How America failed European Jews during the Holocaust

filmmaker ken burns has said of his latest  documentary he doesn't expect to work on a   more important film with susan spencer we take  a closer look this wing of the family all died   in the holocaust all of them all of them that  dark chapter in history left an indelible mark   on filmmaker sarah botstein's family they died  in the ghetto of typhus they were killed in a   killing center they died in all the different  ways that the jews in that part of the world died   so it was a deeply personal experience for  botstein to work on a documentary about the   holocaust with ken burns so much has been written  about the second world war about the holocaust   why did you even want to take another look seeing  it through the lens of the united states helps us   i believe understand the holocaust itself in a  much different and perhaps fresher perspective   we tell ourselves stories as a nation one of the  stories we tell ourselves is that we're a land of   immigrants but in moments of crisis it becomes  very hard for us to live up to those stories   their film seven years in the making and  airing on pbs later this month is entitled   the u.s. and the holocaust in painstaking detail  burns botstein and their partner lynn novick   unravel how america reacted to this humanitarian  catastrophe we failed you know we let in   more human beings than any other sovereign  nation but if we'd done ten times that many   i think we would have failed and it's a failure at  every level it's a failure in the executive it's a   failure in the legislative branch it's a failure  in media it's a failure in the general population   many white protestant americans came to  fear they were about to be outnumbered   and outbred by the newcomers and their offspring  that they were being replaced the documentary   cites shocking national polls to make the point  in 1938 just two weeks after kristallnacht   a night of terror when nazis attacked and murdered  jews across germany only one in five americans   said the u.s. should admit more jewish  exiles the following year that number was one   in 10. was this because of a lack of information  we cannot blame america's lack of action   on not knowing there was a great deal of coverage  in the newspapers of what hitler was doing   as the situation got worse and worse  and worse deportations mass killings   thousands of refugees trying to get out lines  at consoles all of this was known but instead of   opening our doors we shut them ever more  tightly says lynn novick who partly blames   widespread american xenophobia celebrity aviator  charles lindbergh was the face of it he was an   icon he was a hero they had songs about him and he  really believed a kind of ugly anti-semitic white   supremacist ideology that the nordic race should  prevail he said these things americans clapped   one thing that has been cited in this  discussion has to do with the context when   this all happened the depression was going on at  the time among other things there was a lot of   leftover isolationism from world war one does  any of that in your mind give america a pass   i can't give america a pass on what happened  and what we failed to do but i can definitely   appreciate the challenges and  difficulties that our leaders faced   we did not play a role in the murder of the  jews we just did not do enough as a good people   to get the people on the edge of this cataclysm  out and that is on us on us and will forever be on   us sharp limits on immigration had been in effect  since the mid-'20s when quotas were set for   each country during the war a state department  official named breckinridge long enforced those   restrictions with gusto he also assiduously  worked to sort of suppress information about   the true nature of the nazi threat to the jewish  people of europe so reports came across his desk   that he should have passed on to other people that  he just buried reports such as extermination is a   policy yes exactly we made it hard technically  to get here paperwork visas affidavits   sponsors i mean you can appreciate now how hard  it is just to renew your passport and you're now   stateless you're in a country that's been taken  over we made it very onerous and hard to get here   so all of this or most of this is just paperwork  and just imagine for anyone who came here   all of this had to happen in lynn novick's office  case files tell the story of world war ii refugees   desperate to get to america among them a household  name when we started to make the film it came to   our attention that anne frank's family had tried  to get to america a fact that i did not know i   don't think most people know that i don't think  most americans know that we all know anne frank   everybody knows anne frank and to think that  she could be here talking to you right now if   america had had a different immigration policy i  absolutely believe that i absolutely believe that   by 1945 two out of every three european jews had  been murdered yet even then only five percent   of americans wanted to let more refugees in  while more than a third said we should admit   even fewer that's after you've seen the horrific  images of the liberation of the camps and the   bodies piled up and the emaciated people that is  a tough pill to swallow very tough pill to swallow   are you worried that people will interpret this  as sort of indicting our nation if you will i   i don't see this at all an indictment i really  don't i think we're really truly trying to just   tell the story of what happened it's not shaming  america it's thinking about how to do better hundreds of white nationalists storming the  university of virginia at the very end there's   this montage with no narration charlottesville  a build a wall rally a report of attack on a   synagogue what did you intend to convey with that  montage there is right now all of the elements   coalescing for something bad to happen again you  felt a sense of urgency i feel a sense of urgency   we're not trying to equate anything  with the holocaust that would be a   a horrible a horrible thing  to do we're just saying   let's not get there again as as human  beings please let's not get there again

Channel: CBS Sunday Morning

Views: 119,337

Keywords: CBS Sunday Morning, CBS News, news, pbs, documentary, series, the us and the holocaust, open door policy, jews, jewish, europe, nazi, the holocaust, world war 2, persecution, susan spencer, ken burns, lynn novick, sarah botstein, america, united states, failure, humanitarian catastrophe

Id: Ag-m3H9SH84

Length: 7min 39sec (459 seconds)

Published: Sun Sep 04 2022