Ken Burns’ brilliant documentary ‘The U.S. and the Holocaust’
JVL Introduction
The Ken Burns’ documentary ‘The U.S. and the Holocaust’ is currently screening on the BBC – one episode down and two to go.
You can watch it all on BBC iPlayer now – and make sure you do!
In this account, published in Haaretz last September, Adrian Hennigan describes it as a major TV event that “is utterly compelling, frequently heartbreaking and totally unmissable”. He is right.
The truth is that American society, in large measure, did not want to rescue the Jews in Germany or elsewhere. Why this was the reality is faced squarely in this documentary.
Burns wonders how to get those who might learn from these programmes today – the equivalent of those who prevented Jews from obtaining sanctuary in the US in the 30s and 40s – actually to watch them …
This article was originally published by Forward on Mon 19 Sep 2022. Read the original here.
Ken Burns’ Brilliant ‘The U.S. and the Holocaust’ Has Only One Problem
The acclaimed filmmaker’s latest documentary is a forensic examination of America’s failings to shelter more Jewish refugees in World War II
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Fascinating program…..showing the reality of day to day antisemitism for its victims in Germany, Austria, Poland, Netherlands….deprived of all rights, and Beaten , imprisoned, murdered.
What I would like to know is how and why anti semitism became so virulent in the USA. The program show Roosevelt in a good light but having to compromise with all those USA fascist groups….especially that womens group shown in the film.
This is a flawed documentary. It contains many interesting parts, not least the depth of opposition to letting the refugees in and the antisemitism of the State Department, though it does not name the criminal in chief, Breckenridge Long, the Assistant Secretary in charge of refugees.
However it doesn’t even mention the unfailing efforts of Stephen Wise to derail the efforts of those Jews, dissident Zionists Shmuel Merlin and Peter Bergson, to rescue what remained of the Jews of Europe.
It is simply untrue that Stephen Wise tried to get the U.S. government to act on Auschwitz from as early as the fall of 1942. Wise wrote that
‘it is indisputable that as many as two million civilian Jews have been slain. I have had cables and underground advices for some months, telling of these things. I succeeded, together with the heads of other Jewish organizations, in keeping these out of the press.’
He kept quiet for 3 months. He opposed the establishment of the War Refugee Board in January 1944 because no mention was made of Palestine.
Wise opposed all efforts to relax America’s immigration laws. Yes there was mass support for anti-Semitism. But there was also a strong left at the time.
In 1938 when Senator Robert Wagner and Congresswoman Edith Rogers proposed a bill allowing 20,000 children under the age of 14 to be admitted, the leaders of America’s Jewish organisations, at Wise’s instigation, failed to back it
“Burns wonders how to get those who might learn from these programmes today [….] actually to watch them…”
And I wonder how to get those who might watch this programme to learn the right, just, humane, universal lesson. Here’s why:
In my early childhood, in eastern Europe, I was considered “the wrong kind of person” because I’m a Jew. Nowadays, I’m considered “the wrong kind of Jew”.
The latter is because I do not think that the genocide and ethnic cleansing of my people could or should be made up for by genocide and ethnic cleansing of another people – namely, the PALESTINIANS.
But the powers that be have decreed that my views, when uttered, put me in the camp of those who undertook to annihilate my family (with partial success).
I’m old and composed enough to be able to live with this insult, but my life experience does not permit me to cease fighting crimes against humanity, be they against the Palestinian people, be they against racialised minorities, be they against refugees.
Those of you who share my experience would understand. But even if you’re fortunate enough to have been spared all that, don’t wait until
“[…] and by that time there was no one
left to speak for me”.
Organise and take action.
When can we see similar from British media about our refusal to allow those persecuted by the nazi,s safe haven a. Lot of glorification surrounding kindertransport,only silence on the large number refused, gammons hero Churchill right at the centre of shameful actions
May I suggest a parallel video which can be seen on You Tube ‘Everything is a rich man’s trick’. More context to the America 1st Movement.
Between 1933-1939, the British (Mandate) Government allowed, 235,170 Jewish immigrants to Palestine (see Jill Hamilton: God, Guns and Israel). Saving Jews at the expense of the Arabs?
What’s the relationship between a capitalist system in crisis and the Holocaust?
Utterly brilliant. A 6th Form/College or Uni course on the history, 20th/21st century anti – semitism, and wider issues around how racism works, succeeds and the always horrific outcomes ‘could’ be made, based on this work. (But would it ever, let’s hope so?).
More than anything else. Ken Burns, as trenchant as ever, demonstrates what real, lethal, exterminationist, antisemitism is.
The antisemitism that is argued about today is largely connected with opposing opinions about the character, policies and actions of the state of Israel.
NONE of that could be remotely said to be exterminationist. That is the difference. Well done to this documentary for illuminating the fact!
If there was an exterminationist threat to Jews, we would, I hope and assume, immediately close ranks to combat and destroy it.
That no such threat exists today renders even more ridiculous the bizarre and hysterical claim, made just a couple of years ago during the anti-Corbyn frenzy, that the Jewish community in the UK faces “an existential threat”…a claim made by fools and taken up by sheep.
As someone who cut her political teeth on the United States’ war on Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia, I am perhaps not quite as enamoured of Ken Burns as Adrian Hennigan. Burns’ documentary on Vietnam
presents America’s war on Vietnam as started “in good faith by decent people out of fateful misunderstandings, American overconfidence and …” Really?! There are many coruscating reviews of that long documentary. here is but one of many https://www.counterpunch.org/2017/10/10/the-tragic-failure-of-ken-burnss-the-vietnam-war/
However, I shall watch he US and the Holocaust with an open mind and hope it escapes the worst failings of the Vietnam documentary.
I just went on to Iplayer to watch the second part of Ken Burn’s documentary, and something occurred to me that I’ve never thought of before – ie is perhaps Shoa on youtube. And it is, the full nine-plus hours. But you have to turn on the subtitles option. I highly, highly recommend it to anyone who’s never seen it. I initially saw it at an Independent cinema in E Finchley, then again on Channel 4, but I will definitely now be watching it again. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FirfB4jSK8Y