she's described as a female Indiana Jones a French resistance fighter who face down Nazi interrogators she was also the Unstoppable woman who saved the ancient temples of Egypt this is the true story in Empress of the Nile welcome to between the covers I'm Anne bocock Lynn Olson is a New York Times best-selling author of nine books of history and most of them focus on World War II in her latest book a little bit of a departure she brings to life an extraordinary woman a Fearless Relentless woman one of the leading egyptologists of the 20th century please welcome the author of Empress of the Nile Lynn Olson hi Lynn thank you for being here oh it's my pleasure to be here and thank you we have to talk about Christine dirosh and maybe I pronounced her name correctly I'm hoping I did we meet her at 17 in the beginning of the story she is taking classes at the Louvre in Paris already at 17 she has this passion for ancient Egypt yes right tell me about 17 year old Christian Christian was an unusual um woman and she was an unusual girl she grew up in an upper middle class family in just after the turn of the 20th century um and and young French girls young well-bred French girls were basically educated to be wives and mothers you know they were not um they didn't expect to have a career she had Parents who were very liberal educated and her mother had graduated from college which was an unusual thing for a woman at that time and they basically um told Christian that she could do whatever she wanted uh whatever she wanted to do and so she grew up very energetic very enthusiastic very much very strong-willed thinking that she was just as good as anybody including boys and so she was really an Odd Girl Out at the time did you find out about her and I know your trademark really is finding these women in history that we have never heard of I'm going to confess I had never heard of her and how did you know after you found her that this is going to be a great story I was actually I've done a lot of work on World War II and other French Resistance um in uh during World War II um and so I was for my next book I was looking um for possibly another book I had uh written a book about a woman who was a French the leader of a French Resistance organization and I just came across another resistance Network the the first one actually in Paris after the Germans occupied France and one of the unusual things about this network is that women played a crucial role in founding it and so I was thinking well maybe I'll focus on this network and I came across one of the female members of the network and that was Christian De Roche she was in her early 20s then she was a curator of Egyptian Antiquities at the Louvre um and the more I learned about her the more I thought you know I'm not going to do a book about the network I'm going to do a book about her because it wasn't just what she did in the resistance um it was really more what she did after the war um again she was Fearless she was a female version of Indiana Jones she refused to let anybody from the Gestapo to her misogynistic male colleagues tell her what to do she was going to do what she wanted to do and I was just so intrigued by her I thought well I'm going to find out more about her and the more I found out about her the more I knew this was my next book was the information readily accessible because there there's a lot I'm thinking you you go down One path and then it leads you to something else was it hard to find the information not not with her I mean you know when when you write a book about one person I mean she is the through figure throughout this book I mean there are many many other people in this book but um it always helps if that person has written a memoir and she had it's in French it's not available in English it is incredibly detailed very very long and but it also presents her personality her you know Larger than Life take no prisoners personality I mean she was really an extraordinarily she was a daredevil I mean all her life she was a daredevil and that comes across in in her Memoir there there have been other things written about her again in French several people who knew her have written Memoirs so one you know one thing led to another so I followed the trail you know I started with her Memoir and I followed the trail and she died only you know in 2011 she was 97 years old so there are people around who knew her who had worked with her so it really wasn't that hard it does not surprise me that she wrote a very long detailed Memoir with a life like she had yeah there's a scene in the very beginning beginning where she is pulled off of this train by German soldiers she's a young woman at this time right she's put in this I think was a freezing cell interrogated by Nazis she doesn't cave she doesn't back down tell me about this this was when she was with that resistance organization so she would work at the Louvre during the week the the live remained open during the war and then on the weekends and at night she risked her life in the resistance and on this one particular day she was a courier she was carrying intelligence from occupied Nazi occupied France down to what was called free France which I mean the Free Zone The non-occupied Zone which was controlled by the Vichy government the French Vichy government so when that train crossed the border into the viching part of of France it stopped at this town and that is when this Soldier This Ss Soldier got on the train pulled her off they had obviously an advanced word that she was on this train she was carrying intelligence and it was on a little piece of paper that she stuck under you know in her glove um and um they put her in a cell and several hours later they brought her out and put her in a room with about five or six gestapo agents who all had their they were leading back in their chairs with their boots on the table and we're smoking cigars when she came in and they started interrogating her and she said in her Memoir I was not inclined to be amiable well that was an understatement she refused to answer their questions she she countered their questions um and they kept saying you know she was the spy and she said no I'm not a spy and as they kept interrogating her she got more and more angry because they were just like you know the um the the men that she had been working with in archeology who didn't want her there and who were you know who were arrogant and nasty to her and so she'd had it and she finally just exploded and she said talk to she said to them you have been raised so poorly how how could you sit there with your feet on the table when a woman walks into the room and these gestapo agents were just dumped on it you know that she would say that the interrogation continued viewed she got more and more Angry she cursed at them and they finally threw her back in her cell and then they let her go the next day it wasn't because she had talked back they had found that they had not come up with enough evidence but that's the way she was all her life she refused to let men whoever they were tell her what to do and she carried that through her whole life she and her friends in the art world are part of this the French Resistance which was fascinating they have these day jobs in the Louvre yeah and what are they doing in the rest of the time they are they are putting out an underground newspaper they are collecting intelligence they are carrying it like she did as a courier they're sending it to London um they are helping Allied soldiers who were caught in behind the lines and France escape to safety they were you know they were doing all sorts of activities this was very early on in the war and that unfortunately that underground organization was was broken by the Nazis and most of the leaders were executed she met because of this arrest she then was very very careful about what she did so she managed to make it through the war without being arrested or sent to a concentration camp which surprised me be a as bold as she was and is out there as she was I was also interested in in those chapters about the importance of protecting artwork and I think that's something we really don't give enough thought to when we talk about war right this was so important they were hiding these Treasures yes to keep them protected yeah um the head of the live the director of the Louvre a man named Before the War Began had a detailed plan of how he was going to evacuate not just the Mona Lisa and the you know the great masterpieces but thousands of paintings thousands of Antiquities take them out of the loop put them on trucks and and truck them to chateaus in the Loire Valley to keep them safe from the Nazis and then when the Nazis came marching into France and they got close to the Loire Valley those masterpieces of all the artwork was trucked again to chateau's closer to it in the South closer to neutral Spain to get them out of Harm's Way and and um Christian was one of the Lou curators who was involved in that you know she was 25 years old and she was shepherding truck convoys of Egyptian Antiquities down south this is when you know refugees were flooding the roads getting away from from the Nazi from German troops Marching In the German troops were marching and the German planes were bombing of the roads bombing the refugees and she was in the middle of all this you know getting getting all this these Egyptian artifacts down and she managed to do it she had to do it three times I mean she was um it was almost more than half the country that she had these trucks had to Traverse but that was the kind of woman she was you know it it she made it through without any problem I am so I appreciate so much that you put that in there it gives a whole new perspective on on what she and and her her her friends were had to deal with right right it was extraordinary so she follows her passion she goes to Egypt she falls in love with Egypt and the history and we we've alluded to this a little bit she has to prove her worth every single day to all of the men and I could understand if it was the the traditional males of Middle Eastern culture but this was every man yes she had to fight her way right what gave her that strength I think it was her upbringing the uh the uh feeling all along from her parents that she was as good as anybody else she was she was very very bright and she was brilliant in many ways um and that they just never discouraged her they never said you can't do that and I think that really but it was part of her I mean even if she were raised that way if she didn't have that that hunger to do what she wanted to do that it wouldn't have worked um I don't I really don't know what was in her that that allowed her to be as strong as she was because she had to be very very strong all of her life I mean she stood she was the the misogyny was archaeologists was was really a male only Club until really the middle of the 20th century and even past that I mean it was a male only um fraternity obviously a male um they didn't want women they didn't think women should be in the field they thought women were too weak um it was it was just very Macho and and she was really the only woman the only French woman uh at that time who was who was really working in the field and she Rose to the top of her profession despite all that you described the dangerous things that that she the the situation she was put into and yet she did every single one what I found interesting later in the book she's asked a question about feminism and she says no I was not a feminist you know I I explained that for me I think that's true of women of her generation I mean she you know she came of age in the in the 1930s she was in inter you know inner teens and and 20 that she was a feminist without I mean she encouraged women in archeology but they didn't think of it that way I mean they were really most of these women were really out there on their own and so I you know the concept of feminism was foreign to her and and yet she was she was but it it she just said I'm basically she didn't want to have labels placed on her she said you know I did my job I mean I I worked like hell what she did and I did my job and and I I deserved what I got and uh and uh that was true that she did let's have a little history lesson let's go back to the 60s there is this Race Against Time to save these Nubian temples because they also on dam is being constructed correct right what is going to happen what is going to happen as one dam was proposed by uh Colonel Nasser Gamal abdulmaster the um who took over control of Egypt in a coup in 1952 he and his fellow officers in the Egyptian Army and you know what really strikes me as incredible is that he was the first Egyptian to rule Egypt since Cleopatra in 30 BC Egypt had been controlled from the time Cleopatra lost to the Romans until by various countries um the last hundred years before Nasser came along by the British until he and his fellow army officers took control and at that point uh they the the colonels threw out the British and the French officials who were basically um still controlling they were in government in government agencies Egyptian agencies and he threw out all the westerners um and including the French archaeologists who were in charge of Egyptian Antiquities um so the Egyptians took over there was one Western archaeologist they allowed back into the country and that was Christiane their rosh um and it was because she unlike her Western male colleagues um respected them as people the Egyptians she knew Arabic which was not true of most male archaeologists she treated her the laborers the Egyptian laborers on her digs as individuals giving them the dignity that she thought they deserved so she was very different from you know from most and and so that they uh they they kept her there as an advisor and and as as the head of a UNESCO mission to help them build a research center so that's why she was in Egypt during this time when Nassar having taken power then decided to build this enormous new dam to improve electricity and agriculture for him which will flood all of but it will flood yes it came with a horrific price it was going to flood more than 20 Priceless temples later she manages to get the first exhibit of the King Tut Treasures that was surprising as well and then wasn't there like King Tut Mania in the 60s but one thing followed another you know she really had this uh mission to save these temples and everybody was saying it's impossible it's it's engineering you can't do it and you can't raise the money people are not going to pay countries are not going to pay for it she was single-minded and she managed to bring a coalition together and in the nick of time those temples were in fact saved and because they were Nasser as a thank you gift uh she you know she was at the Louvre still she was the curator of the Egyptian Antiquities she he basically said okay you can have the first major exhibition of King Tut's Treasures outside of Egypt so so in 1967 the you know these incredible riches from the tomb were sent to the Louvre and she curated this astonishing exhibit which just took Paris and France by storm and then caused every other country in the world to want a similar exhibition and that is the beginning of the top menu that's still really but it was extraordinary what a coup here's what I didn't expect to see in this book and that's Jackie Kennedy I know and then here she is she really was instrumental yeah on on a parallel level to what Christiane was doing can you talk about that I was stunned I had no idea when I wrote the proposal for this book it was going to be only about Christian and when I began my research I found out that without Christian obviously but also without Jackie Kennedy those temples would not have been saved um the U.S government was against it was anti-nassa anti-egypt and so when this campaign began the government under Eisenhower Dwight Eisenhower uh said no we're not you know we're not getting involved in this project at all we're not getting any money in order for this astonishing campaign to succeed it it desperately needed usaid it couldn't have been done uh without America's help and just you know like a miracle um November 1960 happened and John Kennedy was elected president Jackie Kennedy behind the scenes persuaded John Kennedy to ask Congress to approve funds to save um the Abu symbol and and the other temples uh that were that were being threatened and he did and it really was the nick of time the the dad was already being built so if you they weren't able to say the temples too bad they would be it you know at the bottom of a reservoir um and in the nick of time uh Congress did you know approve this money and so um really without the help of Jackie Kennedy it would never have happened it was all behind the scenes uh nobody knew what that she had done nobody knew but I don't think either women were aware of what the others do they they met in 1973 for the first and only time and that is that is the irony the great irony that without these two women those temples would be at the bottom of a reservoir um and um some of the greatest cultural Treasures of Egypt would have been lost and because they were doing it behind the scenes both of them uh and without credit neither one of them knew that the other one was involved that was fascinating I loved that thank you there's another element in the book that I am trying to balance and that is we have priceless artifacts we have Treasures and visit anywhere in the world how do they get to all of these museums on other parts of the world and I don't think it would all came peacefully oh no I mean that that is one of the great controversies to this day and in fact it's more of a controversy now than it was before um no the story of archeology especially Egyptian archeology is a story of plundering it's a story of Western Colonial Powers particularly the British and the French in the the 18th 19th century and early 20th century who were basically um you know the two main Colonial powers in the Middle East and part of the colonial attitude was that that they uh that they deserved these Antiquities that their archaeologists found in Egypt and in other places and and their argument was it was they were far better the Antiquities were far better off in these fabulous museums like the Louvre or the British museum than in Egypt and so you know for a hundred years tombs were plundered um Antiquities were taken out you know mummies um you know Wonderful statues um and you know nothing happened that you know they they were in Egypt they were part of Egypt but um they ended up in museums all over the west and um this there are reverberations today Egypt is trying to get back a lot of those Treasures the heroine of the book lived this long rich life and I would love it because you wrote it so beautifully if you would read the last two paragraphs be delighted on June 23rd 2011 Christian De Roche Noble Court died at the age of 97. the flood of tributes that followed her death included a deeply personal statement of loss by Henry Laurette who headed the Louvre at the time she was a very special person an emotional Laurette said one who was very dear to my heart French president Nicolas Sarkozy called her the grand Dom of the Nile and compared her to the great jean-francois chapolion the founding father of egyptology in the final few months of her life darosh noblecore made it clear she intended to go on working and living until the last possible moment on the bookshelves in her room she left behind voluminous notes for possible future writing projects as long as there's life there's hope she had told the documentary filmmaker who made a movie of her life never give up never abandon what you set out to do that's my philosophy was her philosophy uh calling her the female Indiana Jones app description absolutely absolutely in a couple of minutes that we have left I'd love to know a little bit more about you I know that you were the AP wire Services first woman correspondent in Moscow is that correct that's correct yes what's the most memorable thing that you remember from that time and what do you think about today um first of all it was a shock going over there I had no background in Russian I was in my mid-20s the AP wanted to have a woman in Moscow um to write features but I also covered hard news um the most memorable thing was just to be there um you know I grew up in the west um I you know did a lot of reporting in the United States I had never been I had never been overseas before I went that was your first month it was my first um you know I I went to London on my way and it was the first time I had been in London so everything about it was new and in a way that probably was good because I came to it with a very fresh eye and it was very foreign and I I learned a lot um you know it was still days of Communism the winning days of Communism so what struck me is to be in a country where there was no Freedom at all that that you could not talk to anybody anybody that came up to you who was rushing on the street you had to be wary of them because they might be you know provocateurs um so living in that kind of very foreign culture on so many levels really opened my eyes you know as an American I was so used to what we have here and to go there and see how how different it is and so it really did give me a totally New Perspective that you know basically I've kept I think all the rest of it it has been such a pleasure to talk with you to learn about Christian what what a wonderful book thank you so much for spending time thank you very much I'm Anne bocock please join me on the next between the covers [Music]