Ken Burns US and the Holocaust—on PBS

It just popped up on my Amazon feed, and was considering watching OP. Thanks for posting.

One of his best.

I’m recording it. Burns was on Colbert yesterday.

It’s a shame they gave more time to a movie that nobody will see, Blonde, than to speak with Ken.

It’s excellent. The MAGAts will probably try to ban it.

I give it four out of five ovens…..

I have been watching it - it is excellent. I knew that Charles Lindbergh and his wife were Anti semetic - but wow - what a nasty guy! ….. Watching the timeline of events and how the Nazis kept moving the bar and expanding territory - you can see how impossible it would be to get yourself out of there - let alone your family.

I'd wonder about the veracity/accuracy of a Holocaust documentary made by a person who compares migrant shuttles to wealthy enclaves to the extermination of Jews of Europe.

It’s all of a piece, R7, informed by a thread of anti-immigrant, white supremacism.

Pre-pandemic, I worked with a 40 yo, on-the-spectrum, Trump-loving attorney (Notre Dame Law) who, in his tiny bubble, had never heard of Ken Burns!

R9 Did you pop it and introduce him to Ken?

I tried, R10, but he wasn’t interested at the first mention of PBS.

Very well done and an effective teaching tool.

Interesting that the whole "We have unsecured borders" has been a clarion call of conservatives for over a century.

Whenever "undesirable" enter in major numbers, the conservatives use that accusation.

An undesirable is of course anyone who isn't white protestant.

R7, those people are also refugees from socialism - and don’t you MAGAts all think Hitler was a socialist?

Excellent.

R7, So communism is only bad if it's in Cuba?

[quote]a person who compares migrant shuttles to wealthy enclaves to the extermination of Jews of Europe.

Where did he do that? Or are you just making shit up?

The R7's of the world don't give two shits about immigrants today or Jews 80 years ago. They only care about their devotion and blind allegiance to their Lord and Savior, Donald J. Trump and or Il Douche Ron DeSantis.

R17 See link. And never assume. You will invariably ERR.

R18 Another assumptive ass heard from.

Burns comparison illustrates his woeful ignorance of the Holocaust. That ignorance is shared by the posters on this thread.

And your credentials to speak with such robust authority, R20 are........????????????

R20 has obviously not watched any of the documentary. R20 can shut right the fuck up.

I haven't seen any of this yet, but how is Burns addressing "we didn't really know what was going on" bullshit by not only the Allies but by Germans.

When the Gestapo knocked on the door in the middle of the night and forced people out of their homes, never to be seen or heard from again, what did the Germans think was happening to these people? When Germans mailed packages/parcels to their departed friends and relatives to ghettos in the east and the ever-efficient German post office returned them marked "addressee unknown" or "addressee decased" what exactly did Germans think was happening to these people?

R21 I'll make it real simple so that even a ignoramous like you can understand.

The Holocaust - the extermination of the Jews of Europe - was the culmination of 1,700 years of Catholic and Protestant church fomented, socially/culturally inculcated Jew hatred. A Jew hatred that exists to this day in America, and especially Europe. Europe saw nothing wrong with the Nazi plan to exterminate Jews. Neither did America.

Migrants are not threatened by extermination due to their ethnicity nor are they escaping extermination. They are fleeing from failured societies for an easier life in the US.

Addendum R24

Therefore Burns documentary and his deplorable comparisons are products of woeful ignorance.

[quote] what did the Germans think was happening to these people?

The Germans knew. The Poles knew. The Ukrainians knew. The Austrians knew. The Czechs knew. The Slovaks knew. The Latvians knew. The Lituanians knew. The French knew. And they all enthusiastically agreed. As did America.

Like most of Burns’ past work, it will be justifiably picked apart and laughed at by actual historians with deep knowledge and training in the field; conversely, average people will probably lap it up as profound and moving.

I haven’t watched this yet, so I’ll reserve judgment, but my “This guy is ignorant of the major trends in scholarship over the last 80 years”-detector is already activated and ready.

R25: Just watch the documentary.

All I know is he did a phenomenal documentary on the Central Park 5. I might give this one a chance.

R28 I wouldn't waste a nanosecond of my time on a documentary by someone who deplorably compares migrants fleeing failed societies to Jews facing extermination.

Instead of Burns' superficial, sentimental, tries-not-to-offend-anybody pap, check out this trio of films by Marcel Ophuls:

"The Sorrow and the Pity" (1969) "The Memory of Justice" (1976) "Hotel Terminus: The Life and Times of Klaus Barbie" (1988)

Also, the Criterion Collection has an exceptional Blu-ray release of Claude Lanzmann's monumental "Shoah" which also includes several shorter films among the bonus features, notably "Sorbibor, October 14, 1943, 4 p.m.", "The Karski Report," and "Visitor From The Living" among others.

Recommended reading:

_The Extermination of the European Jews_ by Christian Gerlach (2016) _The Historiography of the Holocaust_ by Dan Stone (2004) _Hitler, the Germans, and the Final Solution_ by Ian Kershaw (2009)

anything by Richard J. Evans, especially _The Third Reich Trilogy_ (2003-2008) _The Third Reich in History and Memory_ (2015) _Lying About Hitler: History, Holocaust, and the David Irving Trial_ (2002)

Jews were migrants fleeing a failing Germany in the 1930s. The death camps were not yet exterminating them. So yes, American govt policy and sentiment to keep Jews fleeing Europe out of the US did contribute to their death. Ditto those fleeing Franco in Spain. By the time Jews were being murdered they could not immigrate. .

A friend sent me a text telling me to watch it. I sent a text back - no.

The virulence and openness of the antisemitism at the time was shocking.

People are mindless sheep just waiting for someone evil to steer them off a cliff

[quote]I wouldn't waste a nanosecond of my time on a documentary by someone who deplorably compares migrants fleeing failed societies to Jews facing extermination.

I watched only the first hour of the documentary so far. But Burns isn't comparing fleeing migrants to Jews facing extermination.

Where the comparison comes in is to both groups of people trying to get into the U.S. to escape where they came from but instead facing pushback.

Given the documentary's title - "The U.S and the Holocaust" - none of the titles cited in the post written by R31 address in great detail the U.S.'s responsibility in not helping Jews find a safe haven in America in the 1920s and 1930s.

R24, there is a very crooked road leading from Luther (and before him the medieval church) to the Holocaust.

A religiously based Anti-Semitism dissipated but never went completely away from the mid-seventeenth century onward as toleration grew.

A more virulent racially based Anti-Semitism emerged in the last quarter of the 19th century.

The attempted extermination of all European Jewry was in the name of a completely secular ideology. And the Nazis nearly succeeded.

As for complicity in German society, it's shades of gray in terms of the complicity of all sectors of society. Individuals spoke up against what was occurring -- not institutions.

The Final Solution was not put into action until 1942. In the midst of the war, the US decided the best way to end it was to prosecute the war.

Anti-semitism was prevalent in American society at the time. So was anti-Catholicism, anti-Asian, anti-immigrant, and, of course, anti-Black.

Charles Lindbergh was anti-semitic. As was Fr. Coughlin. Along with a host of Democrat politicians in the South and elsewhere. And anti-semitism seemed to be entrenched in the State Dept, which controlled immigration.

Hatred in other forms has not gone away in the USA. Witness recent anti-semitic, anti-immigrant, anti-Black, and anti-gay attacks (dressed up as "protection of the traditional family").

After 9/11, there was an outcry about building a mosque near Ground Zero, and state legislatures enacting laws barring Sharia Law.

Did ordinary Germans know what was going on? Most chose not to know. It was a mixture of working towards the same goals as the regime and living under such a regime.

Burns makes the point that there was no such thing as "illegal" immigration to the US UNTIL the non-Protestants started coming in.

Before that, anyone could come. When Eastern and Southern Europeans, Jews, and Asians started coming, the whites in the US created anti-immigration laws.

Nikki Haley once said no law in American history was ever written to exclude and criminalize a specific group.

She's an idiot because she waves away all the Jim Crow laws. The Chinese Exclusion Act was specifically written to keep out the Chinese (after the US was done using them to build the trans-continental railroad). Haley doesn't know American history.

Hence, among journalistic circles, her press conferences were referred to as Haley’s Vomit.

[quote]The Final Solution was not put into action until 1942.

My uncle died in Dachau in 1940.

Bill Maher stupidly said we should stop condemning those who were in a different time so didn't know better.

The example was condemning George Washington because he owned slaves. The logic is that, because everyone owned slaves, why should he be condemned for not knowing any better (ignoring the fact that he ran the country that was supposedly based on "all men are created equal" and used the convenient "Slaves aren't fully human so don't qualify."

Under that logic, can we condemn Hitler?

[quote] My uncle died in Dachau in 1940

Should heart attacks count?

An interesting point - after the infamous “Night of Broken Glass” - there was so much front page bad press around the world (even by anti semitic hate groups) that the Nazis never again did something so public and sloppy. That’s when so much of the terrible organized efficient secretive killing started.

R39, and Trump's own Muslim ban or the GOP's attempt at a Constitutional ban on gay marriage

He needs to do a documentary about the REAL Holocaust - people being asked to wear masks at the grocery store!

R46 Gazpacho for everyone!

The first lines of the documentary seems to be what's happening right now in America

Dachau was opened in 1933. Originally it was used as a prison for Communists, labor unionists etc.

R42 - I don't think Maher was saying people like Washington shouldn't be criticized. I think he was saying that contemporary people shouldn't act holier-than-thou about people from the past because they would have been doing the same thing if they were living during that time.

I guess a lot of people would just rather not be reminded that Teddy Roosevelt and Helen Keller believed in eugenics; that Henry Ford was a loathsome anti-Semite; or that people 100 years ago were saying immigrants are dirty, diseased, can’t speak English, have no reason to flee anything (“How many Jews have died?” an American Nazi paper snidely asked) and are coming to the US to replace our pure Nordic race.

R41, I'm sorry about your uncle. Up to January 1942, the mass murder of Jews was taking place in the German- occupied areas of Eastern Europe and the western part of the Soviet union. Eastern European Jews were being deported to the Warsaw Ghetto.

It was at the Wannsee Conference in January 1942, when top Nazis overseeing the occupied regions of eastern Europe and the camps decided on the liquidation of all Jews in Europe. That entailed the mass deportations of Jews from all German occupied Europe (puppet states like Vichy France sent French Jews before the Germans asked) to the six death camps in Poland. And at those camps, Jews were killed in the cheapest, most efficient way possible...in mass numbers, using cyanide gas, and mass cremation. The scale of it is unfathomable even today, and it's evil lies in the fact that those who committed such unspeakable crimes were quite ordinary people.

Dachau was the first concentration camp set up after the Nazis came to power in 1933. All external enemies/threats to the Nazis were arrested and sent there (communists, trade unionists, socialists, other political opponents, and some Jews). Did death occur there before the war and before 1942? Yes. But not on a mass, industrialized scale. It was only late in the war that Dachau sent Jews to their deaths in large numbers.

^^^^^^ Sorry for the grammatical errors like it's/its ^^^^^

Fascism takes over slowly—tiny increments, scapegoating little by little until people believe the scapegoated are evil and the cause of all their problems.

R51, Ford wrote newspaper column after column about how terrible Jews were. They were combined into a book.

Ford was fine building cars in Germany

When will Ken be burns out about making documentaries? Did he partner with Jews on this so it will look a little less like appropriation as has some of his other shows in the past have been?

I didn't see the beginning but watched most of the end. There was nothing soft about this. It was hardcore. My mom used to make me watch holocaust shows on PBS so although it is always shocking and horrible, it doesn't take me by surprise. My husband sees no reason to watch it. My son and daughter walked out of the room.

I am a quarter Jew so I need to know this stuff (as does everyone). It was so sad to see Anne Frank looking so happy. The shooting of the naked Russian Jews was stunningly awful. I don't think those of you who say everyone is anti semetic are correct. I also don't think it's right to blame Christians.

[quote] A religiously based Anti-Semitism dissipated but never went completely away from the mid-seventeenth century onward as toleration grew.

[quote] A more virulent racially based Anti-Semitism emerged in the last quarter of the 19th century.

Rubbish! The exact same social/cultural Jew hatred passed from generation to generation through Church-fomented anti-Jewish language, imagery and literature. That promulgation of culture Jew hatred continues to this day. Something that passes for "tolerance" of Jews never existed, as the ancient, socially-inculcated derision, denigration discrimination and persecution continued unabated.

[quote] The attempted extermination of all European Jewry was in the name of a completely secular ideology. And the Nazis nearly succeeded.

"Secular" is a misnomer. The Nazis were products of centuries of cultural anti-Jewish bigotry/hatred. Just like the rest of Europe that enabled/supported them.

[quote] Anti-semitism was prevalent in American society at the time. So was anti-Catholicism, anti-Asian, anti-immigrant, and, of course, anti-Black.

And of that list, only Jew hatred remains as virulent now as it was then. Americans have been socially-inculcated to recognize, expose and reject anti-black/Asia racism. But Jew hatred? Well that's something completely different. Not only has there never been any similar social inculcation, Jew hatred continues to be accepted and rewarded.

And yet three of the four most senior members of the President’s cabinet, plus his Chief of Staff, are Jews.

I don’t know why I’m surprised but yeah this country has a long history of disgusting racist/xenophobia.

Also, it’s crystal clear the majority of the rich have always encouraged our worst instincts. Our country has always had a very aspirational streak where we wanted and believed we could and should be better. If the rich (like Henry Ford) put their efforts into appealing to our better angels I do believe we would have far, far less racism and hatred in our country today. We’d have supported the Allies sooner, we would have accepted and saved hundreds of thousands of Jews from Hitler, we’d have supported POC and they’d be more prosperous today. Instead, they did the opposite and we are paying the price. Essentially, all the things everyone accused the Jews of being (rich elitists who wanted to control us and so on) was projection from rich Protestants.

FDR saved this country in so many ways.

We are also fortunate Charles Lindbergh was juuust disgusted enough by kristallnatch he didn’t fully support the Nazi regime or else he may have fully supported it on the airwaves and possibly run for president. I don’t think he would have won.

FDR was really amazing. He was rich enough and smart enough and handsome enough not to be intimidated by anyone. And, he was a good person.

"Fascism takes over slowly—tiny increments, scapegoating little by little until people believe the scapegoated are evil and the cause of all their problems."

You mean like how certain DLers insist trans are the root of all evil in the world and are responsible for "gay erasure" (whatever the fuck that is).

R58, I am not going to argue with you. I am just giving you the history.

With the growth of toleration from the mid-seventeenth century onward, religiously based anti-semitism dissipated, but as I said, never went entirely away.

Anti-semitism re-emerged in a much more virulent form in the last quarter of the nineteenth century as a racially based anti-semitism (Social Darwinism).

Nazism and Communism which perpetrated the worst crimes against humanity in the 20th century were secular ideologies.

[quote] And yet three of the four most senior members of the President’s cabinet, plus his Chief of Staff,

R60 Which has absolutely nothing to do with two millenia of Jew hatred or its social/cultural entrenchment. The Duke of Windsor, the most vicious of Jew haters, used Jews as financial advisers. Didn't stop him from publicly spewing Jew hatred at every opportunity.

R64, I don't think we're saying that Trans kids are the root of all evil. They are just doing their thing, and that is fine. What is not fine is forcing everyone else to "do their thing."

[quote] With the growth of toleration from the mid-seventeenth century onward, religiously based anti-semitism dissipated,

R65 Jews are relegated to a "religion" only in the US. The rest of the world considers Jews to be a separate nation identity and culture. Both your use of "religion" and "racially-based" are misnomers. Jews were considered a scourge to be persecuted. Ghettos, pogroms, exclusions, expulsions and discrimination never dissipated anywhere in Europe. Cultures that have used Jews for centuries as scapegoats for social discontent do not relax their persecution nor do they develop tolerance. Neither did the constant threat of yet another pogrom ever dissipate.

Judaism is super confusing because it's unclear if it's a race or a religion or what. Being Latino is similar. What makes one Latino? Just having a Latino last name?

I think there are two groups who think there is a lot of anti-semitism. There are the Jews who see it and have to deal with it, and then there are the people who dislike the Jews. The rest of us don't really think about Jews that much. They're just people.

I’m very interested in watching this to see what, and if, they talk about William Dodd, the American Ambassador to Germany from 1933-1937. He and his family’s story is quite amazing and told in Erik Larson’s book In the Garden of the Beast. It’s really a must read to understand how the rise of Nazism unfolded in the early days. His adult children living there at the time even flirted heavily with fascism.

[quote] We’d have supported the Allies sooner, we would have accepted and saved hundreds of thousands of Jews from Hitler,

R61 America was and is as vicious in its Jew hatred as Europe. America would not have saved one single Jew from extermination by Europeans. Rabbi Stephen Wise met with FDR and pleaded with him to allow Jews being persecuted and butchered into the US. FDR's response? "The Jews should keep quiet". FDR was just another vicious Jew hater.

R68, they are not misnomers.

German Jews were highly assimilated, more secular than religious, considered themselves more German than Jewish, and were less than 1% of the total population in Germany in 1933.

I certainly do not argue that a more virulent, racially based anti-semitism had no roots in religiously based anti-Semitism. Go back to my original post where I wrote that it is a crooked road from Luther to Hitler.

But to deny Nazism is a completely secular ideology is ignorant.

As for the racially based anti-Semitism of the Nazis...When deportations to Auschwitz began a German Jewish family wrote to Himmler to get out of it. They were assimilated and secular Jews. The family's fortune was in finance. The family bankrolled the Prussian state and provided it with the wherewithal to unify Germany in 1871. The family was sent to Auschwitz.

But to argue

[Quote] The attempted extermination of all European Jewry was in the name of a completely secular ideology.

Antisemitism is based in Christianity. Christians are angry that Jews didn’t accept Christ as their savior.

[quote] German Jews were highly assimilated, more secular than religious,

[quote] But to deny Nazism is a completely secular ideology is ignorant.

R72 What is ignorant is your inability to understand that what you call "religion" is non-existant in Europe and that "secular" is a misnomer to a people who saw Jews as a separate nation/culture/people to be reviled.

What is also ignorant is your assertion that two millennia of Catholic/Protestant Church fomented Jew hatred had absolutely no influence on Nazi ideology. Or Europe's enabling/support of same.

[Quote] But to deny Nazism is a completely secular ideology is ignorant.

Fascism requires scapegoating minorities. Nazis just used a convenient minority to scapegoat.

Just like the American right scapegoats convenient minorities—those that society is already wary about—gays, Jews, Muslims, immigrants, blacks

Of course Nazi scapegoating of Jews is religious in origin.

To claim hatred of Jews is secular is an attempt to separate the horrors of Holocaust from Christianity.

In fact, it’s the history of Christian hatred towards Jews that led to Nazis naturally focusing on Jews as the scapegoat

[quote] Fascism requires scapegoating minorities. Nazis just used a convenient minority to scapegoat.

The Nazis used Jews because all of the anti-Jewish imagery was familiar and understood by every single European. They'd been inculcated with it for two millennia.

[quote] Of course Nazi scapegoating of Jews is religious in origin.

R76 No, it isn't. Nazi scapegoating of Jews is cultural in origin. Because Europeans, with the encouragement of the Catholic/Protestant Churches, had been scapegoating Jews for centuries.

The amazing thing is not only that so much of Nazi belief originated in American actions, but that, despite running an apartheid nation, America was held up as a beacon of equality.

[Quote] No, it isn't. Nazi scapegoating of Jews is cultural in origin. Because Europeans, with the encouragement of the Catholic/Protestant Churches, had been scapegoating Jews for centuries.

Re-read what you wrote

[Quote] The Nazis used Jews because all of the anti-Jewish imagery was familiar and understood by every single European. They'd been inculcated with it for two millennia.

Hmmm.. what would that be…

^why would that be…

[Quote] The Nazis used Jews because all of the anti-Jewish imagery was familiar and understood by every single European. They'd been inculcated with it for two millennia.

What happened 2 millennia ago…? Yes, there’s your answer to the origins of anti semitism

[quote] so much of Nazi belief originated in American actions

R79 The latest horseshit to shovel. Nazis and their European enablers had two millennia of Jew hatred to work with. They didn't need to look elsewhere for a hatred they were very well acquainted with.

It’s like saying the scapegoating of gays is cultural in origin, not religious.

Religion was what is used constantly to scapegoat gays. In order to pass laws against gays, people try to cloak religion with civic talk, but behind it is religion

R80 I know exactly what I wrote. You keep asserting about "religion" in cultures where the concept of "religion" is non-existant. Thus your confusion.

R84, Nazis openly said they based many of their specific laws from US laws against blacks.

They even felt America’s one drop rule was too harsh

I resigned in my mind from Catholicism in 5th grade when the nun we had for our religion class told us that, if we were going to go out on mischief night, we should go to the Jewish neighborhood and soap their car windows, throw eggs at their houses, toilet paper their trees, etc. (She refrained from urging "light bags of dog shit on their front porches," but we knew she had it in mind.)

Though this is just one anecdote, I definitely believe in an overall Catholic anti-Semitism, at least at that time. This was in the early 1960s, btw, not 20 years yet since WWII had ended in Europe.

As I said, I mentally resigned from Catholicism, though my mother insisted in our continuing to go to Catholic school, until my father finally put his foot down when I was in 10th grade. Many of my best friends are, and have been Jewish.

[quote] It’s like saying the scapegoating of gays is cultural in origin, not religious.

R85 Scapegoating of gays IS cultural in origin. Again, you attempt to project the concept of "religion" on cultures where that concept didn't exist.

R86, yes for two thousand years Christians have been scapegoating and murdering Jews. The reasons were always religious. All the European countries considered themselves Christian countries.

You’re just trying desperately to take the blame from Christianity—Just like the American south pretends it’s states rights, not slavery, that started the civil war

[Quote] Scapegoating of gays IS cultural in origin. Again, you attempt to project the concept of "religion" on cultures where that concept didn't exist.

Yet the justification for it is always religious

[quote] Nazis openly said they based many of their specific laws from US laws against blacks.

R87 Absolute rubbish. The Nazis based their laws on Xtian church persecution of Jews. That had been going on long America existed.

[Quote] Scapegoating of gays IS cultural in origin. Again, you attempt to project the concept of "religion" on cultures where that concept didn't exist.

You pretend that culture and religion are somehow separate

[quote] The reasons were always religious. All the European countries considered themselves Christian countries.

R90 "Religious" is a misnomer. You mean cultural, especially as it pertains to Europe.

[Quote] Absolute rubbish. The Nazis based their laws on Xtian church persecution of Jews. That had been going on long America existed.

Yes, but when making laws against Jews, Nazis patterned them on US laws against blacks—laws against intermarriage, owning property, etc.

This is not controversial—the Nazis specifically said so

[Quote] Religious" is a misnomer. You mean cultural, especially as it pertains to Europe.

In Europe, there is no difference

[quote] You pretend that culture and religion are somehow separate

Uh, no. What Americans call "relligion" Europeans call culture. They are not separate.

I'm still on the first episode. Some of this history was known to me, but I like that the background is laid out. The documentary on Prohibition similarly did a good job of explaining what happened in the decades before the Eighteenth Amendment was ratified.

Is there a new episode every night for six nights?

[quote] Nazis patterned them on US laws against blacks—laws against intermarriage, owning property, etc.

R95 Those anti-Jewish laws were in force throughout Europe long before America existed. Your assertion is agenda-driven rubbish.

R70, Dodd made a brief appearance in last night's episode.

"His adult children living there at the time even flirted heavily with fascism."

Dodd's adult daughter did a little more than flirt. She fucked the original director of the Gestapo and had another affair with a Russian double agent. Hitler was quite familiar with Dodd's daughter and her numerous affairs and was very interested in using her and her indiscretions to Hitler's and Germany's advantage.

[quote] Yes, there’s your answer to the origins of anti semitism

R83 Xtians thieves stole laws and history meant solely for Jews and then spent the next 2,000 years butchering the witnesses of their theft.

What the Russians were doing with the Jews through pogroms and the Nazis doing to them through the Holocaust seem to be based on two different ideologies.

It's excellent and a story that should alway be retold. People need to be reminded of the atrocities and horrors of that time. It could happen again, if we're not careful. I love his documentaries...always well done. Lindbergh was our hero???....he was a Nazi. Americans back then had the MAGAt hate today....only directed at different people. The propaganda and the (C)xtians intolerance were the same then, as today, too. That was a little surprising to me, as I though Americans were better at that time. It opened my eyes.

R102 No, it's based on the identical ideology. Xtian-fomented Jew hatred. In Russia, it was the Orthodox Church. Same vicious Jew hatred. Same discrimination, persecution, expulsion, ghettoes, etc. That's why so many Jews in Russia welcomed Communism, thinking finally an ideology where Jews are no longer considered a scourge. Little did they know, the dumb fucks.

Bonnie Prince Charlie is doing a yeoman's job of putting out facts -- ignore the trolls with agendas.

A few key facts about the Shoah that many don't know:

1. Most German Jews (who were a small-- 500K or 0.75%) assimilated group in Germany) got out of Germany in time and survived the Shoah. It was the three million Polish Jews who bore the brunt of the slaughter. They had six years, 1933-39, to leave.

2. The initial million or so Jews that were killed were not in concentration camps, but rather, were lined up in front of ditches and shot by regular Wehrmacht troops throughout the former Soviet Union. This wasted ammunition and traumatized the Wehrmacht troops, hence they turned to Plan B - zyklon gas

3. Initial reports of the mass extermination were not initially believed -- the notion that the Germans had implemented an industrial style plan to exterminate Jews sounded so far-fetched at the time and of course people just did not want to believe that humans could be so twisted, especially other white European humans.

4. Female German concentration camp guards would take groups of young Jewish children, happily singing songs and march them to the gas chambers where they'd be killed. They did this daily.

^^ >>They had six years, 1933-39, to leave. >> "They" being the 550K German Jews

[quote] It was the three million Polish Jews who bore the brunt of the slaughter.

It was the 3 million Jews of Poland, and the Jews of Holland, and France and Italy and Latvia and Lithuania and Ukraine and Greece, and Germany. 180,000 Jews of Germany were murdered in the Holocaust.

[quote] but rather, were lined up in front of ditches and shot by regular Wehrmacht troops throughout the former Soviet Union.

With the gleeful assistance of Ukrainians, Czech, Serbians, Latvians, etc. The Holocaust would not have happened without the willing assistance of Europe. And America. And the rest of the world.

There was a reason the majority of the concentration and death camps were placed in the East, (specifically Poland), rather than say...Belgium.

[quote] Female German concentration camp guards would take groups of young Jewish children, happily singing songs and march them to the gas chambers

Poles, Ukrainians, Croats, Serbs, Lithuanians and Latvians were also camp guards. The men couldn't be bothered singing. They simply tossed Jewish babies and little children into the furnaces. While they were still alive.

Some of the most sadistic camp butchers were gay. Enthusiastically butchering Jews to exhibit what good Nazis they were and shield themselves from possible exposure.

The unimaginable capability of cruelty by humans...so many went along with this. It's one thing a person or a few people could do this, even though it's horrible...you can sort of deal with it. There are disturbed people. When a huge part of the world, seemingly normal and average people participated in this...even America, to some extent....it's all too much. Humans can be monsters.

R111 And the most montrous part is that, were Jews again threatened with extermination, the world would react identically. THAT'S cultural Jew hatred.

I don't understand that R112. Why so much hatred toward the Jews?

R113 See R24. Jew hatred is the most culturally disseminated/entrenched bigotry in the world. The same imagery, slur and scree are readily understandable to an Argentinian as to an Alaskan as to a Japanese as to an Australian. Jew hatred exists in places were Jews never have. Jew hatred unites black and white, right and left, gay and straight, Xtian and Muslim in a fetid cesspool of social cohesion.

No matter what group of people...race, nationality, religion....there's always something that you're not going to like about them...and like about them. There are differences that may rub you the wrong way, and something that's appealing. To exterminate an entire population off the face of the earth, solely because of religion....just unfathomable. That amount of hatred is unimaginable.

R115 There is no nation on earth that has suffered the extent of cultural hatred that Jews have. And it continues unabated all over the world to this day.

That's fucked up R114. Unfortunately, a reality.

Hey my little atheist heart would love to blame Christianity for establishing Europe's well known antisemitism but the historian in me has to interject and correct an assumption here.

2 thousand years ago Christians were being persecuted. It was the Romans who introduced Jews to Europe and got the antisemitism ball rolling. Jews were slaves all throughout the Roman empire.

Yes R118

But it was the Catholic Church who really pushed it, as Jews were a major inconvenience when attempting to convert pagans.

If Jesus was Jewish and the Messiah, then why didn't the Jews believe he was the Messiah?

Plus all those verses in the Old Testament about circumcision and kosher laws and Passover and the like-- why did the Jews still adhere to them?

[Quote] [R95] Those anti-Jewish laws were in force throughout Europe long before America existed. Your assertion is agenda-driven rubbish.

The agenda seems to be yours.

Below is just one of literally a hundred articles and books about how Nazis based their Nuremberg laws on America’s Jim Crow. They even specifically said so.

You can protest all you want but the reality is clear

What they called “racial” purity was the core of Nazism. Today we’d call it “ethnic cleansing.” The Jews were the available, local “other” in an otherwise homogeneous population. Us v. the outsiders is a powerful meme throughout history. It doesn’t depend on the character of the outsiders. Do racists in the US care that Blacks are mostly Christians?

Why does it have to be one or the other? Europe had a history of antisemitism stretching back to the Middle Ages. Requiring Jews to wear a yellow badge to identify themselves was first done during the Medieval period. It's been speculated that there is something peculiar to German culture that made antisemitism take a particularly virulent form. The Nazis took notes on segregation laws in the early 20th century U.S.

15 minutes in and I’m already livid.

Helen Keller advocated eugenics???

Never mind that her defective ass would have been one of the first people erased from existence. 😡

Yes R111 -- that this was being carried out by the government of a Western nation with "civilized" people on such a grand scale is still hard to fathom and we've known about it our whole lives. Imagine it being presented to you as net new.

I forget who said it on the episode last night, but it's so true: In the 19th century, America looked west and decided to expand to the Pacific Ocean and crush anyone who got in their way.

In the 1930's, Adolf Hitler looked east and said Germany should expand all the way to the Urals and crush anyone who got in their way.

It's still amazing to me how Germany could go from the high cultural point of the Weimar Republic to the unhinged masses out beating up Jews, looting, killing people in the streets, in just a few years. I know the German Jews were highly assimilated (my Jewish grandfather grew up in Hamburg and left in1938) but hearing about how somebody would be your best friend one day and the next calling you a dirty Jew, is horrifying.

Just as it only took the US four years to devolve from the relative calm of the Obama years to an actual violent coup attempt at the Capitol.

I like how German signs are morphed into English. Most viewers won’t understand what “Kauft nicht bei Juden” means, so Burns has literally spelled it out for us.

The parallels of the powerful German men who pushed through the election of Hitler as Chancellor because they thought that they could control him, and Trump were chilling.

R129, they probably could have controlled him, but Hitler and Himmler made them an offer they couldn't refuse: an unlimited supply of cheap, forced labor, the Capitalist's/Businessmen's kryptonite. And it wasn't just Jewish concentration camp cheap labor: it was "guest" workers "imported" from Poland, the Baltics, the USSR and even the West like France, the Netherlands and Belgium.

Hitler/Himmer knew what they were doing when they dangled that delectable narcotic in front of them. They were hooked and he had them by their bottom line balls.

Lots of Jewish media are recommending the series.

I second R70's recommendation of IN THE GARDEN OF BEASTS by Erik Larson, whole-heartedly! It's such a great read! I really had to force myself to "slow down" about halfway through it, and only read a couple chapters a day. I was buzzing through it SO fast, and I didn't want it to end. (It was the first time I'd read Larson; I found that to be the case with his other books, too.)

I like anything by Ken Burns.

Third the Larsen book.

I remember as a kid seeing "The Great Dictator" on TCM and running to my parents in disbelief, "they knew?! Everyone knew!" I was shocked.

Fourth the Larsen book.

But the one you all need to read, especially the MARY brigade, is "Hitlers' First 100 Days" by Peter Fritzche

It will disabuse you of all the Trump parallels.

While Hitler's most vocal opponents were either killed, arrested or fled Germany, the sad fact is that after just 100 days, he had almost universal appoval from the German people, something that continued through WW2.

Trump has never had more that a third of the US population supporting him.

Trump got 46% of the vote in 2016 and 47% in 2020.

R137, around 55% of adults who could vote did in 2016, which was particularly low.

R137 JFC that is only those who are of voting age AND voted. Learn statistics. JFC

67% of eligible adults in 2020, largely due to vote by mail and Trump feelings.

Also, might be registered voters, not all adults.

FDR had to thread a needle and was also undermined by the State Dept and others. Nonetheless, his actions eventually led to the destruction of Hitler and the Nazis. I fucking love that FDR as partially responsible for that pig’s defeat.

R32, Jews were not trying to escape a failed Germany. Hitler was very open about his anti-sematism from the very beginning of the Nazi party in the 20s. German Jews started to be persecuted practically from the minute Hitler was in office. The milestones were the 1935 Nuremburg Laws and Crystal Nacht in 1938, at which time it was basically impossible to get out.

Conspiracy theories are around to make us cynical. Full stop.

What did Hitler say about Roosevelt?

Roosevelt led us to crush those Nazi assholes, the Japanese who were undefeated for 3,000 years, and Italy. They fucked around and found out. And found out good.

You take the position that only the people who actually voted for Trump support him, and I take the position that the 67% who voted are a pretty good reflection of the entire population, and you tell me to learn statistics?

Kristallnacht, R143

Crystal Nacht was a drag queen

But yes, Jews were not fleeing a failing Germany.

The German economy was doing very well--one of the reasons they loved Hitler

But Jews were excluded from many professions and could not own stores, etc. So there was no way for them to actually earn a living.

This was by design too--Hitler and the Nazis had hoped these laws would result in the Jews all leaving Germany and were actually stymied by the fact that the Western nations would not take them in.

That was their twisted rationale for having to kill them.

"See, you didn't want them either! So now we'll just have to get rid of them!"

I am sick and tired of Mr. Burns documentaries. I won't be watching this one. I feel no FOMO.

Let's not get ahead of ourselves here, R145. If anybody crushed the Nazi assholes, it was the Russians who did the heavy lifting, suffering @20 million casualties, vs. 400K in the USA, 450K in the UK and 600K in France. And those UK and USA casualty figures are for both ETO and PTO, Russia's casualties were almost entirely fighting Germany. Roosevelt's main accomplishment in the ETO was the Lend Lease Act, which supplied both the UK and the USSR with massive amounts of armaments and supplies even before the USA formally entered the war. If Roosevelt hadn't been able to secure this aid package, there is a good possibility Russia would have fallen to the Nazis.

And when the Japanese refused to surrender, even after having 2 atomic bombs dropped on them and an American invasion pending, the Japanese threw in the towel only when the Soviet Union invaded Manchuria at the USA's request.

Fuck Russia. They suffered heavy losses because they were weak. They didn’t care how many of their own died. Mighty USA didn’t lose as many because we knew how to fight. They also killed a lot of Jews and were Hitler’s allies at first.

Japan would have thrown in the towel. It was just a matter of days.

pollacks are weak.

R128

Did it? I didn't notice. It means "Don't buy from Jews."

R151

27 million Soviet soldiers and civilians died in World War II. You don't think the Soviets cared? Seriously?

R149

They do seem to follow the same formula. It depends on how interested you are in the subject matter. The U.S. and the Holocaust is important.

I'm only on the second episode but so far it's just another documentary about the Holocaust and I've seen 3,599,000 of those. The attempt to link US culpability to the Holocaust so far is pretty damn weak and I fail to see why a new documentary had to be made.

Just started watching tonight. It is utterly chilling how much it evokes America today.

[quote]Fuck Russia. They suffered heavy losses because they were weak. They didn’t care how many of their own died. Mighty USA didn’t lose as many because we knew how to fight.

I don't know. Could it be because the Allies weren't fighting on continental Europe until 1944, while the Russians were suffering massive causalities against the Nazis on the Eastern front, all alone from 1941 until 1945?

I'll copy this here. I had a South African friend. Her German Jewish parents emigrated in the mid-1930s to South Africa which was wide open. There's a massive Jewish population in Capetown. She said her parents knew Hitler was going to annihilate the Jews back then and all the Jews knew it too. The only ones who stayed were either too poor to leave or wealthy and figured their social standing and money would save them.

She and her brother got reparations from Germany in the 1960s.

My grandfather also got reparations from Germany.

Like in most circumstance, the more well to do Jews got out early, the poor ones didn't.

R158 No, Russia just didn’t care how many of its soldiers died. America would have never accepted 20 million killed. Russians were weak which is why we could have steamrolled them after. Germans were no match for us. WE were fighting the ferocious Japs AND Germans/Italians at the same time. And WON.

Does he still have the haircut of an 8-year old?

You sound like such an ignorant American, R162, I have to think you are a troll or a parody.

Run along and let the adults talk.

R164 Triggered Russian

The Russians were invaded. The Americans had the luxury of building the army up over 2 years (it was pathetically weakened due to years of isolationism) before finally landing at Normandy in mid 1944. The idiot who thinks the Americans would have just invaded and steamrolled over the Germans/Russians is a fucking moron.

And no, R165 - just an American with a degree in history.

R166 Americans were fighting Japan, who were more ferocious than the Germans whom Russia couldn’t handle. America more than handled Japan without “millions” of losses. America was attacked on its own soil, too. Then America handled all 3, with Brit and Ruskie help, of course.

Believe it or not, but before the Nazis’ arriving at the Final Solution one possible plans was to relocate all the Jews to Madagascar!

[quote] 2 thousand years ago Christians were being persecuted. It was the Romans who introduced Jews to Europe and got the antisemitism ball rolling

R118 Uh, no. It was Constantine accepting Xtianity as an official belief of the empire that got the Jew hatred ball rolling in earnest And even by then Xtian liturgies had already incorporated Jew hatred.

[quote] It's still amazing to me how Germany could go from the high cultural point of the Weimar Republic to the unhinged masses out beating up Jews, looting, killing people in the streets,

R126 Amazing? Uh, no. Centuries of entrenched Jew hatred were not budged/impacted by 19 years of "high culture".

[quote] Below is just one of literally a hundred articles and books about how Nazis based their Nuremberg laws on America’s Jim Crow.

R120 Written by someone with an agenda to promote but ignorant about the history of the Jews in Europe and the origins of Nazi discriminatory laws and practices. The Nuremberg Laws relegated Jews to their persecuted, austlander status they endured for centuries before the Emancipation. Nazi practices, such as the yellow Jude star, came frm the Middle Ages, when Jews were forced to wear distinctive clothing/markings to make them easily visible to Xtians. And ONE Jewish grandparent made you a Jew and candidate for extermination, not three, as asserted.

The notion that Jim Crow laws were somehow of interest or useful to Nazis who were very aware of centuries of discriminatory laws/actions against Jews is a product of complete ignorance and ludicrous.

Matt’s off her meds again!

[quote]American law, hard though it might be for us to accept it now, was a model for everybody in the early 20th century who was interested in creating a race-based order or race state. America was the leader in a whole variety of realms in racist law in the first part of that century. Some of this involved American immigration law, which was designed to exclude so-called “undesirable races” from immigration. In 1924 American immigration law in particular was praised by Hitler himself, in his book Mein Kampf.

Russia treats its troops like cannon fodder. No concern about their lives. I’m sure that factored into their WWII losses.

I liked some of the commentator made about Anne Frank's diary. One of the commentators said that her diary was about a girl talking about her life and the people she knew but that is was really not about the Holocaust. I thought that was accurate. The famous quote “In spite of everything I still believe that people are really good at heart" is also remarked upon; the commentator said that if Anne Frank had survived the concentration camps she probably would have changed her mind about that.

[quote]Judaism is super confusing because it's unclear if it's a race or a religion or what.

Ashkenazi is now a designation on DNA sites, adding to the confusion.

It’s a religion (or a group of religions) and an ethnicity (or two). Not a “race.”

Judaism isn’t a race or a religion — it’s a CELEBRATION of anxiety

[quote] I am sick and tired of Mr. Burns documentaries. I won't be watching this one.

I agree. His use of digital-animated historic photographs clever but his over-emotional melodramatic music and banal simplifications is child-like.

R172 More ludicrous agenda and erroneous assumption based on complete ignorance. It neither addresses the original assertion vis-a-vis “Jim Crow laws” nor does it answer the original question as to why Germans who had centuries of barbaric laws/actions against Jews would suddenly look to of all places America for "inspiration"? Especially when there were centuries of examples of far more heinous discrimination and actions against Jews in Germany and the surrounding countries. America, at the time, was no more a “leader” in “race-based laws” than any country in Europe or much of the world, for that matter.

The assertion that “Jim Crow laws were so heinous that the Nazi Germany saw/used them as a model” represents a glut of agenda, yet a dearth of knowledge/reality.

I watched most of the series and found it excellent. But one thing that bothered me a little was that a good bit of the music used was mournful music by Bach - a German composer. I don't know that he was particularly anti-semitic in an overt way, as Wagner certainly was, but one of his Passions, the St. John's Passion, has a notoriously agitated section where the chorus, acting as the Jews, cries out for Jesus to be crucified. It s rather shocking to hear it for the first time and critics have often pointed it out as a musical moment of anti-semitism, although it it taken directly from Luther's translation of the New Testament. I am a great lover of the music of Bach, although not that particular Passion - I just question Burn's choice in using music by Bach as the background music of THIS documentary.

R180 Another instance of Jew hatred being so culturally entrenched that it goes unnoticed and continues to be promulgated.

^ Another instance of Jew hatred of which the American Mr Burns is quite ignorant.

Mr. Burns' ignorance is due to a culture in which no one has ever bothered to point out to him the many instances of Jew hatred in music, literature, theatre and film, so that it goes unnoticed. But, the end product remains the same; Jew hatred continues to be promulgated.

The music of Bach is sublime, and Wanda Landowska, a Jewish escapee from Poland and later France, which she left on the day that the Nazis conquered Paris, was a world-famous harpsichordist who played his music almost exclusively and loved his music passionately. She did not find it offensive in the slightest. As I say, there's really no evidence that Bach was overtly anti-semitic, at least any more than anyone who was raised in the Lutheran faith in the late 17th and early 18th centuries was. Other than that one moment from the St John's Passion, there is nothing else in his writings or in his music that reflects any of that.

I don't think Burns is unaware that the roots of anti-semitism in Europe extend back to the second century AD - and that hatred or fear of the Jews was promulgated by Christianity whenever it suited the powers-that-be from roughly 200 AD until WWII and even beyond. There are times that that is mentioned in the documentaries. What I'm saying is that Burns, by using the music of a German composer, steeped in the same culture that centuries later gave rise to Hitler and Nazi philosophy was not being sensitive in what he used for THIS documentary. He had other choices and, in my opinion, he should have used them. Using the music of Bloch, or Copland, or Bernstein, or any number of other Jewish composers, some of whom died in the death camps, would have been more appropriate for instance.

85% of 21st century Americans wouldn't know who JS Bach is.

Whether ONE Jew found Bach offensive is not the issue (more a rationalization and an offensive one at that). It's that Jew hatred continues to be promulgated because of its acceptability due to cultural entrenchment.

r186 I don't think anyone is denying your point, yet you keep reiterating it as though there are people here doing that. You also seem to believe that Burns was ignorant of this, yet he went to great efforts to point out the numbers of American officials during WWII who actively obstructed rescue or relief efforts on behalf of the Jews because they were deeply anti-semitic and he often traces their actions to the fact that they had been raised that way. The documentaries also showed that the numbers of Americans who believed that accepting more Jewish refugees was a terrible idea was quite large, even after the atrocities of the war had been revealed, and that time and time again, important officials from FDR on down, downplayed the rescue of Jews in the war effort on the grounds that American troops might balk at serving for such a reason. All of that REITERATES your point, which, again, no one is denying.

There continue to be lies told about Jews and anti-semitic tropes in various forms are still rattling around. and sometimes gain traction with the poorly informed. That is utterly deplorable, and again, supports your thesis. On the other hand, not every criticism of, say, some governmental act of Israel must be interpreted through the lens of anti-semitism, and in fact many Jews in America and in Israel itself also criticize some of those acts. But I realize that their historical experience would lead many Jews to question whether or not a criticism, especially coming from a non-Jew, is based on a genuine concern for justice or humane behavior or whether its origin is mere anti-semitism .

[quote] On the other hand, not every criticism of, say, some governmental act of Israel must be interpreted through the lens of anti-semitism, and in fact many Jews in America and in Israel itself also criticize some of those acts.

R187 You could have saved wear/tear on your fingers by omitting your first paragraph since this is the crux of your post; your right to criticize Israel, despite you laser focus beginning and ending with Israel, despite your rhetoric being no different to that found in Der Stermer or Inquisition Spain, despite your hypocritical "concern for justice and humane behavior", because these Jews here enable you. Jew haters just love Jews that enable their Jew hatred. You've more than illustrated thus both in R184 and R187. You have also amply illustrated my assertions in R183 R186. Anti-Jewish rhetoric is so culturally entrenched, not only don't you recognize it, you are outraged that someone has the termerity to point out to you that you're spewing the same Jew hatred spewed by the Nazis and Middle Ages Catholic Church. Just like Burns and his use of anti-Jewish music.

Is it possible that Burns used the anti-Jewish music on purpose? To show that the anti-semitism is all around us? Or is that too much of a reach?

Won’t somebody remember the Armenian Genocide? It was an important Nazi template as well.

OK, how do we feel about the period signage shown that morphs from German into English text? On the one hand, I get how it better conveys the whole horror of what the message is in the sign, and on the other it’s seems disrespectful of the original artifact of the era. I also find myself weirdly anticipating it happening whenever they flash a sign, and then disappointed if it doesn’t happen. What I’m saying is I find it a distraction, they could either tell us in Peter Coyote’s dulcet tones or with discrete subtitles. Just because you can do something technically, doesn’t mean you have to do it.

[quote] Or is that too much of a reach?

R190 Way too much of a reach. If Burns was using the music as an example of the culture entrenchment of Jew hatred, then he would have higlighted the anti-Jewish elements of the music in his doco. But he didn't. Because there is no culture on earth that views the music as anti-Jewish. Yet more of Burns ignorance propagating Jew hatred.

Episode 2 includes this 1941 quote from N.C. Senator Robert Rice Reynolds:

I wish to say — and I say it without the slightest hesitation — that if I had my way about it at this hour, I would today build a wall about the United States so high and so secure that not a single alien or foreign refugee from any country upon the face of this earth could possibly scale or ascend it.”

Some version of which has been repeated at literally every Trump rally and GQP hoedown for the past few years.

It was mentioned in the third part of the series, R190, ever so briefly, but it was mentioned.

Off topic, but does anyone else think Peter Coyote sounds like Henry Fonda?

[quote]Won’t somebody remember the Armenian Genocide?

One of the historians brought it up in the 2nd episode I saw last night.

R192 meant for R189

[quote] It was an important Nazi template as well.

The Nazis would have exterminated the Jews regardless of the Armenian Genocide, whether or not Turkey would have been condemned. Two completely different, unrelated events.

I loved learning about how Varian Fry and Hiram Bingham saved thousands of Jews.

One of the craziest things about the Germans was how, despite the fact that they were committing mass murder on an unheralded scale, they were also strictly adherent to random international rules of law.

So that if a Jew had a document signed by Raoul Wallenberg saying they were Swedish or by Chiune Sugihara saying they had a Japanese visa or Ángel Sanz Briz saying they were Spanish citizens.... then the Germans let them be and did not deport them to Auschwitz or even arrest them

These are the same people dragging nuns out of abbeys because the nun has a Jewish parent but some random piece of paper... well, you are okay.

I am interested to see how Burns handles the murder of the Hungarian Jews, which happened in late 1944 when everyone knew about Auschwitz and the Germans were clearly losing the war.

Long story short, the Hungarians had been German allies, and while not kind to their 800K Jews, they did not kill them.

As the Soviets approached, the Hungarians surrendered and so the Germans moved into Hungary to protect the oil fields.

The Gestapo came with them and immediately set to work rounding up Hungarian Jews.

This was the most insane part of the Shoah. The Germans were losing the war and yet they let Eichmann use trains, fuel and ammunition to kill off Jews. Auschwitz had been more or less shut down by then because they'd killed off all the Polish and other Jews.

So, with the Soviets just a few months away, they were scrambling to kill off as many Jews as possible in the remaining months of 1944 and 1945.

Even crazier: Eichmann tried to bargain with the Allies -- give us millions of dollars worth of trucks in exchange for the lives of Hungarian Jews. (Link below)

So no one was even trying to pretend this wasn't happening.

[quote] These are the same people dragging nuns out of abbeys because the nun has a Jewish parent but some random piece of paper.

R199 The Germans were and remain sticklers for rules, almost to a mania. Those were not "random pieces of paper", but visas issued by the Embassies of Hungary and Japan, putting the people to whom those visas were issued to under Hungarian and Japanese protection. Wallenberg saved 100,000 Jews, Sugihara saved 10,000 Jews. Brit Frank Foley save 10,000 Jews.

[quote] The Germans were losing the war and yet they let Eichmann use trains, fuel and ammunition to kill off Jews.

R200 By mid 1943, the Germans knew that the war was lost. The war then became a by-product of the main Nazi aim of theft/looting on a massive scale and Jew murder. They had looted hundreds of millions of dollars of Jewish property, including gold teeth. Then they cranked up their extermination machine to butcher as many Jews as possible before they were stopped. 80% of the Jews of Europe were exterminated between the end of 1943 and the beginning of 1945.

Hitler remarked on the fact the world did nothing to the Turks after the Armenian genocide so he didn't see why they'd bother about the Jews being exterminated either.

Hitler was no doubt well aware of the apartheid system of relegating blacks in America to second-class citizens when Jesse Owens became famous at the Berlin Olympics.

But one of Hitler's earliest inspirations was the eugenics movement from Sweden which declared people who had mental or physical disabilities had "lives unworthy of life" and should be killed off.

Chilling statistic: there are still fewer Jews on Earth than there were in 1939.

[quote] does anyone else think Peter Coyote sounds like Henry Fonda?

I never thought about it but you're right.

[quote] It's still amazing to me how Germany could go from the high cultural point of the Weimar Republic to the unhinged masses out beating up Jews, looting, killing people in the streets, in just a few years.

This shows it can happen anywhere. NEVER feel comfortable that your rights and lives are safe, particularly if you're in a minority.

And that, R205, is why some fail to realize why the existence of Israel as a 'Jewish' state matters. Because if something like the Holocaust were to happen again to world Jewry, there *would* be a place to go, when all other doors are closed.

[quote]Chilling statistic: there are still fewer Jews on Earth than there were in 1939.

Prior to the war there were 3 million Jews living in Poland. Today? Almost none.

[quote] This shows it can happen anywhere. NEVER feel comfortable that your rights and lives are safe, particularly if you're in a minority.

This was my takeaway and it had me a bit shook!

R205 absolutely. And it’s why we need to fight Trumpism so hard.

Can you imagine if Trump was elected president in 1933?

Philip Roth imagined how it would have been if Lindbergh had been elected in 1940 - if anything, an even more chilling thought.

The diversity of the US population makes us safer here. History has shown if there is a homogenous population and a minority group, that group is in danger. See Rwanda, Myanmar, Sudan, even Northern Ireland.

… and Lindbergh’s movement was, of course, called “America First.”

Trump's relationship with the Jewish community and his courting of antisemites are baffling.

• His favorite child and grandchildren are Jewish • He was often assumed to be Jewish in the 80s and 90s - the Trumps were the only non-Jewish real estate family in NYC • His biggest supporters and friends are mostly Jewish - Steve Wynn, Steve Ross, Sheldon and Miriam Adelson, Bernie Marcus • His social circle in NYC (pre-politics) was mostly Jewish--other new money types • Many of his closest aides and former cabinet members are Jewish - Mnuchin, Stephen Miller, Eric Herschmann, Michael Cohen

I will guarantee you that Trump has spent more time in synagogues (for various bar and bat mitzvahs and weddings) than he has in churches.

If you are Jewish, chances are you know someone like Trump too--the owner of a family business who is at one level charming but mostly crass and embarrassing, has a mercurial temper, a difficult relationship with his kids, and who has an ill-informed opinion on just about everything. (The difference is those guys run a chain of furniture stores or garment companies, not the Republican party.)

This discussion is going off topic.

You haven't mentioned ME for two days now.

[quote] The diversity of the US population makes us safer here. History has shown if there is a homogenous population and a minority group,

Social/cultural “diversity” is completely irrelevant when the society as a whole has been inculcated with the identical imagery and terminology of Jew hatred. And when that Jew hatred continues to be socially/culturally ignored, reinforced, rationalized, justified and accepted. Universal socio-cultural Jew hatred means that Jew extermination can happen anywhere. Including the US.

[quote] Prior to the war there were 3 million Jews living in Poland. Today? Almost none.

And yet the Poles continue to blame Jews for their misfortunte. That's how culturally ingrained Jew hatred remains in Poland.

^^^ misfortune

R213, Trump needs the orthodox Jewish vote and has bent over backwards to do whatever Bibi wanted.

He kept his ire for blacks, immigrants, and other minorities. He snatched kids away from Central American asylum seekers.

He found others to scapegoat

[Quote] And yet the Poles continue to blame Jews for their misfortunte. That's how culturally ingrained Jew hatred remains in Poland.

Like Americans do with blacks and immigrants.

The immigrants are taking jobs away and blah blah blah, when, in fact, the capitalist sent your jobs to China

R218 Uh, no. There are few Jews left in Poland. Yet Jew hatred is so ingrained that Poles continue to blame Jews for social/financial misfortune. Just as they have for the last 350 years.

R218 See R217 for an example.

Not really accurate R217

The Orthodox vote is concentrated in NY and he's not remotely winning New York, so no need to keep them happy other than to get donations, but the real money is with his Jewish billionaire friends.

Keeping Bibi happy kept the Adelsons happy and shoveling money into his campaign.

But people like Ross, Wynn, Marcus, Mnuchin, Herschmann are secular Jews who are not concerned with the Orthodox though supported Netanyahu for other reasons.

And Bibi, like Trump, is no longer in power.

[quote] And Bibi, like Trump, is no longer in power.

R231 But Netanyahu may very well return to power in November. Unlike Trump.

I'd say they have a fairly equal shot R222

R223 Netanyahu has it far easier due to the Westminster system of government. And, reality, Trump is far too old to contemplate running for President. Despite what both his fans and detractors would like to believe.

Trump is likely running against Biden who is even older.

Does not make me happy, but it is the most likely scenario right now.

Americans have had enough of addled geezers. They won't vote for another.

The Repubs will find themselves a fairly young in comparison candidate, crank up the spin and horseshit, and he will be the next president of the US.

I got a cameo!

"OK, how do we feel about the period signage shown that morphs from German into English text? On the one hand, I get how it better conveys the whole horror of what the message is in the sign, and on the other it’s seems disrespectful of the original artifact of the era."

R191, how do "we" feel? I thought the translation of German into English was seamless. How a simple mode of translation could be seen as "disrespectful" actually made me laugh out loud at your post.

As for R7, you're completely disingenuous to write off Burns' entire series because you object to any comparisons he makes today with that time.

And R20, I would find it hard to believe you could have watched the series and still stand by your ridiculous statement about Burns.

The posters (hi Matt!) accusing Burns of anti-Semitism have not watched a single second of the series, so their input is worthless.

R219 I once rented a room in a large apartment I couldn't afford to a couple of Israelis. Moshe was - I learned a Polish Jew, Liora was a Sephardic Jew from Morocco. When they had fights - and they always had fights - she would rant about Polish Jews. Everybody hates Polish Jews. Other Jews hate Polish Jews. They are total shit, liars and thieves. And he would call her an Arab. They broke the sink in the apartment's only bathroom having sex in the middle of the night. Memorable.

R218, “Declining manufacturing employment over the past 30 years has given a lot of people the impression that America’s manufacturing sector is in decline. But that’s actually wrong,” the Vox article explained. “American factories are about twice as efficient today as they were three decades ago. So we’re producing more and more stuff, even as we use fewer and fewer people to do it.” I’m not an expert but I think it’s not a matter of where wealth is but how wealth is distributed.

This is intriguing.

I am finding it OVERSTUFFED with details and also perhaps spends too much time in Europe giving all the necessary background. But then I know all this because I have read so much and seen so many documentary. So I wouldn't make this observation for a novice viewer.

Why were Jews seemingly obsessed with immigrating to the United States in particular? The US was immersed in a huge economic depression, it was clearly and openly anti Semitic and it’s not like the language was something they knew. There were hundreds of other countries to consider, probably many not in economic straits and more friendly to Jews, and there are probably many other languages much easier to learn than English. And if you want English Canada, Australia and India all seem like better candidates, especially with the expanse of Canada and Australia and their friendliness would be better options. It’s as if many put all their eggs in one basket to the exclusion and devastation of not looking at other countries with more welcoming policies. The United States is literally barring the door from them, yet that makes them want to come there more. Remember, the US at this time is not a superpower, has been an openly xenophobic, insular country and well known for that?

None of those countries were taking in Jews, R235. Did you even watch the documentary?

R235 South Africa was.

[quote]Why were Jews seemingly obsessed with immigrating to the United States in particular?

It was the Goldene Medina, to which so many Jews, including family members, had emigrated earlier in the century.

I don't think the jews had made it to Long Island in the 30s.

Really R235?

Because there was a sizable Jewish community in the US at that time that was the wealthiest Jewish community in the world.

There were 4.7 million Jews in the US in 1937, versus 3 million in Poland.

And the Jewish community was concentrated in places like New York and Chicago, meaning there were many parts of those cities that were predominantly Jewish.

Fiorello LaGuardia who was Mayor of NYC had a Jewish mother.

And the US was far less antisemitic than any of the places they came from--we had a Jewish secretary of the Treasury (Morgenthau) and a Jewish Supreme Court Justice (Felix Frankfurter)--as noted, it was the wealthiest Jewish community in the world.

And people had been immigrating to the US from Europe for generations.

Finally, you are talking about a small population--500K people -- of German Jews, The rest of the Jews of Europe had no idea they were in such grave danger

Reread, r239.

God, poor Gunther. What could I do as a teenager to save my family?

Why, oh why aren't you talking about me?

I am the intelligent man's Eric Cervini.

Lets understand something about Russian Communism. It was structured as Communism, but stopped short in its realization. Its was Authoritarianism masking as Communism. The flaw was, instead of putting the PEOPLE in charge, they put government bureaucrats in charge and the government ran things....the opposite of Communism. But the politicians and their establishments demonize Communism and use it as an example, knowingly damaging communisms potential. Fun Fact : all of the things we take for granted today were made available in FDRs New Deal...Social Security, minimum wage, unemployment insurance, 40 hour work week...and much more most dont know existed like a Federal Jobs program that employed 15 million people. That New Deal was made possible by what is called The New Deal Coalition...that coalition was essentially made up of Communists, Socialist, and the CIO (the Labor Unions) Take note...the Unions were destroyed (it used to be 36% penetration, today its under 7%) Minimum wage is stagnant for over 12 years (essentially reduced as a result) and they keep hammering away...Social Security is next. Thats why they demonize Communism and Socialism (and essentially eradicated them in the 50s and 60s) because they were the force that united the working class. They organized and fought and theyre the reason union membership grew. But their gone now...theres no left left, so they keep getting away with the division to keep the working class divided preventing them from rising up again an achieving real change...not the political rhetoric and pandering we get from our elected officials today.

ok,...rants over....sorry i went off topic

Big takeaway: BUREAUCRATS MATTER.

OK, Burns never really makes a case that the US behaved terribly towards the Jews before and during WWII. One historian opines that the US could have simultaneously fought WWII and rescued Jews. How?

As for sending relief money to Jews in occupied Europe, how would the money ever have got to them?

US' immigration policies were always hardcore - before, during and after WWII. They still are. Check the southern border.

It's basically just more Holocaust porn. There's nothing new in this and I'm surprised Burns went to all the trouble.

I get what you're saying R234. Back in the late-1980s, I read a book titled THE ABANDOMENT OF THE JEWS: AMERICA & THE HOLOCAUST, 1941-1945. It was required reading in a U.S. History course about WWII (and a real jaw-dropper at the time). I haven't read it since then (although I still have my copy sitting on a bookshelf with other books from college)...but if feels like this Burns documentary is that book in film/video form??

I think the Burns doc is great, but it's not "news" to me....just a reminder.

^^ a sobering reminder.

It’s stunning. Through I kept repeating “how could so many people go along with this madness and willing torture and kill millions of people.” And each time I’d think of MAGA. I’m convinced that Trump followers would have carried out something similar if given the command. And I think we came very close for Trump to give the order.

Just got done with part two.

I recognized Liam Neeson’s voice right away. Had to wait to the end to recognize a voice that sounded sort of Matthew McConaughey and it was Josh Lucas. Didn’t recognize Streeps voice at all.

I didn't pick up on Streep's voice, either. The voice I recognized IMMEDIATELY in Part 1 (other than Peter Coyote's) was Adam Arkin.

I don’t watch or read anything about this topic anymore, for various reasons.

[quote] And the US was far less antisemitic than any of the places they came from--we had a Jewish secretary of the Treasury (Morgenthau) and a Jewish Supreme Court Justice (Felix Frankfurter)-

A Jew money manager. Could anything be more stereotypical. Europe too had a few Jews in government, such as Leon Blum. Didn’t impact socio-culturally entrenched Jew hatred one iota.

“Far less anti-Semitic” is relative. Jews in America were discriminated against in housing, education, employment, and finance, just as in Europe. They were barred from hotels, recreation sites, community organizations and clubs, just as in Europe. Jews in America were and still are subject to harassment, attacks and a level of bigotry/hatred that would be publicly condemned were it directed at any other minority.

The “Goldene Medina” was a popular myth. The only difference between American Jew hatred and European Jew hatred is that Europe is far more experienced in its brutal, vicious pursuit.

[quote] The rest of the Jews of Europe had no idea they were in such grave danger

Two millennia of Jew hatred meant that Jews had always been in grave danger in Europe. Jews simply didn’t know from which direction it was coming from this time.

r235, People emigrate to places where there are others like them. New York at one time had several Yiddish newspapers, Yiddish theaters, Jewish delis, kosher stores and restaurants. Most northern and eastern European Jews spoke Yiddish as their primary language, so while they ultimately would need to learn English in the US, they would still find many people in the larger cities on the Eastern Seaboard who spoke Yiddish to tide them over while they learned English.

Up until the rise of Hitler, assimilated Jews in Germany had relatively comfortable lives, at least between 1875 and 1925.. They owned small manufacturing firms and stores and many were very well-educated, including many in the medical professions, They were not necessarily in a hurry to leave that for the US. However, in eastern Europe, the Jews had been forced to live in the Pale of Settlement for 200 plus years - an ill-defined swatch of land on the western border of Russia, including large swaths of Byelorus, eastern Poland, northern Ukraine.. They were forced to live there rather than dispersing throughout the nation, and there were very strict rules limiting their professions, their mobility, their ability to buy property and so forth. Moreover, whenever there were tough times, the tsars and religious leaders would blame the problems on the Jews, and soldiers and local citizens would attack them and even murder them in their villages in the Pale of Settlement. (Pogroms).

Starting around 1890, Jews started emigrating to the US in droves. For the next 30 years,, over 2.5 million Jews arrived , mostly from eastern Europe, and the total population of Jews in the US reached just under 5 million. While life in the US had its problems, it was gazillion times better than life in eastern Europe. The floodgates of immigration slammed shut BEFORE the great Depression, not during it. In 1924 the new Immigration act severely restricted immigration from southern and eastern Europe, and that act was mostly aimed at Jews and at Italians.

One thing that Jews had available to them in the US was a legal system for redressing wrongs. It was a slow process, but by dint of many law suits over the years, Jews gained the right to celebrate their own holidays without being penalized, to gain admission to educational institutions that had initially barred them, to close their shops on Saturdays and open them on Sundays, etc. There were many setbacks, but over time, Jews have been able to gain legal protections that they never were able to secure in Europe. Among other things, there is no state religion in the US, (unlike most countries in Europe), and freedom of religion is part of our constitution. That doesn't mean that discrimination didn't exist during most of US history, and in fact it still exists now, but at least Jews can bring lawsuits when particularly egregious discrimination rears its ugly head.

In spite of Matt's rantings, the vast majority of US Jews are not clamoring to emigrate to Israel, because they feel they have achieved a measure of safety and security in the US and this is their home. Our system is far from perfect, and it demands constant vigilance, particularly in times like these, where the rise of the internet has been accompanied by the rise of anti-semitic tropes aimed at the poorly informed. It's sad that Jews must be ever-vigilant against these sort of things, but almost all minorities in the US must be similarly vigilant, because the WASP culture which was the foundation of the country gives other groups rights and freedoms only very reluctantly, and usually only under duress.

R254

[quote] Starting around 1890, Jews started emigrating to the US in droves.

Due exactly to barbaric pogroms in Russia, Poland and Ukraine. The Zionist movement was an outcome of those pogroms and Jews began returning to Israel at the same time.

[quote] One thing that Jews had available to them in the US was a legal system for redressing wrongs.

Jews had and have access to legal systems in Europe. Doesn't change cultural Jew hatred or the inherent bias of the legal system due to same.

[quote] It's sad that Jews must be ever-vigilant against these sort of things, but almost all minorities in the US must be similarly vigilant, because the WASP culture w

"WASP culture" spent decades inculcating social condemnation and censure for bigotry/racism toward minorities such as blacks and Muslims. That never happened with Jews. On the contrary, just like in Europe, Jew hatred in America unites disparate races/ethnicities in commonality. Which allows Jew hatred to propagate and thrive because Americans haven't been inculcated as to what Jew hatred entails or that there is anything wrong with millennia of stereotypes and slurs. As previously mentioned, Jews remain the only minority subjected to bigotry that would be condemned if any other minority were the target.

[quote] the vast majority of US Jews are not clamoring to emigrate to Israel, because they feel they have achieved a measure of safety and security in the US and this is their home.

R254 Much as the vast majority of German, Austrian and Hungarian Jews thought they were "safe". Little did they know, the dumb fucks. What you continue to ignore is the extent of the disease of Jew hatred, how it infects society, how it manifests itself in every aspect of that society. And how quickly those "safe" Jews yet again become targets for persecution, pogroms and extermination.

R250

Streep + Ken Burns = Luvvie Central.

For the Gentiles on the thread, most American Jews in the 1930s were thrilled to be here, saw America as a land of opportunity and a place where antisemitism took subtle forms that could also be easily avoided, especially in places like New York.

As has often been remarked on this board (sometimes negatively because so many DLers wish it was still the 1950s) Jews, Italians, Irish, Poles and other European immigrants of turn of last century are now considered "white" and for people my age (mid-30s) we are all often so mixed and so assimilated, that no one cares.

"OK, Burns never really makes a case that the US behaved terribly towards the Jews before and during WWII."

Either you didn't actually watch it, R246, or you have cognitive issues. Burns makes his points quite forcefully over several episodes, but if you're inclined to believe the "facts" mustering in your own head, who are we to help you?

We only like Colonial Jews with good department stores.

I think La Streep was Eleanor Roosevelt.

It was pretty fucking chilling to see the last moments of the third episode.

Holy fucking shit, history might repeat itself if we don’t go and vote in a few months.

She was. I recognized her voice instantly.

The problem ? PEOPLE DONT FUCKING CARE

I think Burns wasted too much time rehashing every Holocaust documentary ever made, footage of skeletons, etc. We've seen all that before. And he didn't really make his case that the US carried a lot of blame for the Holocaust. He should have concentrated on the parallels between the rise of Hitler and the MAGAs.

The Jewish historian woman was also full of crap. If Burns had any balls he would have covered the fact Palestinians have been treated like people in concentration camps for 70 years.

[quote]And he didn't really make his case that the US carried a lot of blame for the Holocaust.

Then you weren't paying attention.

[quote]He should have concentrated on the parallels between the rise of Hitler and the MAGAs.

Then it would have been a completely separate topic and NOT the US and the Holocaust.

Feel free to defend this doc. Its not awful. But there are several of us now, who feel it was padded with so much we have already seen. But of course, that's because we are educated on the topic.

"I think Burns wasted too much time rehashing every Holocaust documentary ever made,"

R264, that's quite a ridiculous statement, since the entire series is about documentation of the facts of the U.S. and the holocaust. You soud like a character out of Clueless.

"And he didn't really make his case that the US carried a lot of blame for the Holocaust."

And how much blame do you figure the U.S. has, R246?

"If Burns had any balls he would have covered the fact Palestinians have been treated like people in concentration camps for 70 years."

Which has nothing to do with the dubject of this documentary series. R246.

R266, your assertion that you've received a level of education on the Holocaust the rest of us has been deprived of is really adorable.

The US' links to the Holocaust: they refused to change the stringent immigration laws which prevented the St. Louis from docking. They refused a similar plan to the British Kindertransport which had saved 10,000 Jewish kids who spent the war in the UK. What else? Not much. Bombing Auschwitz was first of all suggested by a spy to Churchill in the summer of 1944. The problem was if Churchill tried to bomb Auschwitz or the US did, the spies on the ground could have been identified by the Nazis and eliminated. Finally, a US bomber did bomb several miles away from Auschwitz at the IG Farben factory and unintentionally killed a lot of prisoners at Auschwitz.

I've seen literally dozens of documentaries on the Holocaust including Lanzman's Shoah so all that footage has been out there for decades. It felt like the point Burns might/should have been making that the fertile ground for Nazism present in Germany pre-War is also here, got relegated to the background behind all the horror footage from the camps.

That is not my assertion. But you are defending this doc stridently and a few of us have said - "it's ok but could use some editing."

Do you ever get tired of bitching and moaning about how everyone is out to get you?

my comment at R270 is for R268

R270, if anyone on this thread had suggested it was simply a matter of editing, I woud agree. That's not what they're saying.

I think a large part of the reason for this series' existence is to show the indisputable parallels between aspects of WW2 America and the fascism we're facing now.

R273 well aren't you the arbiter of everything and everyone.

No, R275, but I can read.

R273 I think what the critics of the documentary (including myself) are saying is that it was just another Holocaust documentary about the horrors of the camps (Anne Frank? really?) and a wasted opportunity to concentrate on the fertile ground Hitler found and the equally fertile ground Trump found. Hitler had more to exploit as Germany had really been humiliated by the Allies after WWI. He should have tried to identify what is feeding Trump's bunch of Nazis. Nothing. He had a brief clip of the anti-Semitic marchers in Charlottesville. I expect more depth from Ken Burns. This seems like he let an editor string together bits from every Holocaust documentary ever made then add in a few bits to try to tie the US to the Holocaust. And an American historian to make the ridiculous claim that the US could have simultaneously waged war against the Nazis AND rescued Jews in occupied Europe.

" I think what the critics of the documentary (including myself) are saying"

You mean, R277, DL posters?

" just another Holocaust documentary about the horrors of the camps (Anne Frank? really?)"

Anne Frank--that fame whore!

"He should have tried to identify what is feeding Trump's bunch of Nazis. Nothing."

That's the documentary YOU wanted, the one in your head.

"And an American historian to make the ridiculous claim that the US could have simultaneously waged war against the Nazis AND rescued Jews in occupied Europe."

I guess I missed that.

And, R277, when I say I guess I missed that, I mean I missed your interretation of what she was saying.

R279 that's what she said. I assume you've never seen a Holocaust documentary in your life. So you have a lot of catching up to do.

R274...I think Burns did a good job of that. The parallels are very obvious. I think we're in the early phase.,..1930's Germany.

Quite possibly, R281.

If I took a tiny sip of Manischewitz wine every time the phrase "Jew hatred" was used in this thread, I would be absolutely plastered by now.

Wait if we're in the early phase, who is going to be the persecuted? Immigrants?

That's a lotta Jew hatred, R283.

Imagine, a Ken Burns multi-hour episode series on the Holocaust and it's a downer.

If there is some sort of war on the poor, the aftermath should conclude that poverty is bad and work a new system that ensures a good future for all.

Who doesn't love the Jews?

Who is the audience for this?

Beyond tired and tedious. Move on.

R288 feels if she's bored, THE WORLD IS!

You got to find the people that do it for you. Not all gays are attracted to other gays. That's attraction for you.

It's very hard for bisexuals who can think about both.

Tucker Carlson is on record as saying immigrants are making America "Dirtier". Yes, "Dirtier". Fits right in here.

R288 is exactly who I would like to see gassed.

Wow, there lots and lots of missing posters in my thread. Wonder what idiocy and hateful shit they are spouting.

I guess I blocked them for a reason 🤷🏻‍♀️

No mention of the homosexuals, barely a mention of the disabled.

Right, R294, because the documentary was called "The U.S. and the Holocaust and the Gays and the Disabled."

Wow, Italy just elected some fascist cunt who espouses closed borders and bemoans the Italian birth rate.

R296 Who will be gone by this time next year. Italian governments last about a year.

R278 - you really do need to learn how to format things on DL correctly. Your post is a mess.

Did Gina Lollobrigida (sp) win?...lol She was running for something in Italy at age 95.

I do find the timing of this production just a tad suspicious. It may be "intended" to remind Americans about how the fascist uprising in the US mirrors that in Germany in the 1930s, but it's essentially Holocaust porn and was produced when Israel was coming in for massive criticism - finally - for their treatment of the Palestinians. Methinks this is an AIPAC effort to guilt Americans into continuing to finance Israel and ignore what they've done to Palestinians.

There must be a lot of people who haven't watched previous PBS shows about the holocaust. I did, because my mom is half Jewish and watched that stuff in the 1970's and 1980's. I only watched part of this but if it is on again I'd like to watch the whole thing. I guess my point is that stuff like this needs to be shown again and again so that as many people as possible see it. Even if you've seen the footage a billion times, it doesn't mean everybody else has.

I saw a bit about Anne Frank and it did effect me. You really want to root for her because you know about her, but you also know it doesn't go well in the end.

We went antiquing in Pennsylvania yesterday. Adamstown area. Now, I've seen Nazi stuff at flea markets before. Often. Like, if you wanted to do a check-off scavenger hunt for flea markets and antique malls, you could put Nazi junk as one of the things to find. However, I haven't seen as much of it in NJ lately. Anyway, at one of the outdoor markets, down at one end under a covered pavilion, there was A LOT of Nazi stuff. I was with my teen son at that point. He wears his mask diligently, but our eyes bugged out at each other and we turned right around and walked away. It was kind of shocking. Tons of arm bands and all kinds of stuff. Interestingly, in another place nearby (a clean antique mall with lots of showcases), there was a magazine that showed Donald Duck throwing a rock or something into Hitler's eye. (At a mustier antique mall there was a stall with tons of Mammy stuff, mostly salt & pepper shakers I think but I didn't look carefully. I know that has been discussed here recently.)

If examples were needed as to why there was such enthusiastic support for the persecution and extermination of Jews and just how entrenched Jew hatred remains in the US, look no further than R300.

R301, you forgot to mention the 30,000 Dr. Öz yard signs you saw, vs. four for Fetterman.

[quote] "WASP culture" spent decades inculcating social condemnation and censure for bigotry/racism toward minorities such as blacks and Muslims. That never happened with Jews.

Really, when? Minorities themselves pushed to stop bigotry, and mainly in America. It only took hold only when minority groups became large enough to exert economic and social pressure. Even then, half the country still is fine with this bigotry.

In Europe, they are more concerned with mitigating the effects of class divisions, not race so much.

R294 R295 - Eugenics in USA vs Germany is discussed at length in episode 1. That is the disabled. R295 - the nazis exterminated the disabled so it is well within the theme of Holocaust.

The gays got a very brief, five second plug in this.

[R301]: The image of Donald Duck throwing, I believe, a tomato in Hitler’s eye was the original ad campaign for the very funny Disney wartime animated short, “Donald Duck in Nutzi Land,” a.k.a. “Der Fuehrer’s Face,” which was also the title of a satiric song from it, made very popular by Spike Jones.

I only saw one Fetterman sign and no Oz signs, but that was later when we were driving home (towards NJ).

I think the “I saw lots of Dr. Oz signs!” is a lying troll.

R235

Despite its flaws, the U.S. took more Jews than any other sovereign nation. That probably had something to do with it. Did you watch the program?

R301

The three episodes are available on PBS.org until mid-October.

They are also available on the App as well, but be aware it looks like 6 episodes, but they are three repeated in Spanish.

R269

[quote]It felt like the point Burns might/should have been making that the fertile ground for Nazism present in Germany pre-War is also here....

It was implicit; there was no need to hit us over the head with it. The documentary stayed with the history, on which we have some perspective.

[quote] Minorities themselves pushed to stop bigotry, and mainly in America. It only took hold only when minority groups became large enough to exert economic and social pressure.

R304 Yet it was still the dominant WASP culture - goverment/media/academic/communal - that culturally inculcated social condemnation/censure, especially in the case of blacks. Muslims had neither the demographics nor the economic influence to exert social/political pressure on the WASP majority, yet the concerted effort to inculcate anti-Muslim social disapproval was similar. Yet when it comes to Jews/Jew hatred, those efforts to instill social condemnation/censure remain non-existent.

R264

[quote]And he didn't really make his case that the US carried a lot of blame for the Holocaust.

First off, the people who made it are Ken Burns, Lynn Novick, and Sarah Botstein. Second, the claim was not that the U.S. bore a lot of blame for the Holocaust, but that there were steps that could have been taken to help more Jews. At the same time, it explained why it was politically and militarily difficult to do so.

Although I am an EG, I of course didn't live during this time period so to me it is very eye-opening to see what went on here during the rise of the Nazis. It also bums me out that this is the type of program that school boards in Deplorableville would say is anti-American and makes Americans hate themselves.

MAGAts are screaming “defund PBS” because of this.

Are they?

I saw a whole bunch of people named before the shows began.

Meaning they gave money, right? I don’t know how much funding the network gives to any Burns’ project.

MAGATs are shit.

The BBC is the majority funder for much of PBS' programming. Don't know about the Burns documentaries.

Wow, that was grueling. I did make it through all three episodes, stone cold sober...and indeed they were sobering. Burns did an excellent job here, but with the exception that gays and other 'undesirables' executed in the death camps are given only cursory treatment. I understand that his approach here is that the US denied refugees from entering the country, and that was mostly due to widespread antisemitism and perhaps a failure to recognize the extraordinary scope of the problem at the time.

R317

I don't know that most MAGAts would see a connection. They don't think they're Fascists. But that's one reason the Burns team was right to focus on the history.PBS has other units that do projects on current politics. Explicit parallels would only bring criticism and open them up to the charge of pushing a political agenda.

Videos like these make it more real.

If the US had been a little less restrictive on immigration and refugees maybe Gunther's family could have made it out. It was ridiculous the hoops he had to try to go through to help his family get to the US.

R322, That video goes a long way to normalizing what we think about people from 100 years ago

R323 immigration laws haven't changed either. The only people who got facilitated immigration were Cubans.

Burn’s wife died earlier this month.

He had a wife? I always thought he was gay.

Interview with Burns and the creator team about the project and creation of the documentary. The project started in 2015 and ties into an exhibition at the Holocaust Museum. It was to be released in 2023, but they pushed up broadcast date.

[quote] Burn’s wife died earlier this month.

Oh, dear!

I turned it on and OMG there was a family member narrating some of it. I’m not surprised as somehow he has managed to a make the Holocaust about him yet he was born 15 yr after the end of WW2

R330, he looked remarkably similar to his great uncle Shmiel who was murdered along with Shmiel’s wife and three daughters in Poland during the pogroms. Who else was supposed to narrate what happened to his family? Tom Hanks?

OMG yourself. You sound like a complete idiot.

Do you think he is the only one who lost his great uncle and cousins in the Holocaust. Every one of us did...but this side of the family makes it seem to be exclusively theirs and only they suffered/ I know them. They are the most narcissistic people on earth. R331

His cousin or sister (can’t remember which) was also telling the story of Shmiel’s family on the doc.

I honestly don't know what R332 is even talking about.

R334, I don't either.

These are just example stories, for goodness sakes. It humanizes the story

It really was great. I may watch it again.

R336

I plan to rewatch it. Although I knew a lot about the Holocaust, it still was a lot of information to absorb.

I’m so glad that they acknowledged that the Nuremberg Laws were partly based on US Jim Crow laws. And Americans had the nerve to criticize the Nazis for their intolerance…well, they learned from the masters of the game, didn’t they?

So heartbreaking to see that Otto Frank did try to get US visas…I am sure that he regretted not sending his daughters to England or Switzerland. I think that his relatives in those respective countries offered haven to Anne and Margot. But no one could have envisioned that the Nazis would go so far as to exterminate the Jews. Nobody wins.

Yeah, I pretty much think Otto was an idiot for not sending his daughters to England when it was offered to him.

Harsh, I know and hindsight is 20/20 but, well, what could you do.

R338, they pretty much invented the game, no?

Well somebody won. Hello? Regarding the objective to exterminate Jews, Nazis won. They exterminated most Jews.

[quote] Yeah, I pretty much think Otto was an idiot for not sending his daughters to England when it was offered to him. Harsh, I know and hindsight is 20/20 but, well, what could you do.

It's such a hard call. No one could have predicted that THIS would happen. Its so hard to imagine that you would have to leave the only country you've ever known.

I often wonder, at what point would I possibly have to leave the US. After SCOTUS overturns gay marriage? After hate crimes go up?

Won’t disagree with you there r339, regarding Otto’s failure to send his daughters to the UK when he had the chance.

Link?

Read Carol Anne Lee’s biographies on Anne and Otto Frank r343.

It was very sad and made me feel miserable.

Not a go to especially during a trip.

[quote] Helen Keller advocated eugenics?

Wasn’t there a rumor that Helen wasn’t really blind and deaf?

[quote] Wasn’t there a rumor that Helen wasn’t really blind and deaf?

I never saw or heard this.

Isn't it odd that Keller supported sterilizing the disabled?

No r348. Her parents weren’t disabled, she was. I can only imagine how hard it would be for someone like Keller to have children and raise them without assistance.

That is, of course if she were telling the truth…

Yes, but she's supporting her own sterilization

Her disability was brought on by a fever that left her blind and deaf, not because of a genetic condition.

R351, eugenics isn't reserved for people with genetic conditions. It's for all disabled. Do you think the purveyors of eugenics take the time to look at your medical records?

Watched this a few weeks ago and thought it was excellent. Given that the holocaust and WW2 were seen from the point of view of an isolationist US from that era.

no twitter!

“Leopoldstadt” currently on Broadway is a great companion piece to this documentary series.

I think that there should be more focus on Denmark and how they saved almost all of their Jewish population by whisking them off to Sweden. No other European nation did as much to help Jews.

I agree, R356, and The Righteous Among the Nations and the many (though woefully few) who spoke out against the Nazis early on who were executed.

Totally fascinating…people talk about the Dutch people protecting Jews, but that’s so much bull. The Dutch didn’t do Jack compared to the Danes.

R358, the Dutch didn't do jack compared to any occupied country in Europe. all of which were complicit with the Germans at one degree or another. I'm too lazy to look it up this morning, but I think Holland had the highest percentage of Jews (80 - 90% of the Jewish population) who were murdered than any other country. I know Greece was up there too.

True r359. There were many Dutch collaborators who turned in Jews in exchange for money. People like the ones who helped hide people like Anne Frank were anomalies. And the Dutch totally latched on to the Anne Frank diary because they wanted to wash away all traces of their collaborations with the Nazis. They wanted people to think that all Dutch people were like Miep Gies. Some Dutch people did help, but their numbers are exaggerated. It’s been posted here before.

Sorry for the random 6-months-later bump, but figured it was better than starting a new thread. I just started supporting my local PBS station with a small monthly pledge and gained access to PBS Passport, their streaming service. Just finished this docuseries and found it engrossing. If you can believe it, this was my first Ken Burns series. Hoping for recommendations on...

1). Which Ken Burns series to explore next. The Vietnam one is looking of particular interest.

2). Other historical docuseries (perhaps not just Ken Burns ones) that cover 20th or 19th c. historical events.

The Dutch definitely had collaborators and anti-Semites. However, it was also one of the only countries that used a general strike to openly challenge the Nazis over their treatment of Jews. Amsterdam had been a beacon of religious freedom. The reason so many died had more to do with the meticulous bureaucracy, which made finding Jews much easier. A group of gay resistance fighters saved many lives by burning offices where these records were stored.

The Nazis had a different agenda with each country. Other countries did better, but few were facing the same challenges.

Burns acted like the American War Refugee Board like it was the Second Coming. In reality it was too little too late Created in 1944, after the majority of victims we’re already dead.

Will Grand Wizard DeSantis allow it to be shown in schools?

r363 - I don't think that was at all the intent of Burns, nor was it what was conveyed in the documentary. It was quite clearly stated -- multiple times -- that the majority of Hitler's victims were killed before the War Refugee Board's actions began.

I applaud Burns for making this film. I would have to brace myself before watching it.

That said, Burns lost a lot of credibility for me with his documentary on the Central Park Five, which was extremely one-sided and excluded evidence and material that would have provided a more complex picture of what happened to Patricia Miele.

Patricia Miele was not interviewed, nor was one of her treating physicians, who, based on Meile's injuries, believed there were multiple attackers. (She was dismayed by the settlement with the Five.)

Burns's daughter was a paralegal at the law firm that represented the Five. Retired NYPD Detective Eric Reynolds (who is Black), arrested two of the boys that night and has always believed there was a great deal more going on than was shown in the Burns film.

I'm in no way making a comment on the present film. I haven't seen it, and the horrors of the Holocaust are indisputable. But I look at Burns' work differently now, as a general matter, based on how he approached the doc on the Five.

r366 - interesting. Do you have any published works that legitimately question the innocence of the Central Park Five? That's not rhetorical. I'm genuinely interested in reading more about the "other side" presuming it's not from some right-wing "source".

Hi, R367. Thanks for not calling me a right-wing troll. Like most people, I was very persuaded and moved by the Burns documentary when I first saw it. What later got me thinking differently were the interviews I saw with NYPD Detective Eric Reynolds (retired), who was one of the arresting officers that night.

Reynolds had an excellent professional reputation during his many years with the NYPD and is Black himself. In the interviews, he always strikes me as extremely bright, credible, and consistent in what he says about the evidence and his theories about what might have happened.

I should amend my original post to clarify that Reynolds' public discussions were sparked, as I recall, by the Anna Duvernay film, not the Burns documentary, so that puts a different light on it. But Reynolds has a lot to say about the evidence that, at least for me, doesn't square with the picture presented in the Burns film.

I'm treading on sensitive ground here. I really don't know quite what to believe about the Central Park Five. But I respect Reynolds tremendously for sticking his neck out to explain his views.

If you Google "Eric Reynolds Police Off the Cuff," you'll find a lengthy, 2-part podcast Reynolds did some time ago discussing the issues. The podcast is 3 cops talking, so I'm mindful of that! Googling Reynolds' name and "Central Park Five" also yields good results. I don't want to link you to a video with a copyright problem, so you can judge for yourself what's legit to view. Sometimes it's hard to know.

R367, I should mention for full disclosure that a lot of the critical sources relating to the issues I brought up are indeed very right-wing (Ann Coulter, NY post, e.g.). So there's that.

Do we think Ken Burns would bring something new to the AIDS crisis with one of his 6-hour docuseries?

Burns needs a new toupee, something more natural looking.

I'm halfway through Burns' Vietnam series now. I'm finding it just as engrossing, but I think I'll definitely need to take a break from his work and watch something else (probably, scripted) afterward even though I'd be tempted to go onto another of his films. Hard to choose which one to do next!

If you want to revisit Burns in the future, try his series on the Roosevelts. I found it on Hoopla. Lots of details about TR that I'd never heard about.