director public programs. i have thehe privilege of doing this on a regular basis. we thank you so much for being here today. twe hope you will return on other occasions. usually i play a game with my audience and i'll decide very quickly. y is this your first visit? please raise your hand. raise it higher so i can seeoo it, thank you, thank you, thank you, over hereto. thank you all in the intercity quality so the extra rest of you can exercise one of your arms, if you are a regular and attend our programs all the time please raise your hands. thank you. thank you. the folks you raised your hands first time around, please don't take my word for it alone. asknd anyone else around you who hand went up the second time why they support this institution. why they come here on a regular basis, why do i know many of them by their first name. and for those whose first names i have not learned, i will do my best to learn them. o also i might suggest for those who are not as familiar with our organization to pick up one of our quarterly calendar other bret vents and brochures. you will find them the information desk. it will let you know about all of her upcoming programs. i won't steal more of the time this afternoon to list them lall, but i will tell you we have a program this coming thursday evening, it's going to be an exhibition opening for a brand-new exhibition we just mounted. and that's on this thursday, the 21st, and the next sunday we have another program. we have a film and discussion and await tangentially related to the subject matter today. we are going to be showing the film of the memories of the eyes and row which is a documentary of survivors and the others were witnesses who attended the eyes and trial on one of those witnesses is henry ross who is featured in one of our special exist submissions right now the large photograph of henry roth. those are just a few of the reasons for you to return, and i certainly hope you're well. at the conclusion of today's program, our presenter will be available to sign copies of her new book, citizen 865, the hunt for hitler's hidden soldiers in america. so as a courtesy i ask you to please allow her to exit the stage and the auditorium, and continue your conversation with her over in the vicinity of our legacy shop. them of you may have noticed we have some additional apparatus i in v the room today. we are t very excited that this afternoon's program is being preserved and tapes for future broadcast by c-span, c-span's book tv. so we are excited to have an author, whose work commands such importance at attention as it should. because the subject matter will never go out of style. let me tell you a little bit about our presenter. debbie cenziper is associate professor at medill school of journalism and northwest university. she oversees the investigative lab. i'll have to learn how where to put -- she is a pulitzer prize-winning investigative reporter and nonfictional author who writes for the "washington post". has spent three years at george washington university before joining the faculty at mcgill. over the years her investigative stories have expose wrongdoing, prompted congressional hearing, si and let changes in federal and local laws. in her classes at medill for students focus on social justice on trim justice investigative reporting. debbie is one dozens of words including the robert f kennedy for reporting on he human rights in the goldsmith prize from harvard university. sher received a pulitzer in 2007 at the miami herald for a series of stories about corrupt affordable housing developers who are stealing from the poor. your before that she was a pulitzer prize finalist for stories about dangers breakdown and that nation's hurricane tracking system. debbie is a frequent speaker at universities, writing conferences, and book events. her first book, love wins, the lovers and lawyers who fought the landmark case for marriage equality published in 2016 by william mauro, was named one of the most notable books of the year by the "washington post". her second book that recently released half the presses citizen 865, the hunt for hitler's hidden soldiers in america's or topic of conversation with us today. she is based on medill's washington d.c. campus working with graduate and undergraduate students on investigative stories and we are delighted to present to you this afternoon debbie cenziper.bb [applause] >> thank you for that lovely introduction, lillian. i very much appreciate it. i'm so happy to be here with you today. i am based in washington d.c. for this first quarter at northwestern, i have been here in evanson learning all about evanston, northwestern, and chicago and has been a lot of fun and i'm so happy to be here to talk about this book project. let me tell you where this book got started. this book actually started just in the final moments of 2016 when i was at a new year's eve party in maryland with my friends and my husband. my husband wanted to leave because it was very loud disco music playing in the background, and he had had enough. but i ended up having this conversation with a woman we were having dinner w with whom i've never met before. turned out she was a lawyer from the u.s. department of justice. and over this long, unexpected conversation, robin l gold started telling me about this little-known units, deep inside the u.s. justice department that had spent three decades hunting nazis criminals on u.s. soil. she spent a decade or so on the staff of the "washington post". i knew very little about this units and i remember thinking two things. askingng myself two questions after this to our conversation. number one, how is it possible that so many years after the war, what 70 some years, after the holocaust, there were still nazis perpetrators and war criminals living here on u.s. soil. i just could not understand that and was really fascinated by the idea that was even happening here. and more than that who with the men and women at the justice department that had spent the bulk of their careers hunting for these perpetrators. and how are theyra able to spend day after day, year after year, inside some of the darkest moments in recent history? how were they able to do that and then go home at night to their wives and husbands, how are they able to go home tonight at 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? gi really wanted to get to know the people behind this not see hunting unit and the u.s. department of justice. after i rounded up my husband from this cocktail party he was sitting outside hunched over reading the "washington post" waiting for me for quite some time, i knew that i had the beginnings of another book. about a week later i called up a historian who worked in this nazis hunting unit and that u.s. department of justice. doctor barry white. i askedar barry to talk to me a little bit about what she had been doing here and she recounted the story that prompted me to it write this book. in 1990, soon after the collapse of communism, barry white and another historian named petern black. [laughter] you already got my joke and i have not even told you my joke yet. you already got to the punchline. they went to prague, because communism had collapsed and they knew that than nazis had stashed a lot of records in prague. war documents, not the rosters, and they could never get to them because the communist government would not allow them inside their archives. but after the collapse of communism in 1990, 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 rented a little car that chugged across germany into prague in the middle of the night. they ended at and a little rented apartments and the 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 muchee wanted to feed them pork cutlets and beer for breakfast. that was not a good thing for barry who was very early on in her pregnancy. they ended up inside this massive archive, and prague, surrounded by government agents with guns and everything else.th doctorpe peter black, through his translator said i am doctor black and this is doctor white. [laughter] and we are here representing the u.s. department of justice. all of the government agents are just mark and they are probably thinking the cia has no imagination. [laughter] these must be government spies. but off they go into the death the archives this office building in prague. soon enough, barry white pushes back her chair, she is looking at this piece of paper runs over to peter black and says i found something, turns out they found a not see roster from 1945 that listed the name of 700 men who had participated in one of the most lethal operations in occupied poland. in some of those men, they knew were here and the united states living on u.s. soil. they recognize some of the names. and that was a turning point in an investigation that spanned about 15 years. and it is at the heart of this book, citizen 865. so 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 t so let me give you a little bit of background. i focused heavily in this book on historians. so prosecutors are historians of this book as well. i have spent about 25 years of my life as an investigative reporter so i love documents they intrigue me. historians were able to find documentss from all over eastern europe. inside what were once communist countries, they went to moscow, theyhe went to kiev, they want to prague, they went to louisville and poland, and they found allll of this evidence about men who are 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 this obscure outpost of the u.s. department of justice with drop ceilings and stained carpeting, and a window that faced mcdonald's. here they were hunting nazis criminals and u.s. soil. and they were absolutely determined to bring them to justice, no matter to her how much time it passed. i found that really inspiring as a journalist, as her mother, as a wife, as a human being. these are the people who, in part dried the story. a little bit of background, as you all know, poland had more jews before the war than any other country in the world, probably except for the united states. it was a thriving hub for jewish life. it was also considered a strategic stronghold for the reich because there is a lush farmland and strong economy that they wanted to turn over to ethnic german settlers. poland was a very strategic location of very strategic area for the reich. but what you do with the jews? what you do with the jews? they had experimented with gathings and germany through mobile gas vans. and that idea of kind of blood lust, efficient mass murder, was a very interesting and intriguing to the police leader of the leuven district. a man known as dealio a blush that, anna bosch's last name. he was tasked with deciding what to do with the jews of occupied poland. nwell, the ss was busy fighting on the soviet front and they needed manpower. he needed help to annihilate the jews of poland. so we 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 prudent lithuanians, latvians, polls, and other recruits. he brought them to a little farming villages south of warsaw known as trust nikki. you can see from the map, what's interesting that this is 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, and a sense, a school for mass murder. in this camp, these men were trained in nazis ideology, they were armed, they were empowered, they were taught military drills, german marching commands, and they were ultimately dispatched from this school for mass murder, and this little farm village to the jewish ghettos daof occupied poland where they liquidated the ghettos. they were brought to -- they participated in shooting operations throughout occupied poland, and they man to the killing centers in occupied poland including treblinka and supper poor. force them into gas chambers. the man essentially became the manpower for the ss. they were the men who did the bloodiest jobs in occupied poland. and the jews who were survived, described the men as more brutal and more vicious, and more bloodthirsty than even the members of the ss. these were men who essentially for the foot soldiers of the third reich. and because nikki was their base camp. this is where they were arms, this is where they were trains, and this is where they were ordered deployment orders to go across occupied poland anded help the ss annihilate the jews. these were the men who did the bloodiest jobs in occupied poland. and trust nikki was a school for mass murder in occupied poland is set up by the ss. in fact one of the historians in the book called them 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 hats. some jewish survivors called them the ukrainians because some of the men were from ukraine or that region. but there were others, many, many others. from lithuania and latvia. the ss really came up with an incredibleme 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. if they were died they received proper burials. so for these men, especially men who came from soviet pow camps, serving the enemy seems like a decent option because in the soviet pow camps they'd faced likely starvation or death, or some other kind of horrible death. this camp was set up in the first deployment was to the city of louvre lens which you can see on the map it was a historical cultural and religious center for thousands of polish jews. more than 40000 jews lived in poland in 1939, they held leadership positions on the town council, they were leading members of the business community, there were religious schools, there is just a thriving, thriving jewish culture have their 1939. and it was here louvre led the two of the main characters in my book met. and they were just children in many ways -- in every way at the time. felix and lucinda were born in louisville and, they were friends and their families were friend. loosing his father was a court interpreter before the war and her mother was a dentist. felix's father was an architect before the war. and so these two teenagers were pushed into the loveland gateau by the knot sees along with theirir friends, neighbors, every member of their extended family. 40000 jews were put into this ghetto. there was starvation, you name it, everything -- it was terrible water shortages, food shortages and for what ever -- all kinds of reasons, lucinda and felix were able to survive mass deportation in this ghetto. their survival a story like all survival stories i have heard in researching this book, were just absolutely astounding. it took my breath away as a writer. but here they were in this ghetto in the louvre lens and one day men anden black coats and black caps o surrounded the perimeters of the ghetto and they put on floodlights, and they demand that every family come outside. in this ghetto, 1500 jews at day would be deported east for resettlement in the east. over a periodd of weeks, listen you and felix were barely -- the sinuous in his teens and felix was 19 or so. tell everyone they knew deported. their friends, their neighbors, their extended family. everyone they knew, they lost. h they didn't know where they had gone. it turns out they were taken to the killing center and gassed upon arrival. the people who did this were men and black coats and black caps. and the jews of louisville and described them as being more vicious, more violent than the dreaded ss. they went to a jewish hospital and murdered the patients, the doctors and the nurses. they want your jewish orphanage and they murdered the children along with thewi staff members who refused to leave the children behind. they went into the woods and shah jews at the edge of a ravine through mass killing and shooting operations. these men for the chesney key men who werein trained at the urschool for mass murder. thiss school was so important to the ss that top leadership came to visit including hitler. felix and lucy escapes. they escaped the labeling ghetto and under the cover of night, took a train to warsaw. they slipped inside the jewish ghetto of warsaw because lucinda had an uncle there. and they decided at the last minute they needed to get out of the ghetto. so in the weeks before the uprising with the help of the underground they escaped the warsaw ghetto probably save their lives. because they escaped just before the uprising. what they didn't know at the time, is that the men followed and work side-by-side with the germans to suppress the jewish uprising in the warsaw ghetto. so they survived, out ran the men, they survived warsaw, outran the men, and lucy and felix ended up at the end of the war in a small rural farming village near kraków. and they were essentially hiding in plain sight and felix became a teacher for the local children and the village. never once told anybody, obviously he was a jew. and at the very end of the war they heard soviet tanks rumbling towards this farm village. and felix got down on his stomach and crawled out into the woods on his hands and knees and could see these soviet tanks coming, liberation liberation and a russian commander walked intoma the building, approached felix and said who are you and felix said i am a teacher here. and the commander said okay, for the first time in many, many months, i am also a jew. and the commander said to him, that is not possible. all the jews are dead. you must be a spy. and felix said no no, i am a jew. so the commander called over a jewishie soviet soldier, and said you are jew, he's a jew, speaking yiddish or hebrew to each other. and felix came from a very assimilated family and did not speak much yiddish. in factr his father brought in a rabbi to teach him a little bit of his history, and felix would wait until the rabbi dozed u off, he would take his books, skip to the last page, and when the rabbi woke up he would say here you go i finish my studies. so now he is faced with proving he is a jew and what could've been a life or death moment towards the end of the war. and somewhere in the back of his memory, and the back of his mind he remembered the shema. the holiest prayer right in jewish religion, and he recited it for this soviet soldier. the soviet soldier said oh my god you really are jew. and f how do felix, and that is how felix and lucinda were able to -- that's how they survived the war. so on foot they went w home to lubin to see if anyone was left. before the war there were 40000 jews living in lou blinn. only 200 survived. including felix and listen you. they needed to get out of lubin because to lucinda and particular, every rock had bled honest. l every neighborhood was a stranger by then. so they went to vienna, and felix finished his medical degree, he became a doctor. in 1951, they came to the united states. what they didn't know until years later, and what many i