PBS documentary traces 350 years of Jewish migration
“You survive, you honor us by living,” Martin Greenfield’s father told him. Greenfield, now a New York master tailor, recalled the words after his liberation from the Buchenwald concentration camp.
The quote could be taken as the theme of “The Jewish Journey: America,” a PBS documentary that tracks the migrations over 3 1/2 centuries of Jews fleeing the Latin American Inquisition, czarist Russia, Nazi Germany and Islamic nations.
Although many Jews came to America seeking refuge from persecution by authorities in those and other countries, millions more came for economic reasons — to build better lives for themselves and their children in the New World.
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The first Jews to arrive in the future United States, in 1654, were 23 Sephardim fleeing the Portuguese-imposed Inquisition in Brazil. They settled in New Amsterdam, which would later become New York.
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“The Jewish Journey: America” airs March 5 at 8 p.m. on KVCR and March 18 at 7:30 p.m. on KOCE (PBS SoCal). The program will be repeated in subsequent weeks.