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GARY EICHTEN: Find breaking news and listen online at mprnewsq.org.

REPORTER 1: Support for this program comes from CenterPoint Energy, offering new and improved energy conservation programs that can lower energy use, reduce your carbon footprint, and help run homes and businesses more efficiently with clean burning natural gas. centerpointenergy.com/efficiency.

GRETA CUNNINGHAM: Programming is supported by Twin Cities Business, delivering the top local business news stories to your inbox twice a week, TCB briefcase e-newsletter registration available at tcbmag.com.

GARY EICHTEN: Kind of a soupy mix in the Twin Cities right now. Some light rain and fog. 41 degrees might warm up to about 45. Tonight, rain is likely, some drizzle as well. Low of 35. More rain tomorrow. A tad warmer tomorrow 45 to 50. And a good chance of rain on Friday as well. Again, temperature high of 45.

KORVA COLEMAN: From NPR news in Washington, I'm Korva Coleman. President Obama is welcoming Haitian president René Préval to the White House. Préval is in the US thanking Americans for their help after Haiti's devastating earthquake in January. Hundreds of thousands of people died. Mr. Obama says the quake was one of the most devastating incidents ever to strike the Western Hemisphere.

BARACK OBAMA: To offer just some perspective on the awful scale of Haitian loss, it's as if the United states, in a terrible instant, lost nearly 8 million people. Or it's as if one third of our country, 100 million Americans, suddenly had no home, no food, or water.

KORVA COLEMAN: Haitian president Préval says the challenges in his country are far from over. He's looking ahead to the rainy season and says homeless people must be sheltered quickly. President Obama flies to Saint Louis later today. He's to promote health care overhaul legislation and to discuss how an overhaul could help stop health care fraud.

National education groups today released draft standards for what students should learn in grades K through 12. The move is part of a push to iron out differences among the 50 states and raise expectations for American schools. NPR's Larry Abramson reports.

LARRY ABRAMSON: The National Governors Association and the Council of Chief State School Officers are putting out the proposal today with the intention of getting agreement on final standards later this year. 48 states have joined in the effort to develop national standards. Alaska and Texas have not signed on.

Today's release will put out for public comment expectations for what students should learn in math and English to prepare them for college. President Obama has been supporting the effort as a way to address a key criticism of No Child Left behind, that it allows each state to administer separate achievement tests to its students. The White House wants to tie education funding to the standards and will award money under the Race to the Top program based on progress toward these benchmarks. Larry Abramson, NPR news, Washington.

KORVA COLEMAN: US wholesale inventories fell unexpectedly in January and that's according to a report released today by the Commerce Department. NPR's Sonari Glinton reports.

SONARI GLINTON: Even though sales at the wholesale level in the US rose by 1.3% in January, wholesale inventories fell. What that means is companies cut the amount of merchandise they make available to stores and retailers. The dip in inventory, which was 2/10 of a percent, points towards businesses being cautious about having too many goods on hand.

Economists are hoping that wholesale demand for goods continues, and that will prompt more inventory restocking. The hope is more sales will equal more inventory and more inventory will mean more factory orders. And all of that will lead to an improved economy. At least that's the hope. Sonari Glinton, NPR news, Washington.

KORVA COLEMAN: On Wall Street, the Dow Jones Industrial average is down 6 points at 10,557. The NASDAQ is up 13, 23.54. The S&P 500 is also up three points. You're listening to NPR news.

REPORTER 2: Support for news comes from the Annie E Casey Foundation, recognizing the importance of data to improve outcomes for children on the web at aecf.org.

STEVEN JOHN: From Minnesota Public Radio news, I'm Steven John. All schools in Minneapolis are under a lockdown today as police investigate a threat communicated electronically. Cretin-Derham Hall High School in St. Paul was also closely monitoring people entering and exiting that school after an email threat was received there. Police say they are taking the threat seriously.

Officials in Minneapolis have said the threats they're involved social networking sites. They say the lockdown is a precautionary measure. It's not known if the threats to Minneapolis schools and Cretin were the same. Students remain in classrooms, but access to schools is limited. Parents were notified, but have been told they didn't need to pick up their children.

Governor Tim Pawlenty toured sandbag operations in Moorhead this morning and met with city and county officials. The governor says he's very impressed with local officials detailed plans for a spring flood.

TIM PAWLENTY: They have done just tremendous work preparing for this flood possibility. I leave here today feeling very confident that Moorhead and Clay County are as prepared as possible for these events. You can never know for sure how these things go because temperatures change and weather changes and the like, so you can't take anything for granted.

STEVEN JOHN: Pawlenty says the state will make needed resources available as the floods develop. Pawlenty sent a letter to President Obama this week requesting an expedited disaster declaration for spring flooding.

Minnesota Vikings defensive tackle Kevin Williams is acknowledging that he told several people he tested positive for a banned diuretic before news of the test results leaked to the media in 2008. Just who leaked the test results for Williams and his teammate Pat Williams is an issue in this week's trial of the player's lawsuit against the NFL. The players claim that the league leaked the results in violation of Minnesota labor law.

Light rain south and central today, a lesser chance of rain in the north. Dense fog advisory for Western and Southern Minnesota. This is Minnesota Public Radio News.

GARY EICHTEN: Thanks, Steven. It's 6 minutes past 12:00.

[MUSIC PLAYING]

And good afternoon. Welcome back to Midday on Minnesota Public Radio News. I'm Gary Eichten. A Minnesota woman is being honored today in Washington with a Congressional Gold Medal, the highest award that Congress can bestow on a civilian.

Elizabeth Strohfus is among more than 1,000 women who are finally being recognized for their service during World War II. Strohfus and the others were members of the Women's Airforce Service Pilots or WASP. During the war, they tested and transported planes in the United States so that male pilots could go overseas to fight.

They were the first women to fly military planes and their work was extremely dangerous. Well, in a couple of minutes, we'll hear from Elizabeth Strohfus. But to begin, we have an overview of the WASP and what they did. Here's National Public Radio's Susan Stamberg.

SUSAN STAMBERG: December 1944, Avenger Field, Sweetwater, Texas.

HAP ARNOLD: I didn't know in 1941 whether a slip of a girl could fight the controls of a B-17 in heavy weather.

SUSAN STAMBERG: Hap Arnold, commanding general of the US Army Air Forces, congratulates a very proud group of young women, the most recent group to complete training as military pilots.

HAP ARNOLD: It is on the record that women can fly as well as men.

SUSAN STAMBERG: The women sang their hearts out that day, but their hearts hurt too.

(SINGING) You'll go forth from here with your silver wings.

The WASP program was ending. They would have just two weeks of duty. For more than two years, young women had carried out various assignments in the US, ferrying planes from factories to military bases, testing repaired planes, and most dangerously towing targets aloft so men could learn to shoot.

KATE LANDDECK: So you'd have these planes that would fly past a row of gunners on the ground. And the gunners would practice with live ammunition to learn how to shoot at a moving object.

SUSAN STAMBERG: Historian Kate Landdeck of Texas Woman's University has written a book about the WASP. She says no WASP was seriously hurt towing a target. But there were other close calls.

Margaret Phelan had one ferrying an aircraft cross-country. Somewhere between Arizona and California, Margaret saw smoke in her cockpit. She was trained to bail out if anything went wrong.

MARGARET PHELAN TAYLOR: But the parachutes were way too big. They weren't fitted to us. The force of the air and that speed and everything, why, that just ripped stuff off of you.

SUSAN STAMBERG: So the thing better fit well, otherwise you're in trouble.

MARGARET PHELAN TAYLOR: Well, yes, that's right.

SUSAN STAMBERG: So Margaret Phelan faced a defining moment.

MARGARET PHELAN TAYLOR: I thought, you know what, I'm not going until I see flame. When I see actual fire, well then I'll jump.

SUSAN STAMBERG: You weren't scared?

MARGARET PHELAN TAYLOR: Scared? No, I was never scared. My husband used to say it's pretty hard to scare you.

SUSAN STAMBERG: Like many of the 1,100 trained WASP, 25,000 applied. Margaret Phelan had moxie. An Iowa farm girl in 1943, she was just out of college when a LIFE Magazine cover story on the WASP caught her eye.

Margaret's brother was training to be a pilot with the army. Why not her? 19 years old, she borrowed $500 and got a pilot's license. But there was a problem. Margaret was half an inch shorter than the 5 foot 2 requirement.

MARGARET PHELAN TAYLOR: And I just stood up on my tiptoes. But I got to Sweetwater, Avenger Field where there were a lot of other short ones just like me. And we laughed about how we got in.

SUSAN STAMBERG: Short, tall, slim, wide, they were all civilian volunteers. And like Margaret, came in knowing how to fly. The military-trained male pilots from scratch, but not the women.

KATE LANDDECK: They didn't want to bring in a bunch of girls who didn't know how to fly an airplane.

SUSAN STAMBERG: Again, historian Kate Landdeck.

KATE LANDDECK: So you have women who are getting out of high school and taking every dime they have to learn how to fly so they could be a WASP.

SUSAN STAMBERG: 38 of these eager young women died serving their country. One was 26-year-old Mabel Rawlinson from Kalamazoo, Michigan.

PAM POHLY: I've always known of her as the family hero, the one we lost too soon, the one that everyone loved and wished was still around.

SUSAN STAMBERG: Pam Pohly is Mabel Rawlinson's niece. After training, Mabel was stationed at Camp Davis in North Carolina. She was returning from a night training exercise with her male instructor when their plane crashed. Pam Pohly reads a statement from a WASP who witnessed the accident.

PAM POHLY: We were in the dining room and we heard the siren that indicated a crash. We ran out on the field. We saw the front of her plane engulfed in fire, and we could hear Mabel screaming. It was a nightmare.

SUSAN STAMBERG: It's believed that Mabel's hatch malfunctioned and she couldn't get out. Her instructor was thrown from the plane and survived. Mabel Rawlinson was a civilian. The military was not required to pay for her funeral or pay for her remains to be sent home. And this is a common story her fellow pilots pitched in.

PAM POHLY: They collected enough money to ship her remains home by train. And a couple of the fellow WASP accompanied her casket.

SUSAN STAMBERG: And because Mabel wasn't military, the American flag was not allowed to be draped over her coffin. But her family did it anyway. The women expected to become part of the military. Instead, historian Kate Landdeck says in 1944, the WASP program was threatened.

KATE LANDDECK: It was a very controversial time for women flying aircraft. There was a lot of debate about whether they were needed any longer.

SUSAN STAMBERG: By the summer of 44, the war seemed to be ending. Flight training programs were closing down, which meant that male civilian instructors were losing their jobs. They feared being drafted and lobbied for the women pilots jobs.

KATE LANDDECK: And it was unacceptable to have women replacing men. They could release men for duty. That was patriotic, but they couldn't replace men.

SUSAN STAMBERG: And so the Wasp program was disbanded. Lillian Yonally graduated from one of the early WASP training classes when she was dismissed from her piloting job in California. She says no one saluted. There was no ceremony.

LILLIAN YONALLY: Not a darn thing. It was told to us we would be leaving the base. And we hopped airplanes to get back home.

SUSAN STAMBERG: And once home, they went on with their lives. A few of them stayed in the air as airline stewardesses after the war. In those days, no major airline would hire these experienced women as pilots. Like many World War II veterans, most WASP never talked about their experiences. And according to Margaret Phelan Taylor, they never expected anything either.

MARGARET PHELAN TAYLOR: We were children of the depression. It was root hog or die. You had to take care of yourself. Nobody owed us anything.

SUSAN STAMBERG: Still, some years later, the WASP began getting together and pushing for military status. Then in 1976, historian Kate Landdeck says something happened that riled the whole Wasp nest.

KATE LANDDECK: The Air Force comes out and says they are going to admit women to their flying program, and that it is the first time that the Air Force has allowed women to fly their aircraft.

LILLIAN YONALLY: No, it was impossible for anybody to say that. That wasn't true.

SUSAN STAMBERG: Lillian Yonally still gets upset about that 30 years later.

LILLIAN YONALLY: We were the first ones.

SUSAN STAMBERG: The fact that the WASP were forgotten even by the Air Force united the women. They lobbied Congress for military recognition. In 1977, they finally got it. But it took another 30 years for a really big honor, the Congressional Gold Medal. Lillian Yonally is sad that fewer than 300 of her more than 1,100 fellow WASP are alive to receive it.

LILLIAN YONALLY: I'm sorry that so many girls have passed on. It's nice the families will receive it. But it doesn't make up for the gals who knew what they did and weren't honored that way.

SUSAN STAMBERG: Lillian Yonally and other surviving WASP will be attending the Gold Medal ceremony in Washington and remembering those long ago days when they served their country out of loyalty, patriotism and says former WASP Margaret Phelan Taylor, something else.

MARGARET PHELAN TAYLOR: Actually, I did it for the fun. I mean, I was a young girl. Everybody had left. And it was war time. And you didn't want to get stuck in the hole in Iowa. You wanted to see what was going on.

SUSAN STAMBERG: I'm Susan Stamberg, NPR news.

[WOMEN SINGING]

GARY EICHTEN: Well, as we said, another one of the women being honored today by Congress is Minnesota's own Elizabeth Strohfus. Several years ago, she talked with Minnesota Public Radio reporter Elizabeth Stawicki about her experience in the WASPs telling Elizabeth that while growing up in Faribault, she always wanted to fly.

ELIZABETH STROHFUS: We had a Sky Club. And to be a member of the Sky Club, we had to have a whole $100. That doesn't sound like much, but I was making $50 a month and helping support my home.

My mother would take the money and give me a few dollars to spend because I lived home, I ate home. I didn't need too much to go on. And so when I started flying, I had to borrow the $100.

ELIZABETH STAWICKI: From whom?

ELIZABETH STROHFUS: From the local bank. Well, I heard the banks loan money. So I went down to this gentleman, Mr. Cowell, and I said that I needed to borrow $100. And he said, $100? Miss, wow, what do you want that much money for?

I said, well, I want to belong to Sky Club and I need $100 for membership. He said women doesn't fly. They just don't fly. I said, this one's going to. Well, he said, well, what do you have for collateral?

I had no idea about collateral at that time. I did have a nice bicycle, which I rode back and forth to work. I thought it was my transportation. And I'd be willing to put that up for the $100. And I told him that.

And first, he said, well, I don't know. I lent women money for furs, cars, and trips, and cruises, and houses. But I've never lent money to a woman to learn how to fly. Well, I said, Mr. Cowell, I have to fly. I just have to fly.

So without saying anything more, he went and got the papers. And I signed it. And later, I didn't even know it then, but he had co-signed my note, which I understand was not the usual way of lending money.

So I was very fortunate too. You see, being in a small town, he knew my family. He knew the background. He knew we were poor, but he knew we were honest.

GARY EICHTEN: Elizabeth Strohfus did learn to fly. And after the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor, she quit her job and signed up for the newly formed Women's Airforce Service Pilots. She was one of the women who flew military planes while towing targets behind them so that the men could learn how to shoot.

ELIZABETH STROHFUS: They did it in different types of aircraft. At Las Vegas, they did it with the B-26. That's how I happened to be a co-pilot on a B-26. And we'd have a great big, long tow rope behind the B-26. And then there would be a big sleeve behind that.

ELIZABETH STAWICKI: So you were towing these--

ELIZABETH STROHFUS: Towing this target, yes. And then the fighter pilots would come. We'd be just flying straight and level. And they'd be coming shooting at the sleeve in the--

ELIZABETH STAWICKI: What were they shooting with?

ELIZABETH STROHFUS: Live ammunition. I don't know what caliber.

ELIZABETH STAWICKI: Live ammunition.

ELIZABETH STROHFUS: Oh, yes. Oh, yes. They shot live ammunition there. When I flew the B-17s in formation like this, then with all the turrets. They had here the ball turret, the top turret, the nose turret.

They had the gunners there. Well, they had what they call camera guns because we'd dive in on them. And then they'd shoot at us with camera guns. And then they had a great big trainer. It was called the Waller Trainer. It was a great big like a three-story building with no corners. And they'd show that film on there to where they would have hit it. They would have been an enemy aircraft.

ELIZABETH STAWICKI: What is it like flying a B-26 and having this long piece of material that you're towing behind you, plus having people shoot at you with live ammunition?

ELIZABETH STROHFUS: Well, I really never thought too much about it. I mean, I felt this is one of the-- this is one of our jobs to do. And I felt that if this were going to help our fighters get over there and stop this war, I really felt, I never thought--

ELIZABETH STAWICKI: Were you ever scared that they would shoot off in another direction?

ELIZABETH STROHFUS: No. I probably should have been. I probably didn't know enough to be scared.

[LAUGHS]

No, I never felt that. I never felt the fear. I don't know. It's funny. But when you're young, you feel that nothing is ever going-- and it's a good thing the young do things like this. Because you think you're invincible. And you think that you're indestructible. And you think that nothing is ever going to happen to you. That was my feeling. I never really was afraid. I probably should have been sometime but--

ELIZABETH STAWICKI: Didn't you have an interesting episode in was it near Las Vegas or you were on some training mission. And that when you got out of the-- got out of the cockpit, what happened?

ELIZABETH STROHFUS: They needed someone to fly this mission over at Indian Springs, which is a short distance from Las Vegas. And I'd never been there before. And I'd been flying this mission with the 86s and the B-17s. And so they said, well, do you want to fly this mission? This is closer to the ground. I said, fine.

So they brought me into the office and said I had to sign this statement saying that I wouldn't go below 500 feet. Well, I thought it said 50 because I got over there. And it's something, I don't know. I guess there's a little bit of devilment in all of this.

Anyway, I saw this building up there. And I knew those fellas were all on the other side waiting for me to come to shoot them. And I thought, now really, this is not the way it's going to be when they go there. But I couldn't resist. I went just even with the roof. But when I got to the roof, I did go above it.

And when I got above the roof, I changed the prop pitch of an 86. And it makes some great roar. I love the sound, but it's a real roar. And that close to the building, it shook it. Oh, the poor fellas thought they were being bombed. And I turned around and every one of them had hit the deck.

So then, as I was supposed to do, I went up and then I made all these they called pursuit curves. That's what I was doing, pursuit curves. That's another story. But anyway, I was doing these pursuit curves around these fellas. And they were all in their guns as if they were either the nose turret or the ball turret or the top turret, whatever. And they were supposed to shoot at me.

But thank God they didn't have actual ammunition that day. They had their camera guns. So anyway, they kept shooting at me with their camera guns. And after the mission, I was running low on fuel. So I had to stop there to be refueled before I went back to Vegas. And that's when I stopped in the field.

And before I got out of an airplane, I'm a pilot, but I'm a woman pilot. I reached in my little pocket here. And I get my lipstick out, and I get my comb out and I brushed up. I take off that old hat and brushed up my hair. And I jumped on the wing all decked out.

And this fellow coming down the ramp, oh, he was so upset. Oh, he was so upset, and he was so red in the face. And I don't think he said what he probably would have if he saw it was a woman, when he saw it was a woman instead of a man. He kept trying to look in the pilot, in the pilot seat, which I had just jumped out off. And he said, where's that pilot that flew that last mission?

Oh, I said, I'm your pilot. He said, well, I'm going to report you. And I said oh? I said, what did I do? And he said, well, you scared the living daylights out of those boys.

I said, well, mister, where are those boys going from here? And he said, well, they're going to combat. And he said, and I want them to live to get there. And I said, well, don't you think that maybe this was-- I thought this in a hurry. Don't you think that this was just a good exercise?

I said, the enemy, they're just not going to come around and say, here I am, boys. Get your sights on me and shoot me down. I said, they're going to be surprised. I surprised them. But he and I became friends and I never heard any more about it. So I don't know if he-- it's one of those things. I don't know why I did it. But it's funny, I had to do it.

[LAUGHS]

ELIZABETH STAWICKI: Just had to do it.

ELIZABETH STROHFUS: I just had to do it. I really don't even know why, but that's what I did.

ELIZABETH STAWICKI: There were some accidents, though, that happened.

ELIZABETH STROHFUS: Oh yes. We had 38 of our women killed in the service. And this was really sad because the lay insurance people would not insure us because they said our job is too dangerous. I don't want to get shot at. It was too dangerous. But they wouldn't-- they wouldn't insure us.

The government wouldn't insure us because we were not as yet a part of their organization. So they wouldn't insure us. We had no insurance. And when the 38 girls were killed, their families had to bring the bodies home. One of our girls would go with them.

And if the family couldn't afford it, I know in one instance, they took a collection and got the body home. They wouldn't allow flag in the-- a flag on the coffin. They wouldn't allow a star in the window to show that they had died protecting our country. And those things really hurt.

ELIZABETH STAWICKI: So the government wouldn't even pay to send them home?

ELIZABETH STROHFUS: No, they wouldn't. Well, you see, as of yet, they were still talking about making us military. But they finally decided. In fact, they wanted to take us into the WAC organization. And Jacqueline Cochran said, no, our girls are not going to be taken into the WACs because if we washed out of being a pilot, we'd be taken into that organization.

She said I think this is a special organization. And the girls came in to be pilots. And if they can't be pilots, then they should be civilians. And so they had all this bickering in Congress, which was kind of sad. But anyway, so December 20, they deactivated our organization and told us to go home.

ELIZABETH STAWICKI: What was that like when they just said thank you for your service and that's it?

ELIZABETH STROHFUS: Well--

ELIZABETH STAWICKI: Do you remember that day?

ELIZABETH STROHFUS: Oh, very, very well. Yeah, very, very, very well.

ELIZABETH STAWICKI: What do you remember?

ELIZABETH STROHFUS: I remember that I had to turn in. I turned in my flight jacket and packed my bags. And for me, to leave those airplanes was one of the hardest things I've ever done in my life because I knew that would be the last time that I would fly these type aircraft. And it broke my heart.

But after all, we wanted the-- we wanted the war to end. And we went in to help the war effort. And we went in because there was a shortage of men pilots. And you see, by the end of 1944, there were enough men coming home. And they were trying to take our jobs away from us.

They said that those girls have our jobs. We need them. And they did need the jobs to get their flight pay. If they didn't have so many hours a month, they wouldn't get flight pay. So they had to get their flight pay. So it was just the sign of the times.

ELIZABETH STAWICKI: So did you get on an airplane and come back to Faribault?

ELIZABETH STROHFUS: Airplane? Of course not. I had to pay my way back. So I got a ride with one of the girls from Des Moines. And then I got a ride in them in the railroad. We all have our own ways. I mean, we had to make our own way home, of course.

So it was really hard. And it was hard for me because now I had to go and earn a living because I was not ready to get married to anybody. And besides, I felt if I did, I would be just doing it because I didn't know what to do with myself. And I did not want to get married under those circumstances.

I had a lot of boyfriends, but I'm not ready. So I came home and stayed home for a while. I [INAUDIBLE] motors for one of the fellas at the airport. They wanted me to stay so badly. But for me to go back in an office at this point in time was just too hard.

Because I had gone to Southwest Airlines and brought all my credentials. I not only had four engine rating, I flew pursuits. I taught instrument flying. I did that in between. And I went and got a seaplane rating because I wanted to have everything.

So when I went there, I was fully prepared. I had everything to fly commercial airlines because I had flown four-engine bombers. And they were very impressed with my credentials. And they would have liked me in their front office. But I told them what they could do with their front office. I wasn't really interested.

So that was really tough. But, as I say, that was the sign of the times. They just were not hiring women pilots at that time. But I didn't know why because I said, let me fly in any one of your aircraft that you have. And if I don't fly better than any man you put up against me, I don't want your job. I just want to prove to you that I can do it. But no, I never was given the opportunity.

GARY EICHTEN: Minnesotan Elizabeth Strohfus, one of the many folks, many women who is being honored in Washington, DC today with the Congressional Gold Medal, the highest honor Congress can bestow on a civilian. Strohfus served in the Women Airforce Service Pilots or WASPs during World War II. She was interviewed by Minnesota Public Radio reporter Elizabeth Stawicki back in 1996.

We're going to take a break for news and we'll hear from another Minnesota woman as she recounts her harrowing experiences during World War II.

TOM CRANN: Later on in All Things Considered, the latest on the threats received at Twin Cities schools today and reaction to them. I'm Tom Crann. That story and all the day's news, join me here on Minnesota Public Radio News later this afternoon at 3:00.

STEVEN JOHN: From Minnesota Public Radio News, I'm Steven John. Minneapolis Public Schools officials say the district will remain on a yellow alert for the remainder of the school day. According to Minneapolis school and police officials, a threat was made on social networking sites saying that a male would come to a Minneapolis school to shoot it up and then shoot himself.

The threat didn't name a specific school. District spokespeople say the district's 34,000 students are in classes, but access to the buildings is restricted. In St. Paul, Cretin-Derham High School was also closely monitoring people entering and exiting the school after an email threat was received there.

President Barack Obama has told Haiti's president he understands that the situation remains dire following the devastating January earthquake. He's promising to continue to help Haiti through its long recovery and reconstruction period.

Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius says health insurers have a choice to oppose reform and eventually lose customers or work with the White House. Her speech comes as the president heads to suburban St. Louis for another push for health care overhaul and as business groups step up their opposition to his plan.

Israel's interior minister is apologizing for the timing of his announcement that Israel plans to build 1,600 homes in East Jerusalem. He says there was no intention to offend or taunt Vice President Joe Biden who is in the Middle East promoting a new round of US-led peace negotiations. But Israel isn't backing away from the plans which Biden says could inflame tensions.

The Minnesota Department of Human Services is cutting 200 jobs in a program that cares for people with mental illnesses, but says it will take steps to make sure direct care isn't affected. The cuts are part of $17 million in reductions in Governor Tim Pawlenty's latest budget proposal.

Light rain for the south and central parts of Minnesota today, a lesser chance for rain in the north. A dense fog advisory up for portions of the west and south through 6:00 PM. Highs in the 30s west, to the 40s in the east. This is Minnesota Public Radio News.

GARY EICHTEN: And this is Midday on Minnesota Public Radio News. Good afternoon. Gary Eichten here. For the rest of this hour, we're going to hear the story of Sabina Zimering, a Polish Jew who survived the Holocaust by hiding from the Nazis hiding in plain sight. Maybe you've heard a play based on her story is currently on stage at the History Theatre in St. Paul.

Well, Sabina Zimering is now a retired St. Louis Park physician. But during the war, she and her sister survived the Holocaust by pretending to be Catholics while at the same time working in a hotel full of German soldiers. Sabina Zimering talked with Minnesota Public Radio's Dan Olson about her experience. We first broadcast this interview in 2002.

[MUSIC PLAYING]

DAN OLSON: Dr. Sabina Zimering, a retired St. Louis Park physician, was born into a Jewish family in Poland. When the Germans invaded, friends working for the Polish underground gave Zimering, and her sister new identities as Catholics. The German military's relentless search for Jews posing as Gentiles forced Zimering to live a nightmare existence. She was in constant fear of being discovered.

In a strange twist of fate, Zimering, and her sister found refuge as workers in a German hotel occupied by German military officers. Zimering was 16 years old on the bright, clear Friday, September 1, 1939, when sirens sounded as she and her mother returned from the farmers market in Piotrkow, the city where they lived.

SABINA ZIMERING: So at first I was annoyed. I thought, wow, another one of those boring things-- get off the street, find shelter, and wait until you hear the siren again. Well, instead of that, after the siren, bombs were falling. Shortly after that, I heard about a boy that was older, and I hoped he would notice me. He was the first victim. He was killed on the balcony.

DAN OLSON: They were bombing your city.

SABINA ZIMERING: And this was the first day of the Second World War.

DAN OLSON: Zimering says her grandparents argued it wasn't necessary to flee the invading Germans. However, her father, a coal merchant, had been reading accounts of the persecution of Jews in Germany after Hitler came to power.

SABINA ZIMERING: So the family of five, we got a horse-drawn carriage from our hometown to Czechów, which was my favorite summer place that we couldn't go that summer. And from there, on one foot, we were just walking.

DAN OLSON: Zimering says the roads were clogged with refugees walking at night, hiding in barns or houses with farm families during the day in what turned out to be a futile bid to outpace the invaders.

SABINA ZIMERING: We were spending the night with some farmers. And all of a sudden, some neighbor was running, shouting. They're here! They're here! The Germans are here! They just came out of the forest.

And a group of people gather to get the latest news. And I remember everybody was excited and loud, and my father was silent. His face was ghost white. He knew what it meant.

DAN OLSON: Zimering and her family returned to their home in what was now an occupied city.

SABINA ZIMERING: What I remember is just seeing them and hearing them. The thing that was the most frightening was the marching, the boots. Somehow they're-- what do you call the march? Goose, goose step? Goose step. Yeah. They were so loud and so scary! You could hear them four blocks away that there were Germans.

DAN OLSON: Sabina Zimering says her city of 60,000 included about 15,000 Jews. She says the Germans took their homes and belongings and ordered them to move to what would become the Jewish ghetto.

SABINA ZIMERING: So they were confiscating radios, fur coats, and they took over. Jewish businesses, immediately closed all Jewish schools.

DAN OLSON: Almost immediately, Zimering says, the German military began arresting Jews. The terror included beatings and patrols with attack dogs.

SABINA ZIMERING: Once, I was walking not too far from home and I could hear shouts and people running. And I knew right away what it was. It was the Gestapo man with his dog. And he was a tall, handsome man with black shining shoes with a leather whip and a dog. And he would let the dog loose and he would bite anyone he could get a hold of, leaving pretty deep wounds.

And when it happened when I was in the street, I started to run. And before long, I could hear the panting and barking of the dog right behind me. And I knew that if I keep running straight, he will get me in a second. So I made a quick right turn to the two apartment building entrance. And the dog kept going straight. And a few minutes later, I heard an outcry of a child.

DAN OLSON: Leaders in the Jewish ghetto plotted rebellion, but they were discovered and arrested. Zimering says as the months passed, the food supply dwindled and disease took a heavy toll. Even so, two girls, family friends who were Catholics, risked arrest to visit Zimering's family in the ghetto. Their mother had been Zimering's elementary school teacher. Her mother asked the friends to help them get documents showing that Zimering and her sister were Catholic.

SABINA ZIMERING: A few days later, they were back again and again. So luckily, we were at the edge of the ghetto. Right across the street was already the Polish part with a large church. So they came through the front part, which was on the Polish part of the church, came out, and just went through the street and there they were.

But they came. They said, yes, we talked to mother and here are three IDs. No money. They were extremely expensive. Very wealthy people somehow got a hold of them. We couldn't have never done it.

DAN OLSON: In other words, people were paying a lot of money for false IDs.

SABINA ZIMERING: Right.

DAN OLSON: And these friends, your family friends, just gave them to you.

SABINA ZIMERING: That's right. They didn't ask for anything. They said, here they are, all the signatures, all the stamps. All you need to do is pick names you wanted. Paste the picture and you have it. And I remember the look that my parents exchanged. Total disbelief.

DAN OLSON: Disbelief? Why do you think?

SABINA ZIMERING: They didn't expect it. It was like a miracle. They didn't dare to ask for it and here it was.

DAN OLSON: Sabina Zimering later learned their friends-- the mother and her two daughters-- were part of the Polish underground, people risking their lives to resist the German occupation.

SABINA ZIMERING: Already by then, they were very patriotic. The older one was smuggling weapons. In other words, they were on false papers themselves already then, and they had access to it.

DAN OLSON: Zimering says fear of discovery caused her to delay using the new false IDs. Then events forced a decision. Rumors circulated that the German extermination squad had arrived.

SABINA ZIMERING: A man, a neighbor from upstairs, came from his night shift at the railroad station shouting, they are here! The Sonderkommando is here! They are at the station. They are still unloading.

DAN OLSON: Zimering says the family waited until nighttime to escape.

SABINA ZIMERING: Father went out, didn't see anyone guarding it, so he made a left turn. A few steps later, we were on the forbidden Polish part of town.

DAN OLSON: Subject to being shot on sight.

SABINA ZIMERING: Right. That's right. And as we split up, he said, let's not walk together.

DAN OLSON: Two hours later, the Gestapo arrived at the ghetto, rousting residents, separating those who would be spared for work from those who were sent to their deaths. Zimering says her five family members found refuge where they could, sleeping in building stairwells, or for a night or two with friends brave enough to shelter them. She says they wandered the city for two weeks. During the day, they tried to find places where patrols wouldn't notice them.

SABINA ZIMERING: One day, we were very happy. It was the All Saints Day, end of October, the important holiday in Poland for the Catholics. So we went into a Polish cemetery. It was the day when everybody would come and look up the graves and clean it up and dress it up and so on. So we found several graves that looked very neglected out of the way. And we spent a whole day in the cemetery feeling very secure, straightening out the graves.

DAN OLSON: The family, still separated, continued wandering the city. One day, Sabina Zimering and her sister took a chance and went to the home of old friends. They were given food and a place to sleep for a few nights. But to their horror, they learned their mother and brother had been discovered and arrested.

SABINA ZIMERING: And as he was coming back from the ghetto talking to father, some Polish boys recognized him and started to run after him and yell, Jew! Jew! And pretty soon, there was a big group. And then they brought a policeman. And mother was-- and they saw mother too. So in the commotion of all these people, mother whispered to him, run. He ran away. And they arrested her and that was it. We never saw her again.

DAN OLSON: The risk of staying in their hometown was too great. Zimering's father had returned to the ghetto. He didn't have false documents. He sent a message to his daughters that they must leave, walk to the neighboring town, use their false identification papers and volunteer for work in Germany.

SABINA ZIMERING: And I thought, Germany? What a crazy idea. We're running away from them. How would we go there? But he was still very well informed, he said. It was October or November of '42. The Germans began to retreat. It was after Stalingrad and there was a big turnaround in the war.

So he said, Germany is now depleted of their arm. Their workforce is in bad situation so they need a lot of foreigners. And they were, in fact, rounding up parts of town and just arresting people and shipping them to Germany because they needed-- they couldn't go on with the war. So anyone who volunteered was very welcomed by them.

DAN OLSON: The plan to find work in Germany succeeded. But Zimering and her sister lived with the ever-present danger of discovery and arrest.

SABINA ZIMERING: The transports kept coming all the time. There was still shortage of workforce. And with every transport that was coming in, I could recognize that some of these girls were not Poles. They were Jews just like us. And I was telling it to my sister. I said, this is not safe.

DAN OLSON: Thinking that now the chance of discovery as a group was growing with each day.

SABINA ZIMERING: Exactly. Nobody else was suspicious. I mean, the people that we work with or the women next to us, nobody said anything. So I figured, well, it's fine. Until in one of the transports arrived, what looked to me like two sisters.

And again, there was nothing suspicious about it. Their looks were good. The Polish was accent free, but they were very frightened. They were just cautious all the time. They were getting out of everybody's way. And I told my sister they are Jewish, and I could hear whispers about them.

DAN OLSON: So these two young women were drawing attention to themselves by the very fact that they were obviously fearful.

SABINA ZIMERING: Right. In fact, I heard some people like they were talking how oh, I can recognize a Jew any time. One of the things they could say was they had sad eyes.

DAN OLSON: How would that look? How would sad eyes look for somebody who thought they could tell a Jew?

SABINA ZIMERING: Well, when you run away from something like-- when I looked at those girls, I thought, well, they must have just witnessed something horrible. And they were giving themselves away by the way they looked. And that's what made me suspicious.

And I remember I took quite some convincing of my sister. And I insisted. I said, the way I see it, the whispers will become loud, open speaking. Somebody will let Gestapo know. They will come and find more of us. Well, she agreed.

So now, the thing was to plan. Where are we going? How are we getting away not to get caught out of open lager? So we decided-- we worked in a factory Monday through Friday and half a day on Saturday. So from Saturday noon till Monday, whoever was absent wouldn't be noticed right away.

So I said, we run away Friday night. By the time our foreman will see we are gone, we'll be far away. And on the map, looking on the map, I could tell that if we went straight down south, we could reach the Swiss border. And I thought once we're there, we might be able to just get into Switzerland. And we have it made.

We packed a little suitcase and left it outdoors so we then don't have to walk out with a suitcase. And we went to the railroad station of Neustadt and got the tickets. And we were waiting for them to open the platform. And all of a sudden, three or four German policemen, rushed and locked all the doors. Stopped everybody. And he said, Kennkarte, the ID.

Everybody had to show the Kennkarte, even the Germans. So everybody was pulling out the-- and in the meantime, I could see that they pulled out three young men and were dragging them to the police car, which turned out to be three French prisoners of war that planned to escape and someone informed on them.

So they came to catch them. And while they were checking us and I showed them our ID, Polish women after curfew on the train? So they took us and put us in jail.

DAN OLSON: Next morning, the police summoned their factory supervisor, a man Zimering considered kind and fair.

SABINA ZIMERING: So Mr. Ullman said, these are very good girls. They like him and their job. They don't give me any trouble. They should have talked to me first. They don't know our laws. They're not familiar. They were not supposed to do that. He said, please let them go. There is a shortage of workforce.

DAN OLSON: The police released Zimering and her sister. They returned to the factory, but their disappearance fueled rumors they were Jews. A friend, also a Jew using a false identity, told them it was too dangerous. They had to leave. This time, they walked to a distant station, boarded a train, arriving in the German city of Regensburg, north of Munich. They were out of money.

Throughout their ordeal, Sabina Zimering relied on her command of the German language and she and her sister's quick thinking as they fabricated stories for one set of officials or another about why two young Polish Catholic women were on the move in Germany. Their first encounter with authorities in Regensburg was nearly their undoing.

The sisters went to an employment office. An official there sent them across the street to a building with a German flag. When they entered, Zimering says she realized they had literally delivered themselves to the Gestapo.

SABINA ZIMERING: I still remember how he looked. He had just a very scary way. He was-- the eyes, darting eyes. And he was not very tall, but talked fast and so on.

Well, anyway, I gave him the story again. And he said, stop lying. You bet it. And he hit me. A very strong hit in my face. My head shook and my pain was just spreading into my jaw and my-- and tell the truth. And it looked like he was ready to hit me again.

And somebody at the door walked in. Two other uniformed Gestapo men raised their hands, Heil Hitler. And they asked him in German, are you ready? And he looked at us. He said, yes. He got up and left. And he told us to just stand there and wait.

And I could tell that there was something major going on because there were phone ringing. The officers were coming and going. And he was put away in the middle of whatever he was doing. And before he left, he called for a woman to take us for a body search.

We came back to the office. The first officer was gone. Someone else took over. And another man was much milder. And again, he was too busy with other things. And he sent us back to the employment office.

[LAUGHS]

DAN OLSON: The stunning and inexplicable turn of events found Zimering and her sister assigned to work as cleaners in Regensburg's top hotel, where most of the residents were German military officers.

SABINA ZIMERING: I did the hard cleaning, scrubbing the floors and the front steps, toilets, and so on. And in the morning when I was scrubbing the front steps, that's when all the military people were walking by me to go to work. And they were just practically rubbing shoulders with them. And they greeted me either with Heil Hitler or Wie geht's, Fraulein.

So a couple of things. One was-- and the-- was very interesting to live and work among Germans for the two, three, what was it, from the spring of '43 to yeah, a little over two years. The shortage of men was very obvious among the women there. There were mothers with-- unwed mothers were made to feel like heroes.

Hitler supported any woman that had a child, married or not married. He needed the-- a lot of women were unwed mothers. And their grandchildren were with-- I mean, their children with the grandparents. And they lived and worked in a hotel.

DAN OLSON: By 1944, Zimering says it was plain that the war was going badly for Germany.

SABINA ZIMERING: The hotel was filled with wounded soldiers. And they couldn't put them up. They were sleeping in the beautiful, large ballroom. They were sleeping on the steps of the hotel.

And the German soldiers that I remember seeing full of confidence and arrogance were very humble and frightened looking, bandaged heads or missing arms and so on. And with them came a lot of civilians. First, we saw a lot of Latvians, Lithuanians, Ukrainians that were working with them during the war and were running away with them.

DAN OLSON: Near the end, Zimering remembers the noise, confusion, and the frantic efforts of the German military.

SABINA ZIMERING: In front of the Gestapo building, they were outside on a street, on the sidewalks. They were burning stacks of papers, of documents. And then it got to the point where everybody was in a shelter. The streets were empty. And finally, somebody came running to the basement and said, it's over. They are here, the Americanas.

So we ran upstairs. And they're just like what I saw in Poland in '39. Long caravan of tanks and buses and all kinds of equipment. And all of a sudden, a truck turned around full of young men in uniforms that I never saw before shouting, Hitler kaput!

American soldiers, young American boys. Hitler kaput! Schones Fraulein. Schones Fraulein, beautiful women or young women. And cigarettes and chocolate. And came to mind the German invasion into Poland. Americans coming into Germany.

I felt like jumping up and down and yelling at him, you young boys. You risked your lives to liberate us, to liberate the world. But I didn't. I kept quiet. I held my sister's hand and try to hide my tears.

DAN OLSON: With their own quick thinking and courage, with the help of friends and the compassion of strangers, Sabina Zimering and her sister survived World War II, so did their brother and seven extended family members. However, their father and mother and more than 50 relatives were dead. The mother of the daughters who supplied their false papers had been arrested by the Nazis and tortured. She lived, but her health was broken.

After the war, Zimering stayed in touch with her friends. When she became a physician, she helped one of the sisters recover from a life-threatening illness. When the communists took over Poland, they arrested the other sister for her work with an anti-communist group. Zimering wrote a letter explaining the young woman's wartime work in the Polish underground against the Germans. The communists released her.

Years later, there was a reunion of the childhood friends. One of the sisters has since died. Sabina Zimering is still in touch with the surviving childhood friend who helped save her life half a century ago.

GARY EICHTEN: Sabina Zimering speaking with Minnesota Public Radio's Dan Olson. This interview was first broadcast back in 2002. And as we noted a few minutes ago, Hiding in the Open, a play about Zimering's experience during the Holocaust is currently playing at the History Theatre in St. Paul.

That does it for our Midday program today. Gary Eichten here. Thanks so much for tuning in. By the way, all of these Voices of Minnesota interviews are archived at mprnewsq.org. Check it out. It's a great, great resource.

Tomorrow, we shift our focus. We're going to talk about education in the state of Minnesota. Minnesota education commissioner Alice Seagren will be in studio to field your questions. So get your questions ready and tune in tomorrow. Thanks for joining us today.

GRETA CUNNINGHAM: Programming is supported by the Southwest Journal Spring Home Improvement Fair, Saturday, March 13, 10:00 to 3:00 at Southwest High School. More than 70 vendors with home improvement and landscaping tips. Presented by House Lift remodeler.

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TOM GIESEKE: Hi, this is Tom Gieseke. Hannah and I put MPR in our will years ago.

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REPORTER 3: To get your copy of the new will planning guide, go to minnesotapublicradio.org and click on Will Kit. And thank you.

GARY EICHTEN: Talk of the nation coming up next. This is Minnesota Public Radio News 91.1 KNOW St. Paul, Minneapolis. Find breaking news and listen online at mprnewsq.org.

REPORTER 1: Support for this program comes from the Ordway, presenting the 2008 Tony Award and Pulitzer Prize winning play August-- Osage County for one week only, March 16 to 21. Tickets and information available at ordway.org.

GARY EICHTEN: We have light rain and fog, 42 degrees in the Twin Cities. And the Weather Service says there's a good chance of more rain and fog all afternoon with a high right where it is. Tonight, more rain is forecast with an overnight low of 35 degrees.

Tomorrow, very good chance of rain with a high of 45 to 50. No respite on Friday. Again, 50/50 chance of rain. High temperature of 45 degrees. But it should clear off over the weekend. Weekend right now looks quite pleasant, highs near 50 and partly cloudy. Rain today.