In April of 1944, Walter Rosenberg escaped from Auschwitz alongside Fred Wetzler, making them two of a very small number of Jews who were able to escape a concentration camp and make their way to safety during the Second World War. In the first of this two-part conversation, Jonathan Freedland and David Rubenstein discuss how anti-Semitism shaped Rosenberg’s life in the years leading up to the war, his eventual internment as a teenager in Slovakia, and how his plans to escape took shape once he landed in Auschwitz.

The Escape Artist: The Man Who Broke Out of Auschwitz to Warn the World, Part One

Explore the rich and complex history of the United States and beyond. Produced by the New-York Historical Society, host David M. Rubenstein engages the nation’s foremost historians and creative thinkers on a wide range of topics, including presidential biography, the nation’s founding, and the people who have shaped the American story. Learn more at nyhistory.org.

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In 1991, a crew of New York City construction workers found the remains of a massive burial ground under twenty feet of rubble, just blocks from City Hall. The forgotten cemetery contained the remains of as many as 20,000 African Americans, and pointed to the countless untold stories of the enslaved and free people who lived, labored, and died in New York. Historian Leslie M. Harris joins David M. Rubenstein to shine a light on these stories, tracing the early African American experience in New York from the arrival of the first slaves into the city in 1629 to the devastating racial violence of the New York City Draft Riots in 1863. 
Recorded on April 10, 2023

In the Shadow of Slavery: African Americans in New York City, 1626–1863

The discovery of the cell in the 17th century caused a paradigm shift in medicine, with the human body coming to be seen as something never before imagined: an ecosystem in and of itself; a collection of innumerable organic parts working in tandem to fulfill our biological functions. Physician and Pulitzer Prize-winning author Siddhartha Mukherjee sits down with David M. Rubenstein to explore how this watershed moment came about and how its effects are still playing out in the form of radical medical advancements that draw into sharper relief what it means to be human.  
Recorded on December 13, 2022

The Song of the Cell: An Exploration of Medicine and the New Human

Throughout history, Americans have looked to their president for guidance, seeking leadership from the nation’s highest office during times of turbulence. Historian and lawyer Talmage Boston speaks with David M. Rubenstein to discuss the leadership lessons that can be learned from America’s most effective presidents—from Washington’s precipitous rise to power to Reagan’s ability to motivate and inspire optimism—and how they can be instructive to today’s leaders. 
Recorded on February 12, 2024

How the Best Did It: Leadership Lessons from Our Top Presidents

J. Edgar Hoover was not only the inaugural director of the FBI, but the architect of modern American law enforcement. Hoover’s stewardship over America’s justice system was as robust as it was ruthless, while his connections to white supremacists and the religious right spun a complex web between policing, politics, and race. Historian Beverly Gage sits down with David M. Rubenstein to discuss her Pulitzer Prize-winning book on Hoover, tracing the lawman’s decades-long career shaping the American legal and political landscape, a period of immense influence that would span eight presidencies. 
Recorded on March 8, 2023

G-Man: J. Edgar Hoover and the Making of the American Century

In December 1941, Nazi Germany controlled much of Europe, Japan was fighting a brutal campaign in China, and the United States had yet to enter into combat on either front. The attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7, however, changed everything. Historians Brendan Simms and Charlie Laderman join moderator David M. Rubenstein to dissect the five crucial days between the attack on Pearl Harbor and Nazi Germany’s declaration of war on the United States, tracing the strategic decisions that would irrevocably change the course of the Second World War. 
Recorded on July 31, 2023

The Escape Artist: The Man Who Broke Out of Auschwitz to Warn the World, Part One

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