(Jewish Group) You must watch Ken Burns' PBS series on America and the Holocaust

[Behind the Aegis]

Why? I asked myself — with a heavy sigh.

Why did Ken Burns and others devote so much time and resources to the creation of this much-anticipated PBS series, “The U.S. and the Holocaust”?

Had we not already “been there, done that”? Had not a generation of scholars already created an intellectual cottage industry around America’s apathy during the Shoah? Had they not already covered our national shallowness in great depth? If we needed to do so, could we not simply go to the library and dust off old copies of books like David Wyman’s authoritative The Abandonment of the Jews: America and the Holocaust 1941-1945, among other noteworthy and devastating works?

Let me say, without reserve, that I was wrong in my cynicism and World War Two-weariness. I am only one episode into it, but I will say this: Ken Burns has created a masterpiece.

more...

I have already seen part one. Watch it!

[cilla4progress]

1. Started watching last night.

I am learning about my ancestors' life when they came here from e. Europe in the early 20th century.

Illuminating!

[Joinfortmill]

2. I just finished Part I. Find a quiet place & watch it. Please.

[3catwoman3]

3. I was totally surprised when Helen Keller was listed...

Last edited Mon Sep 19, 2022, 04:53 PM - Edit history (2)

...as a supporter of eugenics.

I've read just a bit about that since watching last night, and apparently she later moved away from this stance, but it shocked me. Surely, she would have been picked out and eliminated as defective, so how she could even briefly support any element of eugenics just doesn't seem to fit.

Here is an excerpt from one of the sources I looked at:

One recent Keller biography, written by disability studies professor Kim Nielsen, advances a number of important criticisms of Keller’s disability politics.34 She correctly condemns an article written by Keller in 1915 during a brief moment when she had adopted certain eugenicist ideas.35 Influenced greatly by her friend and then-comrade Margaret Sanger, Keller conflated the struggle for birth control and reproductive self-determination with the broader social goal of ensuring the “fitness” of future generations. To be fair, Keller never supported the more odious and racist aspects of eugenic philosophy, such as forced sterilization (a practice legalized by the US Supreme Court in 1927). In any event, within a matter of years, Keller was writing articles denouncing the entire “survival of the fittest” mentality upon which eugenics was founded, not only in Nazi Germany, but in the United States as well.

Source - https://isreview.org/issue/96/politics-helen-keller/index.html