Terry Gross

Saul Friedlander is the author of "Nazi Germany and the Jews, Vol. 1: The Years of Persecution 1933-1939." He examines the period looking at how Hitler's "murderous rage" and ideologies, converged with internal political pressures, and attitudes of German and European societies to create the Holocaust. Friedlander was born in Prague and was seven when his parents hid him in a Catholic seminary in France where he took on a new identity. His parents died in the Holocaust. Friedland now teaches at Tel Aviv University and at UCLA.

Daniel Jonah Goldhagen is the author of the controversial book "Hitler's Willing Executioners: Ordinary Germans and the Holocaust." He offers evidence that ordinary Germans knowingly cooperated in the Holocaust, that they were motivated by anti-Semitism, not by economic hardship, coercion, or psychological pressures, as usually put forth by historians. Goldhagen is Associate Professor of Government and Social Studies at Harvard University.

Journalist Stan Sesser is a former staff writer for the New Yorker and the senior fellow of the Human Rights Center at the University of California at Berkeley. He's been following the imminent takeover of the British-ruled Hong Kong by the Chinese government. He says while Hong Kong will most likely preserve its economic freedom, the July 1 takeover calls into question the future of its democratic government and civil-liberties laws.