Ron Boat & Andrew Nagorski go Nazi Hunting…. Trip 1 & Trip 2

Ron Boat & Andrew Nagorski go Nazi Hunting

In the course of my work I’m fortunate to meet, and work with, some fabulous people. Interesting people with diverse backgrounds, lives of accomplishment, even intrigue. Over the last couple of years I’ve had the chance to interact with such a person – Andrew Nagorski. One of the most fascinating people I’ve ever talked with. [You can read his more complete bio is HERE.]

In light of today’s ongoing journalistic fiasco with the media, I present this interview, as it shows what takes place in the process of reporting world events, and the lengths that a good reporter will go to in order to get a true, in-depth and honest story for his readers.

Andrew Nagorski is an award-winning journalist and author who spent more than three decades as a foreign correspondent and editor for Newsweek.

From January 2000 to July 2008, Nagorski served as senior editor for Newsweek International, handling the editorial cooperation between the parent magazine and its expanding network of foreign language editions, launched during his tenure. Newsweek Arabic in 2000; Newsweek Polska, in 2001; Newsweek Russia in 2004; and Newsweek Argentina in 2006. Nagorski has been honored three times by the Overseas Press Club for his reporting.

He was Berlin bureau chief from 1996 to 1999, providing in-depth reporting about Germany. From Berlin, Nagorski also covered Central Europe, taking advantage of his long experience in the region and his knowledge of Polish, Russian, and German.

From 1990 to 1994, he served as Newsweek’s Warsaw bureau chief, and he served two tours as Newsweek’s Moscow bureau chief. In 1982, he gained international notoriety when the Soviet government, angry about his enterprising reporting, expelled him from the country. After spending the next two and a half years as Rome bureau chief, he became Bonn bureau chief.

From 1978 to 1980, Nagorski was the Hong Kong-based Asian regional editor for Newsweek International and then as Hong Kong Bureau Chief.

In 2009, Poland’s Foreign Minister Radoslaw Sikorski presented Nagorski with the newly created Bene Merito award for his reporting from Poland about the Solidarity movement in the 1980s. In 2011, Poland’s President Bronislaw Komorowski awarded him the Cavalry Cross for the same reason. In 2014, Poland’s former President and Solidarity leader Lech Walesa presented the “Lech Walesa Media Award” to Nagorski “for dedication to the cause of freedom and writing about Poland’s history and culture.”

In our discussions, I had an opportunity to delve into some background as well as talk about his most recent book, “The Nazi Hunters,” a detailed account of the worldwide search for those who tortured, maimed and massacred in the name of the German Fatherland. You’ll find his book here on Amazon.

This is the first of two parts on our interview journey.

RB – So many of us go to school, learn a trade or follow in family footsteps, finding a comfortable path of interest, but rarely do people venture out, following another route to more exciting careers. What motivated you to step out and take the course you did?

AN – First, for me it was part of what my father did. He was a risk taker, brought up in Poland, studied law and then Germany attacked Poland in ’39. As a soldier, he and other Polish soldiers were ordered to report to POW camps. He escaped instead, traveling by foot with others and eventually winding up in Paris then Britain. After the war when I was born, my parents came to the United States as political refugees. He started a small news service focusing on life behind the Iron Curtain, and then joined the U.S. foreign service. When I was growing up we lived in Cairo, Seoul and Paris. So I was exposed to many places and cultures, and hearing a lot about the war and history. I also grew up bilingual, since my parents made sure that we spoke Polish at home.

It was probably only natural that I majored in history in college and then was attracted to journalism as a profession. Right after college I spent three years teaching high school social studies. But I then jumped at the opportunity to do a “try out” at Newsweek that developed into a full time job.

RB – And did writing books then naturally follow as an extension of your reporting?

AN – In my case, it did. Writing for a magazine or a newspaper, you’re forced to compress your stories and leave out some of things you find really interesting. You leave out the back story and wish you had more space to develop it. In the back of my mind I always wanted to write a book. In ’82 I was expelled from the Soviet Union because the Kremlin didn’t like my reporting; as a result I became the story as sometimes happens with reporters. I was disappointed not to stay but saw an opportunity to write a first-person account of my impressions of the Soviet Union and that became my first book.

My next book focused on the transformation of Poland, Czechoslovakia, and Hungary after the collapse of communism, something I also witnessed firsthand as a reporter.

But living in places like Moscow, Berlin, Bonn and Warsaw, I was also constantly confronted with the legacy of the war and the Holocaust and the question of how Germany could ever have been taken over by Hitler and his Nazi movement. I still had the opportunity to interview many people who had lived through that era, and I began writing books on those subjects.

RB – In your positions you’ve seen many events that shaped the world, met many people that participated in, watched the growth or destruction of societies. From Steven Spielberg to Mikhail Gorbachev and Boris Yeltsin, tennis legend Boris Becker to Kurt Waldheim. In their presence, did you get a true look into their political and societal soul, or were they so influenced by their positions, politics and affiliations that the true person wasn’t doing the interview?

AN – It’s always a challenge to interview major figures, since they are usually careful about how they answer your questions. They can appear very scripted. But if you got to know someone before they rose to a top position, you have a better chance of breaking through the talking points. For instance, I interviewed Lech Walesa, when the Solidarity movement he led was still struggling against repression. When it triumphed in 1989 and he became Poland’s first freely elected president, I could still talk to him more informally than others could who were interviewing him for the first time. The same was true of Vaclav Havel, the dissident playwright who led the “Velvet Revolution” in Czechoslovakia

It’s also interesting to do interviews with rising starts in other fields.

In Monte Carlo I interviewed Boris Becker when he was 19; he was already the number 2 ranked tennis player in the world and it was easy to forget how young he still was. When I completed our interview, he stretched his arms and I could see that he had been sweating. I realized that he had been more nervous about the interview than I was, although he was the star and I just the journalist. He could go out and beat the best tennis players in the world, but he was still a kid and nervous about talking to a representative of a major news organization.

RB – During your time in the field for Newsweek and others, you certainly had your time behind a desk, researching and writing. But when those assignments demanded the more involved, clandestine, even dangerous times; being followed by the KGB, or shedding the watchful eye of the government police intent on denying you a secret interview with Bujak, the leader of the Polish underground; did you feel the intrigue, the threats, the dangers, or were you so focused on the story as the centerpiece of your thinking?

AN – You always want to get the story but part of the story is getting the interview, and you can’t help but be affected by the tension surrounding it. Ron, you mentioned the meeting with the leader of the underground Solidarity movement, Zbigniew Bujak, who was the most wanted man in Poland at the time. They had imposed martial law and he was on the run.

I was approached by Solidarity activists and asked if I wanted an interview with Bujak; I said sure but I don’t want to bring the secret police to his door and have him arrested. They said don’t worry about that – be at this corner at 6 pm and someone will come by and give you a signal and you follow them. We went through a courtyard and out a door, jumped in a car that pulled up, drove around the city, got out again and went through another courtyard and into another car, and so forth until they were sure no one could be tailing us. We wound up at an apartment building on the outskirts of Warsaw and I was brought to an upper floor apartment and had a 3 hour interview with Bujak. I was excited and a bit nervous, but mainly because I did not want to endanger Bujak.

In part 2 we’ll hunt Adolf Eichmann in South America, travel with Pope John Paul II and touch on the ISIS/Nazi connection.

My thanks to Andrew for his friendship and taking an extra amount of time to talk about an extraordinary life filled with adventure, history and intrigue.

In pursuit of good reading from quality research, I’m confident you would enjoy a view of history from Andrew Nagorski. A real-life review from the ground where it all happened.

Ron Boat & Andrew Nagorski go Nazi Hunting…. Trip 2

In the course of my work I’m fortunate to interact with some fabulous people. One such a person – Andrew Nagorski. One of the most fascinating people I’ve talked with. [You can read his more complete bio is HERE.]

Andrew Nagorski is an award-winning journalist and author who spent more than three decades as a foreign correspondent and editor for Newsweek.

He has served as senior editor for Newsweek International, launched Newsweek Arabic in 2000; Newsweek Polska, in 2001; Newsweek Russia in 2004; and Newsweek Argentina in 2006. Nagorski has been honored three times by the Overseas Press Club for his reporting.

He was Newsweek’s Berlin bureau chief from 1996 to 1999,  Warsaw bureau chief from 1990 to 1994, and served two tours as Newsweek’s Moscow bureau chief.  From 1978 to 1980, Nagorski was the Hong Kong-based Asian regional editor for Newsweek International and then as Hong Kong Bureau Chief.

We talked about his exciting background as well as about his most recent book, “The Nazi Hunters,” a detailed account of the worldwide search for those who tortured, maimed and massacred in the name of the German Fatherland. You’ll find his book here on Amazon.

This is part two on our interview journey. (Part 1 is HERE)

RB – In your years of writing overseas for Newsweek, did situations of intrigue, danger and history make you a better writer, allowing a better story when in such precarious situations than a guy that shows up, asks questions and goes home?

AN – I think it has to. Once you go through an experience like that, you want to be able to describe it in detail not just some humdrum story that limits itself to “ok, I interviewed this guy and this is what that person said.” How you got the story becomes part of the story. You have to become more adept at writing the description and narrative.

In my latest book, “The Nazi Hunters” when I would go to someone’s house and talk with them, I wanted to describe the scene and that person’s emotions, not just what he or she did. You want to put the reader in the situation, allowing the reader to feel what you felt.

RB – In that most recent book, you extensively researched the efforts of those seeking to find and bring to justice those who committed some of the most heinous atrocities in human history. Do you feel a personal attachment or commitment to documenting such stories?

AN – You can’t help but feel such a commitment when people confide such stories. When I was in Poland in 1995, for instance, we decided to do a Newsweek cover story about the 50th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz. I tried to find every survivor I could to tell the story of the last 6 months of the camp. So I went all around Europe finding survivors. You don’t sit down with scripted questions in such situations since I found that the survivors usually poured out the stories of what happened. And there are always personal experiences and stories you’ve never heard. You can’t help but be affected by those stories.

One such untold story was about the Israeli Mossad’s effort to kidnap Adolf Eichmann from Argentina, and then fly him to Israel for trial. But El Al had no regular flights between Argentina and Israel. A special flight was planned but what if that didn’t work? Plan B was to bring him by ship to Israel and the only ships available were cargo ships that brought Argentine kosher beef there. In the end, they got Eichmann out on the special flight. But if that hadn’t worked, he could have been smuggled on an Israeli ship carrying kosher beef. Some irony.

RB – With your books’ more specific subjects, is your background Jewish?

AN – I was born into a Polish Catholic family and raised as a Catholic. I don’t think you need to be Jewish to have an interest in the Holocaust and World War II. What happened in that era has much broader ramifications about human behavior, demonstrating that people are capable of both good and evil. It is hard for anyone of us who did not live in such a dangerous period to imagine what people went through—much less to know how we would have behaved under similar circumstances. But we should try to understand those circumstances as much as possible, and I hope my books help readers do that.

RB – We’ve worked several times for the Holocaust Memorial Museum in DC. In doing those projects, we see such an intense passion, a need to carry the torch of historical remembrance ingrained in that segment of society. It seems at times to be an overwhelming memory instilled in every man, woman and child. Does the history of that era ever diminish, or is it necessary to honor those who sacrificed so much and to prevent its re-occurrence? Is it tough to write about such human carnage?

AN – You owe it to the victims not to forget them and just write off their fate as a normal consequence of war. There also has to be some lesson learned from our recent history. The Nuremberg and other trials after the war offered one such clear lesson: it is never acceptable to excuse mass murder and atrocities by saying, as almost all the Nazis did, that they were just following orders. We are all responsible for our actions.

RB – And it’s not just the physical impact but the mental anguish for generations…

AN – …Yes, but there’s even more anguish if these stories are bottled up and forgotten. When I interviewed the Auschwitz survivors, I would tell them that if we touched on any part that was too, painful, we could stop the interview at any time. After telling me his life story in great detail, one survivor said:  “I never told anyone any of this because no one in my family was interested.” I was stunned. Many people kept things bottled up for decades and the younger generation was so concerned with their own lives that they never asked about grandpa’s situation.

RB – Most people never find themselves on the world stage of events. In your time covering Europe and beyond, did you have the feeling of being a part of a greater involvement – an inside view of something important? Or is your thinking just directed to meeting the people, getting the story, finding the facts and presenting the events in order to engage others more than yourself?

AN – I don’t want to overstate my role as an observer but I do feel there were times I was very fortunate to have the chance to witness history in the making and to report on it. I was lucky to be in certain situations where I could relate a story with meaning and realism. I felt that with the Solidarity movement, for example, I was able to tell the story and thereby perhaps contribute a bit to their effort to gain their freedom.

RB – When you look at your experiences and travels with intrigue and danger etc., what was the most fun you ever had?

AN – That’s a good question. Maybe interviewing Boris Becker or traveling with Pope John Paul II, who of course was Polish. He did not give formal press conferences, but on trips on his chartered Alitalia plane where he and his entourage were in the front and the international press corps would be in the back. He’d wander down the aisle and everybody would get to ask one question and it was fascinating. He was so multilingual that the international reporters would ask a question and he would usually respond in the language of the reporter. It was amazing to watch. I could ask my questions in Polish, and I felt I was giving him a bit of a break when I did so.

In the 80’s during the Reagan years, during the arms buildup, I got to take a flight in an F-16 trainer after they crammed weeks of safety drills into 45 minutes. During the flight, I really came to understand the concept of g-forces in a very direct way. I managed to avoid getting sick—but just barely. I also got to drive an M-1 tank, that was really fun – sort of like driving a large motorcycle. Those were incredible experiences that allowed me to get some feel of what others do on a daily basis. You come away with real respect for the men and women in our armed forces.

RB – Seeing the leader of a worldwide church, which isn’t totally a political position, have you seen a shift with the current Pope – do you see a difference with his political involvements?

AN – Of course there are always personal agendas and backgrounds, Pope John Paul was the first non-Italian Pope elected in 453 years and some thought he was too focused on Poland. Pope Francis, who is from Argentina, has a different mindset. Some of the issues in Latin America, such as economic and social inequalities, loom larger in his thinking. While John Paul was often critical of capitalism as well as communism, Pope Francis often sounds more strident in his critiques of Western societies.

RB – As a conclusion, and based on your view of history and bringing your book, The Nazi Hunters into the discussion, are there any comparisons to be made between Nazism and modern day ISIS, their methods and execution of their long-term plan?

AN – I think the difference is that ISIS is not a state, not organized in the same way as Nazi Germany. But in terms of their ruthlessness and willingness to go to extremes, yes there are parallels. It is worth remembering that when Hitler was rising to power he was saying things that seemed so extreme that people would rationalize that he can’t really mean it. They assumed he was not going to try to eliminate all the Jews and eliminate political opposition, and that once in office he’d become more moderate. So there may be a lesson there.  When ISIS says they are going to eliminate Israel then you need to take them seriously and not believe they don’t mean it.  They think in totally different terms than most of us and for them there are no boundaries; they are operating outside anything we consider to be a normal mindset.

My thanks to Andrew for his friendship and taking an extra amount of time to talk about an extraordinary life filled with adventure, history and intrigue.

In pursuit of good reading from quality research, I’m confident you would enjoy the view of history from Andrew Nagorski. A real-life review from the ground where it all happened.