Quickly. Is this your first visit . Please raise your hand. Raise it higher so i can see it very thank you, thank you, thank you. Over here too. Thank you. In the interest of quality so the rest of you can exercise one of your arms if you are a regular, if you attend programs all the time if you are one of our members please raise your hand. Thank you so much. Thank you. The folks who raised her hands the first time around please dont take my word for it alone. Ask anyone else around you his hand without the second time why they support this institution, why they come here on a regular basis, why i know many of them by their first name. Those whose first names i havent learned i will do my best to learn them. Also may suggest those of you who are not as familiar with the organization to pick up one of her quarterly calendars and brochures. You will find among the information desk. This will let you know about all of our upcoming programs. I wont take the time to list them all but i will tell you we have a program thats coming thursday evening. Its going to be an exhibition opening for brandnew exhibition and thats on thursday the 21st and the next sunday we have another program. We have a film and discussion in ways tangentially related to the subject matter today. Well be showing the film the memories of the eyes and row which is a documentary of survivors and others who were witnesses or who attended the eyes and trial and one of those witnesses are featured photographs in our special exhibition memories on earth the large photograph of henry roth. There are just a few of the reasons for you to return and i certainly hope you will. At the conclusion todays programmer presenter will be available to sign copies of her new book citizen 865 the hunt for hitlers hidden soldiers in america so as a courtesy i ask you to please allow her to exit the stage and auditorium and continue your conversation with her in the vicinity of our legacy shop. Some of you may have noticed we have additional apparat i in the room today. We are very excited that this afternoons program is being preserved and taped for future broadcast by cspan, cspans booktv. So we are excited to have an author whose work commands such important attention as it should because the subject matter will never go out of style. Me tell you a little bit about the presenter. Debbie cenziper is associate professor and director of investigative reporting at brazils school of journalism Northwestern University she oversees the investigative tip investigative lab. She is the Pulitzer Prizewinning Investigative Reporter and Nonfiction Author who writes for the Washington Post. She has spent three years at George Washington university before joining the faculty at mcgill. Over the years her investigative stories have expose wrongdoing profit congressional hearings that led to changes in federal and local laws. In her classes at medill her students focus on social justice investigative reporting. Debbie is one dozens of award and a tear rare can. Journalism including the robert f. Kennedy award for reporting that human rights and the prize for investigative reporting from harvard university. She received the pulitzer in 2007 at the miami herald for a series of stories about corrupt Affordable Housing developers who were stealing from the poor figure before that she was a Pulitzer Prize finalist for her stories about dangerous breakdowns of the nations hurricane tracking system. Debbie is a frequent speaker at universities writing conferences in both events. Her first book love wins, the lovers and lawyers who fought the land marchesa on Marriage Equality by a million warm William Morrow was named one of the most notable books by the Washington Post. Her second book hot off the presses citizen 865 the hunt for hitlers hidden soldiers in america is a topic of conversation with us today. She is based on the medill washington d. C. Campus working with students on investigative stories and we are delighted to present to you this afternoon debbie cenziper. [applause] thank you for that lovely introduction. I very much appreciate it. Im so happy to be with you here today. Im based in washington d. C. For the First Quarter at northwestern. Ive been here at evanston learning about evanston northwestern in chicago and its been a lot of fun and im so happy to be here to talk about this book project. Let me tell you where this book got started. This book started in the final moments of 2016 when i was at a new Years Eve Party in maryland with my friends and my husband and my husband wanted to leave because there was very loud disco music play in the background and he had had enough. I ended up having this conversation with the woman we were having dinner with whom i had never met before. Turns out she was a lawyer from the u. S. Department of justice and over this long unexpected conversation robin gold started telling me about this little known unit deep inside the u. S. Justice department that has spent three decades hunting nazi war criminals on u. S. Soil. She spent a decade on the staff of the Washington Post. I knew very little about this woman and i remember two things, asking myself two questions after this twohour conversation. Number one how was it possible that so many gears after the war 70 some years after the holocaust there was still not the perpetrators and war criminals living here on u. S. Soil. I just could not understand that and i was fascinated by the idea that was even happening and more than that who were the men and women at the u. S. Justice department has spent the bulk of their careers hunting for these perpetrators and how are they able to spend day after day, year after year inside some of the darkest moments in history . How were they able to do that and then go home at night to their wives and their husbands . How were they able to go home at night to their children, take occasions and live normal lives when during the day they were hearing about in reliving some of the most horrible horrific moments in holocaust history. I really wanted to get to know the people behind this nazi hunting unit in the u. S. Department of justice. After i rounded up my husband from the cocktail party, he was sitting outside hunched over reading the Washington Post waiting for me for quite a long time i knew i had the beginnings of another book. About a week later i called up and historian who worked at in this nazi hunting unit in the u. S. Department of justice dr. Barry white. I asked barry to talk to me a little bit about what he had been doing here in she recounted the story that prompted me to ride this book. In 1990, soon after the collapse of communism very white another historian named peter black, hugh already got my joke and i havent even told you my joke yet. You already got to the punchline but they went to prague because communism had collapsed and a new the nazis had daft a lot of records and more documents nazi rosters and they could never get to them because the communist government wouldnt allow them inside their archive. After the collapse of communism in the 1990s they could get in and it was a treasure trove of information for these historians. Imagine what they might find there. They flew into germany. They went to prague in the middle of the night. They ended up in a little rented apartment and the russian caretaker was very upset that barry white was not there with her husband on the job. She was actually pregnant at the time and the russian caretaker very much wanted to see the corpse for breakfast and that was not a good thing for barry who was early on in her pregnancy. They ended up inside of this massive archive in prague surrounded by government agents with guns and everything else. Dr. Peter black whose translator said i am dr. Black and this is dr. White and we are here representing the u. S. Department of justice. All the government agents started to smirk and they are probably thinking the cia has no imagination. These must be government spies but off we go into the dusty archives in this Office Building in prague. Soon enough she pushes back her chair and shes looking at the paper, friends over to peter black and says i found something it turns out they found the nazi roster from 1945 that listed the name of 700 men who had participated in one of the most lethal operations in occupied poland. Some of those men they knew were here in the United States living on u. S. Soil. They recognize some of the names. That was a turning point in an investigation that spanned about 15 years and is at the heart of this book citizen 865. As soon as i talked to barry white or knew that this was my next book. This was for sure a story that i wanted to tell. Let me give you a little bit of background. I focused heavily in this book on historians though prosecutors are heroes of this book as well. I focused heavily on historians because i spent 25 years of my life as an Investigative Reporter so i love documents. Historians were able to find documents from all over Eastern Europe inside what were once communist countries. They went to moscow they went to kiev, they went to prague and they found all of this evidence about men who were living here in the United States. I found that absolutely intriguing as an Investigative Reporter that there were men and women who had spent their careers in the outpost of the u. S. Department of justice with drop ceilings and stained carpeting and a window that faced mcdonalds. Here they were hunting nazi war criminals in u. S. Soil and they were absolutely determined to bring them to justice no matter how much time had passed. I found that really inspiring as a journalist, as a mother, as a wife and a human being. These are the people who in part to drive the story. A little bit of background. As you all know poland had more prefer the war than any of their country in the world probably except for the United States. It was a thriving hub for jewish people. It was also considered a strategic stronghold for their rights because there was lush farmland and the Strong Economy that they wanted to turn over ethnic settlers. Poland was a very strategic location of the very strategic area for the right. But what do you do with the jews . They had experimented with gas in germany with mobile gas masks and that idea of the mass murder was very interesting and intriguing to the Police Leader a man known as ophelia to the bush neck. He was tasked with deciding what to do with the jews of occupied poland. The ss was busy fighting on the soviet front and they needed manpower. They needed help to annihilate the jews of poland and so he ended up recruiting from soviet p. O. W. Camps men who were captured soviet soldiers. They were put in soviet p. O. W. Camps are they likely faced death and the actually recruited them and essentially taught them how to fight for the enemy. He also recruited lithuanians latvians poles and other recruits. He brought them to a little farming village south of warsaw. You can see from the map with censures thing about this map is it was an incredible location because it had rail lines that connected this village to other key points in occupied poland. He ultimately recruited about 5000 men to this camp. It became in a sense a school for mass murder. In this camp these men were trained in nazi ideology. They were taught military drills and marching commands and they were alternately dispatched from the school for mass murder in this little farm village known as trust mickey to the jewish ghettos of occupied poland where they liquidated together. They were brought they have participated in shooting operations throughout occupied poland and they manned the killing centers in occupied poland including treblinka. The men essentially became the manpower for the ss. They were the men who did the bloodiest jobs in occupied poland and the jews who survived describes a man as more brutal and blood thirsty than members of the ss. These were men who essentially became the foot soldiers of the third reich and it became their base. This is where they were armed, this is where they were trained and this is where they were issued deployment orders to go across occupied poland and helped the ss annihilate the jews. These were the men who did the bloodiest jobs in occupied poland and trazegnies was essentially a school for mass murder in occupied poland set up by the ss. In fact one of the historians in the book called the men of trazegnies the foot soldiers of the third reich. They were often known by the jews as the men wearing white coats and black hats. Some village survivors called them ukrainian because some of the men were from ukraine or that region but there were many many others lithuania and latvia the ss really came up with an incredible system because these men were given wages. They were given housing. They were given food. They were given Service Medals for work that was done well. They were given vacations. They were given all kinds of honors. For these men especially men who came from soviet p. O. W. Camps serving the enemy seemed like there was a decent option because the soviet p. O. W. Camp space based starvation or death or some other kind of horrible death. This camp was set up and their first deployment was a city you can see on the map. It was a historical cultural and Religious Center for thousands of polish jews. More than 30,000 jews lived in poland in 1939 and they held leadership positions on the town council. They were leading members of the business community. There were religious schools. There was just a thriving, thriving jewish hub in 1939 and it was here that two of the main characters in my book matt and they were just children in many ways, in every way at the time. They were born in lubilin. They were friends and their families were friends. Listen this father was an interpreter before the war and her mother was a dentist. Felixs father was an architect before the war. These two teenagers were put into the lublin ghetto by the nazis along with their friends and neighbors and every member of their extended family. 40,000 jews were put into this ghetto. There was starvation, you name it. It was terrible, water shortages, Food Shortages and for all kinds of reasons lucinda and felix were able to survive mass deportation in this ghetto. Their survival story like all the survival stories i have heard in this book are absolutely astounding. Took my breath away as a writer but here they were in this ghetto in lublin and one day men in black coats and black hats around the perimeters of the ghetto and they put on floodlights and they demanded every family come outside. In this ghetto 1600 jews a day would be deported east for resettlement in the east. Over a period of weeks who send you and felix, felix was 19 or so so everyone they knew deported, their friends, their neighbors and family. Everyone they knew they lost. They didnt know where they had gone and it turns out they were taken to the killing center and gas upon arrival. The people who did this were men in black coats and black hats and the jews of lublin described him them as being more vicious and violent than the dreaded s. S. They went to a Jewish Hospital and murdered physicians and doctors and nurses. They went to a jewish orphanage and murdered the children along with the Staff Members who refused to leave the children behind. They went into the woods and shot jews at the edge of her routine through mass killing and shooting operations. These men were the trazegnies men who were trained at the school for mass murder. The school was so important to the ss the top leadership came to visit including hitler. Felix and lucy escaped to the lublin ghetto and under the cover of night took a train to warsaw because they didnt have anyplace to go. They lived inside the jewish ghetto of warsaw because lucinia had not go there and they decided that the last minute they needed to get out of the ghetto so in the weeks before the uprising with the help of the polish underground felix and lucy escaped the warsaw ghetto and it probably saved their lives because they escaped just before the uprising. What they didnt know at the time is that the trazegnies men followed and work sidebyside with the germans to suppress the jewish uprising in the warsaw ghetto. So they survived the lublin outran the men of trazegnies. They survived warsaw outran the men of trazegnies and lucy and felix ended up at the end of the war and a small farming village near krakow. They essentially were hiding in plain sight and felix became a teacher for the local cherlin in the village. Never once told anyone obviously he was a jew. The end of the war they heard tanks rumbling towards the farm village. Helix got down on his stomach and crawled out of the woods on his hands and knees and could see these soviet tanks coming, liberation, liberation and or russian commander walked into the building and approached felix and said who are you . Felix said im a teacher here. The commander said okay and felix said for the first time in many many months i am also a jew the commander said to him thats not possible. All the jews are dead. You must be a spy and felix said no, no i am a jew. The commander called over a jewish soviet soldier and said you are a jew, he is a jew speaking atish or hebrew to each other. Felix came from a very assimilated family and lublin it did not speak much yiddish. In fact his father brought in a rabbi to the house to teach him a little bit of this history and felix would wait until the rabbi dozed off. He would take his books get to the last page and when the rabbi woke up he would say. Go i finish my studies. Now hes faced with proving he is a jew in what could have been a life or death moment for the end of the war and somewhere in the back of his memory in the back of his mind he remembered the shema the holiest prayer in jewish religion and recited it in the soviet soldier said oh my god you really are a jew. And he hugged felix and thats how felix and lucinia were able to assess how they survived, one of the ways they survived the war. On foot they went home lublin to see if anyone was left there before the wa