, and she shaw german children begging for anything to eat, and even when she had chocolates and oranges in her suit kaatz, she refused to give them any. Its as if they killed all the victims, all the people who had been murdered. She later she said she changed her mind, and in new york, there was a daughter of a holocaust survivor who represented the tax division of a large legal firm at a meeting with german clients, and afterwards, she told one of our colleagues she felt very uncomfortable in the presence of german middle aged men, and a colleague said, dont you know you were speaking to hitlers son the son of hitlers foreign minister, when he said that, all the color drained from her face and she was speechless. And another man had four jews hanging upsidedown by their feet, and he did only one thing for those who were meted afterward murdered afterwardses. He said every day i said he memorial pray for the dead just that they would have done for my parents, my sister, my brother, but he had one word of advice, for future generations. He said, unless we know about it, and tell others about it, it is bound to happen again. Now i want to end with this one. There was an american major and his aide who told thus was a top ranking nazi living in a chalet in austria but didnt know his name. So they went to arrest him. The major went up the stairs with his revolver at the ready, and he saw was an the alps opposite. So he said to the man, are you who are you . And he said, i am julius cesar. And masked the name on his i. D. And then the major saw the initials js printed on a card, and out of the blue he said, are you julius striver, and he map said, yes, thats who i am. In the jeep going back the major said to him, are you the julius striker who hated jews so much . Thats who i am, said the man. Who had been editor a very antisemitic newspaper. But the major didnt shoot him because he didnt believe in killing anybody who had surrendered. However, as they got to he booted him to accelerate his departure, and then a reporter said to him you just killed 2009 biggs stories of the war, and the major said how come . He said can you imagine if a man had arrested this antisemite . What a story that would have been, and the major said, why . And he said, because a jew would be arresting striker, and he the major said, but i am jewish, and that when the camera started whirring. Thank you very much. [applause] thank you very much for your talk. I want to start with what you started with, heritage. And specifically you listed off babylonian times, roman, persian times. Human beings tend to continue to be cruel to each other throughout history, whether thats africanamericans, indigenous people, indians, whoever it is, jewish people. You said, they were treated the way they were because they were jewish. Id like to maybe from your Historical Perspective say, why tide that trend continue from the perspective of you said at this point in time, this jewish group made this girl angry or whatever it is. What was is that compounded throughout hoyt . Theres no justification for it, but what we learned from our parents and from our peers is how germany decided to use that story to give their people a reason to cause the jews so much pain. Im curious if you were to go back to pint in time and say this is why jewish people have been treated this way. Are you saying im i dont thick heard the beginning but are you saying what is the reason for antisemitism . In the sense from a Historical Perspective, where is this point, whether its biblical or jewish tribes did this to this group that carried on throughout time. Theres a lot of structure and history in europe that continues on but if you can go back to some point from your perspective. I think if i could answer that id be cold solomon. Its beyond me why so many people dislike jews. I dont know. Theyre smart, because many professionals were denied not allowed to be farmers and everything else, and i think that sharpened their outlook on life. They had to have their wits about them to survive so many persecutions but its made an extraordinary comeback now, antisemitism. I think this is related to the changing demographics of europe. That might be the reason. But i which is political, but i dont know why in the past it happened under so many people but it did. And i am sorry but that the best answer i can give. There must be others. I finished early. Just to make sure that there would be room for questions. What made you pick up this subject after a career in studying lincoln . What made me write this . Yes. This subject. I look for three criteria in books. They have to be true, they have to be epic and have to be horrific. Somehow im attracted to that. I dont know why. People ask me to write funny things. I cant. But thats wry it wrote the assassination of lincoln, the burning of the white house in washington, vietnam, and a book come naught march about a lynching in georgia. 10,000 documents. Under freedom of information act, but they all somehow in the intensity of that horror, but they all fit the mold, and that why im looking for a subject now. If you can think of one, that hasnt been written about before, that is epic, true, and horrific, come to me. But there was another reason. There was a man that it mentioned earlier, a frenchman, and when he saw how when i saw how he made fun of the holocaust, i just couldnt stand it any longer, and i had to apply to him because it was so glib, and people racked with laughter, and i thought this is not a funny subject you. Cant deny it happened. And i felt honestly that the best answer i could give him would be the words of those who came out of the death camps alive, the survivors and thats why i wrote it. That was the impelling force that prompted me to write this. Yes . There was a leonard that was left in a a person was about to die, a molotov cocktail originally and with similar kind of with his belief in god, he wasnt going to give god he said he [inaudible] and said that, god must have turned away for a moment. It was interesting he had the same kind of quote you gave earlier. He said but i think thank god for having not made me one of those who are coming to get me now. Right. Have you heard of that letter . Would you mine telling me what he said . For a letter buried in a milk about until warsaw with the individual saying, thank god for not having made me like those who are coming to get me. Are you familiar with that story or others like it . Yes, thank you. Im familiar with the story. And actually its funny. The quote that i gave that im thankful that god didnt make me like the murderers around me, comes from another man, but seems to be the same quote but different circumstances because it was definitely not the man that you talk about. But there is so much wisdom. Its pervasive in this book, and you dont have to look for it. Its there all the time. Its extraordinary what they survived. Yes . What do you think of movies like chaplains the great dictator and mill brooks the bruiser poise which tried to make fun of hitler and use the nazis for comedy . A good question. We have the First Amendment right of free speech, and you may not agree with it, but its enshrined. And in the amendments, and i believe in free speech the nazis march was unbearable, intolerable, but they have the right of free speech. I slightly disagree with the scope of the example. I think that limbed free speech, when it is not used to try to talk to some people about something, but an act to fry and flip [inaudible] on someones lawn, even if they have a right to the property, going across [inaudible] is not speech. Its trying to terrorize. When speech is used to terrortize i think a judge would agree with you on that. That burning a cross is not considered free speech, and its on private profit so they would on private property. So they would convict them. But the parade by nazis, i take issue with you. [inaudible] [inaudible] to convince people as speech or was it to terrorize and traumatize the people since they were marching to [inaudible] its hard for me to believe they were trying to con to vince anyone. To convince anyone. Youre right, youre right. But i disagree with you on the subject of free speech. They were inciting, but they had the right to do it. A judge gave them the right. There was somebody, two people displayed a flag of isis right outside the British Parliament a few days ago, and the police let them continue because they hadnt broken any law. And it was said by those in authority that they had a right to do it. And you its obviously nobody here would agree with that. They dont like it. But thats what the police said, they have a right to do it. You mentioned some stories of why people couldnt get out of europe, why jews couldnt get out of europe, and you may have mentioned some already, but i was wondering do you have stories of people who tried to get out but couldnt or people who successfully got out . Do you have stories about people who have either tried to get out that couldnt or people who were successful in getting out. Well, theres the story of a lady who was on the gallows who spat in the commandants face. She escaped, she was caught. They did have a lot of impediments that stopped people escaping. Thats why so few managed to do it. But i dont recall that i i dont recall having one where they actually escaped. I actually meant when the persecution started before they were [inaudible] once they began emigrating out of europe once the possessor cues started in the 1930, do you have stories to that effect . I know that i do mention that in the 1930s when it was quite obvious what was going to happen regardless of what churchill said warned, rather i think that a lot of people were so is ensconced in the culture of the times, they said were germans. Its not going to happen to us, and thats why i gave the examples of the person who didnt take up a petition in brazil, the person who [inaudible] they didnt understand and they didnt appreciate what was happening. It was inevitable what would happen. And even after the new [inaudible] didnt realize that their lives were in danger, and they should have. They should have fled. But the problem was i have a lot of story, a lot of stories where people say if only israel had existed then, they would have had somewhere to run to. And that comes up time and again. And they had nowhere to go. The quota system was filled up. The [inaudible] turned back the ship with refugees was turned back, and they were sent off to concentration camps. So they were really locked in. Some people fled. I got many stories where they fellowed to antwerp and other places in france, and they survived the war. And i spoke last week to a fellow who was hidden just outside berlin for the entire period of the war. And was hidden in a village, and he survived. And spoke to him, and i said i spoke to him, and i said its marvelous that you mentioned the name of the family that protected you they were gentiles and alerted the [inaudible] in israel so they would be called the righteous gentiles. Thats [inaudible] yeah. You said in the beginning that one reason you wrote this book was because of the great increase in antisemitism in france. So after the recent murders of jews in france, the israeli Prime Minister encouraged french jews to emigrate to israel. Given what youve said about the stories of people who wish they had left germany in the 1930s, would you suggest that french jews move to israel . Its a very good question, but theres a very great difference. The nazis were in control of the government. One of these extremists currently holds any position of authority in europe. The governments are controlled by people who are elected democratically. Thats the great difference. If any one of those governments sanctioned, came into power and then sanctioned what weve talked about, antisemitism, then i would say to them, get out. But at the moment, its a very, very strong government feeling against these people. And the french Prime Minister is married to a jew. So he is very outspoken in his words against the extremists. And thats the very, very great difference, that they dont have the backing of the government. Anthony, thank you for you time. Thank you more your time. [applause] pleasure. [inaudible] [inaudible conversations] youre watching booktv, television for serious readers. You can watch any program you see here online at booktv. Org. This is booktv on cspan2, television for serious readers. Heres our prime time lineup. Next, robert due beck reports on the controversy surrounding the building of the Vietnam Veterans memorial. Then at eight, Walter Williams talks about his book, american contempt for liberty. At 9 p. M. On after words, missouri senator Claire Mccaskill discusses her life and political career, followed at 10 p. M. Eastern with a history of the americans with disabilities act. And at 11, the story of a British Consul turne
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