The U.S. and the Holocaust on PBS

[Vandal]

I finished watching this 3-episode documentary series recently and, like most Ken Burns docs, it's well-researched, well-reported and very moving. It lays out the lack of involvement by the US during the 1930s and into the 1940s as Hitler and Germany set out to remove every Jewish person from every country in their reach. They nearly did it.

It was horrifying to watch even though I knew the ending (but not all the details). The reality of antisemitism at the highest levels of the US government was particularly troublesome, even as Roosevelt tried to play both sides and remain neutral and limit immigrants from Europe as war raged there and Jews were rounded up and placed in ghettos and camps. Thousands tried to leave, but were denied. It's easy to say we should have done more.

Some of the interviewees were holocaust survivors and their stories were chilling. They lost family members and those who survived were reduced to skeletal form. Those photos (and Ken Burns know how to get the most out of them) are haunting.

I highly recommend this series to people of all ages. I'll encourage my adult sons to see it so they know the gruesome truth.

Definitely not America's 'finest hour.'

[jarnon]

This documentary is skillfully done and heartbreaking.

Something that surprised me: Unlike today when images of Russian atrocities are an incentive to action, leaders who knew about the horror of the Shoah were hesitant to use it for propaganda because they thought soldiers would fight less hard if their mission was to rescue Jews.