The U.S. and the Holocaust (PBS/Ken Burns) (1 Viewer)

[Josh Steinberg]

The most recent film from Ken Burns and his team, “The U.S. and the Holocaust,” a three part series, just concluded airing on PBS and is also available free for streaming on the PBS app.

It is not an easy film to watch, but an essential one. I offer my highest recommendation.

 

[B-ROLL]

The most recent film from Ken Burns and his team, “The U.S. and the Holocaust,” a three part series, just concluded airing on PBS and is also available free for streaming on the PBS app.

It is not an easy film to watch, but an essential one. I offer my highest recommendation.

Many of the Archival interviews come from Claude Lanzmann's Shoah (released on blu-ray in the US by Criterion), as well as Shoah: Four Sisters (released on blu-ray in the US by Cohen) The Cohen set as well as as another film from the same material are available as part of Kino's current sale https://www.kinolorber.com/list/view/code/shocktober-sale-2022

Kino Lorber | Experience Cinema

The Best In World Cinema - including European, Asian, Silent, documentary, and American Independent titles. Kino Lorber sells videos and dvds directly to customers through its online store and mail order catalog.

www.kinolorber.com

 

[Josh Steinberg]

I knew some seemed familiar but I hadn’t made that connection - thanks for pointing that out.

I’ve seen many other documentaries about the Holocaust before but there’s something extraordinarily powerful about the way this new film contextualizes what was happening in Germany with what was happening here in the U.S. at the same time. It’s not necessarily that the information was new but that framing was. It raises timeless and perhaps unanswerable questions about what our obligations are to each other as people in the world.

 

[B-ROLL]

I knew some seemed familiar but I hadn’t made that connection - thanks for pointing that out.

I’ve seen many other documentaries about the Holocaust before but there’s something extraordinarily powerful about the way this new film contextualizes what was happening in Germany with what was happening here in the U.S. at the same time. It’s not necessarily that the information was new but that framing was. It raises timeless and perhaps unanswerable questions about what our obligations are to each other as people in the world.

PBS was running a (BBC) docu-series on the build up to the Nazi takeover of Germany -I believe the 2nd season of that series was partially pre-empted by live coverage of the January 6th Committee hearings.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rise_of_the_Nazis

Rise of the Nazis | PBS

See how Adolf Hitler and the Nazis rise to power and usher in the death of democracy.

www.pbs.org

 

[Sam Favate]

The show is also coming to Blu-ray on Oct. 4. It’s a blind buy for me, to add to my library of historical documentaries.

 

[B-ROLL]

The show is also coming to Blu-ray on Oct. 4. It’s a blind buy for me, to add to my library of historical documentaries.

There was an offer of the show on DVD, blu-ray and/or Music CD and then end of at least the last episode.

Ken Burns: The U.S. and the Holocaust: A Film by Ken Burns, Lynn Novick and Sarah Botstein DVD & Blu-ray

Ken Burns, Lynn Novick and Sarah Botstein’s three-part, six-hour documentary series, The U.S. and the Holocaust, examines how the American people and our leaders responded to one of the greatest humanitarian disasters of the twentieth century, and how this catastrophe challenged our identity as...

shop.pbs.org

It looks like the lower price option of the DVD, Blu-Ray & CD are "backordered" on the ShopPBS website

 

[Matt Hough]

A masterful documentary trying together the inhumane practicing of bigotry and discrimination on both sides of the Atlantic. Much of it made me feel ashamed that lessons from the past have not been learned or applied to today's world. [sigh]

 

[Sam Favate]

There was an offer of the show on DVD, blu-ray and/or Music CD and then end of at least the last episode.

Ken Burns: The U.S. and the Holocaust: A Film by Ken Burns, Lynn Novick and Sarah Botstein DVD & Blu-ray

Ken Burns, Lynn Novick and Sarah Botstein’s three-part, six-hour documentary series, The U.S. and the Holocaust, examines how the American people and our leaders responded to one of the greatest humanitarian disasters of the twentieth century, and how this catastrophe challenged our identity as...

shop.pbs.org

It looks like the lower price option of the DVD, Blu-Ray & CD are "backordered" on the ShopPBS website

View attachment 155030

It’s not really backordered, since 10/4 is the release date.

 

[benbess]

This three-part documentary is often harrowing and agonizing to watch and experience. But highly recommended.

 

[Adam Lenhardt]

I’ve seen many other documentaries about the Holocaust before but there’s something extraordinarily powerful about the way this new film contextualizes what was happening in Germany with what was happening here in the U.S. at the same time. It’s not necessarily that the information was new but that framing was. It raises timeless and perhaps unanswerable questions about what our obligations are to each other as people in the world.

I just finished the second part. I'll probably watch the third part tomorrow night. It would have been easy to lapse into righteous condemnation of the moral failure of the United States to adequately respond a most dire humanitarian need.

But this isn't really interested in passing judgment; it's more interested in understanding how the systems and laws and prejudices of the time made that moral failure inevitable.

One thing that the first part, in particular, drove home for me was how traumatized the West still was from the disastrous first world war, which had left so many dead or disabled and seemingly achieved so little. It's what fueled American isolationism, it's what allowed Hitler and the Nazis to rise in Germany, it's what made the strength and order promised by fascism so appealing to so many for so long.

Nor does this documentary shy away from the complexity of the choices made those in positions of power. If FDR's State Department appointees had been more accomodating to refugees and if FDR had pushed more strongly for immigration reform, it's possible that tens or even hundreds of thousands of lives might have been saved.

On the other hand, it's also possible that those things would have triggered a backlash that would have resulted in even more restrictive immigration laws. Even with its substantial shortcomings, the United States accepted more refugees fleeing Nazi persecution than any other country in the world. If FDR had overplayed his hand, and Lindbergh's faction had come to power politically, tens of thousands more may have died -- and perhaps untold millions if an isolationist "America First" government had been in charge and Britain had fallen.

While the documentary tells us about people who were in a position to do the right thing and infuriatingly didn't, it also tells us about people who had competing priorities and had to make impossible decisions in service of the greatest good for the greatest number of people, decisions that may or may not have been right in hindsight.

There is a calming quality to Peter Coyote's narration on these Ken Burns documentaries that is particularly potent here; it made the precursors to the Final Solution feel somehow more academic and less ominous at first. The bureaucratic delays and processing quotas initially sound so banal. And then, by the time that those delays and quotas have become outright death sentences, there is a horror that comes from that earlier complacency. How many people back then, as they learned of the scope and scale of the atrocities being committed, were appalled at their own prior inaction?

A masterful documentary trying together the inhumane practicing of bigotry and discrimination on both sides of the Atlantic. Much of it made me feel ashamed that lessons from the past have not been learned or applied to today's world. [sigh]

I'll pick my words carefully here to avoid delving too deeply into political discussion, but what stood out to me is the way that so many of the same forces of irrational fear, lack of empathy, and pompous ignorance are coming from the same places and same types of personalities today, even if their political affiliations and methods of communication may have changed. A lot of the same exact arguments, with an similar lack of supporting evidence, impact policymaking and legislation today.

On the other hand, many of the same organizations and institutions that were established back then to address that humanitarian crisis are still active and doing heroic work with regard to the humanitarian crises of today.

Human beings like to believe that we inherit and build upon the progress made by those who came before us, but that the mistakes and failings of those who came before us are unique to them and not applicable to our lives and choices. When the truth is that both the good and the bad have a way of echoing down through the generations.

 

[Adam Lenhardt]

Just finished the third and final part. There's something particularly heart-wrenching about the stories of those -- like Ann Frank and her sister -- that managed to survive the worst of the atrocities only to succumb in the weeks and days leading up to liberation. And it is illustrative of the fanaticism of the Nazi idealogy that even when they knew the war was lost, that Hitler's dream of a thousand-year reich was not to be, they prioritized the continuing eradication of the Jewish people even as they retreated from Allies advances approaching from both sides.

And the last ten minutes, which jump ahead to the present day, are like a punch to the gut, and leave no doubt why Ken Burns and his collaborators felt the need to tell this story at this time.