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Peter Tedeschi, a Woonsocket, R.I., native and Class of 1981 Bishop Feehan High School graduate, has logged more than two decades working for CNN as a news producer.

In the first part of his story, he spoke about his feelings as a Conservative Jew attending Feehan and some of his major stories, including Sept. 11. Here, he talks about covering Katrina - and his current project: Trying to unravel the mystery of a remarkable album from the Dachau concentration camp in Germany in his role as producer of a documentary on the historical album.

THE SUN CHRONICLE: You spoke last year at the synagogue about your experiences covering the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina in 2005 in Mississippi. Could you describe that experience?

TEDESCHI: Again, I almost need to write a book here. But to keep it brief, we all know of the failings of the government and the incredible lack of response. I'll just say two things about the experience:

First, the scope of the disaster, from the wreckage to the filth and the smell, was far worse in person than one could ever experience on television. I would be overwhelmed by the destruction some place and then do a story on it. And even I would feel as though my own story just didn't capture the experience completely. Also, I wasn't even in the first wave of journalists who went to the region, I was in the second wave, so it was even been worse a few days before. Second point, it forced us as Americans to see a level of poverty we're not used to seeing in this country. We have poverty in New England, but it's not like what I saw in places like Biloxi, Mississippi or the ninth ward in New Orleans. I was horrified to see up close that Americans face the kind of challenges we normally assume exist mostly in the developing world.

THE SUN CHRONICLE: How did you get involved with your current project, producing the documentary on the Dachau scrapbook that Shari Klages' father, Arnold Unger, had brought to this country when he immigrated to America on a ship with more than 60 Holocaust orphans?

TEDESCHI: I wouldn't call it a scrapbook; I'd call it an album. The book itself is a work of art, as I hope the world will see soon. To answer your question, a journalist is a storyteller. But I'd been thinking for some time about expanding beyond journalism, so some years ago I took a sabbatical from CNN and got a master's degree in fine arts, and didn't really do anything with it.

Last year, I thought it was time to take the plunge. I started looking for theater companies with which to work, and I ended up doing a project with a group in South Florida on the American immigrant experience in 1910 New York. The artistic director of that theater, Avi Hoffman, doubled as the head of the National Center for Jewish Cultural Arts. Shari Klages had approached him with news of her father's album, wondering what to do with it. He knew that I was a TV news producer and asked if I would be interested in producing a documentary on it. When I saw the album and its drawings, chills went down my spine and I immediately jumped on board. I feel it's my mission now to make sure the world sees this artwork.

THE SUN CHRONICLE: You spoke eloquently on Yom Kippur of how it felt to be Jewish and doing research in Germany inside one of the most notorious death camps of the Nazi regime. Could you summarize those feelings?

TEDESCHI: Dachau wasn't actually a death camp. Though many, many people died there, it was a concentration camp, where most were worked to death, shot by Nazi guards or died of disease. The gas chambers there are believed never to have become operational.

Remember: Dachau's Jewish population was low. The camp was "de-Jewified" early in the war, and the Jewish prisoners were then sent to Auschwitz to be killed. Many of those who died at Dachau were Polish and other Slavic political prisoners, along with a very high number of Catholic priests and nuns who had spoken against the Nazis.

That said, working there every day is rather mind-blowing. We would arrive through one of the back gates where the memorial employees entered. That meant we drove right under one of the Nazi guard towers, through the mechanical arm between posts of a once-electrified and barb-wired fence. In fact, the fuses are still attached to the barbed wire, though obviously they are no longer operational. Once on the grounds, I always picked up on the exceptional energy of the place.

I don't think you can visit such a site without feeling the enormity of the crimes that were committed there. Interestingly, it's not just the energy that the victims left behind; it's also the vibe of the perpetrators that's still in the air. Then, of course, you bring your own energy to the place and feel the reaction of the hundreds of tourists all around you, all of whom, I'm glad to say, looked appalled.

But getting that close didn't clear anything up for me. Rather than come to understand the Holocaust better, I left not understanding on an even deeper level how one set of human beings could behave so monstrously toward their fellow humans. The first three or four days we were there, it was gray and very cloudy, even chilly for August. I kept saying that I couldn't picture such a place in sunlight with a beautiful blue sky resting above. The next day, it was sunny and clear. As we drove, I thought I would finally get to see that ironic juxtaposition. Because the camp had been in operation for several years, obviously the prisoners saw many sunny days.

But a fascinating thing happened: When we arrived that morning, we saw that the sunlight bouncing off drab white buildings and the fine, beige and white gravel everywhere actually made the grounds look all the more harsh. There could never be a beautiful day at Dachau.

We didn't need to see the crematoria and mass graves for research purposes, so we waited until our last day to walk through that part of the facility. Standing in the presence of the ovens makes the experience so very real.

I think it's easy for those of us who didn't live through it to think that World War II was almost a movie, in black and white, but seeing the ovens changes that.

I'm not sure I am eloquent enough to explain all the feelings I had, I'm not sure anyone is. But suffice to say, the instant I walked into the crematoria, I was filled with a great sense of urgency to get to the other side of the camp, as quickly as I could, to step into one of the memorial chapels and send whatever positive energy I could to the souls who had passed through that place.

THE SUN CHRONICLE: What was the reaction of the Germans you met to this album, which contains 30 pictures of life in Dachau, along with 258 photographs.

TEDESCHI: Every German historian or archivist who saw the album was immediately taken aback. To generalize for a moment, Germans tend to be rather stoic, so when we saw their faces express their surprise at the uniqueness of the drawings, and heard them mutter words like "moving" and "monstrous" as they looked through the pages, we knew we had something very special.

The artist was a Polish Catholic, the person who preserved the art was a Polish Jew, it was all created in Germany and brought "home" by a group of Americans. So many lives were destroyed, including those of the artist and the boy who saved the work, but there is joy to be found in knowing that the artwork can bear witness now that the people can't.

I think each of the German officials who saw the album found that to be a very emotional experience. These were all very good people who have devoted their lives as historians to try to make right something that can never be made right.

THE SUN CHRONICLE: Any thoughts on how Arnold Unger might have gotten this album from artist Michal Porulski? What do the other members of your team think, or is it too early for such speculation?

TEDESCHI: We have no idea how Arnold might have gotten the drawings from Porulski. We know that the photographs are Arnold's because he is in many of them. So we speculate that either American soldiers made the album for Arnold as he was leaving to go to America (he was working as their office boy after the war). But right now we haven't confirmed that theory.

THE SUN CHRONICLE: What are the next steps for your team in the quest to make this documentary?

TEDESCHI: First, we need to track down more people who might have been there. We know that Arnold lived in a home for children in the town of Dachau after the Americans liberated the camp. We need to find some of those children, now likely in their 70s. We also need to find American soldiers who were stationed at Dachau anytime between 1945 and 1947 and see if they remember Arnold Unger, Michal Porulski, the album, etc.

We also want to do some forensic work, try to find out where the leather bounding was made, where the paper came from, what kind of ink was used, and so on.

LARRY KESSLER is a Sun Chronicle local news editor. He can be reached at 508-236-0330 or at lkessler@thesunchronicle.com.