We thank you so much for being here with us today. We hope you will return on other occasions. Usually, i play game with the audience and i will do it quickly. Is this your first visit v, please, raise your hand . Higher. Thank you. Over here . Our presenter must have a fan club. 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 as one of our members, please raise your hand. Thank you so much. Thank you. Of the folks who raisee your hands the first time around presenting my word for it, ask anyone else w around you whose hand went up 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 and those whose first names i have not learned i will do my best to learn them. Also come i suggest or those of you not been there with our organization to pick up one of our quarterly calendar calendar of events brochures and on the information desk and there in our legacy shock to let you know about all of our upcoming programs. I want to steal more of the time this afternoon to list them all but i will tell you that we have a program coming thursday evening that will be an exhibition opening for a brandnew exhibition we have Just Announced and thats on thursday, the 21st, and next to sunday, another program with a film and discussion in a way tangential we relate to the subject matter today. We will show the film of a israeli made documentary that interviewed survivors and others who were witnesses or who o attended the iceman trial and one of those witnesses was hendrik ross whose photographs are featured in our special exhibition right now quote memory unearthed. Those are just a few of the reasons for you to return and i 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 hit hitlers hidden soldiers in america. I ask you to please allow her to exit the stage in the auditorium and continue your conversation with her in the vicinity of our legacy shop. Some of you may have noticed we have some additional apparatus in the room today. We are very excited that this afternoons program is being preserved and taped for future broadcast by cspan, cspan book tv. 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. Debbie cenziper is associate professor and director of investigative reporting at Mcgill School of journalism and western university. She oversees the Investigative Lab or Investigative Lab. She is a Pulitzer Prizewinning Investigative Reporter and Nonfiction Author who writes for the Washington Post. She has spent three years at George Washington university before joining faculty at mcdill. Over the years her investigative stories have exposed wrongdoing, and lead to changes in federal and local laws. In her classes at mcdill she and her students focus on social justice investigative reporting. She has won dozens of awardss including the Robert F Kennedy award for reporting about human rights and the goldsmith prize for investigativeht reporting fm harvard university. She received a pulitzer in 2007 at the miami herald for a series of stories aboutut corrut Affordable Housing developers who were stealing from the poor. The year before that she was a Pulitzer Prize finalist for stories about dangerous breakdowns in the nations hurricane tracking system. Ns debbies a frequent speaker at universities right conferences and book events. Her first book love wins published in 2016 was named one of the most notable books of the year by the Washington Post. Her second book the recently released hot off the press citizen 865 is her topic of conversation with us today. She is based on mcdills washington dc campus working with undergraduate and graduate students uninvestigated stories and we are delighted to present to you this afternoon debbieve cenziper. [applause]. Take you for that lovely introduction and i very much appreciate it. I am so happy to be with youe today though, based in washington dc for the First Quarter at northwestern i have been here learning all about evanston and northwestern in chicago and its been a lot of fun and i am so happy to be here to talk about this book project. Let me tell you read this book got started. This book actually started just in the final moments of t 2016 when i was at a new Years Eve Party in maryland with my friends and husband and my husband wanted to leave because there was very loud disco music playing in the background and he had had enough, but i ended up having a conversation with a woman we were having dinner with who id never met w before. Turned out she was a lawyer from the Us Department of. Justice and or this long unexpected conversation robin golda started to tell me about this little known unit deep inside the Us Justice Departments that had spent three decades hunting not to war criminals on us soil and though i had spent a decade or so on staff at the Washington Post i knew very little about this unit and i remember thinking to things, asking myself to questions after this twohour conversation. Number one, how is it possible that so many years after the war , what 70 some years after the holocaust there were still not keep perpetrators more criminals living here on us soil , i just could not understand that and really was fascinated by the idea that that was even happening here and more than that who were the men and women at the Us Justice Department that had spent the bulk of their careers hunting for these perpetrators and how were they able to spend a day after day year after year inside some of the darkest moments in recent historyns . 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 and i to their children, take vacations and 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 really wanted to get to know the people behind this nazi hunting unit in the Us Department of justice and so after i rounded up my husband from this cocktail party, he was sitting outside hushed over his phone reading the Washington Post waiting for me for quite a long time and i knew i had the beginnings of another book. Eg so, about a week later, i called up a historian who works in this nazi hunting unit in the us the part of justice, doctor barry white, and i asked very to talk to me a little bit about what she had been doing here and she recounted a story that prompted me too write this book. In the 1990, soon after the collapse of communism, barry white and another historian named peter black you already got my joke and i have not even heid the joke at. Are got to the punch line. They went to prague because communism had collapsed and they knew that the nazis had stashed a lot of records in prague, more. Ellipsis word documents and they could never get to them because the communist government would allow them inside their archives, but after the collapse of communism in 1990 c, they cod get in and it was a treasure trove of information for these historians. Imagine what they might find their and so they flew into germany. They rented this little car that shoved across a germany into prague in the middle of the night they ended up in a little rented apartment and their russian caretaker was very upset that v barry white was not there with her husband. She was, in fact, their onthejob and she was pregnant at the time and the russian caretaker very much wanted to feed them poor cutlets and beer for breakfast and that was not a good thing for very who was very early on in her pregnancy. They ended up inside this massive archive in prague surrounded by government agents with guns and everything else, so doctor black peter black through his translator said im doctor black and this is doctor whites. [laughter] and we are here representing the Us Department of justice. Well, all the government agents started to smirk probably thinking the cia has no imagination. These musty government spies. Off they go into this dusty archive in this Office Building in prague and sitting on barry white pushes back her chair. Shes looking at this piece of a paper, runs over to peter black and said i found something. Turns out, they found a knotty roster from 1945, that listed the name of 700 men who had participated in one of the most lethal operations in occupied iepoland and some of those men they knew were here in the United States living on us soil. They recognized as some of the names and 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, i knew this was my next book. This was for four historian wanted to tell and so many give you little bit of background. I focused heavily on this book on historians, though prosecutors are the heroes of the book as well. I focused heavily on historians because i spent about 25 years of my life as an Investigative Reporter, so documents intrigued me. I love documents and the historians were able to find documents from all over eastern europe, inside what were once communist countries. They went to moscow, prague, they went to, poland, and they found all of this evidence about men who were living here in the United States and i found that ngsolutely intriguing as an Investigative Reporter, that there were men and women who had sent their career in this obscure outpost of the Us Department of justice with drop ceilings, stained carpeting and a window that faced a mcdonalds and here they were hunting nazi war criminals in us 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, as a human being and to so these are the people who didnt hard drive story. Delivered a background. As you allro know, poland had me jews before the war than any other country in the world, probably accept the us. It was a thriving hub for jewish life and it was also considered a strategic stronghold for the rights as there was lush farmland and a Strong Economy usthat they wanted to turn overo ethnic german settlers, so poland was s a very strategic location on a very strategic area for the rights, but what you do with the jews . Would he do with the jews . And so they had experimented with gassings in germany through local vast vans and that idea of kind of bloodless mass murder was very was found very interesting and intriguing to the policece leader of the district, a man known im going to botch his last name. So, he was passed with the deciding what to do with the juice of occupied poland. Yell, the ss was busy fighting on the soviet front and they needed manpower. He needed help. Mp [screaming]. He taught them how to fight for the enemy. He also recruited pennsylvania pennsylvanians, and other recruits. And he brought them, to a little farming village south of warsaw, known as cosby. You can see from the mat, whats interesting about this is that he was an incredible location, because the real r lines. They connected this village to other key points in occupied poland. And so he ultimately recruited about 5000 men. To this camp and became a school murder. In a sense because in this camp, these men will trained in ideology, they were armed, they were empowered, they were taught military drills, german marching, commands, they were ultimately dispatched from this mass murder from this little part milledge notice because making to the jewish ghetto in poland with a liquidated together and they were brought to other participated in shooting operations, throughout occupiedoo poland. Demand the killing centers in the occupied poland. Including other areas. In the course to be gas chambers in occupied poland. The men essentially became the manpower. They were the men who do the bloodiest jobs in occupied poland. And the jews who survived, described the men as more brutal and more vicious and more bloodthirsty than even members of the ss and these will men who essentially became the foot soldiers of the right. And this town became their space. The base camp. This is where they were armed and this is where they were trained and this is where they were issued a deployment order. If to go across occupied poland and help ss annihilate the jews. These will the men who did the bloodiest jobs in occupied poland. And from kinky wasnd essentialla school for massia murder in occupied poland set up by the ss. In fact one of the historian books called the men of sudsy keep the foot soldiers of the third reich. That is what they did. They were often known by the jews as the men wearing black coats and black caps. Some jewish survivors called the ukrainians because some of the men are from ukraine that region. But there will others and many many others, the ss really came up with an incredible system because these men will given wages and they were given housing, food, Service Medals for work that was done well. There will given vacations. They were given all kinds of honor and they received proper burials. So for these men especially men who came from soviet pow camps, serving the enemy seem like a decent option because in soviet pow camps they would likely start or face death of some other kind of horrible death. And so this camp was set up in the first deployment was to the city of woodland which you can see on the map, lublin was a historical cultural and Religious Center for thousands of poland jewish. More than 40000 jews lived in poland in 1930 united. And they held leadership positions on the townci council, they were of the Business Community and the religious schools and there was just a thriving jewish cultural have their 1930 united. It was here in oakland that two of the main characters in my book met. Theyre just children. And in many ways in every way at the w time. Felix and lucinda, will born in louisville in and they were friends and their families will friends. The sin his father was a quote interpreter prefer the work that her mother was a dentist. Felix news father was an architect before the war. So these two teenagers will pushed into the lumen ghetto by the nazis along with the front and the neighbors. Every member of their extended family. As a 40000 euros will put into this ghetto. No starvation, typist, you name it and everything, is terrible. Food shortages, and for all kinds ofr reasons, listening and felix will able to survive mass deportations in this ghetto. Their survival story like all of the survival stories ive heard in researching this book, is just absolutely astounding. It took my breath away as a writer. Here they work in this ghetto in lieu glenn, and one dave minute blackouts in black caps, surround the perimeter of the ghetto. In one of floodlights and the demand that every family come outside. And in this ghetto 1500 jews a day, wouldbe deported east for resettlement in the east. And so over a period of weeks, the senia and felix will barely, and the city it was entertained felix was about 19 or so. So everyone they knew, deported. Their friends, theirir neighbor, their extended family, ever with any of the lost. They didnt know where they had gone and it turns out they were taken to the killing center and cast upon arrival. Let the people did this, will men in black coats and black caps. The juice described them as being more vicious and more violent than the dreaded ss. They went to a Jewish Hospital and they murdered the patients and the doctors and the nurses. They went to a jewish orphanage and they murdered the children. Along with the Staff Members who refused to leave the children behind. They went into the woods and chargers at the edge of a ravine through mass killing in shooting operation. And these men will the men who will trained at the school for mass murder. The school was so important to the ss that top leadership came to visit including hitler. Felix and lizzie escaped. Escaped the lumen ghetto. And on the cover of night, took the train to warsaw. Because they didnt have any place to go, they slipped inside jewish ghetto of warsaw because the senia had an uncle there. And they decided that last minute, they need it to get out of the ghetto. Heand so in the weeks before the uprising, with the help of the ispolish underground. Felix and lizzie escaped warsaw ghetto. Probably saved lives. Because they escaped just before the uprising. What they didnt know at the time is that the men followed and they work sidebyside the germans to suppress the jewish uprising in the warsaw ghetto. So they survived movement and outran them and have trieded nikki, and they survived warsaw and outran the men of trauma and achy in scene felix ended up at the end of the war and a small rural farming village near costco in the essentially will hiding in plain sight. Felix became a teacher for the local children in this village never wont told anyone obviously, he was a jew. And it the very end of the war they heard soviet tanks mumbling towards this farm village. And felix set down on his stomach and he crawled out into the woods on his hands and knees and can see the soviets tanks coming. And liberation. In russian commander walked into thema building, an approach felx and said to argue. Felix said i am a teacher here. And the commander said, okay. Felix said, the first time in many months, i am also a jew. In the commander said to him, its not possible. All of the jews are dead. You must be a spy. Felix and nono, limited. So the commander called over a jew soldier and said, your jew, hes a jew, speak hebrew to each other good and felix, came from a very assimilated family in the lead. Do not speakid much in fac