Ken Burns' PBS documentary asks hard questions about how Americans treated Jews...during wartime

[Behind the Aegis]

Ken Burns’ PBS documentary ‘The U.S. And The Holocaust’ asks hard questions about how Americans treated Jews and immigrants during wartime

One of the first people introduced in Ken Burns’ new documentary series about the Holocaust is Otto, a Jewish man seen in the series’ first episode who tries to secure passage to America for his family but gets stymied by the country’s fierce anti-immigration legislation.

It isn’t until the third episode that viewers learn that Otto’s daughter is nicknamed Anne, and the pieces fall into place: He’s the father of Anne Frank, the Holocaust’s most famous victim.

Burns calls the delayed detail a “hidden ball trick,” hoping that an audience with only passing knowledge of the Frank family will not immediately clue into the fact that Otto was Anne’s father. Burns and his co-directors, two Jewish filmmakers, want their viewers to ponder the question of what the U.S. government felt Anne’s life was worth when she was still a living, breathing Jewish child and not yet a world-famous author and martyr of the human condition.

“It was important to us to look at a way in which you can rearrange the familiar tropes so that you see: This is a family that is getting the hell out of Germany, and hoping eventually to put more distance between them by going to the United States, which basically in the majority of the citizens and in the policy of its government does not want them,” Burns told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency.

more...

I am sure this is going to be a BIG surprise for more than a few.

[Mike Nelson]

1. Hmm...

... well, my grandparents said there was a large part of the US that wanted to stay out of what was happening... of course, Americans did - as a whole - recognize it as a threat to humanity, and acted correctly. Still, it was late and the population did have to be persuaded. A minority of the US supported the German Nazis. One of my great-aunts married a Jewish man. He and another boy made it out from Poland to France to the USA. They loved America, but were aware a portion of that hatred existed in this country. It's still here.

[Solly Mack]

2. K&R

[Lonestarblue]

3. And the "Jews will not replace us" crowd are still here today.

The anti-immigrant sentiment is strong among Republicans, along with their white supremacy. It has been here a long time, but more of it came out in the open with Trump’s encouragement. Anti-Asian hatred also increased after Trump repeatedly called Covid the Chinese virus or flu.

Recently a woman in Houston was arrested after she attacked a group of Asian women in a parking lot simply because they were speaking in their native language. What ever happened to mind your own business?

[bmichaelh]

4. Breckinridge Long

This was dramatized in the miniseries War and Remembrance.

Eddie Albert played Breckinridge Long of the State Department who was an extreme nativist.

[appalachiablue]

5. K/R

[Martin68]

6. When I was a child in the 1960s, many country clubs and other organizations did not allow

Jewish people to become members.

[hedda_foil]

7. And there were still towns and suburban developers that had covenants banning home sales to Jews.