Festival. You can do that online, or you can do that in various spots around the book festival. Youll see the donation stations. To thank you for considering that. Also after susans talk today, she is taking questions, and if you would like to ask a question because we aren on cspan, youre asked to line up at this microphone here. Shell speak for about half an hour so shell have about 20 minutes for questions. Please, dont ask your question from your seat, but from the microphone. My name is andrew maraniss, and as someone who has written about civil rights in the south and my next book takes place in 1936 nazi germany at to him picks i could not be more excited about susan here to talk about her new book, and im so eager to hear more about it. Learning from the germans. Theres probably no person on the t planet that is more qualified to write about this subject than susan who was born in atlanta during the segregated time and now lives in berlin. One of the leading philosophers of the time, and this is such an important book for these times. She studied at harvard and the Free University of berlin, shes taught at yale and tel aviv university, shes now the director of the Einstein Forum outside of berlin. Shes been here in the u. S. On her book tour, she said, for about five weeks. I think hes i know shes happy to be here in nashville, but shes also looking forward to getting back home after a long book tour. [laughter] please join me in welcoming susan nieman to nashville. Thank you so much for coming. [applause] thank you. Im so tired. Im delighted to be here. And i want the start by saying a little bit about my own biography, the stuff that doesnt come in on the internet necessarily because therese a sense in which ive been writing this book all my life. I was born in atlanta in 1965, but my parents were yankee jews who had just moved to atlanta before i was born. So if you can imagine, we werent really considered southerners, and to make it worse better my mother got very involved in the campaign to desegregate the Public Schools in atlanta. So i spent a lot of my childhood dreaming of leaving atlanta for europe, which i knew about from the maaed line books maaed line books. Madeleine books. [laughter] or greenwich village, which i thought was kind of a leafy but talkative town. [laughter] but looking back on it e, you know, your life starts to have a shape when you get to be a certain age, and im glad i grew up in the south at a time where there were very clear ideas of right and wrong and a sense of progress. And thats probably what led me to study philosophy, though i wouldnt have admitted it at the time, and to study moral philosophy. So i was working on dissertation on emmanuel conte, for which it was pretty easy to get a fellowship to spend a year berlin in 1982. It was a time when very few americans and even fewer Jewish Americans set foot in the place. In fact, my mother told me what am i going to tell my friends . [laughter] spending a whole year in germany . This is 1982. And what i said at the time now, of course, its very trendy. My kids say, oh, yeah, hes doing his berlin year. But at the time it was not cool. And isnt it just as racist 40 years after the war to blame the entire german nation for what happened during the war as it was for the germans to blame one or another group of people in it wasnt just the jews they didnt like, there were a whole bunch of others. And im going to forget all that and concentrate on conte and gerta. Well, i was pretty surprised when i got there, because it turned out that everybody i met in berlin, of course, i was meeting a certain kind of person. I was meeting people in their 20s and 30s, people who were usually pretty educated, usually pretty, you know, they did something, they were writers, artists or musicians. All they wanted to talk about was the war. Ande i was truck even then struck even then by the difference between what they were doing with their history and what americans were doing with our history which was basically nothing. And i was already beginning to ask those questions at the time. But this, so theres a sense that ive been writing this book for about 40 years but 35, something hike that. [laughter] but there was an immediate impetus to writing this book, and i was standing at my apartment in berlin watching president obama give the eulogy for the nine churchgoers murdered in charleston, and i was in tears. Wem sure many of you were. But i also felt hopeful because it seemed as if president obama was carrying the country with him. You saw nikki haley take down the confederate flag, you saw walmart saying they werent going to sell confederate memorabilia anymore. And i said, oh, wow, america really is starting to reckoning with its history. And at the same time, just two months later, the german people welcomed one million refugees. And when i say welcome, i mean literally standing on train stations, thousands of people, with open armssigns saying welcome. You have probably heard that theres been a backlash, and there has. But it is still the case that there are more people actively engaged in Refugee Integration than voted for our rightwing party. And when i say actively engaged, i mean people spending their time to teach the refugees german, to help them with the bureaucracy, to play music and soccer with their kids. I know people who have taken strangers into their homes. When my son and i tried to buy as many groceries as we could carry, we had a hard time finding a a place that needed them. I mean, that was how active and engaged the citizens of germany were. And you have to think if america would have done something comparable, we would have welcomed within two months five million refugees. Think about it proportionally. [applause] five million refugees on a fraction of the geographical space. So i decided to write this book. I thought this is something i knew something about. And if america is going in the right direction, maybe theyre ready to hear some lessons from somewhere else. And i, but i before i thought i was going to give lessons to america, i thought, actually, i better find out more about what americans now are doing with our history. Thand so i went and spent half e year in oxford, mississippi, at this William Lehrer institute for racial reconciliation. And i learned a lot about what is going on in the south. If i focus on the south in this book, it is by no means because i think that racism is only a problem in the south. It is not. But the south is kind of a magnifying glass both of good and evil in this story. So thats why i, the book is divided into three parts. One part talks about germany, one part talks about the south, and then the last part takes some general lessons that we can learn about questions like monuments, reparations, things that i know we have all been thinking about. Now, i want to start i want to go on, i guess ive already started i want to show you somed. Images. You may have seen a picture of the holocaust monument in berlin. Whats not entirely clear from r those pictures is that it is n the center. This would be as if you would put a monument to slavery in the middle of the washington mall. This is the its not just the symbol of berlin, brandenburg gate, it is the symbol of the country now. But its not my favorite monument. Though its the most famous one. This is the largest, and its one of my favorites, its the monument to 13 million Red Army Soldiers who died fighting fascism. Finish and we often the National World war ii museum, they know the war was not just one at normandy. We honor the sacrifices of those who died in normandy, but there was a lot of other things going on. Its a very moving monument. I didnt show the slide. You walk in, you see a huge statue of a moan in mourning mother in mourning surrounded by weeping willow trees. Then you go to this gate, these are soldiers kneeling in honor for their fallen comrades. You walk down this park, it is gigantic. I urge you all to go and see it if you ever go to berlin. And 7,000 Red Army Soldiers buried here. Seven of the 77,000 who died in the last days of battle for berlin. And you see this huge statue. When it was built, it was the largest statue in the world. Im going to show you where i would be. And in one hand, he holds a child who hes rescued from the ruins, and in the other hand he to holds a sword with which hes smashed a swastika. Another one of my favorite monuments, sometimes people say, well, nonviolence worked in america or with gandhi in britain because they were civilized, but it wouldnt work against totalitarian regimes. Well, actually, it did. At least once that we know of. The law passed in 1936 forbade jews and nonjews to marry, but they couldnt absolutely force those who were married before then to divorce, although they put a lot of pressure on them. They usually lost their jobs, their rations were cut. But some people stayed faithful to their jewish spouses. In 1943, in february one of the darkest hours of the war they decided to see if they could do a trial run and round upme and deport 400 jewish men o were married to nonjewish german women. And, because up til then theyd been safe from being deported. Uso they rounded up these men, eyd they put them in a holding pace that has now space that has now been destroyed. And the women, most of whom didnt know each other, came down to the place where their men were being held and said give us back our husbands. And the gestapo trained their guns on them, and they said we dont care anymore, you can shoot us, but were not leaving until you give us our men back. Berlin, icy gestapo guns, and they backed down and they released the men. And all those people survived the war. And this sculpture, which is another very moving sculpture kind of in a little park, this sculpture was made by a daughter of one of those marriages. This is a monument to the book burning which took place in april 1933 before they actually started killing people. They burned books. And its quite strike thing monument. Striking monument. All it is is you can see the scale over there on the left, it is a hole in the ground with empty book shelves. Because the nazis built some of the great im sorry, burnt some of the great works of german literature. Whats important to know, because we tend to i think that the nazis were, you know, ignorant mob, people who didnt know any better . Right in the back on the left is the humboldt university. Its the biggest university in berlin. The highest proportion of nazi Party Members were educated, had college educations. And it was students and professors who walked out of that university and burnt those books right on that square. Now, there are 423 monuments in berlin alone, and im not going to show you all of them, but im going to show you one. These are called the stumbling stones, and they were started by this artist on the right. And people are required if you want up a stumbling stone, they required to do some research. It costs about 125, which is not beyond the needs of most people if they want to do it. But they also to research the lights of the person that is being commemorated. They have to getco permission. Thousands of people have done this, and one of the reasons, so these are scattered all over the city to stumble over when youre on your way to the dentist for the Grocery Store or wherever you are going, to remind you that this took place in the middle of ordinary life. The reason that i take the one to show youou this one is becaue brian Bryan Stevenson told me he was inspired by that when he went to germany, that was an important inspiration for his monument. If you havent seen it, go down next chance you get. I have seen pictures about it but when interviewed him in 2017 then monument was still under construction. I wasin finally able to see it yesterday and ive never seen a finer memorial to anything. And whats interesting and where the stumbling stones inspired him, those of you are not at the scene it be sought outside, that are parallel markers to the ones that are hanging up. The idea is for each county where the cgi has researched and found a lynching, each county should take back their marker and change the south. So whatever wherever you go, drive two miles, apply for another confederate battle, but in addition to this, Bryan Stevenson wants to have those memories as well. Now, this is berlin right after the war. The question is, why did germany do all this work when we are just beginning . Since i dont suppose you think they are better people than we are, you might think they are worse, and you might think since not too many people know very much about the nazis, they have an image of their mind, image in their mind of cattle cars and gas chambers, and thats absolute evil, and anything that doesnt rise to that level is not something we think about. We dont think about how it begin. We dont know much about how it ended. So the view is the minute the war was over, the german people realize, oh, my god, what have we done, and they fell on the knees and askedey for forgivene. Well, it wasnt like that at all. Here are in some places allied troops made germans walkthrough gas chambers. Sorry, not gas chambers but concentration camps. You can see them smiling, and the view was that the germans were the worst victims of the war. Its quite funny, when it first came to germany in 82 i had a lot of friends who would tell me that the parents had been nazis and they were ashamed and they werell estranged from their families. Ed they often decided not to have children out of their own. Butt nobody actually would tell me, my parents were nazis and the thought theyth were the wort worst victims. It took me a long time to realize that that was the general view. And they would say we lost 7 million of our best and brightest, our country was divided, we lost a lot of territory. Our cities were destroyed. We were hungry. Just barely alive. I hope you get the reference. And on top of that these yankees want to say it was all our fault. Who does that sound like . This was not just of you right after the war. In 1995 there was a very famous exhibit which showed that they committed war crimes on a systematic basis. Till then many people in germany have been able to say well, it was the ss. It was a few bad apples, but the 18 million men so if you were not drafted come you are doing something worse like guarding a concentration camp or being a high nazi boss, the idea was they were clean, it was galante and when this example it ran through germany from 19951999, youre thousands of people demonstrated it against it. That sign says our grandfathers were heroes. And the other similar things, and standing with my grandfather. Well, some of you caught the reference. Re but they did sound just like the defenders of the lost cause. Now, why iss this good news . I decided this was good news, and the good news is one of the first, most important things we can learn from the germans is that facing up to your shameful history is really hard. Nobody wants to do it. We prefer to live with the good stuff. Gosh, even at a personal level i forget a lot of stuff thats happened to be in my life. I choose to dwell on the nice the parts that make it remind me, and you really forget about that . Yeah, i did. Why dwell on it . But as i like to say, a nations relationship to its history is like a grownups relationship to her parents. When youre a kid you believe everything they say. When youre a teenager, maybe the opposite. But if youre going to grow up and be a reasonably Healthy Human being, you need to sort through the things that you got from your parents and be able to say, this is what im proud of and id like to pass it onto my children. Im glad my parents had those values. And on this one im not so sure. You know, i would just as soon do without it. So seeing that even the germans had a really hard time going through that process should make us feel okay, its not surprising, here the New York Times has a 1619 project. Of course Newt Gingrich is going to get upset. Of course hes going to push back, right . Even the nazis pushed back, right . This is hard to do, and nevertheless, we are beginning to do it. These are germans pushing back at the demonstrators saying, fascism is not an opinion. Its a crime. These are, up above, people looking all the pictures in the wehrmacht exhibit. So the germans have a long compound word for this process. Germans have long compound word for a lot of things. Ill pronounce it for you but you willor get right unless you spend a long time [laughing] sorry. And it means working off your past, okay, and this is a big process. It involves questions of justice. In west germany by the way, most of the criminals after nuremberg did not get tried and did not get sent to jail. Anymore than, that is Edgar Ray Killen who murdered the three civil rights activist in mississippi. It took them 40 40 years to brg them to trial. But as we know there are other people who need to be brought to trial. Or lets say convicted. But im getting helpful because i do think, and im not going to mince any words here, maybe in the last couple weeks i dont haveco to, i think our Current Administration has forced white americans to be conscious of just how deep racism runs in this country. And theres not a blip in an otherwise glorious history. You know, we all knew there was slavery but then we fought a civil war, and it was segregation but we had the civil rights movement. Im not one of those people who thought that president obamas election was going to create a postracial future, but i but id like many people i know think the art of, the moral arc of history was bending in the right direction. Until this presidency. And i think the racism that we have seen coming from that direction has forced americans to say wait a second, actually they period between the end of the civil war and the beginning of the montgomery bus boycott is kind of a blank for most white americans. Myself very much included before he started doing this research. Itsch funny, i have been saying this now for a few weeks, people like im a Silver Lining kind of person, believe me, ive been as much as theres anybody these past few years but ive been seeing change. The nuke times published an article just this morning saying can confirm this is exactly whats happening. Henry louis gates tv series in his book on reconstruction. Things like the 1619 project. Which is not just a commemoration of slavery, but an attempt to look at American History from the perspective of slavery. Not just as this unfortunate, unpleasant blip. But to talk about just how much america, for good and for bad. Good in the sen