Khaled Abou El Fadl

DATE July 16, 2002 ACCOUNT NUMBER N/A
TIME 12:00 Noon-1:00 PM AUDIENCE N/A
NETWORK NPR
PROGRAM Fresh Air

Interview: Khaled Abou El Fadl discusses various interpretations
of the Islamic holy book, the Koran, and his growing up as a
Muslim extremist
TERRY GROSS, host:

This is FRESH AIR. I'm Terry Gross.

My guest counts himself as one of the moderate Muslim intellectuals living in
the West who are fighting for the very soul of their religion, fighting
against extremists who believe that true and faithful Muslims should rejoice
at the spread of terror. What gives him special insight into the minds of
extremists is that he was briefly one of them as a young teen-ager. He grew
up in Kuwait, and now in his late 30s, Khaled Abou El Fadl is a professor of
law at UCLA, where he teaches Islamic law, Middle Eastern law, anti-terrorism
law and immigration law. He's the author of several books, including
"Speaking in God's Name: Islamic Law, Authority and Women." His next book,
"Tolerance in Islam," is due out this fall.

I asked El Fadl what he found appealing about the extremist form of Islam that
he gravitated to when he was young.

Professor KHALED ABOU EL FADL (UCLA): I was attracted by the feeling it gave
me, the high. I can describe it as a high of confidence, confidence,
confidence. You just feel so secure and confident in your beliefs that
suddenly your view of life becomes very, very simplified and very streamlined
and you have a superhuman level of confidence in what you can do.

GROSS: Can you think of examples of things that were plaguing you with doubt
and how those doubts disappeared after you became an extremist?

Prof. EL FADL: Well, the types of social frustrations that I remember very
clearly were an extreme level of displeasure at the way the society in which I
lived, both in Kuwait and Egypt, were structured. In other words, there were
kids who came from elite families, or families connected with the government,
who had impunity, and I, from the family that I came from, relative to these
kids, I was a nobody.

For instance, one of the turning points in my life--I was--once a kid who was
from a prominent family beat me up in the street in front of my brother and in
front of friends. And I couldn't strike back because I knew that his family
was well-connected in the government and that he could--if I as much as
defended myself, he'll have me thrown in prison and probably have my family
hurt.

And the degradation, I remember this--although I was at the time about 12
years old, I remember it as if it was yesterday, the feeling of utter
degradation and humiliation. And when I joined the more (technical
difficulties) uncle complained to my mother that I was such unpleasant social
company, because every time they would take me to go see my uncle and my
cousins, I would cause such amount of anxiety by simply going around with my
nose stuck up in the air, commanding and ordering and saying, `This is wrong,
this is wrong, this is wrong.' And I just--frankly, you know, I don't know
how they put up with me.

GROSS: Your family wasn't happy with the extremist form of Islam that you had
begun to practice. Did your family help lead you out of it?

Prof. EL FADL: Yes, absolutely. I mean, you know, I was going on one of my
fits, one of my rants. And I actually don't exactly remember what particular
thing I was having a fit about that day, but I had gotten to the point where
every single day I was having a fit about something my sister was doing or my
brother was doing or, you know, always calling it a sin and blasphemy and
they're going to go to hell, and so on.

And I'm not quite sure why my father, that particular day--normally he
wouldn't respond to me. Normally, he would just keep reading or working and
just shake his head. And that day, he closed his book, he looked up at me and
he said, `OK, Khaled, since you are convinced that you know everything and
that your knowledge--God speaks through you with such absoluteness, I'm going
to strike a deal with you. And you know me, I'm a man of my word, and we will
abide by this deal.' And, of course, I paid attention, and he said, `I'm
going to present you with one challenge. You go and attend a class that I'm
going to take you to on Islamic jurisprudence, and if you are able to answer
all questions about that class, about the material presented in this class,
one session, from now on, every member of this family is going to obey you
blindly as you want. We're just going to do whatever you say,' you know,
effectively become my slaves, because, of course, I was convinced that I knew
everything. I spoke on behalf of God, after all.

GROSS: So what was the test he gave you?

Prof. EL FADL: Well, he took me to a class in a different mosque than the
one that I attended, and it was a class on Islamic jurisprudence. Actually, I
remember the class well. It's on the field of Islamic law known as legal
maxims. And I am sure--although he's never confirmed this to this day--I am
sure he had talked to the teacher beforehand, because the teacher kept asking
me, you know--the style of teaching is very dialectical, and what they call in
law a Socratic method, where you pose a question and then people try to
answer, and then you show them how they're wrong and so on. And the teacher
directed a lot of the questions to me. And every time I responded, not only
was I wrong, but I had no clue what I was doing.

So, for instance, he would pose one question and I would, of course, come in,
`Well, the answer is clear,' you know, `God says in the Koran, X.' And then
the teacher would say, `Well, sure, he says X. But how about Y? And how
about Z (pronounced zed)? And how about F and T?' In other words, for every
Koranic verse I cited, he cited 10. For every tradition from the prophet I
cited, he cited 10 or 20. And the students themselves were showing such
facility, I was destroyed.

I mean, I came home and my father said, `How did it go?'--he wasn't at the
class--and I, of course, lied. I said, `Oh, it went fine.' And then I went
into my bedroom. I'm not quite sure why, but I crawled under my bed and I
sobbed until my father came and asked me to come out from under the bed after,
I think, I was--he had left me cry under the bed for about and hour. And then
he finally came in and said, `Khaled, you know, this is not going to help.
Come out.' I never forget it, and I will eternally be grateful for the wisdom
and the patience that he and my mother showed.

GROSS: And then you ended up devoting your life to the study of Islamic law.

Prof. EL FADL: Absolutely.

GROSS: My guest is Islamic scholar Khaled Abou Al Fadl. He teaches Islamic
and Middle Eastern law at UCLA. We'll talk more after a break. This is FRESH
AIR.

(Soundbite of music)

GROSS: My guest is Khaled Abou Al Fadl. He's a professor of law at UCLA,
where he teaches immigration law, national security law, law and terrorism and
Islamic law.

Do you think of Islamic law as having a rich history of debate, of different
interpretations?

Prof. EL FADL: Absolutely. The remarkable thing that I started, of course,
learning, and as I continued on to become a jurist and so on, Islamic law, at
one point in its history, was--the divine will, so to speak, was represented
by no less than 130 different schools of interpretation. Every jurist except,
of course, the extremist schools that predominated in later parts of Islamic
history, they always argued that you exercise the best judgment you can in
trying to interpret or understand the divine will. But no one can understand,
can be assured that they perfectly and absolutely understand the divine will,
or realize the divine will.

And if you're wrong, if you exercise the best of your judgment and you're
wrong, God rewards you once for the effort. If ultimately you're right, God
rewards you twice. But you're even rewarded for being wrong. That was
liberating. That was absolutely liberating.

GROSS: In other words, you're rewarded for taking it seriously enough to
consider it and deliberate about it.

Prof. EL FADL: Absolutely. Yes.

GROSS: Well, let me ask you about something we understand the terrorists, the
suicide bombers, believe about the afterlife. You know, we've been told that,
for instance, the people who destroyed the World Trade Center, that they
probably believed that they were going to heaven, directly to heaven
afterwards, where they would be met in paradise by virgins...

Prof. EL FADL: Right.

GROSS: ...the implication being that, you know, the virgins would be
available to them, as well.

Prof. EL FADL: Right.

GROSS: Where does that come from in the Koran, and what does that passage
mean to you?

Prof. EL FADL: What I believe is that this is nothing more than a male
erotic projection upon the text of the Koran. The Koran itself uses the word
`khori ain.'(ph) Now the expression `khori ain' is two words. Now what that
expression means in pre-Islamic poetry and in literary sources after Islam was
revealed, it usually refers to something very pure, something pure and
beautiful, or it sometimes refer to `beautiful horses,' sometimes refer to
simply `beautiful souls.' Now...

GROSS: Beautiful souls?

Prof. EL FADL: Souls.

GROSS: Mm-hmm.

Prof. EL FADL: Spirits.

GROSS: Mm-hmm.

Prof. EL FADL: Now there is one tradition attributed to the prophet in which
the prophet supposedly says that the martyrs will be in the company of female
virgins. In that tradition, it's not referring to an expression that should
be read as `purified souls,' but it actually specifies virginal women, and, in
fact, specifies a number and so on.

But if you come from a scholastic point of view, from a juristic point of
view, if you go back to the sources written on Islamic traditions going back
to 1,200 years, consistently, Islamic juristic sources said that this
tradition is too isolated with too many problems in the way it was transmitted
and reached us to be relied upon on a matter of theology, that it's too weak
for it to establish a theological belief. I mean, the commonsensical point
that if you're going to adopt a theological belief, you better base it on
something that you're fairly sure, or, you know, there's at least a
probability that the prophet actually said. For that tradition, we can't even
reach a probability. There is only a 10 percent chance, if that, that the
prophet actually said it.

GROSS: Terrorists have used the Koran to justify their attacks on Westerners
and on Israelis, as well. Now there are a couple of quotes that you hear
quoted for justification.

Prof. EL FADL: Mm-hmm.

GROSS: The Koran commands Muslims to fight the unbelievers, quote, "until
there is no more tumult and oppression and until faith and all judgment
belongs to God."

Prof. EL FADL: Right.

GROSS: Or, "Fight those among the people of the book who do not believe in
God or the hereafter, who do not forbid what God and his prophet have
forbidden, and who do not acknowledge the religion of truth." Is the Koran
telling Muslims to fight people who aren't Muslims?

Prof. EL FADL: These verses that you have quoted are being read out of--you
know, taken out of a historical context, out of a textual context, that if
they are implemented absolutely without reservations, without qualifications,
without thinking about, `Well--ooh, ooh'--What are they really referring to
here? They would contradict other parts of the Koran, and they would, in
fact, void, cancel and abrogate other parts of the Koran.

GROSS: Which parts of the Koran do they contradict?

Prof. EL FADL: Well, they contradict parts of the Koran that says it is the
divine will that people will remain different till the very last day. In
fact, the Koran tells us specifically that until the very last day, the Earth
will not become Muslim. So if these verses are read to mean `fight until
everyone becomes Muslim,' as bin Laden reads them, well, it seems that we are
going against what the Koran tells us is the divine will.

The Koran also says, `We have made you different, nations and tribes, and made
you different, and you will remain different,' and then explains that the
reason God did this is so that we will get to know one another. So they
contradict the idea--since war is not the best way of getting to know the
other, they contradict the idea of the necessary discourse to get to know the
other.

GROSS: So if you think that the passages that I read have been taken out of
context by the terrorists who use them, put them back into historical context
for us.

Prof. EL FADL: Well, the historical context is the prophet existed in a
socio-historical context that was very hostile, and the prophet needed
support. And the Koran tells Muslims, `support the prophet.' Now I, for one,
am not willing to give any other human being the same status of the prophet,
and to lend the type of support that the Koran demanded for the prophet to any
other human being. Bin Laden is not the prophet, not even comes in the
proximity of the prophet. So the fact that the Koran tells us, or commands
Muslims, to support the prophet doesn't mean that I support bin Laden.

GROSS: So you're saying that when the Koran commands Muslims to fight the
unbelievers until there's no more tumult or oppression, that was a reference
to a particular battle in a particular period in a particular war. It wasn't
meant to say, `All the time you have to fight unbelievers.'

Prof. EL FADL: Absolutely. And under the leadership of a particular man and
that is the prophet, Mohammed.

GROSS: Right. Right. Now I'm wondering if you think that the sheiks and
imams and terrorist leaders who interpret the Koran in a very extreme way, if
you think that they really believe that in their heart of hearts, or if you're
more cynical about that and you think that they just want power and they're
using the Koran as a tool to help them get it.

Prof. EL FADL: I believe that what really motivates them is a desire for
empowerment. They, for a variety of complex reasons, feel disempowered and
frustrated by this disempowerment, and they invent a theology of power, as I
refer to it in some of my writings.

GROSS: So you think that they've reinvented the Koran in order to get power
because they feel disenfranchised.

Prof. EL FADL: Well, yes. And I also feel that the morality of the text--you
know, how ethical a text is depends to a good part, not in all parts, but in
good part, on the morality of the reader. And the prophet has a tradition in
which he says, `Those of you who are moral before Islam are going to remain
moral after Islam.' And I read that to mean that, you know, if an immoral
person, if a power-hungry person, if a person who wants to dominate women and
oppress the other reads the Koran, reads the Old Testament, reads the New
Testament, they will draw these conclusions from the text. The text is not
somehow going to reinvent their psychology.

GROSS: Khaled Abou Al Fadl teaches Islamic law and Middle Eastern law at
UCLA. His next book, "Tolerance in Islam," is scheduled for publication this
fall. He'll be back in the second half of the show. I'm Terry Gross, and
this is FRESH AIR.

(Soundbite of music; credits)

GROSS: Coming up, we talk with Leo Litwak about serving as a combat medic in
World War II. He traveled with a first aid kit, but without a gun. He's
written a memoir called "The Medic." And we continue our conversation with
Khaled Abou El Fadl.

This is FRESH AIR. I'm Terry Gross, back with Khaled Abou El Fadl. He counts
himself a moderate Muslim intellectual who is appalled by extremists who use
the Koran to justify terrorism. He teaches Islamic law and Middle Eastern law
at UCLA, and is the author of several books, including "Speaking in God's
Name: Islamic Law, Authority and Women."

You've expressed your concern that you think extremists are kind of stealing
Islam away from other believers, and you've been critical of the American
Muslim leadership. What are your reasons?

Prof. EL FADL: Right. Well, I've been critical of--well, first, as to the
issue of stealing, the problem is that, yes, we had--there has been a long,
rich history of humanistic Islam. I mean, the Muslim contributions to human
civilizations are beyond dispute, whether in philosophy, mathematics, sciences
and so on. The problem, though, is that one cannot rest on their laurels and
expect that somehow magically that the same beauty that once existed will
always exist. And I think that the extremists are transforming Islamic
theology into--instead of a system of thought that leads towards civilization,
into a system of thought that is fundamentally deconstructive of civilization,
fundamentally destructive of--and here what I mean by `civilization' is
humanism. That's what I mean.

As to the American Muslim leadership, I think, to put it simply, that there is
way too much political correctness in the way this leadership conducts itself.
That, for many years, the priority has been on sort of cheerleading Islam in
the most apologetic sense, on not engaging in critical thinking and critical
self-reflection and critical evaluation of the tradition. Every time someone
opens their mouth about negative elements within the negative groups, negative
orientations within the current Islamic context, this leadership will often
raise the claim of, `Oh, you're creating divisions and you're creating strife
and we Muslims must be united and we should not criticize each other,'
regardless of how immoral the conduct that we see our fellow Muslim is
engaging in.

And we only--in my view, this leadership has tended to condemn the conduct of
a final Muslim only when non-Muslims, particularly the non-Muslim media,
Western media, puts the spotlight on that leadership and says, `Well, you
know, are you going to condemn this or not?' And then at that point, they
condemn. So they're not moral leaders. They simply act in a largely
reactive, knee-jerk mode instead of grabbing moral leadership for Islam.

GROSS: Is it dangerous for you to talk that way? Have you been harassed or
threatened?

Prof. EL FADL: Oh, yeah, plenty. I mean--but, you know, I don't know who's
issuing these threats, and I don't want to imply that it's the Muslim-American
leadership. That would be slander. But someone, and I don't know who these
parties are, you know, started threatening to the point that the police was
involved and so on. But I want to say this, that as a point of encouragement
for other Muslims out there and critical thinkers and youth that are tired of
this mummified intellectual atmosphere that exists, that if you're
determined--and this definitely applies to me--if you're determined, if you
truly believe that this is your Islamic duty, that this is what God wants from
you, you're irrepressible. I mean, I've been on black lists. I've been
thrown out. I've been threatened. I've been even beaten and struck at
different times. But I carry credibility, and the credibility of knowledge
and honesty.

GROSS: What would you like to see the American Muslim leadership do or say
vis-a-vis extremism and terrorism?

Prof. EL FADL: I would like us to stop playing political games. You know,
let's call--although it's not maybe appropriate to use that expression because
I don't play poker--but let's call a spade a spade. You know, as a Muslim, I
don't gamble and so on. But...

GROSS: OK.

Prof. EL FADL: ...you know, let's call things as they are. So we've got a
problem with a serious puritan form of Islam called Wahhabism. No one in the
Muslim leadership is willing to condemn it because they are scared of the
reaction of the Saudis or the reaction of the rich people who believe in this
form, and so on. Well, my honest belief is that you betray your tradition
when you play politics at the expense of Islamic morality.

I also would have liked to see a very, very, very different response to 9/11.
I would have liked to see this leadership make a thunderous, resounding,
unequivocal response to 9/11, to basically send the message, very loud and
clear, to the terrorists that you don't represent us in any way, and not
because we're afraid of retaliation or anything like that, but because we
firmly believe that this is not and cannot be Islam.

I would have liked the leadership to organize a massive march led by Muslims,
where we go to ground zero and each Muslim would deposit a flower or a card,
and that--it would be something of, you know, thousands. I would have liked
to see the leadership issue a unified statement signed by every Muslim
organization clearly telling and saying that bin Laden, al-Qaeda, the Taliban
and their whole theology and system of beliefs is something that we absolutely
reject. And I would like this statement to have been signed by every Muslim
organization, to be unified, to be clear, to be unequivocal and so on. I
mean, there are so many different things that we could have done in response
to even something as horrific and ugly as 9/11.

GROSS: Well, I want to thank you very much for talking with us.

Prof. EL FADL: Oh, you're quite welcome.

GROSS: Khaled Abou El Fadl teaches Islamic and Middle Eastern law at UCLA.
His next book, "Tolerance in Islam," is scheduled for publication this fall.

(Soundbite of music)

GROSS: Coming up, witnessing life and death as a medic in World War II. This
is FRESH AIR.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

Interview: Leo Litwak discusses his new memoir "The Medic," which
covers his experiences as a young medic during World War II
TERRY GROSS, host:

Leo Litwak was an 18-year-old college student in 1944 when he enlisted to
fight in World War II. He imagined himself an armed, vengeful warrior, but he
wasn't given a gun. He was given a first aid kit and assigned to be a medic.
Medics operated under the rules of the Geneva Convention. They were
non-combatants, carried no arms and were obliged to treat enemy wounded as
well as their own. His training in first aid was often no match for the
mutilated bodies of the wounded.

Litwak is the author of a memoir called "The Medic: Life and Death in the
Last Days of World War II." It's just been published in paperback. Litwak
has taught English literature at San Francisco State University for more than
30 years, and is the author of the novel "Waiting for the News," which won the
1970 National Jewish Book Award. Litwak says the larger subject of his war
memoir is the transforming intensity of war, the shellings, the entrenching,
the wounded and dying. Here's a short reading.

Mr. LEO LITWAK (Author): (Reading) `The living are complicated, but the dead
have been stripped of all meaning. We saw them coiffed in crab-shaped
helmets, dressed in gray uniforms, mouths agape, gray teeth, gray hands, worn
boots, no identities, indistinguishable one from the other; dead meat, nothing
to grieve. There were times when we'd squat near the dead and break open our
packages of K rations and eat the processed ham and eggs and the powered
orange juice. We'd light cans of Sterno under canteen cups and heat the
bullion and the sour coffee, and afterward lie exhausted among the dead.
Heads braced on downturned helmets, a cigarette for those who smoked, feeling
neither the misery nor pleasure of being alive; snoozing until Sergeant Lucca
prodded us.

`We were stupefied by the death we breathed and stumbled toward combat,
clutched by the fear that we too could be made simple. We ate among the dead,
slept among the dead, tried to rid ourselves of pity for the dead. Pity hurt.
I felt it in my belly, in my heart, in my temples. It tightened my throat and
lips and made me gassy. It was a hurt that went on and on, and the only cure
for it was to become pitiless. That's what I wanted: the power to not give a
damn.'

GROSS: That's Leo Litwak, reading from his memoir "The Medic."

What kind of judgments did you have to make about who to send to the hospital
and who to send back into battle?

Mr. LITWAK: I didn't have to make that judgment, particularly, because in
combat, I was a platoon medic. The designation was aid man. So I was
stationed with a rifle platoon, and I had to keep up with my platoon. And
that meant I could often only give cursory treatment to the wounded.
Following us were litter bearers, who could pick up the wounded. So my
immediate task was to deal with the bleeding, the shock, to administer
morphine most frequently, and to bandage very quickly and to apply
tourniquets, and perhaps to give reassurance and then move on fast to catch up
with the platoon. So the decision as to how to treat the wounded really
happened a bit later with the litter bearers and then back at the aid station.

GROSS: Now you were often in the position where you had to risk your life to
save somebody else's life as you had to take care of somebody and sometimes
you were under fire while you were working on them. What's the closest you
came to being killed or seriously wounded during World War II?

Mr. LITWAK: Well, we had occupied the high ground above a German village,
and we could look down at the village. And finally at the end of the day, we
saw the troops of another company moving in to take the village. We had dug
in, so we were all in slit trenches. I dug in with my platoon sergeant, who
was my dear friend, Sergeant Salerno--that was his true name--and the platoon
messenger. And Sergeant Salerno climbed out of the trench and told us all to
get up--we were moving out to--the village was taken. And so we all got out
and were putting on our gear, and someone yelled out, `Rockets!' And I don't
know what he saw--probably the rockets leaving the rocket launcher a mile
away. I don't know. But I immediately dive for the slit trench. And I was
still in midair when the rocket hit at the lip of our slit trench and kind of
turned me over. And then Salerno and Hass came toppling in on me.

GROSS: Were they hurt?

Mr. LITWAK: Well, yeah. Salerno had his belly ripped open and his leg
off--or nearly off. And Hass didn't make it into the trench, and his leg was
amputated around the calf. And so I had to treat them both. I called for
help, but the rockets then were coming in all over the place and the platoon
had to evacuate. They sent a rifleman in to stay with me, and he kind of
huddled in this tiny trench while I administered to the two wounded.
There's--I covered Salerno's belly wound and put a splint on his leg, and tied
a tourniquet around Hass and covered his stump and gave him morphine. And
then we were stuck there for hours while the rockets kept coming in. And it
wasn't until some time later that they were able to send litter bearers up to
take out the wounded. I was kind of left there alone.

GROSS: Did either of them survive?

Mr. LITWAK: No. No, they didn't. They survived till the next day. And then
the ambulance that was taking them back to the division hospital was caught in
traffic, and they died in the ambulance. So I was told.

GROSS: Was it difficult to have to treat a friend of yours who was so
mutilated?

Mr. LITWAK: In the heat of the moment, I don't think such notions as fear and
difficulty arise. You're just dealing with the situation; you're doing the
best you can. And I think the hardest thing was waiting, waiting in that
trench, because we were all alone there. It was unlikely that Germans would
come, but there was that likelihood. And there was that possibility that a
rocket might make a direct hit. And I guess Hass, who was in the lip of the
trench, was no longer responsive, and I could barely get a breath from him.
And Salerno was fading, and I was terrifically anxious about that and didn't
know what more I could do for him. So it was a tremendous stress, and yet I
didn't experience it as stress. It was just--as I say, I was just in the
moment.

GROSS: I'd like you to read a passage from your memoir about what it was like
for you when the war ended. This is on Page 204.

Mr. LITWAK: (Reading) `The platoon brotherhood I had celebrated seemed no
more than drunken sentimentality. We accommodated to everything. Being alive
was a transient, easily modified condition; no intrinsic joy in it. Killing
was simple; dying was scarier than ever. I would return to Detroit and resume
my life. Nothing would have changed except that I had lost time.'

GROSS: Now I was interested, you know, reading that, you know, dying was
scarier than ever and there was no intrinsic joy in being alive. You know, I
always wonder, like, after an experience like that are you just so happy to be
alive?

Mr. LITWAK: I wasn't. And in part--you know, it may simply be my temperment.
Others might have experienced a kind of joyful release. In part, while I
wanted to return to the old routines, being in them again seemed a
disappointment.

GROSS: Because you had changed a lot, maybe?

Mr. LITWAK: Yeah. It seemed as though I had to set aside all that I'd
experienced in the three years of Army life and begin again something that I
not only no longer was, but didn't really want to be. In effect, that was a
transition that I chose to make, and I did put aside my Army experience. I
sometimes resented being treated as though I hadn't earned something by what
I'd undergone.

GROSS: What do you mean?

Mr. LITWAK: Well, it seemed to me that being treated as just an ordinary
20-year-old, or 21-year-old, didn't take into account what I'd experienced in
the battlefields, what experiences I'd had with women, with dying, with
friendships interrupted by death. In other words, with the cardinal matters,
that I was now returning to issues that seemed kind of banal and trivial and,
nonetheless, that's what I had chosen to do. And so there was a kind of
dissatisfaction, which I don't think I ever really managed to overcome.

GROSS: My guest is Leo Litwak, author of the new World War II memoir "The
Medic." We'll talk more after a break. This is FRESH AIR.

(Soundbite of music)

GROSS: Leo Litwak is my guest. He's the author of the memoir, "The Medic,"
which is based on his experiences as a combat medic in World War II in Europe.

When you came home from the war, you said, you know, there were millions of
men coming home with you, millions of men who had experienced similar agonies
on the battlefield to the ones that you did, and now were kind of coming to
the other side where a lot of the people who fought in World War II are
leaving. You know, they're passing on.

Mr. LITWAK: Mm-hmm.

GROSS: And many of those World War II stories are going to survive now
through books, through movies, through letters and through stories that have
just been handed down to friends and family. And I guess I'm wondering how
you feel about your memoir coming out at this time. You're nearing 80, I
think, and, you know, the generation that you fought with is beginning to
disappear.

Mr. LITWAK: Yes, it is. And that comes as a great surprise to me since I
don't feel much change, but the change is there and coming. I think that
World War II has received, especially in the last years, some remarkable
memorials, both in the movies and in a variety of books.

GROSS: Mm-hmm.

Mr. LITWAK: And to some extent I think young people have a kind of nostalgia
for World War II. It surprised me that during readings, young people would
come up to me and shake my hand and thank me, and I was kind of surprised by
that. I didn't think that I'd done anything to deserve anyone's gratitude.

People remember it, and I think not incorrectly, as a time when the issue of
good and evil was clearly demarked. We knew who are enemies were. We were
all joined. There was a feeling of unity, not only in this country, but in
most of the civilized world, that we were in the right and our war was just.
It was, in a way, a rare time. And that kind of unity had also provided a
kind of culture which, in retrospect, seems naive, but also kind of joyful
insofar as it reflected the unified country--well, you know, the music and the
movies. They all seemed relatively simple now, but it's that yearning for
simpler times and where explanations are themselves simple that people have a
nostalgia for.

GROSS: Is it important to you to have set down your memories of the war in a
book? I know it's not the first book you've written. You're a novelist. But
I think it's your first memoir.

Mr. LITWAK: Yeah. Yeah. I prefer the notion of personal narratives than
memoir, but memoir will do. Yeah, in part, I'm delighted that my
grandchildren and my relatives and my family will have some kind of record.
And similarly, I'm delighted that this generation of young people will have
some kind of testimony that they can turn to if they wish.

For me, it's kind of an odd experience that the memoir, in a way, has kind of
erased my original memories. And what I now remember, to a great extent, are
the shaped memories of the book. And that's not unwelcome, but it distances
me even more from the experiences of World War II. I don't know if that makes
sense to you.

GROSS: It actually makes a lot of sense to me. Well, thank you so much for
sharing some of your memories with us. I appreciate it.

Mr. LITWAK: Well, thank you very much, Terry.

GROSS: Leo Litwak is the author of "The Medic: Life and Death in the Last
Days of World War II." It's just come out in paperback.

(Credits)

GROSS: I'm Terry Gross.

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