For President Franklin Roosevelt, humanitarian concerns were certainly an issue. However, they took a back seat to the more pressing struggle against Hitler, first with his tacit support of England and later with America’s entry into the war. Understanding the U.S. role during the Holocaust requires going back before that, reflecting on the anti-immigrant sentiment that permeated the 1920s, the virulent anti-Semitism of auto magnate Henry Ford, and the interest in eugenics and racial superiority. As historian Timothy Snyder notes, Hitler admired the brutality of Native Americans during the occupation of their lands, seeing it as “The way racial superiority is supposed to work.” Divided into three chapters, the first covers the pre-war period, the second 1938-42 and the third the end of the war and its aftermath. American sympathy for the Jews only went so far. After the violence of Kristallnacht in 1938 made it clear that there was little hope for those left in Germany, Congress rejected yet another proposal to accept more refugees, including calls to take in 10,000 children a year. At the same time, the filmmakers detail stories of individual Americans and government officials who tried to help Jews escape Nazi persecution, saving thousands of lives. As is customary with Burns’ productions (again written by Geoffrey Ward and narrated by Peter Coyote), the deftly edited clips — such as Charles Lindbergh speaking in support of his America First agenda or footage from the German camps gathering — are growing with top actors voicing key historical figures, with Liam Neeson, Paul Giamatti, Meryl Streep and German director Werner Herzog among those lending their voices to the effort. What it really comes down to, in the end, is how complicated the story is — a mix of heroism and callousness, horror and hope — and the need to tell those stories, warts and all, at a time when how to teach history of the US is much debated. “Even though the Holocaust took place in Europe, it’s a story Americans must reckon with,” says historian Rebecca Erbelding. The filmmakers powerfully convey this message at the end, incorporating footage from the 2017 Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, as well as the January 6 riot, and an image of a participant wearing a “Camp Auschwitz” sweatshirt. Addressing such contemporary examples, historian Nell Irvin Painter speaks of a current of white supremacy and anti-Semitism that has run through US history. “It’s a big current and it’s always there,” he says. “Sometimes it bubbles up and shocks us and falls down. But the current is always there.” Few people have done more to make such a story commercially viable than Burns, whose extensive contributions to public television — including more focused works recently devoted to Benjamin Franklin, Ernest Hemingway and Muhammad Ali — have continued with astonishing normality since “Civil War”. in 1990. While that kind of impact is elusive in our time, perhaps most of all, “The US and the Holocaust” (which will be accompanied by a student outreach program) underscores the importance of recording history in all its complexity and messiness. As Snyder puts it, “We need to have a view of our own history that allows us to see what we were.” “The US and the Holocaust” will air on September 18, 20 and 21 at 8 p.m. ET on most PBS stations.
