New store here at south street seaport. We been open for just about two months, so welcome. Tonight were excited to have with us eric lichtblau, with his book return to the reich and a credible story of world war ii heroism. Based on years of research and interviews with meyer himself whom the author was able to meet only months befores his death at the age of 94, return to the reich is an eyeopening unforgettable narrative of world war ii heroism and this is an incredible story that im very excited to hear more about. A two time codes a prizewinning journalist is the bestselling author of the nazis next door, and the remaking of american justice. He was in washington reporter for the New York Times for 15 years also writing for the los angeles times, the new yorker, times, and other publications. Hes been a frequent guest on npr, msnbc, cspan whom we have tonight and other networks as well as a speaker at many universities and institution. He lives outside washington,e d. C. So without further ado lets give it up for eric. Thank you so much. [applause] thank you. Thank you very much for having me. At your beautiful new facility. Its wonderfully spent by so many books. We need more people reading so thank you. Many of you i bet have never heard of freddie mayor and i myself have never heard him until just a few years ago, and it was only by chance that i came across his remarkable life story. I was a having coffee with a source of my last book, the nazis who got into work after the war with the many Eli Rosenbaum who was investigated criminal for many menus at the Justice Department and member at this point a to meet eli that morning i write an obituary in the paper a short story about aa man in your blood just died in his \90{l1}s{l0}\90{l1}s{l0} after saving countless jews from certain death, a shambles list type character but without any International Credit that Oscar Schindler got been a member saying to eli as we started coffee and bring up the midobituary, how is it that weve never heard of so many of the people who did such brave and heroic things during the worst genocide in Human History during world war ii . I just written a book on the subject and ive never heard of this man. I was embarrassed to admit that the eli. He didnt have any immediate answer butia then i asked him, o tell me someone who still alive today before the pass away, before i i read in an obituaryo i wish i could meet eddie had an immediate answer to that. He said theres a man named freddy mayer and he lives not far from washington where i am base, just a couple hours away inay West Virginia and eli gavee a short synopsis of his life story as a German Jewish refugee who fled germany wishes family as a teenager just before 1938 and almost immediately joined in the u. S. Military in a fledgling spy outfit called oss, and fled an Amazing Mission parachuting back into austria near innsbruck and collecting vital intelligence on the nazis at the end of the work that really helped to bring about the bloodless surrender of one of the nazis last battlegrounds in innsbruck. So that at my interest piqued, and i went out to see freddy mayer in West Virginia. He lived all by himself out in a small cottage out in the woods, 94. He was still in Remarkable Health i remember, both physically and mentally. You see a picture when i visited with him. He was still driving a car. The fact he drove meals on wheels he said for the younger people, and he had a girlfriend in her 70s, much younger woman, and he chopped wood. He shoveled his own driveway. And not only physically but he had this mental acumen as a talk to bothac his childhood growingp in germany and the Espionage Mission itself. He could take off the names and dates from 70 years earlier during the war of critical events during his Espionage Mission of tiny, tiny towns in austria where he was a spy during his time there here id never heard of these places but he had to spell them for me and he would take them off without missing a beat. He gladly recounted for me this incredible time in his life, spanning a couple of years as a wouldbe spy. In fact, he had trained with oss right up the road from where i live in bethesda in a country club that was converted in a training facility, a posh country club called Congressional Country Club used for pga golf tournaments sometimes, and the military blue the place away with is lucas and hand grenades and Training Missions for about two years during the wars to train people like freddie. So i remember telling him how amazed i was that for two months in innsbruck he couldve lived under cover at you posing as a nazi officer. But then he gently correcting and said well, i was not a nazi officer the whole time. Im not going to tried to do the accent, i cant do it justice. But he said after about six weeks he said he gave up his nazi officer disguised and he became a french pow electrician working inside a german nazi factory and he told me how he didnt even have to change his name from freddy mayer to begin and he told me with this big bravado, frederick mayer. He laughed as he said that but it also showed me and told me how the nazis had captured him and tortured him brutally for days on end and strong him up from the ceiling on two beams while pouring water down his mouth and in his ears, something we didnt even know until years later was called waterboarding, with tim and tell his back was raw, vegan to a pulp and shows on the verge of death. He showed me all this. I remember him stand up and showing a roundhouse to the chin that knocked six of his teeth out. Later look at the medical reports that verify all this. It was a memorable afternoon to say the least, and i told freddy for one to write about a story, that he didnt think enough people knew about this. He was sort of ambivalent. He said well, there then things written over the years, a couple books on oss Missions Including his spirit there been a documentary some years earlier. He wasnt sure whats the point, whats the deal is likely what he was saying. I said i think its very big deal. Generations of people who dont know about the sacrifices of people like you made, the refugees like you made. And i thought that this was a story that really needed to be told and it showed not only this untold chapter that most people knew nothing about but i thought at modernday residents going about terrorism, about hatred and about the contributions that people like fred mayer, jews and nonjews alike, major american, a lesson that really residents s today more than ever. We agreed to talk about later and i would come back out and visit them soon, and two months later freddy died. I was a bit of a shock me and i did end up writing about them far more quickly than i thought for the near times where i was working as reported in and about his obituary for the New York Times in 2016, despite a nazis after fleeing germany dies at 94. I knew immediately that writing 700 or 800 words for an obituary, that type that are readua that morning driving to e the light when he first mention his name, didnt really do justice and i thought that this really has the makings of a much fuller treatment, you know, a book. Eventually i did decide to write a book and it took several trips to austria with a mission took place. I went through thousands of pages of Records National archives outside washington, silver spring, with your reports on not only the mission itself by his nazi interrogators, admissions made by one of the gestapo men who carried out the beatings. I looked at records, other to photograph photographs. I talked to survivors. There was one survivor from the mission itself who believe it or not is 96 years old, a pilot who flew the plane and still lives in world virginia. At 96, still still flying a plane. He had these Amazing Stories about flying the nation and dropping fred and his two compatriots onto a glacier 13,000 feet high in g innsbruck, in the austrian alps after three attempts. They barely were able toafr makt and finally being able to put them into position to parachute down. But i also knew i didnt want this book to be simply an Espionage Mission, or jason bourne or what have you. I wanted to be as much about that experience. Immigrant experience and that involve not only fred but his second in charge, on the left you see him and his twin brother who came to the United States around the same time as did freddy in 1939, fleeing the netherlands. They came from very different paths than did freddy and ill get to that but i wanted this to be about the immigrant experience. You see fred here as a kid. Let me read to you a prologue od the book, if you will, which is set in february 1945. Airborne over the australian alps, 2 fabric 25th, 1945. The snowcapped alpine mountains look deceptively quiet, even peaceful as freddy mayer crouched in the back of a b 24 days down at the majestic peaks whizzing by in the frigid night ever close your eyes, you could almost forget there was a brutal war being waged on the groundir w,000 feet below. Peering one last time on the floor, freddy waited for the final signal from the cockpit. Seven years earlier when freddy fled nazi germany as a teenager come a return trip to the hellfire adolf hitler had made an signal. He was not at the age of 23, a parachute on his back and bulky back strapped stretch his leg a pistol ammunition and supplies inside, preparing to dive back into the nazi stronghold in austria. He was doing it for the americans no less on the spy mission. This was a life on a type of adventure that the barrel chested refugee had been craving for months. Pitting him against men he once called countrymen. Some were below them, were nazi soldiers on antiaircraft weaponry designed to shoot downn planes just like this one. The chances of success for his tiny threeman spiting is one in 100, an officer told him. That was good enough, anything to defeat the fascists. He waited so long for the skin and is desperate to make the jump. Mission had been scuttled twice in the last five days because of bad weather and half an hour earlier the flight crew almost was forced to turn back yet again to italy. Fred was determined this was a night. The moonlit skies separate them from the nazis on the ground below, gorgeous he thought to himself, and odd feeling of tranquility washed over him. The cockpit the signal. Ready ready ready go. The crew yield. Seed at the edge of the whole, front pushed away and jumped. Now, Freddy Anderson almost didnt make it out of germany. Not just because of the discriminatory policies in the United States and in britain that kept up hundreds of thousands and even millions of refugees who ultimately perished in the holocaust, but also because of the experience of his own father, heinrich, who was a world war i hero, as were many other jews in i germany who fout for the kaiser, and even earned an iron cross for his heroic efforts in france during world war i. They were fleeing to switzerland and other parts of europe because they feared the worst from hitler in the mid 1930s. But hinrich remained resolute. No matter what the nazis, he would not leave his home. Not when they demanded a ban on jewish buildings, not when his christian employees had to stop working for him because he was a jew. And not when it was impossible to buy lead and cooper. And not when they saw hitler banning from the olympics. And rounding up communists, and others and nothing bad will happen to us, he kept repeating to his son as a matter of faith. You see freddy here at age 11 with a belt around his waist. It wasnt just any belt. It was a military belt that his father had worn during the war. He used to prance about and saw himself fighting as a german. He thought of himself as a german and a jew. In the early 1900s, this was a period when jews were at the top of their fields in business, in literature, in theater, in science. A young physicist named Albert Einstein won the nobel prize 10 years before the rise of hitler and that suddenly came crashing down and his father, who had built on this hardware business that his own father built. And helped found. This was a period when they thought their liberties were growing and not taken away. It was so hard for them to give that up and they almost didnt make it out because the window of opportunity for visas for people like them was so narrow. Now, i mentioned the second in command on the mission who was hans on the left. He also got to brooklyn,s an i mentioned, around the same time from freddy from the netherlands. He had almost a polar opposite experience. His father was almost a canary in the coal mine in the netherlands, gunning hitlers assumption of power in 1933, he feared the worst for all of europe. His father, leo was really warning people around the netherland when this was still germanys problem about the raise rise of rashism and tried to align and in 1937 he began to look at visas for his family. He couldnt get visas for them all to get out so what he did was accepted his two twin sons. Hans on the left and luke on the right, to america basically to escape hitler. The invasion by the nazis of his home country of the netherlands was still two yooers away at this point. And family and friends thought this is crazy, this is not our problem, this is their problem. And they sent them to america, and they called it the cowboys in hindsight it was prescient. He would write the letters which the family shared with me, long typewritten letters which are both passionate and dutiful in their telling the mundane, daily events and the activities of the day before and after the nazis invaded the netherlands. He would talk about Neville Chamberlain in england, way too much of a pacifist. He would talk about hitler allies in the United States, Charles Lindbergh who he considered a traitor and was a known antisemite. And one down the street would talk about herr hitler. And talk about the School Children and how are they doing at grades at school and like a typical father, he said at one point. You know, to hans, please, please, whatever you do do not overwork yourself, he said excessive exercise is going to do you in. There was no reason to risk an injury. Quote, youre already the representative of the chess players shts wasnt that enough . Its amazing even in this time of just historical political cite s crisis and theyre dealing with the same mundane things. And then the letters to brooklyn stopped. By that point, both hans and fred were in the military. You see them together here. Thats hans on right and freddy on the left and they met where it was blown to smithereens. And they quickly bonded. I lo of this because you can see the affection and almost awe in which hans held his friend freddy. And he outlength him. Almost seven inches taller and he was almost like a puppy dog, he said freddy as fearless, he didnt follow military rules and he was never quite closely shaven enough and shoes never shined enough. There are stories where in the war games, he would break the rules and in one case capture the Commanding Officers by outflanking all the other men and busting through the military procedures and demanding the surrender of the top general at the base and the next day, the next day that Commanding Officer called him in for what freddy thought it was going to be a chewing out over how badly he violated the rules of the war games. Instead, the general saw a grittiness and a moxie, a deringdo and he said how would you like to get out of the military. And he was where he wanted to be was fighting off the nazis who invaded his ho homeland. He said, do you speak french. Yes. Do you speak german. Yes. Would you like to join oss. He said yes, but didnt know what oss was. It was a new agency, meant to collect intelligence and do sabotage mission, it was a friday by the seat of your pants agency. Because United States had no centralized Intelligence Agency and donovan was determined to create what he called a band of amateur a glorious amateurs who could literally parachute into or tunnel into or swim into enemy territory. And both collect vital intelligence secrets and if necessary, directly directly confront and capture the enemy, whether its the nazis or in the asian theater during the war. And freddy and hans were going to be two members of the team that originally was supposed to go into france, and they were all suited up to dive into france in 1944, even before normandy and the mission was cancelled literally on the runway. Fred was so he was taking demands. At what time he wanted to be dropped in at the dachau at the prisoner camp and ill free the prisoners myself. And they nodded at him as if he would check in for treatment. It seemed like a suicidal thought. On the other hand, he led some from europe to hitch like up 25 miles to a base in italy to demand a new assignment and this actually worked. Because the commander officer sent them to a new unit, also, italy, that had just been formed with the approval of general eisenhower. After a lot of waiting and Training Missions that seemed pointless, especially to freddy. They got assignment to parachute into austria, and they but their mission was to mainly collect intelligence on what they feared in the United States was a lost great stand by hitler, in the all pine readout. They called it, which was a the notion, i compare really of the wmd of later times that was really a half built concept by the nazis, never completed to the point that the allies feared, a booby trapping the entire austrian alps to mount one last final stands and go down in flames and take hundreds had of allies with them. It was as much up to freddy to prove this wrong to develop int intelligen intelligence. He went underway as a french technician and found the jet planes that hitler was building in a ms. Er messerschmitt factory and this was intelligence in knowing what the nazis could d