That he was able to share it and one of the last things that he wrote as a free man was also one of his most beautiful. And it was talking about sitting with friends in the camp, knowing that they were going to be executed the next day and then reflecting to him that a great regret in life was that they hadnt shared more with those that they loved and that was pileckis final thought as a free man and i would, if i could see him i would just want to ask him whether he felt that he could at that point connect with his family again. I think everyone has had experience of stress and turmoil in their lives. We know how to disassociate in that can be and how that can drive wedges between those we love and i would love to think that there was the possibility of redemption. I think pilecki was opposite of that in his final moments and may be something we can take away from his story on right now looking at the q and a, the questions that have been raised and speaking out, if thats okay i will maybe do it. One question which came from katie car and basically its about the title of the book, the volunteer and the question goes to to what extent was he really a volunteer in the sense that he was a military professional and that he saw his task as part of a continuous or he had fought in the war as an officer. Before the polish army of course the government never capitulated and this was a continuation of that so to what extent can you talk then about the fact that he was a volunteer because at a certain moment that suggests that he had a choice and if he had a high sense of duty and professionalism and in some ways you might suggest maybe he was not a volunteer at least not in relationship to his own superego, so to speak. Was a great question and i know katie car who wrote brilliantly about one of the great escape reasonable. Hello, and i love your work. Its a great question. The book is called the volunteer and that raises the image of pilecki raising his hand and saying ill do it. The story of how his mission was conceived is such an awesome one because it cuts to the heart of some things about pilecki that informs so much of his time in the camp and that is this. Pilecki doesnt write much about politics. Other than to say he doesnt like politics and politicians in the way they use issues to divide people but there is one great political act in his life and that is when he stands up to his boss in the underground. This is shortly after the germans have occupied warsaw and hes taken up the fight against them. His boss wants to publish a manifesto thats nationalistic, defines poland as only for catholic polls and for pilecki its clearly divisive and he takes a stand against his boss. He insists that he sign up with the main polish underground and has a more inclusive agenda and his boss does, but in doing so he volunteers, pilecki for emission. A mission to auschwitz and you know, its such an important thing in the book because it tells a lot about who pilecki was and he was taking a stand towards having poland thatwas inclusive in which everyone banded together to fight the nazis. Of course he still has to decide to take a mission. Thats one thing and his boss said to him. That is pretty dangerous hes told so im going to have to ask you to volunteer. And of course for a man of duty and patriotism being told your omission, you can do it if you want to or leave, of course its an impossible decision for pilecki. He still avoided the first roundup that could have gotten sent to the camp as he was struggling with his decision but in the end of course he did go and that for me is the essence of volunteering, that willing choice and why that seemed like the presentation where it was so important because its that question when heset aside , decided to leave behind his family, his immediate circle and everything you think you might be concerned with in order to begin this extraordinary journey. One of the people of course. Very famous as a man who informed especially about the holocaust of the jews in poland is jan party and one of the reasons he became very famous of course is also because of his appearance in the movie where he gives incredible testimony and its very important in the movie. One of the interesting things is that right at the beginning of the testimony as it presented in the movieshow up , crusty when he goes into the gallows and hes invited by jewish leaders who are in the war to go into the war to see for himself whats happening inside the gatto in 1942 so that he can in some way when he goes to the allied capitals can see all of this with my own eyes. And kreski whos an aristocrat he admits to some prejudice against the jews and then he says it actually was quite wonderful because the jewish leaders i was meeting in outside of the ghetto, they were not at all jewish. Were like polish gentlemen and the moment they go into the ghetto they flip through the door , through the walls and suddenly they became jewish. They were amongst themselves and its interesting. It was an incredible love and admiration for kreski but also for the fact of in some ways both recognizes his prejudice and then also his struggle to transcend his prejudice. Now, kreski when he goes and auschwitz doesnt go there because of whats happening to the jews. Auschwitz at that point is not important in the final solution but it becomes quite important and since we are here speaking at the museum of jewish heritage i think maybe it would be a good thing to for a moment consider pileckis relationship to what was known in poland as the jewish problem and theway he struggles with that. Is a great question robert and its one that i really thought i needed to tackle in the book. Straight away and thats really the situation that pilecki in prewar poland which was multiethnic, diverse, the largest Jewish Population in the world, also was just is nothing but of ideas and culture but it was also a scene of antisemitism and i think one of the things that i came to understand in the course of my research is that its important to form a distinct between polish antisemitism prewar and that of the nazis. When you think about antisemitism you think about a root towards nazi ideology and that wasnt what life was like in prewar poland. There were nasty, vitriolic material appearing in the press. There was a campaign to have polish jews emigrate to israel, there were areas different types of discrimination and pilecki, that was partly his world. He came from a conservative catholic background. I found no evidence to suggest that he held antisomatic views but i think even had i done what i think makes this story so important is that he left that all behind in his journey to the camp and he found a way to reach beyond his immediate circle of friends, jan his immediate conception of being polish and who he was in order to risk his life to report on crimes against soviet pows and then crimes against jewish families brought to the camps for extermination and so that to me such interesting questions and its so relevant to all of us today, how do we reach beyond our immediate concerns in order to emphasize, empathize with the suffering of others. Thats pileckis challenge to us and what i think his story can really teach us and again, i have a question for you which it has always interested me. You brought this to a beautiful and right now. I was about to suggest to close the meeting we have one question from me. I think many here will know his name and is quite celebrated and a remarkable polish curator took the news of the holocaust as it was unfolding in 1942 and did such an incredible job of bringingthat to the allies. What i wanted to again, rightly celebrated in the United States and hes a wellknown name. We know of course many reasons why pileckis name is not well known because of that suppression during communism but i was just wondering why since the 90s when his material is being widely available why is he not being sort of celebrated in the same way . Why does it take until now we are talking about this remarkable man . My sense, and this is pure speculation but i think if we are looking at the history of research at the auschwitz museum, they have a really goodResearch Department. They have excellent historians and my sense is a little bit that there was an in normas amount of emphasis in their Research Department on resistance throughout in the camp, in the 1970s and 80s and that in some way, many publications appear at the time that pilecki was persona non grata and i think in some ways the emphasis on resistance in the lets say communist era in the auschwitz Museums Research enterprise which in some ways is still the core i think of much of being in auschwitz and we refer to the Research Department and what auschwitz is doing as a sort of moment when we come into lets say the late 1990swhen the name of pilecki now becomes more known. In the street that leads the museum is named after pilecki and so on but in some ways the Research Focus and in some ways the focus of the Auschwitz Birkenau Museum shifted away from the issue of resistance so i think in some ways the, that in some ways the discovery of pileckis activity in some ways came too late for the kind of natural flow of what the auschwitz museum, what material they were working on. That doesnt mean that the research, a new focus on research and their work i think was certainly probably center on pilecki but there were many things we were looking at also. The kind of evan flow of things and research in the whole history of the holocaust where were looking at Different Things today. Then we would look 20 years ago. Nowadays of course number studies have, are very much informing our ideals of what actually are harmonics, we realize theres a certain moment in the 1990s after looking for 40 years on the history of auschwitz, people started to realize they never look at women inauschwitz. So at a certain moment it took time and actually for that Research Focus to get basically, to become pure and for the work to be done so i certainly think that it is probably time a generation later for a new kind of consideration of the question of research in auschwitz and i think there are many unanswered questions. I think especially lets call it polish Roman Catholic christian resistance groups versus the Jewish Resistance groups. And the relationship between these two. Resistance in auschwitz one, the main camp in auschwitz birkenau and theres a lot of diversification around that relationship but one resistance comes back on the agenda, that he will be a central character in all of that. That ought to be at least my explanation and i must admit that the first book i wrote was really conceived in the 1980s, written in the early 1990s. Pilecki is not mentioned in that book and ultimately in might later work he is mentioned but certainly after your book, he will become an even greater character and whatever narrative i write about auschwitz. We are out and are now at a little after three so i think that you stopped everyones time so i would like to thank you very much for this excellent presentation, even if we had some issues with the slides i think so im going to give it back to you, samantha. Thank you jack. To echo what robert jan said, this was an incredible presentation thank you jack for the work that youve done , and everyone watching, please go out and buy jacks book. We have a lot of questions that came in that we did not have time to get to today hopefully you can find your answers to your questions in jacks book, its available now in politics and from and also amazon. Com so ill be sending out those links in the coming days. In addition to more information about jack and more information about our upcoming programs. Were continuing to do these programs twice a week, tuesday and thursday afternoons eastern time so stay tune for more and thank you guys again. At politics and prose in washington dc robert plumb looked at how harriet come in, clara barton, Harriet Beecher stowe and other women had an impact on the civil war. In this portion of the program he talks about poet julia ward howe, authorof the battle hymn of the republic. In the early 1860s she came to washington with her husband, doctor Samuel Ridley howe who is a piece of work himself and not shy about talking about his ability to do great things. She came and sort of was in the backseat while he was off doing things on official washington with the Sanitary Commission which was able early version of the red cross. She went in a wagon with some friends across the potomac and watched the Union Soldiers parade and do their military kinds of things. On the way back they were surrounded by Union Soldiers and she was struck by two things. One was the fact that they were very young. Some not much older than her own children and secondly that they started singing