 Good afternoon, everybody. Welcome. My name is Michael Llanosky. I'm the dean here, and on behalf of the law school and the university, I want to welcome all of you. I want to recognize before we get started, and I'll be brief, but I want to recognize Lynn Friedman, who is a member of our board of trustees, law school board as well, adjunct faculty. Lynn was on the group that planned this particular event. But I want to, she's not in here, but I want to give a little shout out to Chelsea Horne, who organized getting the exhibit from the ABA present here at the law school. And Dave Du Marzio is responsible for, we'll be taking the exhibit into his custody soon. So thank you. That's all worked so smoothly. This is a program that is, that we're sponsoring in collaboration with the federal district court, and that collaboration has been smooth as always. So what I'd like to do now is welcome the chief judge of that court, the chairman of the law school board, and also an adjunct faculty member, Lynn Smith, who will say a few words and introduce our first trustees. I'm really in honor to collaborate with Roger Wooden University Law School on bringing this exhibit from the ABA to Rhode Island and to have it in two locations here at the law school and at the district court. I think it's terrific. To have a program like this is even more special because we really get to dig a little deeper with the program that the law school has put together today. So I want to thank Dean, thank Dave Logan for thinking and suggesting that the exhibit should be brought here. Programs like this I think are really valuable to us because they give us a chance to kind of step aside from the early burly of our daily work as judges and lawyers and academics and really focus on fundamental questions of why we do what we do and what drew us to the profession and really what it would be like if it weren't for lawyers. And it's not very often that we take the time to do that but I think it's really important that we do that as lawyers and judges and academics so that's why I'm so excited that the exhibit is here and that we're going to have a terrific program today. My job is very easy and that is to introduce you to two people who need no introduction at all. One is Dean David Logan, just retired, former Dean and now Professor of Law at the Law School and I'm confident everybody in this room knows that Logan is not going to say anything more about him. And the other is to introduce our first speaker, Judge Michael Silverstein. So Silverstein is on the security board of the bench where he has served a great distinction for 20 years. He was in private practice for 35 years before that so you can do the math. And I would bet you to say he's probably the only one who was just fairly alive at the time of what this does today. Judge Silverstein is a wonderful judge and a wonderful privilege of practicing before the judge. So I'm going to have Judge Silverstein to get his... 25 years, I practice for 21 years, I've met a judge. Why do I tell you this? One of the brochures that announced this event had the following statement. The exhibits Rhode Island sponsors hope that it sparks both personal reflection and public dialogue about the lessons of history and how they shed light on our current institutions and values. You're going to hear my perspective, speaking for the judiciary, not speaking from a political point of view, hopefully. But my perspective, and I told you a little bit about me, because I think we're all a product of our environment. My thinking probably reflects my background. I was born in Providence. My family was born in Providence. My parents were born essentially in Providence. But going back beyond that, they came from Europe. And they were European Jews, not Germans, probably Russians. I know a little bit about the Holocaust. The events that are reflected in the exhibits really were the preamble, I suppose. They show that an effort, conscious effort, was undertaken by those in power to decimate a portion of the legal profession and the judiciary. By the way, essentially the same thing probably happened in education. I said I know a little bit about the Holocaust. I think of the Holocaust in terms of six million people, Jews, Gypsies, socialists, whatever. I can't put a face. That exhibit puts a face on it. That exhibit shows the connection with some, I don't remember if it was number 18 or 20, whatever it is. Distinguished lawyers, distinguished judges, advocates, and other reasons. I wasn't reacted to by the non-Jewish judges and lawyers or the populace. That, you all know that. I'm sure you're going to hear more about it from our featured speaker. Why was there not an outcry? It's inexplicable to me. Fast forward, fast forward to today. I read this little word from the brochure. It asked that I reflect on current institutions and values. I said before these remarks, I'm not political, but I am concerned. And I think we all ought to be concerned. When we turn on the television and see attacks as part of our political campaigns on groups of individuals, groups of people, campaigns early. But I don't hear any great outcry about the nature of some of the things that we all are hearing on television. I actually heard that there is a proposal supported by legal authority, I am told, to say that necessarily people who are born in the United States may not be citizens despite what the Constitution says. I haven't heard a great outcry about that. Maybe I'm missing something. I don't profess to be a constitutional authority. I would hope that after you view what you haven't you all have the same experience that I had. Which is to make me stop the things that I've mentioned. I'm only a few to ten minutes on it. So let's do that now. So be it. I do want to add one additional comment. And that is both those faculty of the law school here. I take great pride in the fact that many years ago I had a limited role in the establishment of this law school. I served on two committees. One that consisted of the managing partners of some of the larger firms and some judges that did a review to determine whether or not there should be a law school and recommend the board of trustees which I was on at that point. I was appointed to a committee of trustees to a follow-up investigation. And from all that, incidentally that was chaired by one of the great deceased now former chief justices of our state and vice-president. From that came this. And for that, as I said, I have a little bit of pride. Again by thanking Judge Smith and David Marzio from the federal court and Daniel Noski and his staff here. This is a perfect example of why Rhode Island needed a law school. And it's also a perfect example of how deeply embedded we are in the judiciary and the practice of law in Rhode Island and putting patterns of two-way street. So I want to thank the judges and lawyers here for their part. I'm going to give a little bit of background. I'm going to add some more particular personal comments. But as an academic, I have to give you the background. All right. So here we go. In the late 17th century. We won't spend a long time back there. A number of Jews began settling in the area we now call Slovakia. And like Jews across much of Europe, including Central Europe, they gradually gained rights. And many of them became active participants in their political, educational, and cultural lives in their countries. After World War I, the victors had on their hands the possibility, the option of creating new countries. And so they created Iraq, they created Yugoslavia, and they created Czechoslovakia where there hadn't been countries before. And Czechoslovakia, as the name suggests, was the Czechs, largely Protestants from the West, and the Slovaks, largely Catholics from the East. And so for a brief time, Czechoslovakia was a shiny example of a successful democracy. And there were, at its peak, 135,000 Jews in Czechoslovakia, about 5% of the population. Jews were allowed to worship freely. Unlike in many countries, there were not quotas banning them from higher education, which was the case in the United States for many years. Then they were able to fully participate in the political, cultural, and professional life of their country. You're going to hear from one of the country's great experts momentarily about the Holocaust, but I want to make a couple points about how the experience of Slovaks and my father fit into this. Basically, Hitler and his cronies came up with a three-step plan to deal with what they call the Jewish problem. The first one was to expropriate, to take away from Jews their ability to make a living. So one part meant aeronizing businesses and then off of turning them over to gentile owners. There also was a plan to take Jews in government positions and universities and the professions and no longer allow them to engage in that kind of activity, that kind of meaningful professional and economic activity. Second step was to separate. To take the Jews and move them into ghettos often in cities and then, at various points, to move them into concentration camps. So a concentration camp just means concentrate. Doesn't this mean what you do with them there? But to get the Jews out of the mainstream is best they could. And third was the physical removal of Jews from those ghettos and concentration camps to deportation and after the Wannsee Conference in 1942, exterminate them. So those are the three steps. So Germany began this process in 1933 and in 1935 passed what you'll hear, I'm sure, about the Nuremberg laws. And a key part of the Nuremberg laws was to do two things. One was to define who was a Jew, because if you're going to discriminate against Jews, you've got to define who they are. And secondly, it was identifying those places in public life where Jews could not no longer perform. So it was the professions, it was universities and government positions. In March 1939, Hitler broke Czech Slovakia back into two, took the Czech part and made it part of the Reich and created an anomaly independent country called Slovakia and the Eastern lands. As I suggest, the Eastern lands were more Catholic and he appointed, and there was some vague effort at making this an election, but basically a very pro-Catholic priest who was very nationalistic and had anti-Semitic sympathies, but who was mostly a nationalist. But his prime minister was a hard-line fascist who was deeply anti-Semitic. And so over the next couple of years, there was this battle between two leaders, both of whom didn't like Jews, one of which wanted to follow a gradual program of removal of Jews. Another one wanted to accelerate things, remove Jews from public life and private life immediately and ship them out. And basically, Hitler chose to align himself with the hard-line prime minister. And so very quickly they started introducing various anti-Semitic laws, which restricted the ability of Jews to be lawyers. And so Slovak Jews, you know, there may have been some lack of knowledge, sophistication of what was going on in Germany, but there was at least a general understanding of what was happening to Jews in Germany as a result of the Nuremberg laws. And so Slovak Jews started to think, you know, I wonder how much of this is going to come our way. You know, and it seems to be moving very quickly. In Germany it took four or five, six years for Hitler to sort of do this whole, most of this plan. And Slovakia, it looked like it was coming down to happen in one or two years. So basically one year all the Jewish businesses were Aryanized and all Jews were told they could no longer work as lawyers, doctors, universities, and government officials. And Jews were fired from the jobs in large numbers and the first step was completed, which was to turn Jews into the wards of the state, have no economic wherewithal. So that's the background. So here's my particular connection to it. My father was born Lodislav Lervenbaum in a small town called Trenchen, Czechoslovakia, small town of 50,000 or so. And like, as I said before, many other places in every year, he was raised in sort of a relatively normal life. He could go to college without there being quotas. He was able to go to law school and then went on and studied in Paris, completed his legal studies. His father was a postal clerk, his mother was a homemaker. They were not observant, but they were Jews by virtually any definition that the government chose to use, and certainly the one that was used by the Slobaks. So he completed his studies, he came back to his hometown and hung his shingle, went into a general practice, and spent three or four years representing whatever sort of came through the door. Then in 1939, the reign of terror began and there was untranalled street violence against Jews, much like there had been by the foreign groupers in Germany, but also the implementation of these Czech versions of these Nuremberg laws, which said two people, including my father and his brother, a doctor, they could no longer practice their professions. And so they decided to escape before the borders closed behind them, as they had in some other... And so my father shuttered his law practice, and his brother diagnosed him as having a nervous breakdown and said they had to go to Yugoslavia to Dalmatian coast for rest and relaxation, and somehow the authorities bought it. Now you couldn't leave with any money, and you could leave with the clothes on your back, but at least you could leave. So my father and his brother left in 1939 in late July, early August. And I'm sure they expected at some point, as most people did, that this would pass and their families would be reunited, but the parents were in their 60s and they had no interest in packing up and going on the road, and young people were both psychologically and physically more willing to take those risks. But there was not to be any reunion. Like Schindler's List, soaring troopers arrived one night in this town of Trenchin, forcibly moved all the Jews in town, and fortunately, at that point, at that town, they weren't set to death camps. Rather, the Slovaks had set up substantial labor camps, places where you would work people to death, but you'd get some meaningful economic value out of them rather than sending them off to the gas and gas chambers. So his parents, my grandparents, were sent to these work camps in a rural part of Czechoslovakia. Their home was taken and my father's office was turned into a barbershop, given to a classmate of his from elementary school. The barbershop was brought to Yugoslavia, then Italy, which he said treated Jews much better than Slovaks did, even though they were formally aligned with Hitler. And then finally to the south of France, and like tens of thousands, and I suspect there may be some of your comments on this, but tens of thousands of Jews, but also a substantial number of communists, homosexuals, political pariahs were pressed down on the border of south France, desperately trying to get across Spain, which was fascist, to Portugal. And if any of you who are fans of the movie Casa Blanca, that's about getting the papers to get to Lisbon. Remember the very beginning, Sam hides the papers under the piano, and at the very end, Rick is there, and he's getting ready, his love of his life is deciding to fly with her Czech patriot to London to freedom. So the goal was to get to Lisbon. Lisbon was an open city, and it's a whole interesting story about how Salazar played both sides against the middle, but the goal was for many, many, many, many, many people to get to Lisbon. So it took my father about two years to get to Lisbon. And once you had to Lisbon, if you had connections and money, but just good luck, you could get to London, you could get to the United States or to Palestine, and the ship that my parents and my father and brother got on happened to be going to the United States. We went to New York to Palestine, and a story that we still don't know the exact explanation for, he became Leslie Logan, and his brother became Joseph Logan. And like many immigrants, had their names that the families had given them and they had lived with as professionals, as individuals, or in my father's case, 33 years, a brand new name that sounded American. So I'm David Logan, the son of Lotta Sloth Lermanbine. My father spoke no English, and he said to Europeans, would you ever know who's going to be ruling you at any given time? But he had no money, he couldn't speak English, so he couldn't go to law school. So he took a bunch of menial jobs, bus boys at a restaurant, night watchmen, and gradually found a job as a radio announcer for the Voice of America. But it turned out the Cold War, we wanted it to beam our propaganda to Slovox with Slovox voices. So my father found a life as a radio broadcaster, not a lawyer, but he found a meaningful life and meaningful work in the United States. Of course he never saw his parents again, but he was very proud of the life he built in this country, and in particular the fact that both of his sons became lawyers, but also became law professors, he had a great respect for both the legal profession and for the academy. So one final anecdote, in 1996, I had never gone back, my father never went back, my brother never went back, but in 1996 we decided to do what we call our Roots Tour, and so my son Ben and my son Daniel, my wife Jeanne and I, and my brother gathered in in Bratislava, rented a van with a driver and a Slovak speaker, because in a lot of Slovakia in 1996 English wasn't understood. And so we decided to go look for the town and the graves and sort of the history of my family, which we had never been able to see firsthand. But we did have one interesting clue. We had tracked down a middle-aged man who was a little bit complicated, whose gentile mother was my father's law secretary, legal secretary, and we met him with our translators in a small restaurant in Trenchin, and he brought with him a Manila folder, and through the translator he explained to us that he was giving me a copy of a letter that was on my father's letterhead. I'd never seen his letterhead. When you're a refugee you don't carry your letterhead with you when you hit the road. So I had no evidence of him practicing law of that sort. It was a reference letter my father had written, likely dictated to her and she typed in Slovak that said, more or less, because of law I can no longer practice law, these new laws, these anti-Jewish laws, I can no longer practice law, but I recommend Eva Skarbova. She's a very diligent and loyal secretary. I don't speak Slovak, maybe she said she took a good shorthand, I don't know. But this was now, this is the most cherished piece of evidence I had of my father's life as a lawyer. And it's a poignant reminder that my father had a real life, an honest, respectable member of the community before he came to this country. And it's also a reminder, this is something that I think both the judges that preceded me will agree, that that little piece of paper is a tangible example of why the rule of law matters and why the people that enforce the rule of law, which are the lawyers and the judges, are so incredibly important to live in a democracy that respects us and to be part of the educational process that turns into the next generation of lawyers. So for that reason I'm delighted this exhibit is here and I'm delighted to participate and thank you very much. So my name is Bruce Kogan, I'm on the faculty here at Roger Williams, I like the dean was one of the founding faculty members 22 years ago when the doors opened to a then under construction building which we have a and it is my sincere pleasure to introduce Professor Richard Weisberg who is the Floresheimer Professor of Constitutional Law at Cardozo Law School which is part of the Ushiba University in New York. Richard has his bachelor's degree from Brandeis, his master's and PhD from Cornell and his JD from Columbia. Richard is no stranger to Roger Williams Law School because he previously visited here to teach an honors perspectives course to participate in Symposium with Carl who organized on Lawyer Collaboration with Systems of Evil was a part of our community for a semester and it was wonderful to have Richard here then Richard's participation in this program makes complete sense Richard has spent a significant portion of his scholarly activity and Richard is a prolific scholar as written books, many articles but a lot of his scholarship has focused on the law in connection with what happened in Europe during the Holocaust and he has a very respected book on this the work that he's done both in the Academy and outside the Academy because Richard has been successfully involved in litigation involving reparations, restitution to Holocaust survivors particularly with regard to what French banks did to Jewish families, the wealth of Jewish families during World War II Richard's been involved in that over a long time was appointed by Professor Obama to the US commission on the preservation of America's heritage abroad and in 2009 had bestowed upon him the French Legion of Honor for his human rights work in helping to institute recognition of the Jewish victims of the Vichy regime I said Richard is no stranger to the law school Richard is also no stranger to me our mothers pushed us to Central Park in baby carriages in 1944 so I've known Richard my whole life Richard is my closest friend and his career path to law and to the academy we have sort of managed to keep on the same path and have managed to stay in touch with each other so having Richard come here is a personal pleasure for me to spend some time with him and today with another classmate of ours from elementary school and junior high school and high school and FOA who's at Brown University so it's a personal pleasure Richard and I not only went to school together but we were teammates on a very famous New York institution the Panthers which was a club that Richard founded where we challenged other teams of kids to play ball with each other and so that's part of my memory of Richard so there's a lot of nostalgia there and now I look at this resume and have Richard here and realize he's actually accomplished another aspiration of ours from when we were children which is at one point we thought we might run away and join Lauren Legion and in fact he's done that and I never got to do that so it's my pleasure to introduce my friend my oldest friend Richard Weister what can you say after that kind of from this kind of close and wonderful friend I just add that his Bruce's remarks were so fusibly kind that it calls behind the response of many speakers who get wonderful introductions and they say well that is the kind of introduction that my mother would totally agree with my wife would have completely disagreed on the other hand my wife was with me in that wonderful earlier visit that we were able to have to this terrific law school and she regrets not being able to come here today for this sensational event and I would obviously like to thank all of the organizers and also the earlier speakers today who really touched me each in his own way very much but of course thank Dean Yelmowski just for inviting me Dean Morgan for his remarks just now Judge Smith and Judge Silverstein it is a sensational exhibit and even if you've been working in the field for a certain amount of time you learn a lot an extraordinary amount and it's encouraged me to maybe alter some of the things even the structure of what I was going to speak to you about today except in the following way I want to bring in France actively somewhat in comparison with what we learn through the exhibit about Germany in France during World War II 1940 to 1944 in the case of what we call the Vichy France the regime that the Germans more or less permitted to exist autonomously in the southern part of France most of you know that story but to do with Casablanca because Vichy law which had a strongly anti-submitted component to it and was promulgated autonomously by the French in the zone called Vichy that the Germans permitted them to have under Marshall Petain Vichy law also extended to North Africa and much of what goes on in that wonderful film has this coloration of Vichy which is mentioned as a Vichy policeman the story of France during World War II is a sad and shameful story it took a while for that story to come out I'm going to tell you a little bit about it but by now most people do know about it the German story of which we see so many tragic evocations connected to murders in the exhibit was a story that for many reasons had to emerge fairly quickly after the war I might add the German reparations since Bruce was kind enough to mention some work I did involving reparations for victims of Vichy property restitution that took place through the federal courts in the United States administrative agency the story about France was kind of covered over about 40 or 50 years it was a massive PR job done by people who I otherwise admire especially responsible for not getting the shameful part of the story of France during World War II was Charles de Gaulle himself who kind of single handedly and single-mindedly revived France from the ashes which he knew France had fallen into because of its behavior during World War II and he single-mindedly and single-handedly promoted various myths and I think each country in Hitler's Europe had its own myth ways of trying to avoid people recognizing that it wasn't just Hitler and the Third Reich but it was a series of other regimes some of them relatively autonomous as in France others quizlings and collaborationists it was a series of regimes country by country that in their own way did the evil work unabashedly were going to use in the symposium that Bruce mentioned Carl Bogus organized a couple of years ago collaboration with the systems of evil that evil work was done in different ways country by country so I want to let you know a little bit about what France did and to be online with what we're talking about in this exhibit specifically what they did to lawyers the story is not dissimilar to what you have learned out there and maybe from other reading that you've done the story is not dissimilar from the one that we see in this exhibition but there are some very interesting nuances and differences I want to read in the spirit of the very very personal and touching stories that we have heard today both in the exhibit and also more personally from the speaker who just told us an amazing story about his own father I want to talk to you personally about Jewish lawyers during Vichy France who were persecuted and the response of their colleagues at the bar because we were asked to think about why there was no outcry these things went on country by country and in general with several exceptions very rare our profession did not speak up against the obvious persecution isolation expropriation and eventually extermination that was occurring being forced upon their own Jewish legal colleagues why was there no outcry this is a huge question and it's relevant in year 2015 I don't know if I'm going to be able to answer that today but I will tell you that when Jewish lawyers in Paris that is in the occupied zone where German troops were present and a German administrative government was ruling French lawyers were very quickly isolated some of them arrested and found themselves at the risk of losing their lives some of the most prominent lawyers at the French bar whose stories would be even better known in France at the time than maybe the stories of some of the lawyers here were short circuited so badly these were lawyers who were well known at the bar and they found themselves very quickly into the Vichy regime in the occupied unoccupied zones they found themselves at great risk Jacques Charpentier was the head of the Paris Bar Association a very powerful man a very powerful official after the war he wrote about some of these colleagues it was published in 1946 for a while it was about the only thing we could find out about the treatment of Jewish lawyers until the archives opened really in the mid to late 70s and early 80s in France and I was fortunate to be one of the first researchers to get into the Paris Bar Association and to see some of their files there was great resistance in France on all public levels until about the early to mid 1980s and there's still is some in opening the book about what the French actually did but Charpentier wrote in 1946 his own personal feelings when he saw that distinguished colleagues at the French Bar were being disbarred arrested in some cases forced eventually to wear the Jewish star on their robes when arguing in court if they still had the possibility of arguing in court their property expropriated and blocked and in other ways being victimized by the regime that was both German in the occupied zone but very much influenced by French legalistic anti-Semitism coming from Vichy and he says about these colleagues what was their crime that of having professed a political belief to which they ardently adhered that statement alludes to the fact that some of the lawyers who were socialist tendencies and they were talking only though right now that Jewish members of the bar what was their crime or that even more grave of remaining faithful to their professional mission of defending their comrades like some of the lawyers in Germany right up through the early 1940s if they were able to they used their skills to help defend even less fortunate people what was their crime he finishes a short statement by labeling their crime as follows above all they were lawyers their speech was free and they pleaded undisguisably they stepped to the bar especially in the criminal court rooms where those they defended were unpopular they spoke with fervor they denounced intolerance and they exclaimed their passion for justice taken as hostages as was true of half dozen of the most famous lawyers at the bar just before being shot at the fortress of Yves Lee during a feeble dawn of day they addressed to their professional leader meaning himself the head of the war association moving farewells that resonate still for us as we read them with appeals to the freedom of defending others that these executioners could never stifle beautiful words post war words from the head of the bar association too many of his colleagues were being arrested some of the murdered and a few of them showed up on the first deportation trains to leave france for the east in early 1942 people like P.M. Moss and other people well-known names still this day within france but here's what's interesting and ambiguous about Jacques Charpentier's eulogies really post war there was no public outcry from the french bar association the french bar association unlike the way law developed in germany during this tragic period the french bar association retained a sense of its own autonomy prideful autonomy from Marshall-Payton's regime for example I don't know if you've been to the pavé de justice which is where a lot of the action I'm now talking to you about took place that's the Paris bar and eating that takes place within that wonderful courtroom in Paris and that palatial structure the regime wished to impose an oath to Marshall-Payton civil servants had to take that oath judges and all jewish judges which was also true in germany all jewish judges and prosecutors and assistants were summarily dismissed early in both regimes 1933 in germany 1940 in france lawyers continued to practice gradually reducing the number of jewish lawyers through numerous clauses the bar association in Paris refused to have its members take an oath to Marshall-Payton claiming that our organization is a group of liberal professionals we are not attached to the regime the way you might say judges are in a way or civil servants we're part of a great liberal profession and we don't take an oath to any leader and remember these are terrible autocratic times in which even that kind of stance was very risky and they prevailed they never had to take an oath specifically to the leader of the Vichy regime but they never mustered their forces although able to protest vigorously and effectively as lawyers can do and as bar associations can do they never mustered their forces under Charpentier's leadership to challenge the racial laws that their own regime was promulgating against the jews and to challenge the treatment that their own members were receiving any consolation solace any feelings of regret were expressed exclusively privately here's what Charpentier said publicly even after the war about why he could not or chose not to get his very powerful membership capable of protest in many ways against autocratic regimes standing up in some ways even to the Nazi occupiers could not get them to protest publicly and work against the laws that were identifying their colleagues and others as jews which were laws that their own regime promulgated that were more extensive and expansive more punitive than even the Nazi laws even the Nuremberg laws of 1935 since 1940 says Charpentier in the same book a law excluded the sons of refugees from the profession of law several prior years this type of measure was strongly desired by the Paris Bar now he's not talking about jews exclusively he's talking about lawyers who didn't have french parents before the war he continues we were invaded by those recently naturalized we were invaded by those recently naturalized almost all of eastern origin whose language was ridiculed by the press thus covering us with shame talking about the old line lawyers at the bar in Paris they were subject to ridicule because these other lawyers who were quite competent and were pleading had foreign accents and foreign ways about them they brought to the conduct of their practice the customs of their bazaars now this is one of the most outspoken as I've pointed out to you and I've read only one passage of the many very sympathetic eulogizing passages expressing deep sadness about the persecution of jewish lawyers in France which was not dissimilar maybe took a longer time and was I think more subtle and complex than the persecution of the german lawyers who were jewish that we see in this exhibit and yet he's really giving us an answer to the question why was there no protest everybody felt uncomfortable not about the old line french lawyers they regretted that those people were suffering but about those who had come from the east fleeing hitler in many cases but not exclusively and who brought to the bar the customs of their bazaars pretty damning and supplies of one word answer at least and there have to be other answers as well to the question why was there no protest and here from the very group that was protesting in so many other ways and areas the autonomy of the bar as they always understood it from even the most autocratic regimes it's called xenophobia in thinking about why in which everybody who works in this area is always thinking about how could such a thing happen why did it happen and now again my focus is based on this exhibition or many many questions that can be categorized under that big umbrella question why why did no one speak up in France a key answer I think is xenophobia and I think it's a very important question for us today as one of the earlier speakers pointed out the sickness of xenophobia led to I'm not overstating this led to participation by some of the best and the brightest and the most liberally minded professional communities in Europe in genocide in isolation, identification expropriation imprisonment and genocide those are Raoul Hilberg's five steps towards every genocide some of which are going on in the world today every genocide Hilberg says talking about the one in Europe that we are considering every genocide has those steps the first step is identification who is a june that's very complicated we have gone through this in the United States identifying racial minorities as a matter of law we have gone through this and God forbid we may be going through this again identification complicated process involving lawyers and judges and a lot of hair splitting complicated analysis involving grand parental heritage which was a factor in Jewish identification both in France and in Germany in France if you had more than two Jewish grandparents you were irrebudably considered a Jew and if you only had one Jewish grandparent under Vichy law you were irrebudably considered a non-Jew even if you were in fact Jewish, secretly Jewish, ritualistically Jewish unless you announced non-Jewish the complicated case were the Mishlinga as the Germans would call them that is the descendants of two Jewish and two non-Jewish grandparents which occupied French courts and French law professors and treatise writers and lawyers in their practice over a four-year period and it was pretty good business in trying to make these distinctions in all of those categories identification, isolation we see that in all of the stories having to do with German lawyers a terrible sense of just losing all of your bearings you are ripped out because of this identification from all of the anchors that kept you alive and active and the bar did very little throughout France I've studied not only the Paris Borough but other associations such as in the Yonge very little to re-anchor or re-inspire and invigorate its Jewish colleagues identification, isolation Jews in every country in Hitler's Europe expropriation we are only now beginning to make amends and to some extent with the help of American federal courts although the process is very slow and fraught with risk to bring a measure of justice back for those in France and other countries in Hitler's Europe who were ripped off and were talking about billions of dollars in France we managed to restore 150 million euros it's a drop in the bucket of property that was expropriated and has not yet been returned it's a huge ongoing story because it involves art restitution and we all know some of the more famous stories there imprisonment as these lawyers were imprisoned quickly some of them and eventually genocide means extermination and the French lost 75,000 Jews largely deported under color of French law itself from both the occupied and unoccupied zone how did it happen well xenophobia is just a small slice of the pie but it's an important answer coming from France France and Germany I think did have in common and I'll close on this because obviously we all want to leave room for your questions so there's so much more that can be said there was a racial component in both countries far more virulent in Germany French racism was a more of a polite variety and you've even heard a little bit of that in what I've read to you then the jugular frontal racism that came out of Germany obviously from the GEDGA fear of the left fear that somehow liberal professions will drift towards causes like socialism and communism fear of liberal individualism in and of itself which we associate with the practice of law at its best autonomy from authorities that impose their sense of things on us lawyers are supposed to be often are in the vanguard of those who are thinking critically about accepted truths well the leaders in France and Germany feared that greatly for that reason by the way Hitler hated all lawyers I think about some lawyer jokes some of them originated with Adolf Hitler he really absolutely detested all lawyers especially detested sub-category of that it's over determined why these terrible things happen it's over determined and we have to continue to try to think about it in Germany unlike in France there was from the beginning a drive to have everybody belong to the community to the folk as opposed to sustaining individual rights that was less true as I told you in France the idea of the fear of a prince that judges should make decisions not according to statute books but according to what the community the folk as led by Hitler apparently would want in each case German distortions of law were not based on positivism but a distorted second form of communal natural law in which the furors will even if there were no statutes on the books was supposed to dictate outcomes in court you didn't get that in France you didn't have that sense of community and those lawyers who did manage to survive and some of them were Jews either because the Jews in Paris and elsewhere in France hid their identity I interviewed two people who just said we never I have four Jewish grandparents as Jewish and I pleaded at the bar in Paris unimpeded for four years that was very unusual for different reasons the bar to the extent that the court was permitted Jews or those with records in World War I of bravery or in the droll daguerre which had just occurred of bravery who managed to get exceptions and there were some of that in Germany too believe it or not those who managed to survive until later years in France did try with the exception of this Jewish question to maintain the great principles of individual liberal professionalism so there are differences but tragically the main story is one of similarly sad sometimes incomprehensible tale that we have to continue to consider thank you very much so we deliberately did try to set aside some time for questions and answers if anybody would like to ask a question I would just appreciate if you could identify yourself don't need to be at the mic just identify yourself I'm delighted to see that there are some folks here who haven't been here before a special welcome to you although the person who's about to ask a question has been here and is a student and also welcome to our studio my name is Matthew Thomas I'm a 2L here I want to thank everyone it was really fantastic seeing the exhibit and hearing the story today made me think about my own grandfather and the anti-Semitism base working in the federal government during World War II and then I was wondering the response from the American bar to what was going on in Europe if you guys know much but obviously we know the general apathy what was going on but specifically along this time not a happy story not a happy story the one very well known example involves a great Czech figure named Charisti no he's Polish but let's call him not a Czech almost as cold as you are and an elegant figure who actually was led through the concentration camps and then wanting to tell the story to Americans what's going on not too many people have witnessed this and he targeted, he was a very very elegant modest person but people said why don't you speak to Justice Frankfurter who was sitting on the court and as happened often in other with other witnesses who were trying to tell people what was happening Frankfurter essentially said to Charisti you know I've heard what you say but I just can't believe the stories that you're telling I can't believe the stories that you're telling so that's really one of the highest Jewish figures at any rate obviously who were in positions of authority in the war a person otherwise very sensitive to his own Jewish roots and we know a lot now about what actually happened and still does seem incredible let me just add a couple quick things there were many people in the federal government the State Department that were anti-semitic and the Secretary of State was a deeply anti-semitic man so among the things that were going on was a tightening the vice on immigration and I don't know for sure whether there were German lawyers or Jewish lawyers in the Department of State and other parts of the federal government that were turning a blind eye to what was going on there but it wouldn't surprise me if there were no Jewish lawyers in this and as Professor Weisberg said much of this was a conspiracy of cowardice as opposed to a conspiracy of active support for bad behavior and the why question why American lawyers didn't see the threat to French lawyers and Czech lawyers who they knew were not able to practice law anymore you know, got an ocean didn't feel as immediately threatened as Britain did the British Bar would be a little closer question because they were physically essentially adjacent to France what was happening in France what stories about the British Bar stepping up If I can put in a plot the only thing my dear friend did not mention about my whole past that you would want to mention publicly is that I do have a new book called Imprisoned Transigence and Imprisoned Transigence does tell the story in a way of the British Bar as translated into the British Channel Islands I don't know if any of you know this the British Channel Islands were occupied for five years Jersey, Guernsey, Alderney Sark, I don't even know if anybody's been there were occupied for five years English speaking peoples who had British traditions of fair play and due process also not a happy story deportations took place from the islands they developed their own racial laws very little protest though there was one intransigent in my mind that's good in a sense I mean stood up and said what we are doing is wrong on the Channel Islands but there's a lot more that we really have to learn about what exactly happened as far as the matter of the stage Yes, Jasmine Well, as we stated earlier I suppose it's true for many the Holocaust doesn't have a fair play My grandfather was arrested in 1940 in April as part of the A.B. movement because he was a teacher not because he was Jewish because when Hitler invaded Poland once they finished that they decided that anyone intellectual was a threat so they took them all away He managed to survive which is the reason I'm alive because my dad was pun after the war but he never stayed quiet about it and even during the communist times he still spoke up against the government as he did back then too So for me it's always been something that's been there it's always been a part of family history it's always been something I've known my favorite word when I was three I think I ran around screaming it for days So how do we keep that alive though for people who don't necessarily have that and even for those who do My grandfather died in 2007 born in 1910 Even those who did survive are alive they're not going to be around for long so how do we keep it alive so it doesn't just fade away something that just gets forgotten Because some people are here And perhaps through exhibits like this Right, but younger your question entails its own answers and you will be out there and you will make sure that people and there are a lot of other people like you and that will make you a better warrior Just a reason here I want to take it back to us Yes, just quickly I'm the past president of the Holocaust Education System and the Jewish Alliance and I find I have a parthora of great speakers We teach the young people We teach it We're going to get into the public schools Many do The Catholic schools have been wonderful and we teach Holocaust genocide and it's very necessary and this is just a great great resource for us and I'm sure if we could call on any of you to speak to our young children there's no better way to teach people than to teach Thank you Yes, David and then Mary I was just going to make a comment at a concern that I experienced probably 15 years ago now I have a good friend a young woman who's an attorney in Germany one raised German grandfather who fought in World War II on the Russian Front and she happened to come as an intern when I was in Boston and we took her in and came very close to her and I remember having an interesting Thanksgiving dinner with her with my father at the table my father had been in World War II had been through the war from North Africa to Sicily D-Day plus two unbeknownst to me until after he died he liberated one of the camps and I found photographs I never knew existed and notes about the horror of the situation where we were talking about things and the sense of denial that this woman has a lack of desire to want to talk about that concerned me because you know, you think nowadays that Germany is a different place it's maybe a bit more enlightened you'd like to think that things have changed but what concerns me there and I wonder if the same is true in Japan World War II as well if there's we don't realize that there's a denial and a constant attempt to gloss over and push away as though you know, we had no responsibility in this you know, this attitude that ultimately is setting us up again once again for the possibility some way down the road that this is going to happen despite the fact that we have people who can speak to it either indirectly because their parents who suffered through it or indirectly because my father saw the horror that was caused how do we how do we not only keep it alive here but how do we continue to engage in areas where people want to just pretend it didn't happen to? Well, since you reference Germany and since education is such an important part of I think sustaining people's sensitivities long after the last survivor has died about this issue I just want to mention that I've taught German law students about the Holocaust. I taught a course with Bernard Schlink maybe some of you know he's a wonderful writer he's a judge in Germany and he's a law professor but he's a novelist he wrote a novel called The Reader which was made into a huge Hollywood thing he's a friend of mine but you know sometimes you can envy your friends. Oprah mentioned his book but I'm raising this because I met that 25 students took the class. It wasn't only about the Holocaust but some of the readings touched on the Holocaust and I'm a little more hopeful at least at the moment from hearing them and talking to them that the memory will be sustained very sensitively a few of them were still shattered emotionally and they didn't do anything their parents really didn't do anything and in some cases the grandparents were not culpable and yet one of them said to me she was from Nuremberg that every day she goes back to her hometown she feels a great sense of shame Nuremberg was especially active anti-Semitic Hitler all of the parades and the laws that originated but you're right we don't know any more than we know what our own younger generation will do Germany so far I'm not all that concerned about but I think some other countries in Europe are fighting back I think the word use of shame I think that was what I was sensing is that there's a shame element there and if we could break through the shame element and be able to talk and get beyond that I know how you do that but that was what my sense was was holding us back in the conversation but I think in a younger person it was very very moving to see a person who had no reason whatsoever regretful about her own generation that sense of shame I think was being channeled into a lot of thinking in our heart not only her brain about never again and how could this have happened yeah I am you know it seems that here as I suspect in Germany there was this sense that this can't happen here that we have a very robust advocacy on behalf of the disenfranchised and we have a very well functioning legal system as compared to many other countries but I know that was the belief among assimilated Jews in Germany as well my grandparents thought it's not going to happen here until 1938 and I wonder within both the judiciary and the legal profession how prior to prior to national socialism how robust was the defense of individual rights and the rights of minorities did that exist? was it not part of their subject tradition? there are several references in the exhibit about Weimar Weimar was between the wars somewhat idealistic regime that came out of World War I in Germany Weimar is a very complicated story and you can read terrific books that have been translated by people like England and Michael Stalas to learn more and many other historians they happen to be lawyers about the Weimar period Weimar tried to inculcate through its constitution in other ways a different kind of attitude less authoritarian in Germany than you had even before World War I was an imperial regime which had authoritarian judges in France it was the third republic and that means liberty equality and fraternity and I won't say in the twinkling of an eye because this doesn't happen that way but relatively quickly most French lawyers turned around and accepted the regime's new approach which reversed most third republic or republican values it can happen transition is a part of our lives transition of regimes is a part of our lives so things can happen relatively quickly there needs to be a bulwark of individuals who will speak up in support of what they and others feel were the best of the values that they feel need to be sustained and there wasn't very much of that I was struck when I learned a little bit about the Dachau trials that the US conducted of war criminals that there were many convictions but then very few punishments because the US found it more expedient to get Germany on our side so I wonder if that's part of the explanation right? if it was expedient for the United States to say okay we're not going to go ahead and prosecute these people that have been convicted of war crimes because we want to win a war we want to get a good situation in terms of power over Russia doesn't that explain it in an individual as well it's expedient not to pursue this well I think there were also trials led actually by the great Norbert prosecutor Telford Taylor who was fortunate for me a colleague of mine for about five or six years where judges were put on trial and you're quite right although there were convictions those judges it's very complicated those trials are very complicated and fascinating for us and you can find the transcripts and explanations very few of them spent very much time in jail if they were convicted life goes on and we have kind of flexible pragmatic developments that are always challenging our own individual sense of something wrong maybe is going on here maybe we shouldn't be playing ball with the country that we just defeated to the extent that we are fighting communism by letting these war criminals go I don't know if it's human nature or just the way societies operate but I think the same thing happened during the war itself that is to say people just said we have new conditions now we have a new France that lives in a new Europe and Germany Hitler was a master at both creating and playing on people's fear of emergencies and we have had our share of emergencies in this country during our own lifetimes sometimes they're created by our leaders sometimes they actually happen but emergencies make us feel that we need to move along to the next step 9-11 is an example a lot of it's another conference I'm sure you've all been following legal developments or you should post 9-11 both in the bush and in Obama men in both of those administrations there have been some remarkable deviations from what the rule of law seemed to mean prior to that and I think to their credit some lawyers have sort of tried to say yeah we have an emergency but we don't think that everything has changed we're not so sure about wire tapping we're not so sure about Guantanamo we're not so sure about drone strikes etc so there are iterations of this I think phenomenon if you have an emergency it's human nature and professional nature an emergency changes everything we've got to move on but isn't this all about demonization of the other and fear of the other so the other changes the other changes one has to choose from the other that was convenient now it's Muslim terrorists are the other and so there's fear of the other you can justify an awful lot by demonization of the other and if there's an emergency you double down I'm just a lawyer in Rhode Island I have a question just a little country of law I have a question first I want to thank the people who organized this for keeping this story alive so my question is I'm concerned about 2015 and this country to be blunt and I recently read I don't know how to pronounce his last name I think it's Tyvee he wrote an article about this vast crowd of people running for presidency he analogized it to a clown car which is a small car where like 20 clowns keep coming out of the car and you don't know how many more were in there and it was very well written very entertaining article my concern though is there a danger and I'm wondering people's knowledge of what happened in Europe leading up to the Holocaust is there a danger that we think and then maybe the Germans thought that Hitler was just a nut that achieved power was he viewed as just a nut and not to be taken seriously and it couldn't happen here and is that what we're potentially doing right now because there are there are a lot of nuts but what I hear a lot of is oh he's just a nut it could never happen here and I'm wondering do the Germans think of Hitler it's kind of hard to based on what I saw in the lobby downstairs it's hard to imagine that after 1933 or so people wouldn't be really scared but I'm wondering if initially there was an attitude of he's just a nut we're good people we're bright people we would not let that happen here is that a danger that we face today I'll tackle that I'm Paul Diarmond Professor of Philosophy and Grammar I think the answer is no that is to say in the early 20s like at the time of the Munich Beer Hall of Butch he was one right wing fanatic among many and the Nazi Party was tiny but eventually of course he was much more successful than others but he wasn't more extreme than others and then of course he was voted in in 1933 majority after the Nazi Party had very tiny percentages up until 1930 but he wasn't considered he wasn't a clown he was representing what a lot of people wanted eventually settled down on him but he represented something of a lot of people wanted I have never sat on a panel without the dissent but I would respectfully based on the comments I made in my remarks dissent from that comment I think we have time for one more but I encourage you we've got some refreshments out in the atrium where the exhibit is to continue these conversations but for now thank you I don't often admit anything about my age but I was born shortly after the end of the war and being Jewish and being raised my father was born in Czechoslovakia and had come here as a child and members had not been so lucky and they were killed by the Nazis I lived in a Jewish neighborhood my neighbors had tattoos on them so I was really raised it's really part of my personal culture but I have the benefit of being raised in a wonderful time where I wasn't discriminated against where there was an effort to embrace the survivors and it was politically incorrect to be anti-Semitic I'm going to say that over the last year or two in my entire life I have seen more anti-Semitism in reports that come out of Europe and some out of the United States and some in educational institutions discriminatory it's shocking I never thought I would live to see that and I'm just going to I'm reminded of Martin Niemauer which I don't think I will say it very well but when the Nazis came and I could be wrong about my history here to take the communists I wasn't a communist so I did nothing when they came to take the social democrats I wasn't a social democrat so I did nothing when they came to take the Jews I wasn't a Jew so I did nothing or remain quiet as we were talking about when they came to take me there was no one left something of that I it's not a very good rendition but it's somewhat accurate so that's all I have to say Any last Just one last same course Just the the theme of so many of the comments here is how how do you keep this story alive what do we do about it it's a great turnout that we have here today but beginning in September this exhibit will be also at federal courthouse in downtown Providence and it's a it's a terrific building in its own right but it would be really nice to have this exhibit there and I would just like to put a pitch out there to those of you who are in the bench and in the bar and in the community who may took the trouble to come out here to Bristol to give something to your colleagues who are downtown to take a minute to come by the courthouse and look at the exhibit because I think the answer the hard question is to keep the dialogue going and that's what the exhibit is all about and one way to keep that dialogue going is to push people to take a minute and to observe so if you would do that and those who are motivated enough to be here push those a little less motivated to come to the courthouse and take a look at the exhibit so thank you all again so much for coming and for participating this was a terrific event and I do hope that you spread the word about the exhibit and please join me one more time in thanking our speaker Mr. Weisberg has some comments of an article that he broke that's related to the subject there are four there will be available outside so rush run don't walk