Tv. Org and click on the in depth tab near the top of the page. I didnt have to say anything. You are a welltrained bunch. It afternoon, ladies and gentlemen. That afternoon and welcome to the Illinois Holocaust Museum and education center. My name is lillian gerstner, and as director of Public Programs i get this privilege on a regular basis. We thank you so much for being here with us today. We hope you will return on other occasions. Usually i play a game with her audience and i will do it very quickly. Is this your first visit . Please raise your hand. Rate it higher so i can see. Thank you, thank you, thank you. Over here. Over there. Our presenter must thank you. In the interest of equality so that 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 sos much. Thank you. The folks who raised your hand the first time around please dont take my word for it alone. Ask anyone else around you whose hand went up the second time whp do support this institution, why they come in on a regular basis, why i know many of them by their first name. To those whose first and and ie learned i will do my best to learn them. Also going to suggest for those of you who are not as a without organization to pick up one of our orderly calendar of events brochures pick youll find out on information desk and near our legacy shopping is a legend abt all of our upcoming programs. I wont steal more of the time this afternoon to list them all but i will tell you that we have a program this coming thursday evening that will be an exhibition opening for a brandnew exhibition that we just mounted, and thats on thursday the 21st, and then next sunday we have another program, we have a film and discussion in a way tangentially related to the subject matter today. We will be showing the film memories of the iceman trial which was an israeli made documentary that interviewed survivors and others who were witnesses or who attended the iceman trial. One of those witnesses was henrik ross as photographs are featured in our special exhibition right now, memory and earth. Those are just a few of the reasons for you to return and i certainly hope you will. At the conclusion of todays program our presenter will be available to sign copies of her new book, citizen 865 the hunt for hitlers hidden soldiers in america. So as occurred as i ask you to please allow her to exit the stage in the auditorium and continue your conversation with her over in the vicinity of our legacy shop. Some of you may have noticed we haded some additional apparatusi in the room today. We are very excited that this has to news program is being preserved and taped for future broadcast by cspan, cspans booktv. So, were excited to have an author whose work commands such important attention, as it should, because the subject matter will never go out of style. Let me get a little bit about our presenter. Debbie cenziper is associate professor and director of investigative reporting at the Medill School of journalism, Northwestern University she oversees Investigative Lab or investigative. She is a Pulitzer Prizewinning Investigative Reporter and Nonfiction Author writes for the Washington Post. She has spent three years at George Washington university before joining the faculty at medill. Over the years are investigative stories have expose wrongdoing, prompted congressional hearings and led to changes in federal and local laws. Inner classes at medill, she understood focus on social justice investigative reporting. Debbie has won the dozens of awards and american print journalism including the Robert F Robert f can work for reporting aboutdi human rights and the goldsmith prize for investigative reporting from Harvard UniversityRobert Robert f. She received a pulitzer at r the miami herald for a series of stories about corrupt Affordable Housing developers who were stealing from the poor. You before that she was a Pulitzer Prize finalist for stories about dangerous breakdowns in the nations are again trackingg system. Debbie is a frequent speaker at universities, writing conferences and book events. Her first book, love wins, the lover and lawyers who fought the landmark case for Marriage Equality published in 2016 was then what of the most notable books of the year by the Washington Post. Her second book, the recent release hot off the press citizenze 865 is her topic of conversation with us today. She is based on the washington d. C. Campus working with undergraduate and graduate students working on a basket of story and were delighted to present you this afternoon debbie cenziper. [applause] thank you for that lovely introduction, lillian. I very much appreciated. Im so happy to be with you here today, though i am based in washington, d. C. For this are. Scored at northwestern, i have been here at evanston for all the evanston northwestern and chicago,ca and its been a lot f fun and a so happy to be a to talk about this book project. So let me tell you where this book that started. This book actually started just in the final moments of 2016 whenmo i was at a new Years Eve Party in maryland with my friends and my husband, emma has been wanted to leave because there was very loud this can be displayed in the background ando he had had enough. But i ended up having this conversation with a woman we were having dinner with whom ive never met before. Turned 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 littleknown unit deep inside the u. S. Justice department that has spent three decades hunting nazi war criminals on u. S. Soil. And though i spent a decade or so on staff at the Washington Post, i knew very little about this unit and i remember thinking two things, ask myself to questions after this twohour conversation. Number one, how was it possible that so many years after the war, what, 70 some years after the holocaust there were still nazi perpetrators and war criminals living here on u. S. Soil . I i just, i just couldnt understand that and really was fascinated by the idea that i was even happening here. And more than that, who were the men and women at the u. S. Justice department that had spent the bulk of their careers hunting for these perpetrators, and how was ableto to spend day after day, year after year inside some of the darkest moments in recent history . How was it able to do that and then go home tonight to their wives and hernd husbands . How was able to go home at night to their children, take vacations in live normal lives when, during the day, they were hearing about and reliving some of the most horrible, horrific moments in holocaust history . So i i really wanted to get to know the people behind this nazi hunting unit in the Us Department of justice. And so after i i rounded up my husband from this cocktail party, he was sitting outside hunched over his phone reading the Washington Post waiting for me for quite a long time, i knew that had the beginnings of another book. And so about a week later i called up and historian who worked in this nazi hunting unit in the u. S. Department of justice, dr. Barry white. I asked him to talk to me about what shape into here and she she recounted a story that prompted me to write this book. In 1990, soon after the collapse of communism, barry white and another historian named peter black [laughing] you already got my joke and having told you my joke yet. You already got to the punch line. They went to prague because communism had collapsed and the new that the nazis had stashed a lot of records in prague, war documents, nazi rosters. They could never get to them because the communist government would allow the inside their archives. But after the collapse of communismom in 1990, they could get in and it was a treasure trove of information for these historians. Imagine what they might find there. And so they flew into germany. They rented this little car that chugged across germany into prague in thehe middle of the night. The ended up in a little rented apartment and a russian caretaker was very upset that barry white was not there with her husband. She was, in fact, they are on the job. She was actually pregnant at the time and the russian caretaker very much wanted to feed them pork cutlets and beer for breakfast. I was not a good thing for barry who was very early t on in her pregnancy. But the ended up inside this massive archive in prague surrounded by government agents with guns and everything else. So dr. Black, peter black said im dr. Black, and this is dr. Wyatt and we were representing the u. S. Department of justice. All the government agent started to smirk and theyre probably thinking the caa has no imagination. [laughing] these must be government spies but often they go into the dusty archives in this Office Building in prague, and soon enough barry white pushes back her chair. She is looking ats this piece f paper, runs over to peter black and says i found something. Turns out they found a nazi rosterer from 1945 that listed e name of 700 men who had participated in one of the most lethal operations in occupied poland. And some off those men they knew were here in the United States living on u. S. Soil. They recognize some of the names. And that was a turning point in an investigationur that spanned about 50 years and is at the heart of this book, citizen 865. As soon as i talk to barry white i knew this was my next book. This was for sure a story i wanted to tell. And so let me give you a littlet bit of background. I focused heavily in his book on historians, the prosecutors are the heroes of thiss book as wel. I focused heavily on historians because i spent about 25 years of my life as an investigator for porter said documents intrigue me. I love documents. The historians were able toer fd documents from all over eastern europe, inside what were once communist country. They went to moscow, tf, prague, poland and they found all of f this evidence about men who were living here in the United States. And i found that absolutely intriguing as an Investigative Reporter, that there were men and women had spent their careers in this obscure outpost of the u. S. Department of justice with drop ceilings and stained carpeting and a window that faced a mcdonalds, and 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. And i found that really inspiring as a journalist, as a mother, as a wife and as as a n being. And so these arewi the people wo in part drive this story. A little bit of background. As youas all know, poland had me jews before the war than any other country in the world, probably except the United States. It was a thriving hub for jewish life, and it was also considered a strategic stronghold for the right because there was lush farmland and a strong the economy that he wanted to turn over to ethnic german settlers. So poland was a very strategic location, a very strategic area but what do you do with the jews . What do you do with the jews . And sohe they had experimented that idea of kind of bloodless efficient mass murder was very it was very interesting and intriguing to the police later, a man known as im going to botch his last name. And so he was deciding what to do with the jews of occupied poland. Well, the aspo s was busy fightg on the soviet front and they needed manpower. He needed help to annihilate the jews of poland. And so he ended up recruiting from soviet pow camps men who were captured soviet soldiers. They were put in soviet pow camps where they likely faced death, and he actually recruited them and essentially taught them how to fight for the enemy. He also recruited lithuanians, latvians, polls and of the recruits. And he brought them to a little farming village south of warsaw, and you can see from the map whats interesting about this map is that 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. Because in this camp these men were trained in nazi t ideologyn they were armed. They were empowered. They were taught military drills, german marching commands and they were ultimately f dispatched from this school for mass murder in this little farm village to the jewish ghettos of occupied poland where they liquidated the ghettos. They were brought they participate in shooting operations throughout occupied poland, and they demand the kig centers in occupied poland, including they forced jews to the gas chambers in occupied poland. They essentially became the manpower for the ss. They were the men who did the bloodiest job in occupied poland. And the jews who survived described the men as more brutal and more vicious and more bloodthirsty that even members of the ss. These were men who essentially became the foot soldiers of the third reich, and this became their base, base camp and this is where they were armed. This is where they were trained, this is where they were issued deployment orders to go across occupied poland and help thelp s annihilate the jews. These were a the men who did the bloodiest jobs in occupied poland, and this 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 the foot soldiers of the third reich. That is what they did. Wsey were often, they were often known by the jews as the mainwaring black coat and black cats some jewish survivors call them the ukrainians because some of the men were from ukraine or that region, but there were others, many, many others, lithuania and latvia. The ss really came up with an incredibleit system because thee 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, if they died they received proper burials. M so for these men especially men who came from soviet pow camps serving the enemy seems like a decent option because in soviet pow camps they faced likely starvation or death, or some other kind of horrible death. And so this camp was set up and the first to point was to the city of which you can see on the map, which was a historical cultural and Religious Center for thousands of poland jews. More than 40,000 jews lived in poland in 1939. They held leadership positions on the town council. They were leading members of the business community. These two teenagers were pushed into the ghetto by the nazis along with their friends, their neighbors, every member of theirextended family so 40,000 jews were put into this ghetto. There wasstarvation , typhus, you name it. It was terrible. Water shortages, Food Shortages and for whatever, for all kinds of reasons, Lucyna Stryjewska and Feliks Wojcik were able to survive mass deportation. Their survival story all the survival stories ive heard in researching this book, its just absolutely astounding. It took my breath away as a writer but here they were in this ghetto in lupin and oneday men in black coats and black caps surround the perimeters of the ghetto and they put on floodlightsand demand every family come outside. And in this ghetto , 1500 jews a day were deported east for resettlement in the east. And so over a period of weeks, lucyna and feliks, everyone they knew deported. Their friends, their neighbors, their extended family. Everyone they knew they lost. Turns out they were taken to the killing center and gassed upon arrival but the people who did this were men in black coats and black caps and the jews of lupin described them as being more vicious, more violent than the ss. We went to a Jewish Hospital s. And murdered the patients and doctors and nurses. They went to a jewish orphanage and murdered the children along with the Staff Members who refuse to leave the children behind. They went into the woods and shot jews at the edge of a ravine through mass killing andshooting operations. And these men were the trawniki men who were trained at the school for mass murder. This school was so important to the ss top leadership came to visit includinghimmler. Feliks and lucyna escaped, they escaped the ghetto and under the cover of night took a train to warsaw because they didnt have any place to go, they slipped inside the jewish ghetto of warsaw because lucyna had an uncle there and they decided at the last minute they needed to get out of the ghetto and so in the weeks before the uprising with the help of the polishunderground , feliks and lucyna as gave the warsaw ghetto, probably saved their lives because it was just before the uprising. What they didnt know at the time is that the trawniki men followed and worked sidebyside with the germans to suppress the jewish uprising in the warsaw ghetto. So they survived a win, ill rent ran the men of trawniki, survived warsaw, out ran the man of trawniki and ended up at the end of the war in a small rural farming village near krakc and they essentially were hiding in plain sight and feliks became a teacher for the local children in this village, never once told anybody he was a jew and at the end of the war they heard soviet tanks rumbling towards this farm village. And feliks crawled out into the woods on his hands and knees and could see these soviet tanks coming, liberation. And a russian commander walked into the building, approached feliks and saidwho are you . Feliks said im a teacher here and the commander said okay and feliks said for the first time in many months, im also a jew and the commander said to him thats not possible, all the jews are dead. He must be a spy and feliks said no, im a jew so the commander hauled over a jewish soviet soldier