Return to Transcripts main page

The Amanpour Hour

Interview With Former U.S. Ambassador To The Czech Republic Norm Eisen; Interview With Princeton Professor And Autocracy Expert Kim Lane Scheppele; Interview With Forward Thinking Co-Founder And Director Oliver McTernan; North Korean Troops Embrace Near-Suicidal Tactics In Battle; Officials Give Update On Pennsylvania Medevac Jet Crash; 80 Years Since Liberation Of Auschwitz; Broad Play Hilariously Tackles Age Of Disagreement. Aired 11a-12p ET

Aired February 01, 2025 - 11:00   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

[10:59:48]

ABBY PHILLIP, CNN HOST: You know, Solomon, if I see you up on one of those things, I'm going to call the cops on you myself. That's what I'm going to do.

JOANNA: I know that people don't like watching people on television eating food, but I think this is a Saturday breakfast show. And actually, there should be eggs and croissants and coffee in --

(CROSSTALKING)

JOANNA: And we would all -- we would all benefit.

PHILLIP: Yes. Noted I will -- I will let that be known to the powers that be.

Thank you very much, everyone at the table. And thank you for watching "TABLE FOR FIVE".

You can catch me every weeknight at 10 p.m. Eastern at our "NEWSNIGHT ROUNDTABLE". But in the meantime, CNN's coverage continues right now.

CHRISTIANE AMANPOUR, CNN CHIEF INTERNATIONAL ANCHOR: Hello, everyone. And welcome to THE AMANPOUR HOUR.

Here's where we're headed this week.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

DONALD TRUMP, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: There are people who have wanted to do this for decades.

AMANPOUR: With a raft of quasi-legal executive orders, Trump bolts out of the box. Critics call it a massive power grab. Warnings from recent history about democracies using the law to change the law.

NORM EISEN, FORMER UNITED STATES AMBASSADOR TO THE CZECH REPUBLIC: This was the week that the alarm went off.

AMANPOUR: I asked a former White House ethics czar and an expert on autocracy.

And clean out Gaza?

OLIVER MCTERNAN, CO-FOUNDER, FORWARD THINKING: It was so unfortunate that President Trump used those words "clean out".

AMANPOUR: Middle East mediator Oliver McTernan on Trump's solution there.

Then --

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: We have seen cases when fighters from North Korea ran without body armor.

AMANPOUR: Nick Paton Walsh reports from Ukraine on the suicide tactics of North Korean soldiers who are fighting for Russia.

Plus --

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Everybody is looking for a hero.

CHRISTOPHER REEVE, ACTOR: I am not a hero. That was a part.

AMANPOUR: Global movie star turned activist.

REEVE: Help is on the way.

AMANPOUR: Directors of "SUPER/MAN, THE CHRISTOPHER REEVE STORY" speak to me about life before and after his paralyzing accident.

And 80 years since the liberation of Auschwitz, from my archives chronicling the genocide there.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

AMANPOUR: Welcome to the program, everyone. I'm Christiane Amanpour in London.

Democracy is about more than just elections, of course. It's about the institutions that uphold it as Donald Trump leads a global shift to the populist right. Those very institutions are being tested worldwide.

And in the United States, the president is flooding the zone with executive orders, including a sweeping freeze on federal aid that it then had to rescind after prompting widespread fear and confusion, and also accusations that those orders were illegal under U.S. law.

So the battle lines are firmly drawn as Trump aggressively tests the limits to transform the U.S. government and society entirely. As Democratic Senator Chris Van Hollen told me.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

SEN. CHRIS VAN HOLLEN (D-MD): But what you're seeing is, and flood the zone is a good word for it, just an effort in these last, these first 8 or 9 days of the Trump administration to grab power and to try to implement the president's agenda through any means possible, regardless of whether its legal or not legal.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

AMANPOUR: So the question is, how far can Trump bend these democratic institutions before they break? Or as my first guest asks, is the United States sleepwalking into autocracy?

Princeton professor and autocracy expert Kim Lane Scheppele and Norm Eisen, former counsel to the House Judiciary Committee and a former U.S. ambassador to the Czech Republic, they join me with warnings from the European playbook on illiberal democracy.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

AMANPOUR: So, let me both ask you. First to you, Norm, do you believe still that America is sleepwalking into an autocracy? I know that you didn't think that the institutions were ready to, you know, to combat whatever might be illegal. Do you think they are ready to combat?

EISEN: Christiane, when Kim and I wrote that "New York Times" op-ed in the days before Donald Trump took office, we were concerned that all the signs that we've seen around the world in places like Hungary, Turkey, where dictatorship, autocracy, authoritarianism is coming, were not being paid attention to in America.

But this was the week as you point out that the alarm went off. I was a part of the litigation saying that Donald Trump's attempt to rewrite the Constitution, that there is no birthright citizenship, that was slapped down by one of the groups who got a TRO.

And then this week, a second alarm bell with the court saying, no, Donald Trump, you can't freeze all federal spending. You don't have that power. That's the power of Congress.

[11:04:50]

EISEN: So, I think these alarms are starting to wake up America to what has been a -- you can only call it a dictatorial onslaught.

AMANPOUR: So, you call it dictatorial. Before I get to you, Kim, I just want to press with Norm because you also were a counsel, as I said, to the Judiciary Committee or the ethics counselor during the Trump impeachment process.

Clearly, you have a vested interest in all of this. And again, I just wonder whether you think that this time around, the body politic, the citizens, et cetera, are as motivated as they were first-time around.

Because when Trump, you know, got elected and then went -- there seemed to be, as you coined, the both of you, an anticipatory obedience from all segments of civil society.

EISEN: Well, certainly, the second time around, it did seem that many of those, for example, in the mainstream media who had called him out previously were anticipatorily obeying. Even before he demanded obedience, they were bending the knee. We saw that across media business, and there was a quality of sleepwalking.

But I think people are seeing, Donald Trump claims he can rewrite the Constitution. He's ignoring Congress, the laws Congress has passed. He's devastating the lives of people across the country.

And I think with this spending order, folks are waking up -- and I should tell you that I'm not a visceral never-Trumper. I actually helped with his first presidential transition on those same ethics issues that are my specialty.

But I think you can -- he -- that you can only say he promised to be a dictator on day one. He fulfilled that promise by trying to rewrite the Constitution, and he's continued, Christiane, you know this as somebody who follows these issues around the world. Dictatorial powers once assumed are seldom voluntarily relinquished.

And Donald Trump has continued that day one attitude, day after day after day.

AMANPOUR: This is what you both write. "Autocracy is not built out of the whims of a leader, but becomes entrenched only when it has been certified by legalism exploiting legal means to serve autocratic ends."

So Kim, explain what you -- if you can, in a -- in a concise way what Hungary did, what Orban did.

KIM LANE SCHEPPELE, PROFESSOR OF SOCIOLOGY & INTERNATIONAL AFFAIRS, PRINCETON SCHOOL OF PUBLIC & INTERNATIONAL AFFAIRS: Yes, well, what Viktor Orban did is exactly what we now see Donald Trump doing, which is that he came into power with thousands of pages of laws that had been written by private actors outside the system before he assumed power.

And so when he came into office, he began shoveling these laws through his compliant parliament, and the members of parliament didn't really know what they were enacting.

And so, by the time I think everybody figured it out, three years into Orban's regime, he had captured virtually all of the independent institutions.

He had also rewritten the election law, and there was no way any opposition force had the toehold, the resources or the organization to actually ever oust him from power.

So, what we're seeing now in the U.S. is exactly this kind of thing. And I must say, you know, what's interesting is that people still think that you lose democracies with tanks in the streets.

And what I keep saying is, no, you lose -- you lose your democracy when you have lawyers trying to undermine it by law.

AMANPOUR: So that's really interesting. I am telling you that I hate to go back to the Nazi era. I don't want to bring up Hitler. It turns a whole number of people off.

But I cannot help but be struck by what Joseph Goebbels said after they seized power -- as they were seizing power from a democracy. He said, "The big joke on democracy is that it gives its mortal enemies the means to its own destruction."

And Kim, you saw that firsthand in Hungary.

SCHEPPELE: Absolutely, exactly. Hungary, it was Poland, it was Turkey, it was even Russia, which we forget in the early days was all consolidation of power by law.

So, this is how it happens all over the world. In Venezuela and in Ecuador, the leaders there rewrote the constitutions in their first year.

So when the leader gets elected and changes the law, many people stand around and say, well, gee, you know, I kind of disagree with this leader, but that's how democracies work.

And what they need to see is, you know, it's not just any law that these new autocrats are passing, it's laws that actually remove restraints on the executive.

And that's the danger signal we're seeing now in the United States. You know, Trump is claiming the power to stop all federal funding.

Does he have that power by law? Well, no. But somebody is going to have to tell him no. And the question is whether Congress rises to the challenge, whether the courts rise to the challenge.

[11:09:50]

SCHEPPELE: And frankly, the thing I'm alarmed about in the United States is that unlike in Trump's first term, we're not seeing people go to the streets.

We're not seeing a really mobilized constituency in the general public that's going to let the institutions know that the public sees what's happening, and that's because we don't have focused leadership right now.

Same thing happened in Hungary. everybody objected, people did not go to the streets, and within three years, their democracy was over.

AMANPOUR: And you said it was one of the quickest collapses of democracy in recorded history.

Norm Eisen, Kim Lane Scheppele, thank you both very much for being with us.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

AMANPOUR: So with those warnings in mind coming up, Palestinians make the epic return to northern Gaza. Many find only a wasteland. The way out of this hellish war with an interfaith mediator next. [11:10:41]

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

AMANPOUR: Welcome back to the program.

This was President Trump this week musing about a solution to the Gaza conflict. Take a listen.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

TRUMP: And we just clean out that whole thing. you know, it's over the centuries it's had many, many conflicts that site. And I don't know, it's something has to happen.

But, it's literally a demolition site right now almost everything is demolished.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

AMANPOUR: There he was, talking to reporters aboard Air Force One, but the Palestinian residents of Gaza are voting with their feet against that threat.

This week, they implemented their right to return as hundreds of thousands walked the coastal route back to what's left of their homes in the north.

And for now, the cease fire is holding, with ongoing hostage and prisoner swaps.

My next guest is Oliver McTernan, a former Catholic priest turned hostage negotiator. And he spent two decades working in conflict resolution in the Middle East.

He regularly speaks with both Israeli and Hamas officials, and he joined me here in London to discuss possible next steps.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

AMANPOUR: Welcome to the program.

MCTERNAN: Thank you.

AMANPOUR: Can I just first start by talking about the hundreds of thousands of Palestinians who are moving from one devastated part of Gaza where they've been herded, back to their homes in another devastated part of Gaza?

When you see that and you hear all the noise that's going around what is -- what comes to mind about them?

MCTERNAN: Well, one word -- resilience. I think what I've found over the past 20 years on the regular visits to Gaza and having witnessed five wars there, there is a remarkable resilience, particularly in Gazans, and also attachment to what part of Gaza you live in. So, I think it's perfectly understandable that if you've been deported, as it were, to the south, you will want to return to your patch.

AMANPOUR: And since you have been doing, not just talking to all these different sides, but you've been in conflict resolution there and elsewhere for so long, when you hear what we've been reporting, President Trump's own comments about cleaning out Gaza, and suggesting that the Egyptian president take, you know, one and a half million, he said, and suggesting that the King of Jordan, obviously, would take the others, both of those have refused, both those leaders.

But the Palestinians there have said, we won't accept it. Do you think they will be able to resist? Will they have a choice?

MCTERNAN: I think they will. What's worried me from the beginning is the tactic seemed to make -- be -- to make Gaza unlivable. And therefore, you would have involuntary migration. That families would be so desperate, they couldn't put food on the table, that have no access to health, no access to education, no legal system to protect them.

And in that circumstances, it would be understandable that some, and I stress some, may opt if there was an option to go elsewhere, simply to survive.

It was so unfortunate that President Trump used those words, "clean out". And my suspicion is that he's been very much influenced by the little group around him.

Right at the beginning of this war, I'm going back now to November 23, I was in the Knesset, and then it was clearly explained by some -- and not all would have gone along with this -- but by some, not just in Ben-Gvir or Smotrich's parties, but also in the Likud, that the goal then was to pressurize President Sisi to open up the border with Egypt, make Sinai the place where the whole population of Gaza would go, then to move the West Bank into Jordan, and move north and bring America into war with Tehran. So, you would have a remaking.

Now, there was a theological base for this, and there -- this is where I think the influence around President Trump is.

AMANPOUR: It's interesting that you speak in those words, reflecting what they say in religious terms.

[11:19:46]

AMANPOUR: You yourself have -- are religious, I guess. I mean, you were a Catholic priest. But you are very steeped in this conflict mediation and trying to find solutions. And you have been for a long, long time in the Middle East and elsewhere.

Currently, the ceasefire is holding. There seem to be, so far, regular hostage and prisoner releases.

From your conversations with Israelis and with Hamas political leaders who you talk to, do you have any idea of what the second phase might look like?

MCTERNAN: Well, first of all, I think it's remarkable that the Qataris, with the support of the Egyptians, were able to get some format, but it was torturous.

When you look at it, it's a torturous agreement fraught with risk. And I've described it as a spoiler's dream, because of the long-drawn-out way in which it is done, and certainly, because of the uncertainty along the way.

There is no -- normally when you have an agreement, it's tight, and you have guarantors that they will stand by it. This time, there's a built-in flexibility, and I think it's the only thing the negotiators could achieve.

I think there's one person, and one person only, who can guarantee the second stage and Antony Blinken would have known that. And that is Donald Trump.

As president he has the power because right at the beginning of this, what made it almost impossible to get a tight -- an agreement that, you know, would hold was the fact that the -- Benjamin Netanyahu declared two goals.

The first goal was to see the total demise of Hamas. The second was to see the release of the hostages.

Now, anyone would say, those are totally incompatible. How can you achieve a sort of agreement on those lines?

AMANPOUR: And on a personal note, you posted some images of a kindergarten that you and your late wife had helped fund and run in Gaza. And now, it's completely destroyed. We're showing this, and maybe there's some before pictures.

What does this say to you? This war has also affected you personally, but also the children, obviously. So many of them were killed.

MCTERNAN: The -- it's a human tragedy, what we've witnessed over the past 15 months. I mean, you see the joy, the beauty there. The great vision that the founder of that kindergarten had.

She's a remarkable lady. She was -- in fact, in her own buildings have been destroyed, the family buildings in Rafah, on the beach. In a tent, they set up a school where they were educating a hundred children right through this war. That's the sort of person.

And we don't know what -- hopefully, we will be able to restore this because those children had lived through trauma. They were trying to address that trauma prior to this war. God only knows where we will be now.

You know, you mentioned about Blinken saying they had evidence of 10,000 -- 15,000 recruits into Hamas in the war. The frightening figure I was given was that 60 -- and in good authority -- 60 percent of the fighters at the beginning of this war were orphans from the war in 2014. So, it's this cycle of violence, as I say, needs to be broken.

AMANPOUR: Oliver McTernan, thank you very much, of Forward Thinking. Thank you so much indeed.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

AMANPOUR: When we come back, suicide as a battlefield tactic. Nick Paton Walsh's report on the North Korean soldiers helping Russia's war on Ukraine.

[11:23:29]

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

AMANPOUR: Welcome back to the program.

In Ukraine, Russian forces have seized yet another small town in their push to conquer the entire eastern region of Donetsk. But it does not mean they are winning the war.

And we're learning more about the North Korean soldiers who are helping them try to do that. Suicidal, instead of being captured alive and 80 battlefield tactics -- that's how Ukrainian troops say the North Koreans are operating.

CNN's chief international security correspondent, Nick Paton Walsh, has this report from Sumy.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

NICK PATON WALSH, CNN CHIEF INTERNATIONAL SECURITY CORRESPONDENT: These are the first images on the ground of the capture of North Korean troops by Ukraine. The soldier is injured, can hardly walk, but they spirit him away.

Russian shelling intensifies to prevent capture. A wild prize pulled through their wires here from brutal fighting in Russia's Kursk region against a radicalized, near-suicidal enemy, but one who'd never seen drones in war before.

The special operations forces who fought them told us.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: They are all young, fresh and hardy. But they're only prepared for the realities of an Eighties war. Despite all attempts to call them to surrender, they continue to fight.

WALSH: There's a unique challenge here. Ukraine wants to take captives, but the North Koreans seem to prefer to die. They shoot one here in caution.

[11:29:52]

WALSH: In the distressing images that follow, they pull one injured Korean's leg, then realize he has a grenade he detonates under his chin.

His last words were to scream North Korean leader Kim Jong-un's name, South Korean officials say.

We meet the Ukrainians who show us the faked Russian military papers he was carrying, suggesting he was from Russia's Far East and his military radio codes. Another paper, handwritten pledges of brainwashed courage.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: The hammer of death to the unknown and the puppet trash is not far off. We wield the powerful force that makes them tremble in fear. World, watch closely.

WALSH: These notes from a soldier killed really a snapshot of the mindset inside the Hermit Kingdom. Declarations of loyalty, even tactics on how to fight Ukrainian drones, and also the suggestion that their presence here is about helping North Korea prepare for war.

It's a remarkable insight, but also a reminder of how this biggest land war in Europe since the 40s is becoming more global.

But also a glimpse of the fear they live under, how they inform on each other. Notes from an officer writing a critique of his fellow soldiers.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: He engaged in an unimaginably disgraceful act by stealing supplies. [Another soldier] failed to uphold the Supreme Commander's dignity and placed his personal interests above all.

WALSH: Ukrainians filmed themselves taking DNA samples from the dead, which they say proved these were Korean.

Ukraine says up to a third of the 12,000 here are already dead or injured, and more are coming.

Amur shows us the newest AK-12 rifle and backpack Russia gave the North Koreans. They are overladen with ammo, he says, but sometimes no body armor or warm clothes and minimal water.

AMUR, UKRAINIAN SOLDIER: We have seen cases when fighters from North Korea ran without body armor. They often don't wear helmets, which we find strange, as well. They've very maneuverable. They run and move very quickly. They're hard to catch, especially with a drone.

WALSH: This thermal drone video shows that speed of attack. Below are seven Ukrainians in a trench facing 130 North Koreans above, who race at them and then try to flank them. Many died here, but they seem to be learning.

"BANDIT", BATTALION COMMANDER, UKRAINIAN SPECIAL OPERATIONS FORCES: They have a plan of what to do --

(END VIDEOTAPE)

(BREAKING NEWS)

FREDRICKA WHITFIELD, CNN ANCHOR: Good morning everyone. I'm Fredricka Whitfield in Atlanta. We want to take you straight to Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Governor

Josh Shapiro now talking as a result of that medevac plane crash, killing six on board -- killing one on the ground and injuring several others on the ground.

Let's listen in.

GOV. JOSH SHAPIRO (D-PA): I also want to reaffirm what the mayor said about everybody working together with common purpose.

There are no silos or stovepipes. Instead, it is everyone joining forces together.

I want to lift up those state resources that have been here in northeast Philadelphia, working around the clock. And I want to thank the mayor for referencing them at the request of Commissioner Bethel, your outstanding police commissioner. Colonel Christopher Paris of the Pennsylvania state police, who joins me here to the left of the mayor, has dispatched roughly 50 members of the Pennsylvania state police from Troops K and M, and we thank them for their work here.

PEMA, the Pennsylvania Emergency Management Authority has been on the ground since last night under the leadership of Director Randy Padfield, who slept here last night to work together with Director Thiel and the other leaders here in the city, has made sure that the city of Philadelphia has all of the resources they need.

PEMA and the Pennsylvania State Police are no stranger to tragedies, and we will bring our expertise to support the work happening here locally on the ground.

As I mentioned last night, I've been in communication directly with the United States Department of Transportation secretary. Secretary Duffy, he's asked if we need any additional resources. We do not. They have dispatched members of the FAA, and the NTSB has also been dispatched. We want to thank the federal government and our federal partners for their support.

The mayor alluded to this earlier, and I just want to put an exclamation point on it. We are joined by several state representatives and our state senator for this community.

Everyone is here on the ground. They're here on the ground, not just to address you, but they've been here on the ground for their neighbors.

[11:34:52]

SHAPIRO: I know that the good people of northeast Philadelphia this morning, as daybreak came, walked out from their homes, came down from their stoops and saw carnage in their communities, saw a fuselage, saw destruction and saw things that no one should ever have to experience in their neighborhoods.

We also saw the very best of northeast Philly. Neighbor helping neighbor, folks looking out for one another. That's the Philly way. That's the Philly spirit. That's what the mayor preaches all the time about one Philly.

This is not just a group of emergency response professionals working together at the state, local and federal level. This is neighbors working together to look out for one another.

Our neighborhood has expanded over the last several hours. Northeast Philly to the entire city of Philadelphia to the entire Commonwealth of Pennsylvania. And of course, to our neighbors all across the world.

I want to make special mention of Consul General Carlos Obrador, who joins us here today. His nation suffered loss in this tragedy. We are with you, Mr. Consul General. The entire Commonwealth of Pennsylvania stands with you.

This is the one Philly way, expanding our -- outreaching our arms to bring warmth and comfort and love to one another.

I'll close by echoing the sentiment that the mayor shared. She's a praying mayor. I'm a praying governor. And I want to offer my prayers to all of those who are impacted.

May God's light shine upon this wonderful city and all of its inhabitants. May we lift up those who are mourning and those who are in a moment of strife.

This is a time for us all to join together in prayer and in common purpose. And that's exactly what is happening here in the city of Philadelphia, in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania.

Madam mayor, thank you for your strong leadership.

MAYOR CHERELLE PARKER, PHILADELPHIA, PENNSYLVANIA: Thank you. We are going to make sure that we take a few -- a few questions. Yes.

(INAUDIBLE)

PARKER: What I -- what I want to do is ask our managing director, Adam Thiel, and also our fire commissioner, to come forward to you, Thiel.

PHILADELPHIA FIRE COMMISSIONER: We've had -- in this incredible tragedy that exists, we, the Philadelphia Fire Department, did have five dwelling fires that were involved. Those fires are completely extinguished. Our fire marshals are on location, continuing to investigate and search every one of those affected dwellings.

ADAM THIEL, MANAGING DIRECTOR, PHILADELPHIA: As anybody who's been on the scene or has seen the scope and the scale of this incident can attest, this is a very large area with a lot of damage. And we are still working in a number of different ways to assess that damage.

Right now, we are doing another -- what we call a grid search of this entire roughly four to six block area, a very dense area, to ensure that we have found everything that we need to find, that we have checked in, as you heard the mayor say, with all of the residents, and we will continue to do that. We have teams who are going literally house by house, door to door.

And also our license and inspections personnel are inspecting all of those dwellings, all the dwellings in the area, so we can be sure that we don't have other hidden damage or structural damage. And it is possible that we will still find that.

So as you heard, this is still a very active and fluid situation. It is entirely possible there will be changes to those casualty figures that you heard.

And this is why, as you heard the mayor say, we are being very thoughtful and intentional about this. We have a number of patients who are currently in hospital. We have a lot of unknowns about who was where on the streets of this neighborhood last night at the time of impact.

So it will likely be days or more until we are able to definitively answer the question about the number of folks who perished in this tragedy and the outcome for those who were injured.

[11:39:45]

THIEL: Right now, I would certainly echo. Please pray for all of those affected by -- otherwise, keep them in your thoughts -- this tragedy.

Adam Thiel, I'm the managing director for the city of Philadelphia.

PARKER: Let me just state for the record that the NTSB, the FAA -- all of our intergovernmental collaboration -- it is all a part of an active investigation. When they formally have something that they can report, they will do a separate press conference or press avail to affirm what they have recovered as a result of their investigation.

But again, a special thanks to them for working in partnership with us. I also just want to state this for the record, because it came to light during one of our briefings earlier. There may have been some people in the area last night when the -- when the explosion occurred and they may wake up and go out to get into their cars. They live in another part of the city. And they may have evidence actually on their cars.

If that happens to be you, don't touch it. Just call 9-1-1 immediately. Our forensics unit, they -- I mean, just an amazing job, but everything is essential to us addressing this tragedy. So just call 9-1-1 if that's the case.

THIEL: In the area of impact, that area is roughly four to six blocks. And we also have debris and remote area where something happened with the aircraft. And that's something well need to leave the NTSB to talk about.

So it's a very widespread area, and we are still trying to understand the entire scope. So as you heard the mayor say, it's possible that if you are somewhere not even near here, somewhere between this location and northeast airport, you may go out and find something in your yard, something in your car. Please, as you heard her say, don't touch it. Call 9-1-1. We need to know that.

This is still relatively early in the long-term trajectory of this incident.

(INAUDIBLE)

THIEL: That will all be information you will hear from the NTSB at the appropriate time. The question about how large is this incident? We are still trying to understand that completely.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Last question.

THIEL: For right now, call 9-1-1 if you have -- it's very important. The police department has a very robust way that they deal with missing persons cases. So if you haven't seen somebody, you think somebody might have been in this area. There's a -- you have a relative in this area and you haven't seen or heard from them, and you're concerned, call 9-1-1 and we will take it from there.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Thank you. That's it. That's it.

PARKER: Before we conclude, let me state for the record, Managing Director Thiel, Police Commissioner Kevin Bethell, Dominick (ph), our fire commissioner, I have to say a special thank you to each of you for your leadership.

To my senior team -- Tiffany Thurman, chief of staff for the city of Philadelphia, Sincere Harris chief deputy mayor, Vanessa Garrett Harley chief deputy mayor, and the entire Parker administration cabinet. Thank you all so very much for your support and the hard work that you are demonstrating.

We will get through this and we will get through it together.

Thank you all so very much. And we'll report back later.

WHITFIELD: All right. Still unclear why this medevac plane crashed there in Philadelphia, but you heard from a variety of officials there bringing us up-to-date on the casualties and also warning expect changes to the casualty figures.

Right now, six people who were on board, including a child on board that medevac plane perished. One died on the ground and 19 were injured on the ground.

And you can see from these images here, these aerial pictures, how widespread the debris field is.

You heard the governor there saying the area of impact is four to six blocks there. You heard the mayor of Philadelphia Cherelle Parker let people know that it is not going to be unlikely for them to come out of their homes, go to their cars and see something unusual, which very much could be evidence from the failure of this flight before impact.

[11:44:46] WHITFIELD: CNN's Danny Freeman is with us. He's on the ground there in Philadelphia. I mean, this is just so remarkable, Danny, to see this debris field, to see how many vehicles were involved, to hear how many people may have been involved from injuries to those killed on the medevac plane.

Bring us up-to-date.

DANNY FREEMAN, CNN CORRESPONDENT: That's right. Fred.

a truly stunning press conference that I was just a part of here in northeast Philadelphia. And I want to get straight to the perhaps most concerning part of that press conference. We learned. as you noted, that there was one additional fatality that was not part of the six people that we know were on board that plane.

There was one person who, the mayor announced, was killed, who was in a vehicle at the site of the crash. But as you heard and as you noted, it really does seem as though the Philadelphia and state leaders are concerned that there may be other fatalities, there may be other victims who may have perished. And that's in addition to the 19 people who the mayor reported were injured on the ground after this crash.

And I'm not sure if viewers could hear the final question that the mayor really was passionate about it being asked at the end there just because the reporter who asked it was off camera.

But the last question was if there are people who fear that they have loved ones who are missing, who should they call? And the mayor and the managing director of the city of Philadelphia, they emphasized, please call 9-1-1, because that will help this investigation.

Fred, the concern is that there may have been people walking on the streets. There may have been people in cars in that area or nearby that popular shopping center, the Roosevelt Mall, who may have been hit or impacted or, in the worst-case scenario, killed. And it's hard for, it seems, investigators to tell that right now.

The other thing then, Fred, I'll note, is really also remarkable. The suggestion, and these local officials were very cautious not to get ahead of the NTSB in their investigation, but they noted that the -- or suggested I should say that the reason the radius of potential debris falling is so large could be because something might have been falling from the plane before it actually made impact on the ground.

Again, they're referring questions about that to the NTSB. There's going to be a lot more questions about that. I would imagine, too, that federal investigative agency.

But truly a stunning moment to hear that if you're not even in this four to six-block area here, specifically in northeast Philly, but you're anywhere in between here and that airport, which is a couple of miles away, keep an eye out, because you might see something that could be relevant to this investigation, Fred.

WHITFIELD: I mean, Danny, its extraordinary to see these images, the variety of images, because you're seeing cars that look like they are -- they were charred. I mean, you heard the fire official there say that there were five -- five active fires as a result of this medevac plane plummeting.

You're seeing a what appear to be just chunks of matter on the ground. In one shot, there's even a crater, unclear, you know, what that crater is all about? What kind of -- you know, if that was part of the plane impact, or if there was some sort of, you know, explosion involving a vehicle on the ground creating that crater.

I mean, such a variety of views in this debris field.

FREEMAN: It truly is. And I'll say, you'll see when I come up for you at noon, where we are in relation to the actual direct crash site, we're a couple of blocks down the street. So it's hard for us from our vantage point to exactly see just how extensive that damage is.

But, I mean, these images really do speak for themselves, but especially as we're getting these bird's eye view look of not just the impact, but the cars that are burnt out, the businesses nearby that clearly had impact.

And I know our other colleague, Jason Carroll was here earlier this morning. I'm still here. Like I said, I'm a few blocks away, right, from where this accident happened. And police just in the past hour or so taped off another what looks like an oxygen canister perhaps, or some sort of canister that appears to be from the plane. That's how widespread this damage and this impact really is.

And again, as the local officials suggested there, I don't even think they fully know yet just how far.

I mean, just imagine that, Fred, to say to an entire neighborhood -- northeast Philly, it's a large area of the city. They're saying, keep an eye out because debris might be near you.

[11:49:43]

WHITFIELD: Yes. Incredible. Yes, very densely-populated area where evidence from this crash may end up right in somebody's porch.

Danny Freeman, thank you so much. We'll talk to you again at the top of the hour.

We'll have much more in the NEWSROOM at the top of the hour.

Now, back to THE AMANPOUR HOUR.

AMANPOUR: Welcome back to the program.

80 years ago this week, Soviet troops liberated Auschwitz, the largest of the Nazi death camps. It marked the beginning of the end of the Holocaust, the darkest chapter in our human history.

Back in 2008, I reported from Auschwitz for a documentary called "SCREAM BLOODY MURDER", which chronicled the stories of those few brave souls who stood up to expose and try to stop genocide.

The term was codified by a Polish Jew named Raphael Lemkin, who lost everything he had and everyone he loved in the Holocaust. And through Lemkin's personal story, here are the horrors that he was fighting against.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

AMANPOUR: When Hitler invaded Poland in 1939, Lemkin knew that his worst fears were about to come true. Lemkin fled -- leaving his country and his family behind.

RAPHAEL LEMKIN, POLISH JEW: I felt I would never see them again. It was like going to their funerals while they were still alive.

AMANPOUR: Lemkin became one of the lucky few to reach America after a friend helped him find a job at Duke University Law School. But he remained afraid for his family and his countrymen.

LEMKIN: I had not stopped worrying about the people in Poland. When would the hour of execution come? Would this blind world only then see it, when it would be too late?

AMANPOUR: Soon, the letters from home stopped coming. The Nazis had captured his parents' village. It was a death sentence for 40 members of Lemkin's family.

By 1942, America had entered the war and the Germans had accelerated their deadly work.

Concentration camps ran day and night like assembly lines. Here at Auschwitz, more than a million people were killed.

Jews arrived packed into trains. The Nazis sorted them on the platform. Sent the doomed to the gas chambers. Stripped, shaved and tattooed the rest.

Elie Wiesel was number A7713.

ELIE WIESEL, HOLOCAUST SURVIVOR: I was young, frightened.

AMANPOUR: The Nazis killed his mother and his younger sister.

WIESEL: The question of the killers has obsessed me for years and years.

How could they kill children? I don't know. How could they?

AMANPOUR: As Wiesel suffered in the camps, word of the slaughter reached America. But it seemed of little interest to the press and the politicians.

Raphael Lemkin was outraged.

LEMKIN: The impression of a tremendous conspiracy of silence poisoned the air. A double murder was taking place. It was the murder of the truth.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

AMANPOUR: Jewish groups pressed Washington to bomb the camps -- or at least the rail lines. The allies refused, even though their planes were scouting targets nearby. Twenty-six thousand feet below, Elie Wiesel, seen here in a barracks, was clinging to life.

(on camera): They knew what was happening.

WIESEL: They knew.

AMANPOUR: They had a direct shot at stopping it.

WIESEL: They knew. From 10 to 12,000 men and women and children were killed every single day. The trains were running, running, running.

AMANPOUR (voice-over): But the U.S. didn't want to divert military resources from winning the war.

WIESEL: The truth?

It wasn't a priority.

(voice-over): The wrongs which we seek to condemn...

AMANPOUR: After the war, the architects of the Holocaust were tried at Nuremberg. They were sent to prison or to the gallows. But the world powers made no commitment to intervene should it ever happen again.

Lemkin knew he must act. He set his sights on the fledgling United Nations, put everything aside and worked himself to exhaustion for two years to create an international law against genocide.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: The convention is adopted by this assembly by unanimous vote.

AMANPOUR: Finally, in 1948, the Genocide Convention became law and it required nations to act to stop genocide.

Some called it Lemkin's Law.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Article 1, the contracting parties...

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Genocide, whether committed is a crime under international law.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: ...which they undertake to prevent and to punish.

AMANPOUR: It was a hard-won victory after a lifetime of sacrifice. A decade later, Lemkin would die penniless and alone. In the years to come, others would take up Lemkin's cause -- a brash American in Iraq, a defiant Canadian general in Rwanda and the missionary who took on the murderers in Cambodia.

(END VIDEO TAPE) AMANPOUR: 80 years later, the truth remains under increasing assault and the number of Holocaust survivors who are left dwindles and so too does their story then, as firsthand eyewitnesses.

Yet the far right is on the rise in Europe, even in Germany itself, where the AFD Party flirts with Nazi ideology and last weekend held a rally which Elon Musk addressed by video link.

As a wave of attacks on Jews and Jewish sites sweeps across the world, he actually says publicly that the AFD is the only thing that can save Germany. The danger is obviously self-evident.

When we come back, the hilarious Broadway play for our divisive times, a provocative and satirical look at the conspiracy theories over vaccines. The stars of "Eureka Day" after the break.

[11:54:23]

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

AMANPOUR: And finally, in this endlessly partisan era of division a Broadway play is asking, can we ever get along? Or at least agree on evident facts. Both timely and hilarious, "Eureka Day" centers around an elite California school that's all about inclusion.

This was before Trump's anti-DEI order, and when an outbreak of mumps forces a rethink of the school's liberal vaccine policies. As cases rise, the board is forced to make a decision that won't please everyone.

The play's stars Jessica Hecht and Bill Irwin join me from New York to discuss this.

[11:59:46]

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

JESSICA HECHT, "EUREKA DAY" ACTRESS: The play hopefully opens your mind to that reality that people are narcissistic in the worst and the best ways, I guess, for lack of a better word to use.

AMANPOUR: The worst and the best way. That's good narcissism.

Bill Irwin.

BILL IRWIN, ACTOR, "EUREKA DAY": As we've been talking about, we've hit the curve of history so that since the play was written, the pandemic gripped the world, the social justice reckoning moment when George Floyd was killed and election results.

Things that, like I said earlier, were a little -- we were a little fearful we might fall behind the curve of history. It's actually a very current conversation.

(END VIDEO CLIP) AMANPOUR: And that is all we have time for. Don't forget, you can find all our shows online as podcasts at CNN.com/audio and on all other major platforms.

I'm Christiane Amanpour in London. Thanks for watching and see you again next week.