I watched the third episode of the latest Ken Burns’ documentary, and I understand why he said it is the most important documentary he ever made.
As history, it is powerful. And it is even more powerful because there are so many echoes of present events in our own country.
In three episodes, we see one of the most cultured countries in the world fall under the spell of a charismatic madman. We see the German people march to his tune, cheer him, fall in line, then become brutes as they carry out his mission to exterminate the Jews of Europe and to capture the Continent.
We see heroic Americans trying to rescue desperate refugees. And we meet the anti-Semites in the State Department who wanted to keep refugees out and leave them to their fate. and we are reminded again and again that the American public did not want the Jewish refugees.
We learn about the indifference and decided anti-Semitism in other countries, including our own. We learn about Hitler’s admiration for our brutal treatment of indigenous peoples, killing them and then isolating them on reservations. Hitler also admired our harsh treatment and segregation of Black people.
Inevitably, in the third episode, there are graphic videos of the death camps. There are piles of naked bodies. And there are emaciated men and women who survived, barely, their eyes empty.
In the closing minutes, the parallels to the present are presented. Scenes of racism, Young white men in Charlottesville chanting “The Jews will not replace us.” The mob storming the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021, one of them wearing a T-shirt saying “Camp Auschwitz.” Having just witnessed scenes from the death camps, the T-shirt was not just tasteless but horrifying.
This series should be shown to high school students in every school in the U.S.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
“we meet the anti-Semites in the State Department who wanted to keep refugees out and leave them to their fate”
Kinda reminiscent of the governors of Florida and Texas who play sadistic political games with refugees fleeing Venezuela. Of course, they believe that not just Jews but all immigrants are less than human and hence to be treated as one sees fit.
The irony of these refugees being from Venezuela is that the Right has vilified that regime for so long.
I watched all three episodes of this PHENOMENAL documentary, and completely agree about the similarities of then and now. I live in Florida under the “reign” of Governor Ron DeSantis, and can’t help but compare how DeSantis and the Republican-controlled Florida Legislature has tried to control curriculum content in both elementary & secondary education, as well as higher education by severely restricting teacher’s ability to teach thought provoking curriculum content around issues like Critical Race Theory (CRT), gender identity, sexism and a variety of other “taboo” topics, as defined by the current Republican culture wars. I am beginning to think that the central theme of the MAGA curriculum is WHITE SUPREMACY !!!!!
If it steps like a goose, . . .
I agree with everything but your next to the last sentence. I think we knew in 2016 how far back we were sliding. Or how far we had never come. The Republican Party playing to the same racist base since Goldwater. Trump just ripped the scab off of the festering wound. When he ran for office the polls were wrong because far too many were afraid to admit to a pollster they could support such a vile individual. When he won they were released from all inhibitions.
Points well made, Joel!
Another great PBS documentary, Frontline’s Zero Tolerance, details how Sessions, Miller, and Bannon looked around for someone to carry their white supremacist, anti-immigrant agenda forward and settled on Trump because of his racist history and how they hit upon Building the Wall as the concrete instantiation in the minds of morons of this racist agenda.
Fred Wofe,
I agree with you!
White supremacy is the point.
White male supremacy is the point.
Our country needs to develop a coherent policy on immigration. Politicians know what a “hot button” issue it is so they avoid tackling it, but it is not solving the problem. With climate and political strife increasing every year, the industrialized nations need to collaborate to develop a strategy to address this global problem.
BRAVO….your suggestion is spot-on ! Immigration is an American problem, not a Republican or Democrat problem. Our elected officials need to address and solve the immigration problem through candid discussions and compromise instead of “kicking the problem down the road” like both parties have done since World War II.
How do you solve immigration problems without solving the causes that are driving these migrations.Causes that will only get worse. You do not see the Citizens of wealthy nations like Germany and Western Europe breaking down doors to come to America as they did in the 19th Century. Worse American Foriegn and Economic policy has driven much of the migrations from Latin and South America.
Joel A case in point: I was listening to an interview on CNN yesterday with a group who had come over the border. Apparently, they had been consistently robbed not only by gangs, but by “government officials.” We’re not perfect, however . . . . CBK
“You do not see the Citizens of wealthy nations like Germany and Western Europe breaking down doors to come to America”
But if they were transported here (against their will), of course, you would surely see them breaking down doors to get out.
And imagine for a moment a group of Finn’s who found themselves in Texas for some odd reason (because their flight from Finland to Sweden had been diverted off course by a freakish storm?)
They would jump to take any flight that was offered to them to Martha’s Vineyard or any other northern city (whether it came with a McDonalds gift certificate and promise of a job or not) just to get the hell out of Texas.
SomeDAM An odd historical point: Texas has a huge contingent of several-generations of Germans who came “up” from the gulf and settled around San Antonio and northward. CBK
And I can see how the Venezuelans probably felt the same way.
That was years ago.
I bet they would not make the same mistake twice.
DeSantis was right about one thing.
The Venezuelan refugees are much better off in Massachusetts than they would be in either Texas or Florida.
Diane and SomeDAM I have found myself thinking that there is a nugget of good immigration policy in DeSantis’ treatment of the “transplant” problem.
NOT HIS LOWLIFE METHODS OR INTENTIONS, however . . .
That is, insofar as there are aware, receptive/receiving ‘sanctuary’ cities/towns, places, etc., AND well-funded and systematic lines of communication and travel between entry points, those cities, with the oversight of immigration officials that could treat individual persons and families, etc., it could work. But of course, that doesn’t fix the sources of the problem. CBK
CBK,
The U.S. needs a comprehensive immigration policy, not the inhumane tricks of DeSantis and Abbot.
Why don’t we have work visas? The agriculture and hospitality industries are desperate for workers.
Diane Yes, about work visas, but who listens to me?
My earlier point, however, was that there are lots of people here in this country (sanctuary towns/cities/groups) who would be more than willing to give individualized sanctuary as involved in a systematized law governed network of communications and travel between their towns and border cities . . . NOT just drop off traumatized people or use them as political pawns. The system IS overwhelmed if not “broken.” CBK
I would like to see an immigration program that enabled sponsors who would guarantee immigrants. We had such a program long ago. There are many undocumented immigrants living on the East End of Long Island, who are the backbone of agriculture, vineyards, hotels, and restaurants. My family became friendly with a wonderful Guatemalan man. He was a skilled carpenter, house painter, and electrician. He worked for a small construction company. Every time he planned to go home, they raised his salary. I tried to sponsor him, but there is no such path. He returned to Guatemala, not having seen his two daughters for 12 years. It’s very sad that such a fine man, with so many skills, deep religious faith, was unwanted here.
DeSantis said “they hit the jackpot”.
And comparatively speaking, he was right.
If the immigrants could just board a plane or bus to a blue state before they ever got to Texas or (God forbid) Florida, they wouldn’t have to deal with staying there for even a single day.
Those Venezuelan immigrants probably don’t know how lucky they are.
At least they were only treated like crap by DeSantis and Abbott for just a few days rather than several years if they had stayed in Texas or Florida.
SomeDAM The immigrants’ viewpoint is VERY short-term and doesn’t address, or even know about, their situations as being severely taken advantage of . . . by those racist others who hate and want to destroy the same relatively safe democracy that the immigrants are trying to reach.
In my view, the source is the “home” countries; and OUR problems can only get worse, by the numbers alone, until THAT is addressed. And having more-open borders (like flyovers) only exacerbates an already serious problem. CBK
Migration is a global concern, and a lot of it is from climate change. All nations need to take this threat seriously, even some of the geopolitical strife is connected to climate change. I don’t have any easy answers, but I think the industrialized nations are going to have to provide aid in some way to those countries that cannot feed their people. Otherwise, migrations will continue, and it will take a whole lot more than a “village” or a country to address it.
I’m not saying the way the immigrants were treated was good ( It was horrendous), just that they are lucky to have got away from Texas and Florida before Abbott or DeSantis had an opportunity to extend the abuse for a longer period.
If not already, Florida and Texas are destined to become worse (less free) than some of the countries refugees are fleeing from.
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Why Ron DeSantis Thinks Weaponizing Asylum Seekers Is a Winning Strategy
The Florida Governor’s political stunt rests on the cynical assumption that no one actually wants to offer refuge to people fleeing adversity.
By Masha Gessen
September 22, 2022
A small girl with a dog.
A young migrant in Texas earlier this month. The Biden Administration has done little to reverse the effects of Donald Trump’s anti-immigrant policies.Photograph Jordan Vonderhaar / Getty
Last week, about fifty Latin American asylum seekers were flown from Texas to Martha’s Vineyard on two flights arranged by Florida’s governor, Ron DeSantis. A number of people aboard the planes had told reporters that a woman who identified herself as “Perla” had approached them at a shelter outside San Antonio and promised that, after being flown to Boston, they would receive work opportunities and housing assistance. It was, by all accounts, a callous political stunt, but a similar practice has been under way throughout the summer, with thousands of people sent by bus from Texas and Arizona to Washington, D.C., and New York. The Mayor of New York, Eric Adams, has threatened legal action against Texas, as has a group of lawyers in Massachusetts. Gavin Newsom, the governor of California, has asked the Justice Department to consider kidnapping charges in the case of the people sent to Martha’s Vineyard. President Joe Biden has accused Republican governors of “playing politics with human beings, using them as props.” Speaking at a gala for the Congressional Hispanic Caucus Institute, he said, “What they’re doing is simply wrong.”
As refugee experiences go, though, being put on a bus or a plane and ending up thousands of miles from a place one might have wanted to go, or thought one was going, is ordinary. When people fleeing violence and disaster seek protection from national governments and international organizations, they learn that beggars at the citizenship table cannot be choosers. A national government may decide to house them, for an undetermined period of time, in a hotel, a dormitory, or a detention facility; they may have limited freedom of movement or none; they may not be allowed to seek work to provide for themselves and their families. An international body such as the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees may recognize a person who has had to flee their country as a refugee and place their file in a giant pool of applications from which another country, some years down the road, may choose the person for resettlement. The U.N.H.C.R. currently views twenty-seven million people in different parts of the world as refugees; twice as many, by the agency’s own estimate, have been displaced but have not had their need for international protection formally recognized. Every year, less than one per cent of refugees are permanently resettled in a country that is willing to offer them the prospect of eventual citizenship.
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Hannah Arendt—who fled Nazi Germany in 1933, lived in France as a displaced person, and came to the United States in 1941—observed that a refugee, a stateless person, who exists outside the framework of national laws, is by definition stripped of all rights. While we may claim, and believe, that people have rights by virtue of being human—that these rights are inalienable—in actuality, to exercise rights, a person has to be a member of a political community. Arendt called stateless people “rightless.” Their calamity, she wrote, “is not that they are deprived of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, or of equality before the law and freedom of opinion—formulas which were designed to solve problems within given communities—but that they no longer belong to any community whatsoever. Their plight is not that they are not equal before the law, but that no law exists for them; not that they are oppressed but that nobody wants even to oppress them.”
None of this means that asylum seekers should be put on buses or planes and sent to places they never meant to go—only that the preconditions for such treatment have existed for decades. The relative novelty is the weaponization of asylum seekers. “We take what’s happening at the southern border very seriously, unlike some—unlike the President of the United States, who has refused to lift a finger to secure that border,” DeSantis said, after taking credit for chartering the planes to Martha’s Vineyard. “We are not a sanctuary state. It’s better to be able to go to a sanctuary jurisdiction.” In other words, if Democrats like asylum seekers so much, they should take the responsibility for housing them. Texas’s governor, Greg Abbott, was more direct. After buses dropped dozens of asylum seekers in front of Vice-President Kamala Harris’s house, Abbott told a Texas radio station, “She’s the border czar, and we felt that if she won’t come down to see the border, if President Biden will not come down and see the border, we will make sure they see it firsthand. . . . And listen, there’s more where that came from.”
VIDEO FROM THE NEW YORKER
Separated by a Smuggler
“Abbott and DeSantis did not invent the tactic [of trafficking refugees that they don’t want]. In 2021, the Belarusian dictator Alexander Lukashenka arranged for thousands of people from Iraq, Syria, Yemen, Somalia and other countries, who were in need of international protection, to fly to Minsk, from where they were escorted to borders with European Union members Lithuania, Latvia, and Poland. Years earlier, Vladimir Putin’s Russia appeared to facilitate the passage of people fleeing Syria—where Russian troops were waging war on the side of Bashar al-Assad’s dictatorship—to Finland and Norway, apparently as part of a larger plan to destabilize European democracies.”
— from
Why Ron DeSantis Thinks Weaponizing Asylum Seekers Is a Winning Strategy (The New Yorker)
https://www.newyorker.com/news/our-columnists/why-ron-desantis-thinks-weaponizing-asylum-seekers-is-a-winning-strategy
//// End quotes
In other words DeSantis and Abbott are little more than two bit dictator copycats
Not sure why the stuff at the beginning appeared but what I meant to post starts with
Abbott and DeSantis did not invent the tactic
It gets worse. I just got Ron’s mailer today encouraging me to vote for him. The man really overuses the word “freedom,” which is concept he fails to understand. It is a glossy flyer with a smiling Ron instead of usual sneering, jeering version we normally see on the news.
DeSantis and Abbott could care less about the hardships of poor immigrants. They use poor people as a prop in a political stunt. I hope some smart lawyer can wipe the grin off their self satisfied smirks.
My guess is that the lawyer will not even have to be all that smart because the evidence of fraud is pretty obvious — given to the immigrants in the form of a brochure that was made to look like it came from the state of Massachusetts but was actually fabricated for the ruse. The flag on the brochure was not even the actual flag of Massachusetts (which I believe was actually a coded message by whoever put together the brochure that was meant to indicate that they disapproved of the whole dishonest project)
For a Harvard law grad, DeSantis ain’t the sharpest spoon in the drawer. If he actually believes his “consent form” based on false information is going to fly in court, he’s a total maroon.
DeSantis did himself no favors by essentially owning the whole thing.
And every time he opens his mouth how he makes it worse for himself.
Ha ha ha.
It just keeps getting “better”
DeSantis is a mini-Trump in almost every sense of the word
“Florida migrant-moving company gave GOP cash, has ties to DeSantis’ immigration ‘czar’ and Rep. Matt Gaetz”
https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/immigration/florida-migrant-moving-company-gave-gop-cash-ties-desantis-immigration-rcna48967
If DeSantis is an example of the type of lawyer Harvard is turning out, I’d say “Cambridge, you’ve got a problem”
The guy is just breathtakingly clueless.
He flew the immigrants from Texas to Martha’s Vineyard (with a very brief stop in Florida), using money allocated for a program that the Florida state legislature stated was specifically for “unauthorized aliens from this state” [Florida].
But the folks he flew to Martha’s Vineyard are legally authorized to be in the US AND they were not “from” Florida under any non-idiotic interpretation of the word (unless someone who spends a few hours in a Florida airport to get a connecting flight is somehow to be considered to be “from” Florida).
Or, as a lawmaker who just brought suit against DeSantis for violating Florida law put it
“If we are able to get this in front of a man or a woman in a black robe, how the hell is the state going to contend any of these people are from Florida?”
But things get even worse for DeSantis the “genius” Harvard trained lawyer.
Under DeSantis’ encouragement, the legislature had also passed a law that made it illegal for any Florida state agency to contract with any company that transports “unauthorized aliens”
DeSantis can’t have his unauthorized aliens and traffick them too.
Or as Pizzo put it
“Were they transporting unauthorized aliens into the state? Because that’s a no no. Oh, they’re not, well then they were not eligible to be transported at all.”
https://www.cnn.com/2022/09/22/politics/desantis-florida-officials-sued-migrant-flights-lawmaker-lawsuit/index.html
If Pizzo is a lawyer, he is an example of a smart one.
DeSantis is just an idiot.
But a Yale and Harvard educated idiot.
Ha ha ha.
Idiots do well in politics, unfortunately. One of the paras I work with thinks he’s handsome.
🤮
“Yeah, but…”
Yeah, butt ” pretty well sums it up.
I can hardly wait for DeSantis to start claiming that he knew nothing of the “details” (aka fraud) of the affair .
I wonder how long it will take before he tries to sell that story.
Republicans are playing games with immigrants right now with a purpose:
They want the midterms to be about open borders, not abortion.
They are changing the subject.
Copyright protections would prohibit viewing at school (even excerpts) and parents can opt-out of their child seeing it. Teacher would have to have an “equal” alternative assignment. I can’t think of anything equal to this awesome documentary. Plus, so many literary selections a teacher might substitute are now on the school library “review for book ban” list.
If you buy the DVD, pay for streaming, you can show it. You can’t charge other people to see it, however. It’s called “reasonable use.” PBS and Burns expect his films to be used in schools. I’ll bet there is a website for teachers.
I think of “other viewpoint” as something that applies to controversial issues. But this is history. What is a teacher supposed to do, dig up a Holocaust denier?
I was at a conference with the other directors of this documentary. They WANT an HOPE it is shown in schools. I don’t think copyright will be a problem here.
Copyright won’t be a problem. Censorship will be.
I doubt the copyright protections thing because PBS has put the entire series of three films online where ANYONE can watch them. Here’s a suggested alternative assignment: Read Edwin Black’s The War against the Weak: Eugenics and America’s Campaign to Create a Master Race.
All people should be uncomfortable viewing such material, but that is history. Most nations have an uncomfortable past in one way or another. Sometimes discomfort leads to growth. Censorship is an insult to the intelligence of high school students. If we fail to understand the past, we are more likely to repeat these mistakes in the future.
The toxic right wing will do anything or say anything to undermine and dismantle public schools, a keystone of democracy. Shame on them!
Amazing that many states have banned any material that discuses “divisive concepts” and anything that makes students “uncomfortable.” I feel certain that the Ken Burns documentary on the Holocaust will never be shown in those states.
So, anyone can show and watch this, it looks like. Again, the entire thing was put online for anyone to see by the copyright holder. So, that’s not an issue, I imagine. Permission for kids to watch it is another matter. The series contains graphic violence, so rather than giving students’ parents an opt-out, a teacher would be well advised to make this an opt-in. You have to get your parent to sign off on your watching this. There will doubtless be administrators and parents vehemently opposed to the showing of this film. Fascists don’t like antifascist works.
Ken Burns and PBS want this documentary shown in schools. They may have lesson plans to go with it.
Politicians and censorship may block its showing.
They have already posted some materials for teachers, with the programs, on the PBS website. So, yes, they intend for teachers to show these. And yes, American Fascists will oppose that.
Extraordinarily important, this film, at this time in the United States. Thank you, Mr. Burns, Ms. Botstein, Ms. Novick. So, so, so needed right now.
Donald Trump demanded that his Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security, Kirstjen Nielsen, instruct Border Patrol agents to SHOOT unarmed asylum seekers at the border. When she told him that she COULD NOT do this, he belittled her, screamed at her, called her “Honey.”
Donald Trump demanded that the U.S. military, in violation of the Posse Comitatus Act, be sent in to SHOOT unarmed BLM protestors. Milley and Esper, to their eternal credit, refused and told him that they could not do this, that this was illegal.
If, knowing these things, you have any questions about whether Trump is, in fact, a fascist, you seriously haven’t the sense god gave lettuce.
Oh, and when Trump demanded that the Border Patrol shoot asylum seekers, which he did often, this WAS BARELY A BLIP IN THE NEW CYCLE.
So, what ever happened to “Never again”? WHERE WAS THE OUTRAGE?
WHERE WERE THOSE EXPLAINING THAT TRUMP WOULD TURN THE BORDER PATROL INTO EINSATZGRUPPEN?
Let me be as clear about this as is possible:
This is what ensuring that it never happens again MEANS. It means CALLING IT OUT WHEN IT IS HAPPENING AGAIN. This is the great duty that this history lays upon us. To make sure that it does not happen again by calling it out and stopping it when it rears one of its monstrous heads. Every time. Again and again.
Keeping it from happening again requires vigilance.
Yes . . . shown to high school students; but also, there are so many movies that portray so well the holocaust:
Just a couple of examples: Shindler’s List, Sophie’s Choice, Judgment at Nuremburg (at least two versions), and many others. Art and story tend to speak to otherwise alienated persons in a way that even excellent documentaries cannot. Burns’ combination of them in his documentaries are what makes them so memorable. CBK
This piece by Burns et al. stands out because the makers took on directly the U.S. involvement in the Holocaust, its complicity, from the Eugenics movement of the early part of the 20th century here in the US to the racist immigration quotas that Hitler so admired to the INTENTIONAL blocking by the state department of any attempts to interfere with the mass exterminations of Jewish people. Complicity in war crime. Very, very few filmed works have ever treated these topics so boldly. A few books have. Black’s The War against the Weak and IBM and the Holocaust are examples.
So, this documentary, while not altogether new, differs considerably from other materials that are available and does so in a really significant way. It makes, convincingly, the case that IT CAN HAPPEN HERE because IT DID HAPPEN HERE ALREADY.
And this is precisely why the nascent new fascist movement in the U.S., ushered in by Trump and his creators (Sessions, Miller, Bannon), will do everything in its power to keep this documentary series out of schools. It doesn’t perpetrate a myth of U.S. purity. And fascists are all about their myths of national purity.
Bob . . . both points made. CBK
Thanks, CBK. And it’s good to see you on this board again.
Bob Thanks, and ditto to you; but not for long for me. I’m not dying or anything like that (that I know of), but I’m 75 and have my own bucket list I must attend to. Cheers! CBK
I know this feeling, CBK. I’m right behind you. Much love and happiness to you and yours as you pursue that list!
CBK, you can’t leave. I’m
84 and have a long bucket list too.
Diane More than you know, I appreciate your “bucket list” note. I haven’t stopped reading your notes . . . just participating so much in the discussions. I found, for several reasons, I had to moderate my presence in the discussions. Thank you so much. You are an inspiration to me. CBK
Sophie’s Choice is fiction. Schindler’s List is fine, but really doesn’t tell the story from the victims’ point of view. See also Judgement at Nuremberg. This is better. I am a USHMM trained Holocaust educator.
Wow. Really, Threatened?!?!? That’s freaking awesome. All honor to you.
Sophie’s Choice is fiction. The others films you mentioned are from the perpetrators’ points of view. This is far better than any of those. I am a USHMM trained Holocaust educator. The focus should be from the victims’point of view. This film does that
Threatened I for one was greatly moved by all of these films and others also, and never seem to tire of re-viewing them.
There also is “The White Rose” film and one on cable awhile back called “The Exception.” Then the “Hitler” documentaries that run often on cable. And many, many others over the years, some very old, some European (dubbed) filmed not long after the war. I also have a bookshelf filled with true stories written by those who experienced the holocaust themselves, and first-hand literature written about the Eichman capture, hiding, and trial, which I too included in course material. But whatever the point of view most emphasized in film, the points were well taken. The import is endless, regardless. (It’s not a competition).
Also, I thought one of the most important narratives in the Burns’ piece is when the speaker (cannot remember his name) said that (paraphrased), even while it was happening to them, even THEY could not believe it.
Also, while we are at it, the narrative in the Burns’ piece made the point more than once that the supporters of opening our borders to the Jewish people thought to tone down that these were mainly Jews that we were helping because the public would think WE would be seen as “favoring the Jews.” I had to wonder . . . did they forget that Hitler and his Nazis focused mainly on the Jews? Who else, then, would/should we logically have let in? I wanted to scream at them: You are accepting Hitler’s own propaganda messaging . . . and BTW, they were people. CBK
CBK,
I too loved “The White Rose” about the college students who thought they could fight Hitler by distributing pamphlets against him. Their courage was deeply moving. Of course, they were beheaded. But it was inspiring to witness their fearlessness.
Diane In the early 50’s, we used to go down to the movie house and see cartoons and children’s movies (such as they were). However, they still showed trailers from the war and weren’t caring yet about how age-inappropriate they might be. So, I must have been around six or so when I first saw film clips drawn directly from the concentration camps. I don’t think I have ever really gotten over the shock. I think it made a lifelong liberal out of me. CBK
It is absolutely fantastic! I had to watch it in segments though… Upsetting…
The documentary is very upsetting. How can anyone be a Holocaust Denier after seeing it.
The images of the naked bodies stacked up like cordwood in the newly liberated camps are unforgettable.
Agreed…
Having read and watched so much about the Holocaust over the years, I have not decided whether or more likely how I will watch this one. It is hard to imagine how Burns could improve on much of the analysis that has filled shelves at the library for what is approaching a century. But then he is Burns, and he has done so many good films.
When I get a chance, I will surely watch it. Meanwhile, my daughter is singing a beautiful piece called “I Believe” which is taken from an anonymous poem scrawled on the wall of one of the death camps and put to music in modern times. Those Public High Schools are ruining our kids. What is some child finds death camps disturbing?
Roy Indeed . . . “What if some child finds death camps disturbing?” or worse, what if they found out about our complicity in it?
But DIANE ALSO, there is a resonance to not-too-long-ago when so many, even in educational theory, found fault with original fairy tales that had a definite dark dimension (OMG!). To which we might add: There are “helicopter” parents, but also “helicopter” theoreticians? CBK
Again, Roy, it’s worth seeing because of the info in it about American complicity. To give but a few examples: American eugenicists of note, influential American anti-Semites (Ford, Lindbergh), racist American immigration quotas, the German-American Bund, the America First Movement, and perhaps most shockingly, the suppression by the U.S. State Department a) of information about the ongoing Holocaust and b) of attempts to do anything to rescue Jews as this was happening. There is, however, much more that is NOT told in the documentary–how supportive Americans like bank president and later Senator Prescott Bush, father of George, Sr., made enormous loans to Hitler’s government, how IBM kept the Hollerith machines humming in Germany throughout the war (machines used for war and final solution logistics), how the Eugenics Records Office on Long Island (which got American government and corporate funding) issued a report calling for the bottom 10 percent of U.S. citizens, by IQ, to be euthanized to protect the gene pool of the country, how the U.S. gave protection and jobs to useful ex-Nazis, how police departments around the U.S., caught up in the eugenics crazy, started rounding up people from the lower classes and submitting them to forced sterilization, and so on. It’s a nasty story. There will probably be a few parts of this that are new even to you, Roy.
I do not doubt that it will be worth it to watch. But I do not intend to have my right taken away by making me uncomfortable.
Thanks for the affirmation, but history is new to me all the time. As I get older, I find myself able to barely recall learning stuff in the first place.
I was in college before I figured out that history was everything that ever happened, that a lot of it was fascinating, that most of it is unknown, and that I am mostly ignorant of it and always will be.
As a good example of what you say, I was introduced to the Champes de Marr massacre the last year of my teaching the French Revolution. It was an incident in which several people were shot. The incident, according to the account I read, made Jacobins consider the possibility of France with no king, a radical departure from thought up to that point.
You never quit getting more possibilities in history
History is everything you always wanted to know about but were forbidden from asking.
haaaa
What a great definition! You shared this with your students, I hope!
Oh, that was SomeDAM’s definition. It’s a really good one, SomeDAM!
fascinating piece by the ever insightful and knowledgeable Masha Gessen, SomeDAM. Thanks for sharing it.
The quotes I posted were actually a mish Masha Gessen.
I thought I had only copied the last couple paragraphs which I linked to which were actually not even by Masha Gessen.
They were.
I got mixed up about what got mixed up.
Oh, and Roy, you can watch it at any time because PBS has posted it online–all three parts.
Roy,
You have to see it. Burns pulls together a lot of different strings. And believe me, the visuals are very very powerful. You know, one picture vs. 1,000 words. Few Americans know about the strength of isolationism, fascism, the KKK, Father Coughlin, in the 1930s. Few people understand the depth of anti-Semitism in the U.S.
This documentary should be required for everyone that votes and everyone that is eligible to vote that never votes.
The next two elections, 2022 and 2024, could well decide the fate of this country.
What will win? The fascists among us or the US Constitution that was written by the Founders to protect us from the fascists among us.
Yad Vashem has many lessons about the history
of anti-judaism…SHOCKING …
Search: Anti-Judaism, Shakespeare and the Jews,
for a starter. You may be amazed at how long,
old, this anti SHIT has endured.
The torpor of EXCEPTIONISM defined…
I learned very little that was new to me from this, Greg, but like you, I have read a lot of history of these events. But here’s the thing: Burns’s documentaries are extremely popular. They reach a wide, wide audience. They have a lot of impact, and this one, which specifically treats U.S. complicity in the Holocaust, comes at a time when people here REALLY need to be reminded that Fascists are the enemy and that it is NOT acceptable that one political party in the U.S. has now entirely embraced Fascism.
Most Americans know nothing of this stuff. They don’t even know what Eugenics is, much less that there was a major Eugenics Movement in the U.S. And they don’t know how this underlay Nazis racial theory, and they don’t understand why it is disturbing that Donald Trump, who knows NOTHING of science, purports to hold the “racehorse theory” about “promoting people with good genes.”
So, it’s really important that Burns et al. did this series at this time.
Bob and Greg,
Good point about the reach of television.
More people will see this documentary series than the sum total of all those who ever read a book about Hitler, the Holocaust, or the Second World War.
Memorably put, Diane. Exactly.
One of the interesting and disturbing things about anti-Semitic thought in Europe is its relation to periods of social pressure. There was persecution of Jews in the run-up to the first crusade, but widespread violence seems to have accompanied the calamity of the slide into the plague years. The czar’s anti-anything but Russia campaign in the second half of the Nineteenth Century also took place within the context of a great period of change.
That is the disturbing part. Hitler’s acceptance by the average German, perhaps the average European across the globe (which includes American Europeans) was due to a long acceptance of practices in Africa and attitudes toward the Roma, Jews, and many more.
It’s ironic that conservatives are freaking out right now about a tiny bit of the truth of U.S. history being taught in U.S. schools given that what has generally happened has always been that what’s taught is American Mythology. Almost none of the stuff ABOUT THE U.S. covered in “The U.S. and the Holocaust” is ever taught in K-12. That’s why this work is supremely important. The populace in this country is starting from almost complete ignorance of this.
“Hitler’s American Model: The United States and the Making of Nazi Race Law.” – excellent read:
Thank you, Yossarian!
https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/the-acquiescence-of-the-u-s-government-in-the-murder-of-the-jews
From the report to Roosevelt, from Treasury, outlining the complicity of the U.S. State Department in the extermination of the Jews:
“[u]nless remedial steps of a drastic nature are taken, and taken immediately, I am certain that no effective action will be taken by this government to prevent the complete extermination of the Jews in German controlled Europe, and that this Government will have to share for all time responsibility for this extermination”
The Jews were the primary targets of the Holocaust. Others were targets, too, but only the Jews were to be totally eliminated. That MUST be emphasized whenever the Holocaust is discussed.
“only the Jews were to be totally eliminated” is factually wrong. What must be emphasized is that the elimination of Jews was a goal, but they were far from the only group to be eliminated. The fact that people think Jews were the only victims of the Holocaust is wrong and a perversely destructive narrative.
The youngest person executed by the Nazi regime was a Mormon. If Mormons were as numerous as Jews, they would have been “in competition” with them to determine who was most hated by Nazis.
Others who were to be totally eliminated:
Persons with developmental disabilities
Roma/Sinti
Seventh Day Adventists
Mormons
Christian Scientists
Communists
Social Democrats
Liberal Catholics and priests
Evangelical Protestants
Teachers and professors who did not tow the Nazi line
Conscientious objectors
Jewish sympathizers
Anyone who deviated from official orders
Life is a gift. Every morning is a good chance to be thankful. Every life is worth living. Nazis and nationalists are beautiful people. Their lives are worth living, and I am thankful for the life Adonai breathed into each of them. He is great. Anyone who hates me for being Jewish or for being faithful to His laws, let her or him talk to me. I will thank them for living and for listening.
Reblogged this on Ned Hamson's Second Line View of the News.
My father served three plus years in the European theatre. Airborne and infantry. Prior to that his dream was to be a concert pianist and he was well in his way before enlisting.
He rarely spoke of the war but when he did, it was serious.
So when the holocaust deniers started to make make the news, he told me about Dachau.
He was one of the soldiers to literally open the gates after a relatively brief battle. They thought they were liberating a POW camp.
What he saw there changed his life. The dead bodies. The pits. Speaking with the emaciated prisoners.
It changed his life. Went to law school on the GI Bill and graduated tops in his class at Columbia Law School and worked in the public sector for the City of New York for decades.
He said he did it because he wanted to help people and society. He told me about it so that I would have something to say to anyone who tried to deny the reality he’d endured and encountered during WWII.
I did my student teaching with a lady whose father had been on the front lines. She showed the class pictures of the liberated internment camp he witnessed. It was beyond the imagination of a majority of the students. Piles of bodies burned alive by panicked guards and their superior officers. So hideous that most of the high school kids did not understand what they were seeing.
Much of America is deeply racist, by which I mean not white hoods and bullwhips (that is superficial in a sense), but rather fundamentally trained, educated and raised to either fear black or look down on them. Evidence is easy to find, of course. “Look at those people. They live in squalor and commit crimes. They don’t even know who their parents are. I’m not racist but just look!” The same sort of deep undercurrent exists for antisemitism; it is deeply ingrained in subtle cultural memes and beliefs.
These antisemitic memes and beliefs were more prevalent and public in Europe so it was much easier to organize the Holocaust. Germanic peoples had a long history or antisemitism, as did the Slavs and Russians. From frequent pogroms and purges to wholesale slaughter required a modernized army and industry, though.
Could we have a holocaust n America? Jews, Latinos, Blacks, Asians and Catholics slaughtered en masse? It seems inconceivable until you watch a MAGA rally or read a right-wing web site.
UNTIL
Greg,
Not everyone is as well-informed as you.
Also, Greg, you left out Hitler’s roundup of gays, who wore pink armbands.
Diane Also, unless I missed it, Burns’ documentary left out how totally apoplectic Stalin was when Hitler invaded Russia, after he had signed a non-aggression pact. It reflects, however, Stalin’s own speeches about the death of the conscience as well as, in our time, the complete depravity of Putin. CBK
I recorded all episodes!!! Sadly, when we watched ep. 2 & 3 were the same ! Did anyone else have this issue??!
Will it be shown again soon??? What happened???
Powerful, and very moving. I would expect nothing less from Ken Burns. Does anyone wonder how the Germans were so good at identifying Jewish origin. I was surprised that Ken Burns did not touch on IBM’s involvement in the holocaust. How the Hollerith machines and punch cards that were used to track generations of Jews through National Census. The documentary was excellent, some of the video was very harsh, but needed to be seen by a wide audience… Less we never forget.
I noticed that. I kept expecting it come up. I wonder why he left this out. It seems like a significant oversight.