The U.S. And The Holocaust

[DanaK]

PBS 3 episode documentary series (about 7 hours total) by Ken Burns that examines the US role and response in regards to the Holocaust. Premieres Sunday, September 18 8-10:20pm ET and continues September 19 and 20 at the same time

[Bastet]

It's by Ken Burns, his frequent co-director Lynn Novick, and Sarah Botstein in her directorial debut (she has been a producer on many of Burns & Novick's documentaries).

[Bookish Jen]

I'll definitely be watching this.

[Welshman in Ca]

Had trouble finding parts 2 & 3 for the DVR as they're on Tuesday & Wednesday and my DVR didn't recognize them as part of the series.

[DanaK]

23 hours ago, Welshman in Ca said:

Had trouble finding parts 2 & 3 for the DVR as they're on Tuesday & Wednesday and my DVR didn't recognize them as part of the series.

I just set it manually so I don't know if my DVR would have had the same trouble

[Spartan Girl]

I watched the first part. The more things change, the more they stay the same...

[Welshman in Ca]

There are so many similarities to what is going on in America today that only 1 name needs changing to bring it bang up to date, and that's only within the first hour of watching. 

[sempervivum]

1 hour ago, Welshman in Ca said:

here are so many similarities to what is going on in America today that only 1 name needs changing to bring it bang up to date, and that's only within the first hour of watching. 

Based on what was shown, European Jews were trying to get into the US (or wherever) legally at this point- it said the US consulates were overwhelmed by visa applications, but were operating under stringent quotas passed after WW1. The Jews were objectively being threatened with imminent extermination. Not seeing the similarity. IMO.

I found the beginning part about eugenics very interesting. Margaret Sanger's shameful part in this is fairly well known, but I was surprised to see Teddy Roosevelt and Helen Keller outed as supporters. (I don't think they mentioned W.E.B. Dubois, who was also a fan of this grotesque philosophy).

[Lois Sandborne]

19 hours ago, sempervivum said:

Based on what was shown, European Jews were trying to get into the US (or wherever) legally at this point- it said the US consulates were overwhelmed by visa applications, but were operating under stringent quotas passed after WW1. The Jews were objectively being threatened with imminent extermination. Not seeing the similarity. IMO.

Opinions are fine. But the facts are that immigration agencies in the US are still backed up in the same way today. The same quota -- or preference category -- systems still exist, and are just as, if not comparatively more stringent, because the demand is much greater now. Wait times for visa applications, particularly in India, China, and nations in South and Central America are decades long. Immigration courts are hugely backlogged as well. And despite how it might be spun in news outlets, people who are risking their lives to cross our borders to seek asylum are doing so legally, fleeing torture or persecution because of race, religion, political speech, and other horrors, because physical presence within this country is legally required to claim asylum here. Until it was made undeniable and inescapable, many people in the 30s didn't want to acknowledge that Jewish people in Europe were being persecuted, because it sounded outlandish and inhuman, and it was happening far away from them. I see yet another parallel to that in how people view immigrants, refugees, and asylum seekers today.

Edited September 20, 2022 by Lois Sandborne

[DoctorAtomic]

On 9/19/2022 at 10:13 AM, Spartan Girl said:

I watched the first part. The more things change, the more they stay the same...

I also watched the first part. There wasn't really anything new I learned, but I liked the segments with the people that actually lived through that time. I did find it disheartening that the Jews in Germany wanted to leave, but then they made it harder to leave, and then when they did leave, Germany ended up invading the next nation and they were all back to square one. It's kind of tragic how a lot of the language is derivative of what we're seeing here just 100 years later. 

While I knew the US was really isolationist in the 30s, I also felt bad for the people who were just 'what am I supposed to do? I can't feed my family' because of the depression. 

I do wish they got a little more into how Hitler grabbed power. They only said, Hitler forced the parliament to make him dictator. I mean, he couldn't have just snapped his fingers. And a little more of what FDR was dealing with. I suppose they'll get into him in the ensuing episodes. 

I so want Peter Coyote's job though. 

[DanaK]

2 hours ago, DoctorAtomic said:

I also watched the first part. There wasn't really anything new I learned, but I liked the segments with the people that actually lived through that time. I did find it disheartening that the Jews in Germany wanted to leave, but then they made it harder to leave, and then when they did leave, Germany ended up invading the next nation and they were all back to square one. It's kind of tragic how a lot of the language is derivative of what we're seeing here just 100 years later. 

While I knew the US was really isolationist in the 30s, I also felt bad for the people who were just 'what am I supposed to do? I can't feed my family' because of the depression. 

I do wish they got a little more into how Hitler grabbed power. They only said, Hitler forced the parliament to make him dictator. I mean, he couldn't have just snapped his fingers. And a little more of what FDR was dealing with. I suppose they'll get into him in the ensuing episodes. 

I so want Peter Coyote's job though. 

Read Hitler's entry in Wikipedia, especially the sections on The Reichstag Act, The Enabling Act and Dictatorship. He arrested a bunch of anti-Nazi Communist deputies and other folks in Parliament in order to have enough support to pass the Enabling Act, which gave Hitler and his party the power to pass laws without consent of the Reichstag for a certain period, which basically made him a dictator. Too many people went along with Hitler and the Nazi Party because they thought they could control him. There's a great PBS doc series called "The Rise of the Nazis". The first season is a great primer on how Hitler and the Nazis rose to power. Season 2 is on their downfall

Edited September 20, 2022 by DanaK

[Bastet]

2 hours ago, DoctorAtomic said:

I do wish they got a little more into how Hitler grabbed power.

It's difficult, because that's a complicated tale constituting its own documentary, how to cover that in a documentary focused on the U.S. response.

3 hours ago, DoctorAtomic said:

I so want Peter Coyote's job though. 

Like seemingly everyone on the planet, I love his voice, so I love that he narrates so many of these films, but I tend to watch the late airing, which means I watch it in bed, which means sometimes his voice has a soporific effect.  With part one, I'll have to go back and watch the last 20 minutes, as I didn't quite make it before his soothing voice lulled me to sleep despite the disturbing subject matter.

On 9/19/2022 at 9:13 AM, Spartan Girl said:

I watched the first part. The more things change, the more they stay the same...

Which certainly wasn't news to me (or likely to anyone here), but it sure is striking (and disturbing) to listen to it all laid out like that.

I think this is quite well done so far (as per usual with a Burns & Novick film - I have consistently liked the ones they do together even more than the ones he does on his own - now a Burns, Novick, and Botstein film).

[DoctorAtomic]

They could have added an extra 45 seconds on Hitler grabbed power. They were saying he was making the 'communist arrests'. "Through those arrests, the Nazi party had enough of a majority to push through legislation making Hitler dictator." Something like that was all I needed. 

[DanaK]

Note that with coverage of the UK Queen’s funeral on Monday, Part 2 and 3 have been pushed a day each, to Tuesday and Wednesday

The 3 episodes are titled “The Golden Door (Beginnings - 1938)”, “Yearning to Breathe Free (1938-1942)” and “The Homeless, The Tempest-Tossed (1942- )”

[Bookish Jen]

I've watched both part 1 and part 2. This documentary is wonderfully done, but it's chilling how timely it is, too.

[Bastet]

Part two is brutal, with all the personal stories.  I took a semester-long class on the Holocaust in college, I've been to numerous museums and memorials, I've stood in the house where the Frank family hid, I've watched a dozen documentaries, and each and every time it's a punch to the gut.

The family that landed in Cuba only to be turned away, found safety in Belgium only for that to be invaded, escaped to France only to be arrested -- it is incredibly fortunate they survived.  And those poor kids, who were finally brought to the U.S. to be reunited with their parents, only to find their mother completely and permanently shut down due to the trauma she'd endured since they last saw her.

The man who sent a farewell postcard, wanting someone to know he had once existed in the world, made me burst into tears.

Getting back to the U.S., it is profoundly infuriating that we're still hobbled by the fundamental problem that far too many are unwilling to confront our nation's founding history -- this country was stolen, and then people were stolen to build it.  So, of course, it follows that we have just as many unwilling to confront things like our response to the Jewish refugee crisis.  Which is why the same shit is happening today; calls for walls, treating refugees like parasites rather than victims, designating the "right" type of immigrant, separating children from their parents, a visa process that's over a decade long, barring some people altogether, etc.  Everything covered in this documentary is still going on, just with different people.

I like that they're laying out exactly what was and wasn't known to the American public.  Showing what was being reported - and largely ignored beyond impotent disgust - but acknowledging even those to whom it was happening could not comprehend the scope, or the utter depravity, of the atrocities, so of course even their own relatives in the U.S. couldn't imagine just how severe the danger was.

[nokat]

13 hours ago, Bastet said:

I like that they're laying out exactly what was and wasn't known to the American public.  Showing what was being reported - and largely ignored beyond impotent disgust - but acknowledging even those to whom it was happening could not comprehend the scope, or the utter depravity, of the atrocities,

I can barely watch it, because I can't comprehend the atrocities. There are the completely crazy people that somehow get people to follow them into torture, depravity and mass murder. There are people to this day who would turn a blind eye to gas chambers for the people they don't like.

[Bastet]

I appreciated the opening segment of part three, expanding on some of the stories told in part two, that not everyone was killed in the gas chambers, or even the camps.  And that often there was torture, including rape (which I have always found frustratingly left out of Holocaust discussion), for a day or two before a mass killing.  Throwing children off buildings!  The sadism that went on is important to be discussed, because of how many people participated and how many others turned a blind eye. This was not just a few pyschos, or soldiers feeling forced to obey criminal orders.  There were civilian gentiles murdering their Jewish neighbors in the streets.

Other than those few clandestine photos, all the footage from the camps was taken afterwards, of what and who the Nazis hadn't had time to hide.  But we have evidence of shooting people into mass graves because the people doing the shooting took trophy photos; they were proud of what they did.  Like that one American soldier wrote his dad after seeing one of the camps, the biggest crime isn't even what went on there, the biggest crime is the spread of the beliefs that allowed this to happen, so while we certainly need to punish those who ordered/did the mass killing, what we most need to do is stamp those ideas out, so it can never happen again.

Cue the closing segment, showing that people haven't changed.  The faces change, the targets shift, but the hatred remains, and the thin veneer of civility tears.

This final part continued to nicely lay out what the American public became aware of when, which made it so infuriating and depressing that after so much of what had happened was known, and people were horrified, the overwhelming majority still said nope, we shouldn't let any more refugees in (and some said we should admit fewer!).

I like that the refugee crisis is the common thread of the documentary - thus the titles coming from the Statue of Liberty inscription.  Our military response is part of the U.S. and the Holocaust, of course (I agree with the historian who said there's no right answer to whether we should have bombed Auschwitz; because we didn't, we look back and think maybe we should have, but if we had, we'd look back and think maybe we shouldn't have), but the big story is how many people tried to get out before the ghettos, the torture, the camps, and the mass murder, while we - and other nations, but this is about ours - stuck to prejudice-driven quotas, and even after 2/3 of Europe's Jewish population was wiped out, we still basically shrugged and said go somewhere else (where??). 

I'm glad they highlighted that, in the midst of the State Department's treachery and the president's political considerations, there were government employees who went above and beyond (above and beyond the law, even) to save tens of thousands.

I also like how often the narration referred to "human beings" rather than "people", since genocide rests on dehumanization.

Edited September 22, 2022 by Bastet

[AnnMarie17]

I just finished Part Two and came here to see what y'all were saying about it.  I found Part Two very, very difficult to watch.  I work for PBS and we're encouraged to watch our content, so we can watch things while we work.  I wish I hadn't watched Part Two here at my desk...it was too disturbing; I should have watched that at home.  I caught myself at least twice gasping out loud.  I'm certain all my coworkers know what I have on in my office.

I'm not big on saying anything should be "required for all" but DAMN, I think all Americans should see this.  

[nokat]

1 hour ago, AnnMarie17 said:

I just finished Part Two and came here to see what y'all were saying about it.  I found Part Two very, very difficult to watch.  I work for PBS and we're encouraged to watch our content, so we can watch things while we work.  I wish I hadn't watched Part Two here at my desk...it was too disturbing; I should have watched that at home.  I caught myself at least twice gasping out loud.  I'm certain all my coworkers know what I have on in my office.

I'm not big on saying anything should be "required for all" but DAMN, I think all Americans should see this.  

I'm making myself watch, because we can read about it, but seeing film and listening to people say what happened is something that punches you in the gut. The same attitude of "others" and "unwanted" is here in the US, and it could happen again.

[Spartan Girl]

Forced myself to watch part 3. That footage…I nearly threw up.

The story that really got to me was that kid whose parents got a teacher to hide him, only for him to turn himself in because he wanted to follow his parents to Auschwitz.

I can’t imagine how awful it was for the survivors, either knowing or not knowing what happened to their families. Worse still, many grieving people couldn’t even have the simple dignity and closure of a funeral.

The lost time ten minutes that remind us exactly where we are today…hoo boy, that stuff makes me ragey under regular circumstances but after watching all that, rage isn’t even strong enough a word.

[Bastet]

8 minutes ago, Spartan Girl said:

I can’t imagine how awful it was for the survivors, either knowing or not knowing what happened to their families.

Like poor Shmiel's brother, carrying around his letters for the rest of his life, so guilty he hadn't been able to bring him back to the U.S.  Shmiel's story was heartbreaking.  He was among the few Jewish refugees able to come to the U.S. well before the war, but couldn't stand the Lower East Side so, after a year, went alone back to the family's small hometown in Poland, got married, opened a business, was raising kids, loving his life until the Nazis changed everything.  He wasn't allowed to return, and one by one they were all killed.

Daniel Mendelsohn, his great nephew who was interviewed in the documentary, wrote a book about Shmiel and his family, and the horrific details he learned in the course of finding out what happened, The Lost: A Search for Six of Six Million. 

33 minutes ago, Spartan Girl said:

Worse still, many grieving people couldn’t even have the simple dignity and closure of a funeral.

Daniel's sister, Jennifer, said it well: When you lose family members in this way, with no death certificates, funerals, or grave markers, it can feel as if they have simply been wiped off the face of the earth, as if they never existed.

[DoctorAtomic]

Part two is indeed rough. I didn't know the Nazis first went into the Soviet Union and started shooting everyone. Or just shipping them off to Madagascar. 

The guy talking about how the fog lifted and they saw the Statue of Liberty, I swear I was there. 

[DanaK]

[Welshman in Ca]

I know I'll probably get slated for this but it should be mandatory watching for every schoolchild over a certain age. We're already close to people under a certain age denying or not knowing anything about what happened, why & how just one person's views can affect the whole world.

[DoctorAtomic]

I'm surprised they waited all the way into episode 3 to mention the Armenian genocide, unless I missed it. I didn't know anything about the War Refugee Board either. 

Guy Stern was everywhere!

I really wished they said how the three guys escaped from Auschwitz. From what the lady said, it seemed impossible. I don't think they could have bombed it because the collateral damage would have been too high, and you're handing the Axis even more propaganda. Now? Slip in some drones. No problem.  

[Cinnabon]

On 9/20/2022 at 11:47 AM, Lois Sandborne said:

Opinions are fine. But the facts are that immigration agencies in the US are still backed up in the same way today. The same quota -- or preference category -- systems still exist, and are just as, if not comparatively more stringent, because the demand is much greater now. Wait times for visa applications, particularly in India, China, and nations in South and Central America are decades long. Immigration courts are hugely backlogged as well. And despite how it might be spun in news outlets, people who are risking their lives to cross our borders to seek asylum are doing so legally, fleeing torture or persecution because of race, religion, political speech, and other horrors, because physical presence within this country is legally required to claim asylum here. Until it was made undeniable and inescapable, many people in the 30s didn't want to acknowledge that Jewish people in Europe were being persecuted, because it sounded outlandish and inhuman, and it was happening far away from them. I see yet another parallel to that in how people view immigrants, refugees, and asylum seekers today.

Thank you.