Welcome everyone. We are live on cspan tv and im asking you to turn off your cell phone. Taking your questions, i am mark steiner and its great to have you here, lets introduce the panel. Sitting to my immediate right is a man that we all know, martin goldsmith. We will be talking about it today. Next to him Eric Lichtblau is Sarah Wildman. She has one the Pulitzer Prize many of the places and sitting next to her a Pulitzer Prizewinning reporter and investigative journalist for his work on covering the nsa. And we have glenn kurtz who wrote the book three minutes in poland. We will have each of the authors present two minutes to outline their then we will have a discussion and bring eric and to talk about the nazis next door and then we will talk about that question. So lets start with three minutes in poland. First of all, its an honor to be here with the panel. Thank you. Very much the highlights of this story, in 2009 you can see visuals for you. This was taken by my grandparents. Taken in 1938. Everything that i knew about the film was contained in this title sequence and you see my grandmother here and join the a very exciting crossing in the ocean, my grandmother lived to be 96 years old and i knew her, but she never ever talked about her childhood were her travel. So i never heard anything about this story. Sibley seanez together, tells me that this is something of historical importance. So im going to show you the film as you can gather three minutes shot in poland. Speaking over it again in the interest of time. When i discovered the film all of the information that i had, i knew that it was poland. But because ive never been able to speak with my grandparents i didnt know well and the information i was due for my father and my aunt turned out to be incorrect. Here you can see the arrival of americans with a movie camera in 1938 and it was big news, especially with the younger generation. My grandfather and his traveling companion. And one of the things that were so meaningful about the film is how densely packed with information that is. As i began to search it wasnt always the faces that turned out to be the most important thing. Faces are the choice we difficult to identify with so little documentation. But often it was the architecture were other details that were visible and captured accidentally. But the more extraordinary thing is that two thirds are in color. [inaudible] and that sign over the door became very significant. [inaudible] there is a lot of shoving that goes on in a. [laughter] and so even without learning the information it still would have been an important film because it shows things that only phones can show for example the physical culture and the movement on the streets come in the way that people congregate. There is a lot of information shored of learning the identity. But when i saw the film the thing that was so profound to me was that film always captures a particular place on a particular day, and if we dont know what we are looking at, then it becomes extremely general and i have donated the original film to the Holocaust Museum in washington dc where it will be classed under prewar jewish life, which is not inaccurate but is general as to being relatively meaningless compared to the specificity to the detail that is available in this film. And this is 1938. That is the entire film and all three minutes of it. In the brief time that i have, running through briefly what happened and as i mentioned the information that i received for my family turned out to be wrong and so i turn to our archival sources. As a result of this photograph your in israel on the left is a still from the film. You can see that it matched vertically with what is in the film which told me conclusively that this camera is happened to be where my grandfather is born. It is about 35 miles south of warsaw and is a small town, had about 4500 occupants of whom 3000 were jewish. And it was an important Railway Junction there and therefore on the road to warsaw. It was occupied almost immediately and by september 4 it was in german hands. And this was annexed to the german rides and became part of germany. Within three months on the third of december, 1939 the entire population was deported to two towns in central poland which became occupied poland. In 1942 they were sent to two blanca. Of the 3000 jewish people in this town where my grandfather visited, fewer than 100 survived the war. And that was in 1945 and i began searching for people in 2009. And i searched unsuccessfully for 2. 5 years until out of the blue one day in 2011 i received an email from a woman in detroit who saw the film online and this is her grandfather a 13yearold boy he is here with his great grandson. This gentleman had been waiting his entire life to talk about this town. It was his information that sort of broke open the case and prior to that it had been impossible to connect with the names of people that i was able to gather and document what the faces of people and the film. But mr. Chandler was able to identify people and with the names and information that he gave me, i was able to reach out. So here is a brief selection of his memory of the town. We have these two people. The man in the white here we met. The man with the white bearded, i think that he was what they called [inaudible] everybody knew him by one name. His name was [inaudible name]. It was biblical. Nobody knew where he lived back, but he was dressed just like that. [inaudible] [laughter] [inaudible] he led this very simple life and everybody talked about this jewish version of sainthood. And he would come up and he would tell stories and so on. He was that type of a character. The shorter men. He was the one [inaudible] okay, so with information on this scale it became possible to recover. And with information, ultimately i interviewed seven survivors from this time and found Family Members from any of the others. The extraordinary thing is that i was thinking of creating this memorial and what happened is we created a community of memory, not only the survivors but the Family Members of those that are no longer alive as well as Family Members of the people who have escaped in some other way or come to the u. S. Or elsewhere. I collected documents and this strangely began to fit together. So in 2014 which was the anniversary of the deportation i invited this immunity to return to the town and more than 50 people accompanied me. This is outstanding where my grandfathers film to ways and i will disclose what the final story. One of the survivors here in the same school or he is a student a photograph shows his daughter and husband here. When mr. Chandler and i first met portions of the interview were placed online in this information was put on youtube and picked up by polish television. And it was broadcast on the evening news at the end of 2012. When he escaped from the warsaw ghetto, he ended up working on a harm and a polish woman was instrumental in obtaining a birth certificate and it certainly made this possible at that time. The daughter of that woman saw this broadcast on polish television. She is 89 years old and she also recognize mr. Chandler as the boy her family have helped. And that womans granddaughter, so the great granddaughter of the woman who owned the farm who helped him get there she said yes, we remember him and when he left in order to go to hiding he left behind a stack of photographs of his family and we still have them. So we were able to return those photographs 73 years later to mr. Chandler. That is just one example of the kinds of things that happen here this extraordinary journey. [applause] now we are going to hear from Sarah Wildman her book is transported. It is a great panel to be a part of here. Glenn kurtz is a hard act to follow. We have a similar context both grandchildren of this generation and my story is a little bit different but it also relies upon documentation and a search for eyewitness is. My story was that my grandfather had fled vienna and the fall of 1938. I had always been told that they had escaped with everyone, his mother, sister, nephew, brotherinlaw and that that escape had been so wondrous and perfect so as to allow any other questions about it. I came to realize this is a childs view of the world. Because the world of a child is the nuclear family. It made sense to me that they have escaped with everyone and i didnt have to think about that our worlds are not comprised of our parents or siblings but also our cousins and aunts and uncles and the people we sit next to the people that sell a spread. The world that we run around in. A few years after he died i was in my grandparents house and my grandmother was living and i found an album that i had never seen before. In the back of that album was a folded note. In each quadrant was a selfie of a girl. She had a different expression and the caption for each. No call for me, no letter, maybe tomorrow. And it was dated may of 1939. I showed it to my grandmother and i had who is this. And she said oh it was your grandfathers true love. And she offered nothing further. And i didnt want to ask more. She wasnt well. I called my grandmothers sister who had escaped with my grandfather and she said her name, she had come along from czechoslovakia to study in vienna and selma with my grandfather immediately. And two years past and then he realized that he was in love with her as well and he ran to tell her and they had a romance imprint of escape together, but something changed and he instead escaped with the people that i knew. His mother and sister, brotherinlaw and his nephew and my great aunt wrote to me at the time she wrote me a letter by hand and she said to find out what happened, she was brilliant amazing. At the time i thought what were can i do with that. I had this note and in the album there were hundreds of images of this girl. Each one was written signed on the back. They were wonderful pictures at a time which was much more carefree than anything i have associated with that. And i thought they dont know what we know we have so much knowledge that they dont have and you want to warn them but you cannot. And it is this moment that is amazing to me but i had no back story. In the meantime i was reporting stories across europe about smaller pieces of this history. And so often many of us that know the story we think about Kristol Kristallnacht and i wanted to know what happened with all of those days in between. There is a restriction. What happened to regular people, people you dont read about leaders of the community. They didnt own something we were fighting over in court. Select a time there was about three forgotten slave labor camps and those were tasked with redistributing all of the goods imported from france, 76000 jews. And what had happened to them when they were deported the french moving companies would collect everything. And jewish slaves would be forced to push the goods into two groups. Everything really usable, and then they would send them to the right to bomb victims. Personal journals, school papers, they were told to burn them so that no one would remember those who have been sent away. This story haunted me and it haunted those that i interviewed. And there were still some survivors interviewed that had lived their lives almost unable to speak about having his final moments of the people who had been sent. At the time they contacted me and said that theres an archive in western germany that had never been opened. And we would love to see if you can get it open. I didnt have that power. I wasnt able to move government, but two years later around 2008 we finally had agreements between 11 countries controlled by the International Red cross. Just before this i came across another discovery which made me even more keen to go. Because this girl, this woman she had stayed with me even though i had nothing to go on. And around this time of visiting my parents and by then i had broken up my grandparents home, there you will notice my grandfather. And in that was another box and im not even sure why i opened it, it was late at night and i couldnt sleep and it was hundreds of letters from this and tired exploded world. It was from all of those people that i had never thought about but i had never realized to look for and dozens were letters from half brothers and sisters and cousins and best friends and everyone that was trapped. So i thought maybe i can use these archives and maybe i can do it my great aunt had told me to do, maybe i can tell the story, what i tried to do was a layered approach that is personal. And they say its the family that he didnt choose for one reason or another. I go in search of what happened to her using her words as much as possible and she censored she goes back to czechoslovakia and then moves on to berlin. Her letters show that she was not allowed to buy clothes or shoes by 1941. I layer it with what is happening in the state department and what is happening in this country and then i come to a point and i have to go into it later, i come to a stop because i learned so much. And then that she is working for the jewish German Council of germany, she is working as much as possible, but she is not allowed to be called the doctor [inaudible] she is shoved into a small ghetto apartment, 10 to 15 people per room. She is moving from place to place. Shes constantly on the run. At the same time shes trying to find a way out. Then her letter stops. The u. S. Enters the war and then for a long time i thought i that i would never be able to find anything further. I had so much i couldnt find enough of. So throughout this process i came into contact with other searchers and also bystanders and perpetrators. A handful of those people have become historians now. It was one of them who said to me that you didnt go back to what you found at the archives, and i had originally gone i was hoping they had a life for her in a file but thats not how any archives work and it had not offered me what i have looked for it. It was also something that i had not known to look for which is that no one else had come looking for her before me in the 1950s. This man all around him were these ss barracks, there was a former driving school which houses hundreds and thousands of requests, pieces of paper, every one of them is asking a question, have you seen my husband, mother, sister, brother. Have you seen anyone from my town. I cant find anyone from my town. And so the request had not come from my grandfather coming it had come from sister of the man that she married. For a long time i thought that i would never find her, but i finally put a classified advertisement in the survivor newsletter which is how people search after the war. I forgot about my advertisement. I happen to be there in the United Kingdom in a few months and i got an email my last night in town saying the searcher was my mother. I dont know if you are ever in london, but i think i have some answers for you. She leaves us hanging there. Thank you Sarah Wildman. Turning over to martin goldsmith. Thank you to the Annapolis Book festival for the imitation. I am of an older generation and i am part of this generation. My parents managed to escape to this country in 1941 as a result of their being members of an extraordinary organization and not the germany. A collection of jewish artists, musicians, actors. They gave performances strictly for jewish audiences and to perform at them you had to be jewish, and you also had to be jewish. I described all of that in my first book which i realize shortly after it was published that it was the first attempt that i was going to make to get in touch with this generation. We share this need to connect with our families, many that were murdered during the holocaust. My grandfather and my uncle were two of the more than 900 passengers onboard which left them down for havana. The ship arrived safely only to discover power plays in the cuban government made it impossible for more than a handful of the 900 plus passengers on board to disembark. And for a couple of weeks it was front page news in american newspapers and it was not allowed the ship was forced back to your and the deal was brokered where passengers can disembark in england or france or belgium or holland. But uncle disembarked in france amends for the next three years being sent from one french camp to another before being sent to their deaths in oslo to 1942. While they were in their last to know what addresses in the concentration camp in the france area, he managed to write letters to my mother and father who by then who had made it to the United States and were living in a smaller part of new york city. In the last letter that my grandfather wrote to my father, he wrote among other things i will describe to you the awful conditions we will be living in france, this will be the last time, if you dont move heaven and earth to get us out of here, thats up to you but will be on your conscience. And his death at the age of 95 still riddled with lott and his younger brother and sister. It goes to our emotional inheritance, but there was this amends the silence that reigned in our house and i remember my brother once asking my father why cant we go over the river and through the woods to grandmothers house at a skimming. Our grandparents, our aunts and uncles, my fathers aunt was that in just a few words they died in the water. And he didnt want to get into all the details. So we had never known what had happened to our family as we were growing up. But we obviously inherited something that circulated. I realize i wanted to be able to reach back through the generation to touch the banished generation. So in 2000 and eight i completed this 20 month course of study that resulted in my becoming a bar mitzvah boy at age 55. But that was only the beginning. My father died 2009 at the age of 95 and my brother also died very suddenly of a heart attack. I was the last goldsmith standing and it became clear to me that i needed to find out more and also it was clear that i felt that there was an obligation to save my grandfather and my uncle and the rest of my family and that that had somehow been passed on to me. Before they went to the south. And before that theyd been in the small town of monotaliban in the south of france. I learned it was the sister city of a town in oklahoma. I called up the city hall and asked to speak to the person who ran the sister city campaign. He directed me to a frenchman who lived in montalban. I emailed him, he wrote back. I learned that my grandfather and uncle had been held in the factory of a manufacturer of cookies and cakes for a month in 1940. And before that they had been in a small town in the northeastern part of france, an agricultural reeducation center, as it was called. So i