over the past several years he's been researching and giving presentations on the holocaust and on the armenian genocide he has a masters of divinity from harvard university but he's also a fine arts photographer an is currently working as the education court nadir for hand in plastic surgery at beth israel deaconess hospital in boston i also thank you for coming out on a night that's about four degrees above zero so it shows your commitment to this subject as we begin tonight i just want you to look at the face of this young girl because i don't know who she is i don't know or name she lived in warsaw it is quite likely that she was a murder victim of the holocaust and in some ways it's people like this that inspire me to give talks on the holocaust how did this talk come to be as diane mentions i'm a fine art photographer and for several years i was thinking about how can i develop a curriculum on the history of photography and i was literally going back and forth to work on buses and subways trying to figure out making new curriculums and things like that i was going to the to the to the public library check you know books on photography taking photos of it and literally photographing in scanning thousands of images and then one saturday morning i woke up with a question and the question is what about germany and from that question this top came into being it will look at it will look at six photographers who who worked in the nazi era it will look at their life work and choices but in order to understand who they were and the context in which they wrote we have to we have to kind of understand the context itself many of us know that but the photograph you see in front was the primary political architect of the era and that is adolf hitler and this photograph was taken in one nine hundred twenty eight in nuremberg and the man in front is is herman gehring who also becomes who also later commits suicide at nuremberg in one nine hundred forty five i believe and what you have here is kind of an image of power it's kind of showing adolf hitler as a new emperor coming almost out of the midst of the cathedral in nuremberg out of the middle ages itself but i want to contrast it with this photograph this photograph was taken by one of the photographers roman vision iacke and it shows an image of fear and in some sense the iraq was an image both of power and of fear depending on where you stood now when was this photograph of fear taken it was taken on the night of kristallnacht or the night of broken glass that many people are familiar with in which it was a state sponsored pog rome that occurred throughout germany and austria in which the police did not protect jews and jews were totally vulnerable to what whoever wanted to hurt them and these were the results ninety jews reported dead thirty thousand jews in prison suicides businesses destroyed and five hundred twenty synagogues this is a photograph that was taken a few days after kristallnacht and it was taken at book involved concentration camp and these are some of those thirty thousand jewish men who were in prison because they were jewish but i want to compare that way up way up at the very top a man in white i think if you i'm doing a little pointer there that's aid off hitler returning to berlin after the and anschluss or the enix ation of austria and what you have here is a a group of people giving the hitler salute and they're actually doing the way and it's kind of like one germany united so from these two photographs the one in broken vald and the one in this you can see the power of photography how it can show different things what you have here is the reichstag in march of one nine hundred thirty three in which hitler takes almost complete control of the german what we would call the german legislature and these are judges giving the nazi salutes and even ministers and these nazi salutes would go down to the youngest of children down to the the the new generation and that was primarily hitler's hitler's motivation said i don't care about the older people i want to get the minds of the young i want to shape their thoughts i want to shape their spirits i want to strong people and i don't want  weak people and he would go on and how would he educate them he would educate them in in ritual and this would be where young people both male and female would take a blood oath to hitler and he would use posters and he would talk about he would say i want the young people to be a brutal people to be a people who are willing to do anything on behalf of germany and it would move to using the media today he would be using computers and he would be using televisions and he would be using entertainment but at that time they didn't have them so they used radio and here you see a group of young people around the radio being basically having their brains washed and they would also teach carrick to church and the humiliation of jews in public parades and from those parades young people first began to carry flags then they began to carry shovels and then they begin to carry rifles and this photograph was taken on the streets of vienna in march of one nine hundred thirty eight and jews are being humiliated and being forced to watch the streets with acid in water and who is in charge young people there  overseen the humiliation of jews washing on the street this is hitler's view of beauty he wanted to create the perfect man the perfect woman and on your right hand on your left hand side is a photograph is this is a sculpture by a nazi kind of collaborator sculpture named arnel brecker and on the other side is a nude by joseph thor rock and in both cases this is what hitler wanted he disses what he he thought that human beings should look like the one on the party the man was outside the german reich stogie and it would be later bombed when the allies bombed berlin this is hitler's view of beauty every true art must give its products the stamp of beauty for the ideal for all of us must lie in the cultivation of the healthy only the healthy is right and natural and so everything right and natural is beautiful it is our task to find the will to true beauty sounds good on the surface but who decides who is healthy and who isn't who decides the standards of beauty and what happens if you don't meet the standard like this young girl who was mentally disabled and she would be injected an hour later she did not meet the standard or these gypsies in auschwitz who are product who were experimented upon they also did not meet the standard and they themselves would never measure up to eight off hitler these are jews murdered in a in a massacre pit in eastern europe they did not meet the standard and if you move to the political realm the first people that hitler began to execute were communist socialist in trade unionists some are executed on the streets others would be moved into the concentration camps because they did not meet his political standard he did not want diversity of politics he only wanted one politics in which he was the law this is a homosexual man who did not meet the standard and him in the concentration camps they would wear pink triangles and about fifty thousand of them would be arrested in germany and anywhere between ten and fifteen thousand would never leave the concentration camps and this is a jehovah witness they would wear purple triangles in the prisons because they did not meet the standard either primarily because they would put the allegiance to jehovah versus allegiance to hitler and there's a story at the beginning of the war there were some insults housen prison camp and they were said you you now have an opportunity to join the military and if you don't join we're going to kill ten people and after the nazis killed forty people they no longer tried to persuade him because none of the jehovah witness would give up their faith and this is a polish deacon named peter so navasky and you noticed the dead bodies behind him he also did not meet the standard a lot of times people don't realize but when the germans went into poland they executed anyone that they thought might be a polish activists on behalf of the resistance and that also included many catholic priests but the reason i like putting this man's name here because everyone who was murdered in the holocaust the six million plus jews that you the two hundred fifty thousand or a half a million gypsies the three point five million russian p o w s who who were basically died of exposure in hunger not in battle but because the nazis allowed them to starve to death and to die now the talmud says the person who saves one life it is as if he or she has saved the world but we can also turn it on its head the person who takes a it is as if he or she has taken a world we will never know the worlds that were taken from us but it that's wesen we need to have these kind of talks the first person or a good photographer we're going to look at is a man named auguste sonder he's german he's not jewish he was born he's even older than adolph hitler and much of his work was really done before hitler even came to power he learned photography as an apprentice mine his father was a miner slash carpenter and he became a photographic apprentice there and one day when he looked under one of those big cameras you know those big eight by ten or maybe even larger cameras he looked  clouds moving and from that moment i realised i wanted to be a photographer now is photographic principle has basis was in photography there are no unexplained shadows and you look at some of these photographs that were taking of children and families and it's his whole focus was very realistic he will later influence people like diane arbus and richard avedon this kind of approach but the question we need to ask if your whole approach photographs or images with no shadows what happens if you begin to live or try to do your art in a regime that is full of shadows where's the conflict going to occur he marries on a initially he he takes his foot from photographs to a place called limits which is in austria right across the german border it happens to be the area where adolf hitler was born and in this is in six when sonder goes there adolf hitler is actually being educated also in the in the city of linz shortly afterwards adolf hitler would go to vienna after he was in lists about six or seven years was and then he goes to western germany to a place to called cologne and he kind of wanted to get out of the studio and he said so we begin to go to farms and what you have here is a farm family in western germany and this is all so he said i want to go out on the by roads and the by ways of germany and this is an image of that this image was taken in one nine hundred fourteen it's one of perhaps his most famous image and it's called three farmers and it was probably taken in the summer of one nine hundred fourteen and there's three farmers that look like they're going somewhere to a dance to be drafted where are they going we don't really know but why this image was important for sonder was he said when i took this photograph i realise how i wanted to spend the rest of my artistic photographic life i wanted to take every sector of german society and try to show this is what germany is this is the people that make up the country of germany and so he began that process in one thousand nine hundred twenty seven from his work a book will be published and it's called the people of the twentieth century and in the preface of the book this is what sonder would write he said first his his his his approach look observe think and then he would go on nothing seemed more appropriate to me than to capture in photography a picture of our time which is absolutely true to nature so allow me to be honest and tell the truth about our age and it's people i hate nothing more than sugary photographs with tricks poses and effects but again the point is this is a guy who wants to show truth one thousand nine hundred twenty seven member the first photograph of adolf hitler that i showed you that was taken in one nine hundred twenty eight so we see and we're seeing something new also begin to occur saunders would ultimately take about forty thousand photographs but ten thousand would survive the war and this is only  the smallest smallest smallest little example of the type of photographs he took masons a pastry chef a doorman an entrepreneur a nun a man who was in parliament in the reichstag he would also photograph prussian young prussian man who were doing sword fights and they had scars all over their faces because germany had a warlike tradition and he began to photograph as as hitler begun to come to power the s s men as well but they didn't get they had the same billing as other people like a painter who would be considered by adolf hitler degenerate because it's are was degenerate and it would basically not be allowed to be sold in germany a da dancer and a clown or comedian is very dangerous to be a clown or a comedian in the time of adolf hitler a joke could get you or your family thrown into jail or into a concentration camp and so if you set a joke at the wrong time to the wrong people you could basically suffer horribly and not just you but also your family he photographed an unemployed man surely not like the s s man and also on the other man a minister a swedish minister called reverend coral bar in theological if you go to harvard divinity school or someplace like that though talk a lot about karl barth he becomes famous because he refuses to sign in an allegiance to hitler and he writes hitler a letter and he says to him he said christians should have their allegiance to jesus christ and to god not to a man like adolf hitler so he ultimately has to leave germany and he goes to he goes to switzerland and he becomes one of the leaders of what you could would call the protestant confessional church and they would grind began to do resistance as a relates to hitler they weren't totally successful he also photograph people on the edge like the circus people you notice the black man and there's actually a black woman in the second photograph up at the very top blacks were some of the first people sterilized by by the nazis they called them rhineland bastards they did not consider them very good for their gene pool they did not consider them good for the area and race and several thousand of the them would be sterilized between one nine hundred thirty four and one nine hundred thirty nine two hundred thousand people would be sterilized in nazi germany by the end of the war four hundred fifty thousand he fought it saunders photographed the homeless in the concentration camps they would be given black triangles and in in nazi germany if you were homeless too long it was a crime and you were called in a social and that would be the excuse to throw you into the into jail and he photographed people with genetic illnesses the mentally disabled the chronically ill and those are the first pretty pull that hitler killed  between one nine hundred thirty nine august and august of one nine hundred forty one seventy thousand mentally disabled people were either killed by injections gas or other means or starved to death and the reason was he wanted to get rid of them and they were the vosa vulnerable and in these in these hospitals so called so called hospitals they they also began to develop the template for the final solution they were the first people gassed they experimented on which was a better way to kill by injection or by gas which gas in it was the mentally disabled because they were the most vulnerable and when we make our own policy decisions even in our country how are we going to treat the most vulnerable in our society hitler felt the most vulnerable should be eliminated taken away from the public and eliminated sterilized as well as other things and here's two more examples of that he photograph communist like this man right here socialist on your upper right and trade unionists hitler was not for unions unless you were his union he was not for socialist no counter views no views of the left in his case gypsy's i mentioned it before but i'll mention it again two hundred fifty thousand to a half a million were murdered by hitler and his helpers and finally  jews who oftentimes were extinct totally a simulated many of them in germany thought they were more german than they were jewish but they learned that it didn't matter it didn't matter if you were a famous doctor a nobel prize winner a teacher it didn't matter because your grandfather or your grandmother was jewish that means you were you didn't even matter if you were catholic and you had converted all that mattered was if your grandparents were also jewish th you were fit into that group now what happens to saunders work well he becomes involved in the censorship and this this started in may of one nine hundred thirty three and this is an image a very famous one from university or the university of berlin i think probably about may eighth one nine hundred thirty three mostly young people and they began to destroy the works that they did not consider proper so another part of hitler was censorship that we only want people to think certain thoughts and if we don't agree with them we're going to destroy them and again you notice young people doing this not older people young people and heinrich  famous jewish poet of the one of the latter part of the one nine hundred century would write were one burns books one will in the end burn people this quote is that the holocaust museum in jerusalem and at the time both the newsweek and time they would call it a a biblio cost and one of them i can't recall which also called it a holocaust now this point they're burning books but as we know as time moves on they soon also began to burn people now one of the books that were burnt was by an austrian jewish man in france were full and it was called the forty days of mussa dog now it's about the armenian genocide this book in the ghetto in the warsaw ghetto in the ghetto of woods in vilna was the most one of the books that was most checked out by the jewish community why because it talked about their own experience the experience of clabber ration fragmentation of a community starvation hunger should we resist or should we not resist how do we protect the children how do we pass on our our works our education our lives on to the next generation hitler would say before he attacked poland whoever remembers the annihilation of the armenians so i think if we need to get it i found it interesting that this was one of the books here are there some of the banned writers a just a small group of them john doe dreiser albert einstein sigmund freud the parrot heinrich kind ernest hemingway helen keller and going on karl marx margaret song or thomas mon excedrin and also august sonder now there's probably two reasons or perhaps perhaps there were two reasons why august saunders works in one nine hundred thirty six were taken off the books shelves and the printing presses were destroyed there's probably two reasons one reason is that his son was a socialist and one day he didn't have a printing press and his father said well what we could do is i could take a photograph of of your of your flyer and i could we could develop it in the darkroom and i could create more than one and supposedly the least what the books say is they were hanging this up after they had been developed and somewhat partially dried they were drying them up in their backyard and someone reported them and that some would get imprisoned and put in jail and he would be there for ten years and he would die in one thousand nine hundred four so one reason his books was banned maybe was due to his son another reason which i think is equally as compelling saunders showed the real germany he gave equal billing to the s s men and to the mentally ill he gave equal billing to the entrepreneur and the unemployed man and he showed germany as it really was as a place of actual diversity like every community is and nothing that was monolithic so any and saunders also brings up to us the fact that what if you were german even a loyal german he was a veteran twice sonder was never fought in a war but he was a veteran while he was in the reserve in world war one but what do you do if you have a state that can throw your child or your loved ones in prison how radical do you become how much do you resist my wife always tells me and she's somewhat of a radical herself she said you know when i when i was a young person she said i would if the s s came to my door i want to scratch their faces and she would even say even rip certain private parts of their body to rip them apart but once i have a child it changes the way i look at the world and it changes my responsibility because my children need me so that all at once changes so when we think of the other artist in germany there would be be about twenty thousand two thousand of them that would leave germany others would stay and some of them kind of began to photograph things like trees and scott architecture because it was too dangerous to photograph other things so that if they called it an internal exile though he did steer fair to grab german soldiers and at the same time political prisoners and they both gave him equal billing so he still played around the edges even after his his own books and stuff were taken off the shelves his own studio would be destroyed by allied bombings and he would say that what happened to germany was not an act of nature it was the act of one evil man and his policies saunders himself would die on april twentieth  four april twentieth is actually adolf hitler's birthday he would be rediscovered however after the war by a famous american photographer called edward studied him who at that time was the curator curator at the museum of modern art and saunders work would become part of that famous photographic show one of the most famous in the twin the twentieth century called the family of man and in in  hundred sixty one he would be given the name he would be given a order of federal order of merit by west germany and he was called a man of conscience but again the question is you're a loyal german you're an artist or anything how do you resist in a regime were every party whether it's the legislature whether it's the law whether it's the church they're all giving the nazi salute what what do you do and what are you willing to pay to do it the next person we look at was one of germany's most famous dancers film actresses perhaps the most famous woman film director in the twentieth century and also later a still still photographer and her fairly name was helene bertha a molly reeve install but she called herself lenny she would she would live one hundred one years and she was she was known primarily as one of the artists who helped lift to make adolf hitler who he was the how he was depicted in the media this is what how she describes the first time she met adolf hitler i heard his voice fellow germans i had an almost apocalyptic vision i felt paralyzed i sensed that the audience was in bondage to the man the rally had had such a profound impact on me that i felt unable to catch a cab my mind was in turmoil she also said that she first read mine com she became a committed national socialist she thought that was the way on the other hand she never actually joined the nazi party she would be what adolf hitler would consider the perfect german woman and she's she's here on your right hand side i think kind of third from the end in the black dress with with the flowers and she was intelligent she was strong she was ruthless in her own way she was highly talented like one of these people that has so much talent it almost loses out of them the question always becomes what do you do with your talent who do you give it to why are we given talents she would go adolf hitler and her she would become kind of personal  friends adolf hitler would go to her birthday parties he would share his airplanes with her his cars with her his physicians with her she would go to his birthday parties and in one nine hundred thirty seven she would she would run she would be quoted in the detroit news to me hitler is the greatest man who ever lived he truly is without fault so simple and at the same time possessed of masculine strength now from her autobiography which you you have to always doubt because she also could lie and she was somewhat narcissistic she said at one time she thought eight off hitler wanted to kiss or but he actually never did but there were jokes about him one joke was if install mary's hair marries herr hitler we will have to fear ers in germany and other ones would be kind of sexual innuendo jokes they called her the great crevasse she did sleep around a bit ok  triumph of the will was her most famous film it was a documentary of the nazi party congress in nuremberg in one nine hundred thirty four adolf hitler named it that's his title and she would write the preparations for the rally were made in concert for the camera work which sounds a little bit like propaganda on the other hand people can approach films in different ways what are you trying to do with it but but in this case the preparations for the rally were totally extensive she had worked closely with adolf hitler as well as a young architect on your right not far right hand side called albert speer and he would create the set the stage and then she would film it and between the two they would orchestrate perhaps one of the most powerful films ever made and she was a master of light and darkness and are some examples of that and she also began to photograph the new power of the german army at this time they were still under the first sight treaty they weren't supposed to be getting a lot of airplanes and other things but it was beginning  on the on your right is that big ego is elbert spears and that's lenny reeve installed there she would create special kind of electronic electronic kind of carts and carts in which she could get special shots special cameras and lenses were made for her this is by lights she was also not just simply a master photographer she was a master editor probably miles of film were taken and she would edit it all by herself with others but she controlled almost every little every little frame this is the kind of work they created and you kind of see the power of it here between king george and the dragon and all the nazi  insignia behind it the crowds of people the cameras and the cathedral of the nuremberg cathedral there as well our holocaust historian would write he said the nazi a static was like the greek di bottom is adolf hitler many of the directors throughout hollywood would study this film this would disk type of shot would later be used by george lucas in star wars one and when if you recall han solo luke skywalker and princes laya as they're walking up at the very end it was a shot taken right almost from this kind of angle and also this kind of frame she made him a god and she made him human at the same time she in the film you know he's shaking hands with women and other times you know he's kissing little babies he looks like he just an ordinary guy but at the other hand she's lifting him up really high some people looked at the film and then make fun of it this is charlie chaplin in one nine hundred forty so he's actually going to do a parody on hitler and actually he would not have been safe to go to go to germany at the time and his film was very controversial because even in america people were a little bit frightened of adolf hitler and there was a lot of anti semitism here as well so he was very courageous actually to make this film the triumph of the will received a lot of awards and here is lenny reeve install doing the hitler salute with one of the propagandist of the german regime a man named striker giulia striker and he himself would be executed at nuremberg her next film was of the olympics it was also a masterpiece and it was the first time in the olympic games where they took the flame from athens and they took it to the site of the olympic  games themselves and that would be later modeled by every olympics after it what the nazis were also doing every every city whether or every country yugoslavia austria and others that they went through they were using the n exe as an opportunity to organize the ethnic germans within those communities and also spread their propaganda and their anti semitism through every country in europe as it went through this is the flame as it's going into the berlin stadium and these are the people greedy adolf hitler when he would walk in they wanted to create a film that magnified the area and race that we are the top race in the world but their dreams got shut down by jesse owens that he was not too helpful and every time he won adolf hitler would walk out of the walk out of the stadium this fit this is kind of interesting the the man who won second place was a let's long actually a friend of jesse owens and he himself would be killed in world war two and jesse owens would later visit his mother the other man is a japanese man within five years they will all be at world war against one another their stories behind these images jesse owens won four gold medals in his last one was the four hundred meter relay race to jews who were supposed to run that race a man glickman and another man that i just can't recall right at the mall right at the moment samuel just can't recall it samuel stahl or i think but i'm not positive on that they were supposed to run the relay race but the head of the american olympic committee named avery brundage did not want to offend adolf hitler so he removed them from the race he put in max robinson the brother of jackie robinson and he put in jesse owens they probably would have won the gold medal with the two jewish runners either and they regretted it they trained all their life for that event and they were basically removed from it every brundage was also the president of the u the united the international linkage committee at the time of munich and he's the one that made the decision after the israelis were murdered at munich too to let the lympics continue so it's there's kind of little threads that are going on in this one nine hundred thirty six olympics also all these signs that were up before the olympics they were all removed because hitler and goebbels and all the other ones did not want other people to see them at the same time period the gypsies were put into camps concentration camps so the press never saw them either everything was hidden you only saw the good front you didn't see what was behind the scenes the olympic film  film would also be given to adolf hitler as a birthday present right after they had annexed austria it would play in copenhagen oslo u s and elsewhere and win a lot of awards lenny reeve installs life changes the world's life changes with this event this is the german army going into poland on september first one nine hundred thirty nine lenny reeve install would actually be part of a film crew and twelve days into the war there was a place called conscript poland where an atrocity occurred some germans had been killed by polish partisans and they gathered up twenty jewish man to dig a grave and as they were digging the grave they would all be shot and murdered leonie reeve install will be looking on and she is appalled by what she has seen and she goes to the officer in charge and she says german officers are not supposed to act like this what you're doing is wrong and the german officer takes out his luger pointed at her face and say shut up bitch otherwise the same thing's going to happen to you and at that moment she leaves making war films she returns to berlin with a very kind of exciting airplane ride goes to adolf hitler reports what she what she had seen and adolf hitler said yes officers are not supposed to act like that i'll do something about it i'll take care of it and of course nothing nothing ever happens she would spend the rest of the war making one of the most expensive films in history was called t fly on and it it was done in austria on location in austria in spain no cost was it was too small in fact even those in the german propaganda regime like dr joseph goebbels would say he's she's spending too much money she's spending too much money hitler would lend his own money to have the two have the film published and she would do crazy things that kind of showed you about it like she didn't want to just use a regular lake she wanted to create a lake so what happens is she she creates a lake and then she wanted to put sheep around the lake so the sheep were there but the sheep wouldn't go in the place that she wanted him to go because they were sheep so she said how can we how can we get the sheep to go in the right place she said we'll put salt down so she put salt down maybe if we give them salt then they'll they'll behave well the sheep ate so much of the salt that then they began to drink up all the water in the lake and so that's how that ended so it was ultimately produced after the war and it was kind of a artistic flop but what she did when she was making the film she also used gypsies she took gypsies from the concentration camps paid them about fifty cents a day according to her and they would be used as extras and you see some there you see one of them playing a guitar you see some others coming into the set from the concentration camps now later she will be sued by some of these gypsies and taken to court those who survived but she ultimately they couldn't prove many of the many of the witnesses were dead and she basically said what was i supposed to do you know i paid them it's better to be on the set than in the prison camp which is true you know it's better i would rather be on the set than in a prison but she could never quite make the connection what are children doing in concentration camps she could never make that connection it was all about her art it's about her and her projects but you know the other people are there to be used  would marry a german war hero his name was peter frank and from that they were married for two years at the marriage was the last time she officially saw adolf hitler it was in hundred four he had post traumatic stress he was an alcoholic he also liked other women and their marriage lasted two years this is her brother who she loved a lot and he would be sent to the eastern front and his body would be exploded in half by a grenade this isn't lenny reeve installed but it is a photograph of berlin in the bombings her house and her mother's house would be bombed by allied bombing after the war immediately when when the allies began to come she tried she tried to run she tried to hide she would go up to some germans that she knew knock on their door and they would look at or in this say satan slot and they would they would shut the door in her face she ultimately would be arrested ten times she would be committed to a to a mental hospital because she tried to commit suicide she would go through for the not sophistication trials and this was her final one in berlin where she was led off which was very controversial at the time but they said she never joined the party she was what you would call a fellow traveler after that  she would in one in the one nine hundred seventy she would go to africa quite a few trips and create a book on africa and and it also want to ward's at the age of seventy two she took up underwater drone diving lied about her age and she would create movies underwater movies up to the age of one hundred throughout her life this is her as a young person and as an older person she denied any responsibility for fashion nazi a static or bowstring the regime she said that she was naive about nazis her art had nothing to do with politics and to the end she remained unrepentant she would say at one point she was quoted as saying once she said i regret the day i ever met adolf hitler because people will always look at me as a nazi and but what did i do but what did i do and it's a good question she created films she created art but that raises the question where do we want to give our talents to this is how i like to see her nuremberg in her white dress surrounded by one hundred seventy people who helped produce the film no money was spared to produce it it utilized the s s it utilized the german army airplanes blimps and everything new engine nearing feats excedrin to say that politics had nothing to do in nazi germany with art or anything else i think is somewhat disingenuous if not an outright lie because people died because of their art and people had to leave germany because of their art but again when we think of lenny reeve install and this is actually from her or her movie triumph of the will i was photographing on the television and two images came together because my i guess my shutter speed was too slow but i began to think about it we have to ask the question is you know lenny reeve and stall was an opportunist she was talented perhaps a genius but what is the relationship between genius art or anything science and ethics is there one or is there not one people can answer that in different ways but i think she also challenges us how much are we opportunist are we willing to do what are we willing to do for fame for money for christine age and so is she in some sense also should be questioning us the next person we look at is a jewish german photographer born in west prussia his name was a star and he would actually die in one thousand nine hundred five in martha's vineyard in massachusetts  is a veteran a jewish veteran of world war one people often times aren't aware of this hitler and others would blame the jews for their loss in world war one in actual fact even though they were one percent of the population  over one hundred thousand would serve in world war one thirty five thousand would be decorated and twelve thousand would die this is aizen stott in his own regiment he would be the only one to survive in this photograph i like to contrast him with another person in world war one and that is adolf hitler and so we have both of them to two took totally two different paths from their experiences of the trenches in france and belgium and other places himself would be wounded he would have shrapnel in both legs and he would spend over a year in rehabilitation after the war his family lost all their money he himself would begin to photograph at coffee shops and other places like that he would go to museums and he would study the lighting of rembrandt and the composition of some of those who were in the museums in berlin he tried to make money as a button and belt salesman he wasn't too good of a salesman he started getting so involved in in the photography that he decided that he would leave his occupation as a salesman and they said you should not leave because you can't make any money you're going to starve to death but in fact he becomes one of the first a p photographers in berlin and in germany and his first job was to do the nobel prize speech of thomas monde on december ninth one thousand nine hundred twenty nine and this was that photograph as you know thomas mann wins the nobel prize the author of magic mountain and other himself would leave germany his work was censored he was more vocal against hitler and it wasn't safe for he and his family to live there would photograph human interest stories famous playwrights like george bernard shaw marlene dietrich and marlene dietrich so anna mae wong who was part of those charges charlie chan movies and lenny reeve install so here we have an example of two of the photographers intersecting he went to bonn germany and as he was photographing beethoven's bedroom some some brownshirts came in and they put the nazi wrea over beethoven so he took a took a quick photograph of it this kind of reminds me of george orwell's famous quote he'll controls the past controls the future and that's another part of fascism in tyranny the constant battle to to shape the way the past is seen because if we can shape the past and how it's understood and how it's seen we can help shape the present and by shaping the present we're affecting the future and they are again they want that beethoven mozart and other people but they want to remove anything that they considered bad so it wasn't a true depiction at the same time it was also about the present this is in berlin the flags are at half mast for the funeral of the president paul von hinde and berg was a famous general in world war one and you again you see the note with the growth of the nazi flags in the image itself i can stop begin to photograph the rise of the new german army from the soldiers to the chief of staff to the commander in chief he photographed mussolini in rome and his camera actually got taken from him at this as he photographed this he would photograph the meeting the first mean of of hitler and mussolini in in venice in venice he photographed this man and about two minutes later he photographed this man the same man this is joseph goebbels who is the head of propaganda for the nazis it's at the fifteenth league of nations assembly in geneva september one nine hundred thirty three this shows you the power of a team two minutes apart same man who would you want to have a beer with it also showed you which one would you want to publish in the newspaper which one could you publish in the newspaper so it again it shows you how a photograph can shape the way we see the way we think the way we perceive how a person should look or not look he would write about this photograph he called it from with love when i went up to him in the garden of the hotel he looked at me with hateful eyes and waited for me to wither but i didn't whether if i have a camera in my hand i don't know fear in one nine hundred thirty five  einstein would leave germany for the united states he joins thousands of other jews seeking asylum in other nations one was albert einstein as he was actually returning from the united states to germany when hitler  came into power in january of one nine hundred thirty three he landed in amsterdam he never set foot in germany again he returned back to the united states and became a u s citizen why did they leave because it was germany was because i mean a dangerous place for jews was becoming dangerous on the streets it was becoming more and more difficult to make a living this is the nazi jewish boycott on april first of one nine hundred thirty three it was a place where jews began to be a den a fight a den of fide discriminated against segregated ghettoized and ultimately moving de ported and ultimately murdered slash exterminated it was also a place of the the nuremberg laws where they also begin to say who you could marry and who you could not write marry this is i am a race traitor because a person had relationships between a jewish and in a non jewish person but where do you go if you left early like i didn't stop one nine hundred thirty five it was easier than if you tried to leave after kristal ht if you're young it's easier if you're single easier than if you're married if you have contacts like he did famous photographer what happens if your dishwasher what happens if you're a mechanic or a furniture store what happens if you have a disabled mother or a disabled child where the countries don't want to subdue people with disabilities and this is a this is a cartoon from the evian conference in july hundred thirty eight called the franklin delano roosevelt because he was trying to work out where jews could go any place in the world it was a failed conference including by the united states because the united states would not change their quotas on how many jews they would accept and they were saying ok we will accept jews if the germans will pay for them and of course hitler just laughed at it he said they don't want jews either so the question is where do you go and when do you go and so i can start as one of the lucky ones there were those who waited too long they always some would think the phenomena of hitler would pass but they chose wrong elbert eisenstadt would become one of the original photographers for life magazine more than twenty five hundred assignments eighty front covers and by all estimates and by all people a world one of the famed most famous photographers of the twentieth century this is perhaps his most famous photograph v j day in times square after the war he'd go to places all over the world photographed martin buber in jerusalem told joel and he would cover the war crimes trial in tokyo president's wife jackie onassis kennedy he also returned as an older man back to where he fought in the trenches and when he was there he also photographed lenny reeve install this was also somewhat controversial because there were many in the jewish community united states thought by him photographing her is again lifting her up she's somewhat like a medusa no matter how many times you try to cut off her head or cut or she would just keep growing and  said i was a photojournalist all of my life that's what i did so he photographed her and there we get have to their lives are very different but they met several times in their travels he would always i tried to keep in mind the most important thing about photographing people it is not clicking the shutter that counts it's clicking with the subject the next person we look at is is from berlin also from a merchant family a jewish merchant family irwin blumenfeld and he would write i was a berliner i am a berliner i have stayed nothing but a berliner he himself was a veteran in world war one and if you notice on his i guess it's on your right look into your tutu you're right he has a cross he was actually a red cross ambulance driver and a corpse carrier and he would write the stench of a hundred bloody corpses crammed together in a cellar is a wonder of nature especially in summer as part of his regiment he also was a brothel accountant and he would write i was supposed to record in my ledger which had made the lord be with us on the front the name and number of the girl the room number and the precise start in finish times he would go on to write it cost four marks for german marks one for the girl one for madame du vall who was ran the house and two for the red cross after the war are his experience turned him away from nationalism and turned him away of and he became a dadaist and a dog to us were some of the first shock artist in europe people like salvador dali marcel duchamp and others others they wanted to challenge the mindset of nationalism and they wanted to challenge the mindset of kind of what we would called civilized conservative kind of notions of what is art what is an art what is good what isn't good and they were radical and they create problems well he also became one and he became the president in in ha of a group in holland one of his famous inspirations was charlie chaplin and this is a collage that he created of charlie chaplin he would marry a dutch woman and they had a child and they would move to amsterdam and he became the owner and the solicitor i guess of a women's leather store leather shop of purses belts and other things but at the same time he was really interested in photography and so he began to photograph in the back part kind of like the studio in some ways he had the front part we're selling leather in the back part we're going to we're going to create a studio and that's actually what he did and this is a self portrait of himself and his wife he would begin to be moved to be a come a little bit more risque he would begin to talk the young women who came into the shop where they want to get their photographs taken and he would start moving to what you would call the artistic edge so here's nudes interracial marriages and this would be the first american that he did and her name is tara twain and from that he creates a business card in one nine hundred thirty three when hitler comes to power this is his view of hitler it's not the view of lenny riefenstahl he's not kissing little girls and you know being nice to two women and everything else he's saying this is what hitler really looks like and he called it collage hitler in one nine hundred thirty three it would later be used by the allies when they bombed germany they would drop them out of the planes to all the people who might find them below he had other versions of it and this is one of them and then he would also do a self portrait again this is  thirty three and he would write with cordial greetings thinking of the concentration camp very early so he's one of these artistic kind of guys who's always on the edge but because he's on the edge he's always kind of thinking ahead he's seeing things that other people don't really see he would think it off hitler in his autobiography called eye to eye he said without hitler i would still be in that leather shop but when hitler came to power he was importing from berlin he said i could no longer import leather i had to do something my business was going bankrupt i picked up a camera and i decided i would become a photographer and that's what he became and he moved to a hotel in paris and it's called the hotel and it was a hotel that primarily consisted of working girls or working women prostitutes he would have to do his own photo shoots around the times that the prostitutes were working he didn't know that this hotel would also kind of save his life in the future he also again photograph nudes and he began to move to high art fashion photography and this is an example of that but at the same time he also began to do a little political stuff this was called the dictator and it was part of a show that was held in paris when the german ambassador saw it he kind of thought that it maybe was representing adolf hitler became very angry and formally protested to the french government and sent unless you take that image out of the show we are going to create an international for and ultimately the french took it  out he would be he would be discovered by a man called cecil beaton who was an english fashion photographer and he was introduced to vogue magazine and he began to photograph high fashion art and women this is one on the eiffel tower in one nine hundred thirty nine he went to he went to new york because he was trying to make connections with harper's baza and while he was there it was a new york world's fair so he decided to go there he was given a press pass and he was just kind of cruising around and he makes a kind of connections with harper bazaar they told him he shouldn't return to europe he said you know i  was in one more i can't be into in my life i'm sure the war will never take place of course he was wrong and he regretted it in some ways the rest of his life in june twenty third one nine hundred forty he's living in in paris and it's conquered by the nazis and here's an photograph of adolf hitler by the eiffel tower and the nazi flag with the eiffel tower in the background now when he went there the gestapo began to look for him but he was always like one step ahead of them he took his negatives and gave them to one of the prostitutes and they protected him throughout the war but he and his family were moving and if you recall francis francis divided into the german occupied a france area so he actually gets arrested because he's a german national he also is jewish but he's a german national and that's the reason he gets arrested at that particular time and he gets put in a concentration camp and he gets put in the concentration camp way kind of down here near the bottom it's called laver nay he would write has anything at all ever been published about french concentration camps hell is a body politic like any other it is only inhale that human nastiness comes into full bloom he said they they sent people from devil's island into this prison camp with families and with others he said i saw people beaten to death i saw people starve to death but one of the things that he was always lucky blumenfeld was always lucky so they were going through some old magazines like vogue magazine some of the mafia types the criminal types and they say hey isn't this you and he said yes so they kind of adopted him he was their own personal kind of artist photographer and he was so much adopted that the commandant also adopted him and he started taking photographs of his family and one of the things if you read about french concentration camps if you had a special skill like maybe you were a good cook there's a man here from the watertown area waltham area named fred nasa he was actually in a french concentration camp and his uncle was a really master chef they survive because the uncle was a master chef because everyone wanted to eat his food ok other people would starve to death but if you could create food for a year the people in charge of your garden stuff you could maybe maybe survive he was moved into he would write today who ever talks about those who were starved or beaten to death in labor nay pale and this is what he said we ate pale brown chicory water for breakfast one ounce of bread to last the whole day and the main meal cass et maggot stewed in lukewarm dish water he would lose forty five pounds when he was in when he was in this concentration camp but again the commandant liked him a lot so he said you know you're such a good photographer and you're such kind of an interesting character he said i'm giving you a pass to go around the vichy area and that's what he did and he also said i want you to photograph some relatives near marsay and so he sends them out to marsay and while he's going all out once he starts thinking and he says you know it's not really safe in nazi in v c france for a jew or for a german a german jew in particular he said i really need to do something else so what happens is he goes to the u s consulate in mar say france and he begins to see the long line of people who are trying to get out some are jewish some are probably socialist mostly jewish and he began to count the people in the line and he said there's twenty four hundred people you begin to notice how long it took him to get to the front door and inside i said if i wait here it's going to be thirty days before i get to the front line there are other families you know that have their chairs they was person to go away and go to the bathroom and go eat but he said i'm just single here i don't have anybody family wasn't with them they were like in another kind of camping area and he said i have to do something so i went to a bar and he just kind of talking to people and once person said well you know the assistant consulate there like photography his name is all over here this so it kind of put that in the back of his mind and then he realized he had that press pass from the world's fair in new york so he decides he goes of air and somehow i'm not quite sure how he gets inside the embassy and he's trying to get an appointment with all of her hips so he's kind of wandering around and he comes to a room with a back room behind it and he says i as i come to the edge of the room i he kind of ecstatic noises coming from the back room and he said it kind of reminds me of some of the noises i heard at the kelty kotel and he said most people would leave but he said i'm a voyeur and he said and i needed  said i'm not going to leave so he goes to the next room and i looked in and there was a large photograph of franklin delano roosevelt there was a pipe on the table there was a bottle of brut champagne and then over there kind of in the corner there was a coach and there was a man in a he had wool pants but they were down to a speed he was lying on the couch and the woman had her head between his spread out legs and he said it was it was fascinating  but at some point they saw him and they kind of they're startled and the women who gets up and she comes up to him and she said you know i knew her name was cissy m and i knew at the celtic hotel and then he says in fact i was kind of in the same position of a few months before ok and he said she said all earl when we were just talking about your photograph nude in silk all over his comes up to him kind of pulling up his pants at the same as wine to shake his hand and he said how can i help you and he said vsam he got his visa ok but to get a visa isn't quite enough because you still have to pay to get out of the country at this point the belts are starting to be controlled by the french mafia and you know every at every step you have to pay someone so it takes a few months to get out and he's trying to get out and the boat captain at this point has very little money and finally says c m comes to help them again and she does the same thing to the boat captain so he gets he and his family get into the boat at marsay and they go to portugal and then they land a wild and casa blanca and they ultimately make their way to new york he would comment on this which is both this was said in one thousand nine hundred forty or forty one but it also could probably be used in more modern times he would write one skillful tongue is sometimes better than a thousand wise words i always think of other situations more modern about that but i think i will move on at this juncture he would go to new york he had little money but he knew he had contacts there from his earlier visit and a photographer was away and they needed to shoot done so they said would you be willing to do it erwin he said yeah i'll do it and he eat kind of the replace the person who was on vacation who was sick and he w later become one of the ones who would shoot hundreds of vogue magazine covers some of these two were actually in the museum of fine arts a few years ago here in boston and after the war this was his poster he created for the red cross as they were trying to help jews in displaced persons camps as well he was one of the lucky ones however if he had been at the kelty kotel he could have been like this class of jewish girls or the eighty thousand jews who were deported from france and only two thousand would survive so he was an opportunist because he knew to take a new that if it was there he was going to take a chance he was an icon st somewhat of an anarchistic and he was very lucky and if you talk to survivors almost all of them say i was one of the lucky ones why did you survive luck luck you maybe were helped but you also had to be lucky the next person we look at is eric solomon he was born in one thousand nine hundred six he was kind of the founder of what you call the candid camera i didn't start would say he was god to me he was so he himself also was a world war one veteran he was captured and he's to be on a boat for years in a french concentration camp and he learned french he always dressed with that tux and bow tie he was always distinguished they called him the doctor ok and he was what he was one of the fathers of photojournalism and he was one of the first to use that small camera in kind of political context after the war he began to work for an art house and they needed some photographs of a sign initially and he took it and he just kind of fell in love with photography this was one of his first jobs it was the murder trial of a safe cracker johann hein who was accused of killing three policeman you weren't supposed to have cameras in the court he smuggled it in with suitcases and his briefcase other times he would smuggle things in with his coat and he would photograph through his coat so he was kind of like what you call almost like a modern in certain ways he photographed famous people like king followed of egypt and the german president paul von hinde and berg sometimes he wasn't allowed in so then he would try to be creative and this is where they s you can't see hand in bird so he said so he rented the hotel room across the street he waited until him to pass through the window and then he photographed him he would he would say if you want to get into it the right place to photograph shoot you dress for the occasion you dress in a tuxedo you come an hour two hours early you go to the event he said you look so good and like you're supposed to be there that no guard is going to ask you to leave because they would almost be embarrassed to say are you come a little later when all at once the events going on and no one really cares if anyone else goes in or not one time he did the outrageous because the chancellor of germany was speaking and there were no empty seats to take the photograph so he  was asking the doormen are there he was asking the person in charge is anyone going on vacation you know all the chairs are full is anyone six know all the chairs are fall is there any way i can get in and one person said well there is one chair they said what's that when the chancellor gets up to speak there's an empty chair so he waited at the far end of the podium in the studio area he waited until the chancellor got out and as he got up he quick runs in sits in the chancellor's chair he already knew was sitting on either side he had taken photographs of them and their families so he hands on the photographs and while they're looking at the photographs he takes the photos half of the chancellor so that's the way he would think this are the french ministers a international conference and they had a bet could the doctor get in and they ultimately this is then the first guy point he's winning the bed and he said he said look at this is the doctor the king of the indiscrete ok and so there was always they would have bets whether he would make it again he would fair to graph a lot of famous people heinrich brewing who was one of the chancellors two chancellors before hitler the cardinal eugen cheli who becomes pope pius the twelfth he was the vatican secretary of state and he was one of the founders of the first reich concorde out with the vatican they were the first kind of country to recognise nazi germany and occurred on john july twentieth one thousand nine hundred thirty three i like to bring it up however because brewing was the head of the catholic center party it was at the time it was the last party that had any type of independence to challenge hitler in in in germany but a deal was made the deal between the vatican and the nazis was this if you let us control the german catholic bishops because they're kind of a rowdy bunch we will we will create a can cordon with you but the here's was hitler's cost so we will have the can corn but then catholics are not supposed to participate in politics like in the church or in the catholic center party so the vatican got control of the bishops but what was lost was that any political action that could come from the catholic community as a whole including the center party so then this raises question let's say i'm a jew who converted to catholicism but my grandfather was jewish when the nazis come into the church and they're looking for my birth certificate is that political when the mentally ill are being killed is that political when jews are being deported is that political the church will actually be respond to the mentally ill but the protestant in the catholic churches and they would help publicly stop it in one thousand nine hundred one but what if they had done that with jews or gypsies it's an opportunity lost history will never know solomon would take photographs unlike many photographs of the time which were step stage kind of photographs of the of the political figures and he would try to get them in candid perspective and it wasn't just the leaders he was taking photographs of he was trying to take the people around the periphery as well here you have mussolini and brewing who's also right up there in the center  people in the gallery the interpreter to diplomats making a deal the man who's waiting he was waiting in the wings two young lovers the man who's watching over the hats this is from new york city this is a boy's club this is the first photograph of the u s supreme court in session and that's louis brandeis right there he smuggled the camera in and took a secret photograph through his attach a case the first meeting of matt schmeling the german heavyweight boxing champion and franklin delano roosevelt know at the time a lot of people encouraged solomon and his family to stay in the united states or to move to britain but he refused he said you know i'm a european my works in europe i won't go back to germany i'll go back to holland and that's where he when he went to amsterdam he thought he was safe in his family went into hiding and was betrayed by dutch nazis how did they find him they were the man who read the meter they realized they were using more gas in quarter of amsterdam and it's being sealed by barbed wire on august twentieth one thousand nine hundred forty one one hundred six thousand jews from holland would be murdered in the holocaust the most famous is and frank but there were one hundred in i guess one hundred in five thousand nine hundred ninety nine others as well and one was eric solomon this is their experience they would be deported out of the town they would go to a concentration camp called westerbork they would be put on to trains and this is what they would be looking out as they left they would be sent to auschwitz and this is actually from hungary ariens not from people from holland but it was the same time period because they were also shipping those from ha from from hungary around the same time period elie weisel would write men to the left women to the right words spoken quietly indifferently without emotion eight short simple words yet that was the moment when i parted from my mother this photograph is truly there's two photographs here that are truly ones in the eye of the storm and this is what this photograph shows it is not like all these fancy beautiful photographs that these famous photo journalist and others took it was taken by a collaboration between jewish sonderkommando as the people cleaned up the bodies and polish partisans and they smuggled a camera into auschwitz and they took three photographs and if you go to auschwitz you will see these photographs and they're almost as large as the studio and what you have here are women who are undressing before they go into what they think are the showers and this is them on the outside what happened to them when they were taken out of the showers and that is what that looks like blown up not one of the reasons why why did they risk their lives if they were discovered they would be murdered they would be executed right it as soon as they were discovered they took them for us and they took them for future general and that's moral courage of the highest they weren't thinking of themselves they were thinking of a also people who worked in the dark room there were jews and others when they knew the russians were coming closer they began to take the developed photographs and pour water on them because they knew they would be more difficult to burn they would stack them and wet them by doing so it would be harder to burn them when the russians are right almost at the gates and the germans are trying to clean up any free photographs that they had around the people in the dark rooms would take them and they would start throwing them all over the floor like snow for us the last person we look at is roman vision e x he was born in moscow he was trained as a zoologist a scientist he began to take photographs as a young man he would write at the time when he first started taking photographs i felt this responsibility for history i knew it was my task to make certain that this vanished world did not totally disappear nish really he was kind of a veteran in world war one and when the road right before the russian revolution occurred he decided to demonstrate to be a peace demonstrator and as he demonstrated he gets arrested and he's supposed to be executed by the czar but the date that he's supposed to be executed the russian revolution occurs and he said at that point i realize that maybe there is a god because he was let out of jail but it was still unsafe for jews to be in russia even at that time so he takes his family to lot theo and from lot fia he goes to berlin very early like in the twenty's and he's a ph d student in international art and but when hitler begins to come to power he begins to be afraid and one of the persons asked him would you take photographs remember when they are measuring the jewish man with that it's kind of there on your far right that that contraption to measure the facial structure they wanted him to do that and he refused and he said all human beings are the same but he said the experience caused such trauma that for several months he couldn't speak approximately around one nine hundred thirty five one nine hundred thirty six two things began to occur he wanted to travel to eastern europe and photograph what was happening in eastern europe at the same time the american joint the joint distribution committee also wanted to fund a person to also because they also were afraid of what was going to happen so they began to fund and he begins to take trips to eastern europe like vilna out in the cities and in the country this is warsaw vilna vienna and he would write when i came to a new city i would not at first photograph the fear in people's eyes i always begin by photographing the most beautiful things i would carry a small hidden camera and a larger one a decoys that i would risk he would be beaten up nine times his cameras were often taken care of him sometimes he was also beaten up by his city jews who didn't want their photographs taken he would develop his photographs in in running water sometimes in winter in in  russia and then he would take them home develop him and his daughter remembers they would all be on their like a living room thing and they would be trying to walk over them and organize them he would meet people like henrik schwartz a salesman who would help him get into places where they were doing the cabal and other places like that henrik schwartz would be the only one who survives of his family he would make his way alternately to israel and these would be some of photos of vision vision e x photographs he also wanted to save the beauty of eastern european jewelry and there you have it the the candles the torah the books etc but most of all he wanted to photograph faces and these are some of them but he also at the time anti semitism was also in lithuania it was also in poland it was also in hungary and you begin to see the effects of that and with the rise of germany the anti semitism became stronger there as well like in this photograph the person in the far back on your right is a polish undercover police officer because he's because jews can only sell in certain places where a young girl who's getting a ticket or a young boy jewish boy who no longer has is starving or a man who's unemployed and these are actually polish the polish people who are demonstrating against and he would begin to kind of photograph the fear in people's eyes one person a photograph right after chris right before kristallnacht is is nellie stubb who was age eleven and she would later become mrs si katz and she would see a photograph in one of his books in one nine hundred sixty another one would be sarah aged ten her father did the painting on the back she would not survive the war what happens to vision  his photographs his photographs somewhat like blumenfeld his photographs were first smuggled out with his family they would go from our say to cuba to miami the confiscated by the u s state department but ultimately given back to them and they make their way to new york his family got out before he did he himself was trying to get out he's in france he gets captured like blumenfeld and gets put into vichy concentration camp but he has contacts with the joint he has contacts with a lot the in government so he basically gets released from prison and he goes maher say portugal cuba miami and ultimately new york city in new york city yes afraid what's going to happen to the the jews in europe and he sends his photographs or some of them to franklin delano roosevelt and eleanor roosevelt hoping with the know something horrible is going to happen they don't hear for many months and then after a while they get a card back saying nice photos he himself would become a professor at pratt institute in new york city of science of art and of ethics he would state this my mother taught me first you must be a good human being then a good jew whenever he would start one of his classes he would state in the name of the creator let us begin he would not have agreed with lenny reeve install saying that there is a separation between art ethics or science and ethics he would say there is an ethic moral basis to our choices and to what we choose to do or choose not to do through my personal grief i see in my mind's eye the faces a six million of my people in a sense who were brutally murdered by order of a warped human being the memory of those swept away must serve to protect future generations from genocide l e v's l who is right there in book involved we are only messengers with some luck other men and women will benefit from our experience and learn what the individual is capable of doing under a tall the tearing and regime where the line between humanity and inhumanity becomes blurred karl jaspers who married a jewish wife he was a famous german philosopher he could not teach in germany this serves as a warning from history as it was possible for it to have occurred it is also possible for it to occur again and you who to by our an israeli holocaust historian  quick preface when i was putting this talk together remember the question what about germany roman vision was the last person i came to this is a very long talk and you're trying to i didn't have time to put in the faces of all the faces i wanted to put in i had to choose and i remember sitting up in my library swallowed by my book my mess and everything else and as i was looking through all the images of r man visioning at i felt the whole community surrounding me and is at that moment i realized that even those who were murdered in the holocaust are no longer with us as flesh and blood their spirits still exist they are so they want to teach us they want their faces seen they want their words heard and they want every person nation and generation to understand the lessons of the holocaust i'm