Posted for a retired oncologist, a published author, and a good friend:
Re: https://www.pbs.org/kenburns/us-and-the-holocaust/
By the time the War ended in May 1945, when Eisenhower, the Supreme Allied Commander, entered Buchenwald, the existence of the mass murder chambers in the death camps was widely known in the United States. Photographs had been delivered to the American press. The public knew. America had even reviewed ways to save people. Some had actually worked. What Ike saw was beyond words and he knew at once that he had to make sure others saw it for themselves. He invited newspaper editors from across the country, Senators and Congressmen, leaders at the State Department and others to bear witness.
Burns Novick and Botstein (and the US Holocaust Museum) believe it is time for us to bear witness, not to what the Germans did, but to what the Americans did and are still doing.
This documentary is designed to wake us up to the reality of how Americans dealt with the information as it developed and afterward.
It is not fun, but it is necessary to spend some time thinking about it right now as we have been imitating the behavior of the Germans, the good Germans, the ones who liked what Hitler promised – to make Germany Great Again. Even if they did not know about the worst of the atrocities (and it really doesn’t matter), they knew the Jews had been identified as the enemy. In America, we knew what was happening as it happened every step of the way. It made the front pages. The public refused to focus on it until it was overwhelming. When they learned about the death camps, they thought a million people had been murdered. By then, 5 million were dead. They did what they could, but it was too late. Even after it was over, they would not let the survivors come to America. They could not return to their homes. No one would let them in. Why? They were afraid of immigrants, afraid of losing control over America and their way of life. If the surviving Jews of Europe had not been allowed to go to Israel (which did not exist as a country until 1947) they would have had nowhere to go.
I admit to being surprised and shocked by the finale of the carefully constructed and largely factual documentary of the almost indescribable and unbelievable era in Germany which began, like the Trump era, with enthusiasm for a man who promised to make his country better, pleased the crowd with his policies and “went off the rails” as some like to say.
A series of unrestrained photos no longer shock as they did sixty years ago when I first saw them. Panning through Auschwitz’s piles of thousands of dead bodies arranged like a major sawmill did not make me shut my eyes. I watched without shuddering as I viewed trenches full of the dead, emaciated bodies, electrified barbed wire that set people trying to escape on fire, brutal soldiers laughing as they killed women and children, haunting eyes staring at the photographer knowing they were slated to be killed. Hearing about how they rounded up communities, led them into the town square, and took children up into the clock tower so they could drop them on their heads did tighten my stomach. But, oh well, they were Nazis, right?
What shocked was when the survivors who told of these witnessed events said, “No. they are not “THEM” – they are US! All of us. . Anybody can do as they did”
If so, how does it begin? With people liking the fanatic’s policies, with them accepting his angry assaults on the press and those who disagree with him, with him blaming “enemies” – like liberals and people who believe in public discourse, with undermining government institutions, with abandoning elections, with funny salutes (have you seen recent films of the Trump crowd?),With people who think they are not fascists just standing back and standing by and letting it happen.
Not content to let us draw our own conclusions, Burns, who started making the documentary during the Obama Administration, finished it with updated footage.
It shocked me. WE ARE THEM! All of us.
Frank and Friends 