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{\an7}Improved by Sailor420
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{\an9}Hope you enjoy the show
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Announcer: Funding for
"The U.S. And the Holocaust"
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00:00:02,420 --> 00:00:04,800
was provided
by David M. Rubenstein,
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investing in
people and institutions
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that help us understand the past
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and look to the future;
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by the Park Foundation;
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the Judy and Peter
Blum Kovler Foundation,
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supporting those who remind us
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about American history
and the Holocaust;
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by Gilbert S. Omenn
and Martha A. Darling;
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by the Arthur Vining Davis
Foundations,
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investing in our common future;
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and by these members of
the Better Angels Society;
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Jeannie and Jonathan Lavine;
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Jan and Rick Cohen;
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Allan and Shelley Holt;
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the Koret Foundation;
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David and Susan Kreisman;
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Jo Carole and Ronald S. Lauder;
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the Fullerton Family
Charitable Fund;
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the Blavatnik Family Foundation;
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the Crown Family Philanthropies,
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honoring members of
the Crown and Goodman families;
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and by these additional members.
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By the Corporation
for Public Broadcasting
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and by viewers like you.
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Thank you.
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♫ ♫
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Narrator: On a sunny
March afternoon in 1933,
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a German businessman
and his family
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went for a stroll
in the center of Frankfurt.
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Otto Frank snapped a picture
of his wife, Edith,
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and their two daughters...
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Margot, 7 years old,
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and Annelies, just 3.
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Otto's ancestors
had lived in Germany
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since the 16th century.
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Merchants and bankers,
they were not
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particularly observant Jews.
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Otto, a proud officer
in the Great War,
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was a patriotic German.
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But in January of 1933,
Adolf Hitler had come to power
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and everything had begun
rapidly to change.
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Jews, Hitler charged,
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were "parasites," not Germans.
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Nazi thugs roamed
the Frankfurt streets,
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beating anyone they thought
was Jewish.
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Most of the Franks'
Gentile friends fell away.
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Their landlord insisted
they find other quarters.
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Margot was made to sit apart
from her classmates in school.
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Man as Frank: The world
around me had collapsed.
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When most of the people
of my country
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turned into hordes of
nationalistic, cruel,
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antisemitic criminals,
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I had to face the consequences,
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and though this hurt me deeply,
I realized that
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Germany was not the world,
and I left forever.
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Narrator: By the time Otto
Frank photographed his family,
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he and Edith were already
planning to move
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to Amsterdam in the Netherlands.
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By early 1934,
they would be living in
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a spacious, sunny apartment
in the city's River Quarter,
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alongside hundreds of other
Jewish families from Germany.
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They would eventually try to seek
a safe haven in the United States,
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only to find, like countless
others fleeing Nazism,
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that most Americans
did not want to let them in.
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♫ ♫
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(gulls squawking)
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(ship's horn blows)
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Woman: Here at our sea-washed,
sunset gates shall stand
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a mighty woman with
a torch, whose flame
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is the imprisoned lightning,
and her name
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Mother of Exiles.
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From her beacon-hand
glows world-wide welcome;
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her mild eyes command
the air-bridged harbor
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that twin cities frame.
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"Keep, ancient lands,
your storied pomp!"
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cries she with silent lips.
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"Give me your tired, your poor,
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"your huddled masses
yearning to breathe free,
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"the wretched refuse
of your teeming shore.
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"Send these, the homeless,
tempest-tost to me,
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I lift my lamp
beside the golden door!"
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Emma Lazarus.
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Narrator: In 1883,
Emma Lazarus,
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the descendant of
Portuguese Jews
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who had fled the Inquisition
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and found sanctuary in Manhattan
before the American Revolution,
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had written a poem expressing
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what the Statue of Liberty
meant to her.
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But a few years later,
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Thomas Bailey Aldrich,
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a writer whose family had also
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lived in America
since colonial times,
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wrote another poem
warning of what he believed
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would happen to his country if
the golden door remained open.
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Man as Aldrich: Wide open
and unguarded stand our gates,
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and through them presses
a wild, motley throng.
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In street and alley what
strange tongues are these,
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accents of menace
alien to our air,
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voices that once
the Tower of Babel knew!
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O Liberty, white Goddess!
Is it well
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to leave the gates unguarded?
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Man: I think Americans
have a very hard time deciding
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what kind of country
they want to have.
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We all tend to think
of the United States
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as this country with
the Statue of Liberty poem,
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"Give me your tired,
your poor."
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But in fact, exclusion of
people and shutting them out
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has been as American
as apple pie.
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♫ ♫
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Man: All of my grandparents are
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immigrants from Eastern Europe
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except one grandmother
was born here.
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So, I sort of grew up
haunted by stories of,
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as they used to say,
the old country.
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Haunted by this story of
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my grandfather's brother
and his family,
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living in a provincial town
in Eastern Poland,
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and then they disappeared.
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All you think about is that
they had been consumed by this
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conflagration that consumed
all of Europe.
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♫ ♫
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Narrator: When Nazi rule began
in 1933,
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there were 9 million
Jews in Europe.
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00:07:12,530 --> 00:07:18,140
12 years later, when the
Second World War ended in 1945,
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00:07:18,160 --> 00:07:22,460
at least two out of every 3
of them had been murdered.
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00:07:25,530 --> 00:07:29,340
Mendelsohn: It's not so easy
to put the picture together,
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the real scale of
what happened to people.
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It is unbelievable.
It boggles the imagination.
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You don't know what
6 million people looks like.
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Narrator: As the catastrophe
of what would come to be called
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the Holocaust unfolded,
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Americans heard
about Nazi persecutions
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00:07:55,200 --> 00:07:58,500
of Jews and others on the radio,
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read about it in
their newspapers and magazines,
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00:08:01,630 --> 00:08:04,900
and glimpsed it in newsreels.
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00:08:04,930 --> 00:08:08,640
Some Americans responded
by denouncing the Nazis,
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00:08:08,660 --> 00:08:14,370
marching in protest,
and boycotting German goods.
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Individual Americans
performed heroic acts
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to save individual Jews.
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Some government officials
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00:08:23,200 --> 00:08:25,040
battled red tape and bigotry
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to bring Jewish refugees
to America.
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00:08:31,060 --> 00:08:33,300
In the end,
the United States admitted
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00:08:33,330 --> 00:08:38,040
some 225,000 refugees
from Nazi terror,
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00:08:38,060 --> 00:08:43,070
more than any other
sovereign nation took in.
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00:08:43,100 --> 00:08:45,870
And by defeating Nazi Germany
on the battlefield,
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00:08:45,900 --> 00:08:48,440
the United States,
Great Britain,
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00:08:48,460 --> 00:08:50,940
the Soviet Union,
and their allies
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00:08:50,960 --> 00:08:55,430
stopped the killing of the
surviving Jewish people in Europe.
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But during the years when
escape was still possible,
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the American people and their
government proved unwilling
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00:09:04,060 --> 00:09:06,270
to welcome more than
a fraction of
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00:09:06,300 --> 00:09:11,360
the hundreds of thousands of
desperate people seeking refuge.
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00:09:13,200 --> 00:09:15,340
Woman: The Holocaust
disrupts any idea
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00:09:15,360 --> 00:09:17,100
that we have of good and evil,
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00:09:17,130 --> 00:09:18,640
of right and wrong.
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00:09:18,660 --> 00:09:20,140
This is a story in which
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00:09:20,160 --> 00:09:22,100
everyone is challenged
all the time.
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We are challenged as Americans.
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We're challenged as parents,
as children.
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We're challenged
as neighbors and as friends
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to think about what
we would have done,
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00:09:30,460 --> 00:09:33,870
what we could have done,
what we should have done,
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00:09:33,900 --> 00:09:38,040
and even though the Holocaust
physically took place in Europe,
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it is a story that Americans
have to reckon with, too.
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Man: We tell ourselves
stories as a nation.
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One of the stories
we tell ourselves is that
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we're a land of immigrants.
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But in moments of crisis,
it becomes very hard for us
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to live up to those stories.
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I think the impetus
should not then be
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to wag your finger
at people in the past
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00:09:59,960 --> 00:10:02,970
and think that we're
somehow superior to them,
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00:10:03,000 --> 00:10:07,600
but to struggle to understand
why that's such a tension
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00:10:07,630 --> 00:10:09,270
between having
a humanitarian ideal
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00:10:09,300 --> 00:10:13,570
and then living up to it
on the ground.
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Woman: Part of our
national mythology is that
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we are a good people,
we are a democracy,
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and we are a democracy,
and in our better moments,
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we are very good people.
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00:10:26,630 --> 00:10:29,600
But that's not all there is
to this story,
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and I think if we're going to
congratulate ourselves
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on our democracy,
which I think we should,
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we also need to face up
to the other side.
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Woman 2: In the past few years,
I've begun to wonder
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how serious America's
commitment to looking at
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00:10:50,630 --> 00:10:55,600
some of the dark marks
in its history really is.
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How can we learn from the past?
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00:10:58,000 --> 00:10:59,500
Where did we go wrong?
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00:10:59,530 --> 00:11:03,200
How can we not go wrong
the next time?
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00:11:03,230 --> 00:11:05,400
And I think while there is
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00:11:05,430 --> 00:11:08,640
much we can be proud of
of this country,
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00:11:08,660 --> 00:11:11,670
the episode of America
and the Holocaust
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00:11:11,700 --> 00:11:15,230
is not one that
redounds to our credit.
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00:11:17,200 --> 00:11:24,000
Man: How did America
treat its potential refugees?
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00:11:24,030 --> 00:11:27,000
The refugees,
they lost their lives
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00:11:27,030 --> 00:11:28,800
because those doors...
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the golden door
was not wide open.
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00:11:32,200 --> 00:11:40,200
♫ ♫
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00:11:44,300 --> 00:11:46,400
(birds chirping)
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00:11:46,430 --> 00:11:50,270
(horse neighs)
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00:11:50,300 --> 00:11:52,200
Narrator: For centuries,
America had
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00:11:52,230 --> 00:11:54,170
mostly open borders.
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00:11:54,200 --> 00:11:57,840
Peoples from Europe
and the Far East were let in...
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00:11:57,860 --> 00:11:59,670
and at least tolerated...
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00:11:59,700 --> 00:12:03,900
As workers, farmers,
soldiers, and pioneers
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00:12:03,930 --> 00:12:08,970
needed to conquer a continent
and build a nation.
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00:12:09,000 --> 00:12:10,300
Irvin Painter: This is
the good side of us,
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00:12:10,330 --> 00:12:12,400
the open side of us.
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00:12:12,430 --> 00:12:16,200
We want
to welcome working people.
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00:12:16,230 --> 00:12:19,740
The other side of that is
Native American genocide,
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00:12:19,760 --> 00:12:23,400
Native Americans being pushed
out of their lands.
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00:12:23,430 --> 00:12:28,200
And then there's also
the involuntary immigrants,
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00:12:28,230 --> 00:12:32,570
the Africans who were
transported across the ocean
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00:12:32,600 --> 00:12:36,900
to become a workforce that
could be worked to death.
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00:12:36,930 --> 00:12:42,440
So, the idea of immigrants
at the top, it looks very good,
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00:12:42,460 --> 00:12:45,800
but that's not
all there is to us.
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00:12:48,030 --> 00:12:50,740
Narrator: Before the Civil War,
most immigrants had come from
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00:12:50,760 --> 00:12:54,740
northern Europe...
England, Scotland, Ireland,
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00:12:54,760 --> 00:12:58,470
Germany, Holland,
and Scandinavia.
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00:12:58,500 --> 00:13:00,700
Hayes: I'm named after
my ancestor who arrived
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00:13:00,730 --> 00:13:03,040
at the port of Boston in 1860.
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00:13:03,060 --> 00:13:05,200
He came from County Cork
in Ireland.
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00:13:05,230 --> 00:13:07,570
He didn't have to fill out
anything but a landing card
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00:13:07,600 --> 00:13:09,270
when he got here
230
00:13:09,300 --> 00:13:12,140
in a time when immigration
was free and open.
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00:13:12,160 --> 00:13:14,940
It became more and more
restrictive later.
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00:13:14,960 --> 00:13:17,440
Narrator: In 1882,
Congress passed
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00:13:17,460 --> 00:13:19,870
the Chinese Exclusion Act,
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00:13:19,900 --> 00:13:22,300
the first time
the United States had barred
235
00:13:22,330 --> 00:13:25,700
the immigration of
any people from anywhere.
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00:13:27,630 --> 00:13:30,800
But between 1870 and 1914,
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00:13:30,830 --> 00:13:34,340
nearly 25 million people
would arrive,
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00:13:34,360 --> 00:13:37,600
mostly from
Southern and Eastern Europe.
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00:13:37,630 --> 00:13:42,400
They spoke unfamiliar tongues,
followed other customs,
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00:13:42,430 --> 00:13:46,340
worshipped God
in different ways.
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00:13:46,360 --> 00:13:51,170
Their sheer numbers
inspired a backlash.
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00:13:51,200 --> 00:13:55,140
Man: We Americans must realize
that the altruistic ideals
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00:13:55,160 --> 00:13:57,470
which have controlled
our social development
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00:13:57,500 --> 00:13:59,240
during the past century,
245
00:13:59,260 --> 00:14:01,140
and the maudlin sentimentalism
246
00:14:01,160 --> 00:14:04,370
that has made America
"an asylum for the oppressed"
247
00:14:04,400 --> 00:14:08,740
are sweeping the nation
toward a racial abyss.
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00:14:08,760 --> 00:14:10,870
This generation must
completely repudiate
249
00:14:10,900 --> 00:14:14,000
the proud boasts of our fathers
that they acknowledged
250
00:14:14,030 --> 00:14:17,100
no distinction in
"race, creed, or color"
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00:14:17,130 --> 00:14:19,270
or else turn the page of history
252
00:14:19,300 --> 00:14:23,700
and write: "FINIS AMERICAE."
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00:14:23,730 --> 00:14:25,260
Madison Grant.
254
00:14:27,900 --> 00:14:30,370
Daniel Okrent: They don't
speak our language.
255
00:14:30,400 --> 00:14:32,540
They don't really look like us.
256
00:14:32,560 --> 00:14:34,440
They don't have
the educations that we have.
257
00:14:34,460 --> 00:14:36,570
And so, you find
somebody like Henry Adams
258
00:14:36,600 --> 00:14:38,100
walking across Boston Common
259
00:14:38,130 --> 00:14:41,700
and he describes in
his autobiography,
260
00:14:41,730 --> 00:14:46,140
he sees this creature,
this furtive Yitzhak or Yakov
261
00:14:46,160 --> 00:14:49,470
reeking of the ghettos,
snarling in a guttural Yiddish.
262
00:14:49,500 --> 00:14:53,360
What was this thing?
It was utterly alien.
263
00:14:55,660 --> 00:14:58,340
Narrator: Among the new
arrivals from Eastern Europe
264
00:14:58,360 --> 00:15:00,600
were more than two million Jews,
265
00:15:00,630 --> 00:15:02,440
most fleeing poverty,
266
00:15:02,460 --> 00:15:06,000
and many escaping
antisemitic violence.
267
00:15:07,130 --> 00:15:10,940
Some Jews, who had already been
in America for generations,
268
00:15:10,960 --> 00:15:13,600
were also wary of the newcomers.
269
00:15:13,630 --> 00:15:18,070
"We are Americans and they
are not," one rabbi said.
270
00:15:18,100 --> 00:15:21,960
"They gnaw the bones
of past centuries."
271
00:15:24,530 --> 00:15:27,170
By 1910, New York
would be home to
272
00:15:27,200 --> 00:15:29,270
more than a million Jews,
273
00:15:29,300 --> 00:15:32,840
more than a quarter
of the city's population,
274
00:15:32,860 --> 00:15:36,060
far more than
any other city on earth.
275
00:15:37,960 --> 00:15:39,900
Hayes: The anxieties
about urbanization,
276
00:15:39,930 --> 00:15:44,800
about unlettered, untutored,
relatively uneducated peoples
277
00:15:44,830 --> 00:15:47,200
coming in in large numbers,
278
00:15:47,230 --> 00:15:50,440
the sense that disease
was a problem,
279
00:15:50,460 --> 00:15:55,100
all of these worries were
amalgamated into a belief
280
00:15:55,130 --> 00:15:57,340
that immigrants
cause these problems,
281
00:15:57,360 --> 00:16:01,170
and thus immigration
should be held down.
282
00:16:01,200 --> 00:16:04,040
Narrator: Many white Protestant
Americans came to fear
283
00:16:04,060 --> 00:16:07,200
they were about to be
outnumbered and outbred
284
00:16:07,230 --> 00:16:09,670
by the newcomers
and their offspring...
285
00:16:09,700 --> 00:16:12,060
that they were being replaced.
286
00:16:13,730 --> 00:16:16,540
They embraced a new
pseudo-science born in Britain
287
00:16:16,560 --> 00:16:21,270
called eugenics, which falsely
claimed with no evidence
288
00:16:21,300 --> 00:16:24,200
that everything from
poverty to prostitution,
289
00:16:24,230 --> 00:16:28,000
disabilities to what
they called feeble-mindedness
290
00:16:28,030 --> 00:16:31,670
could be eliminated if
the individuals they dismissed
291
00:16:31,700 --> 00:16:33,300
as "socially defective"
292
00:16:33,330 --> 00:16:35,900
could be stopped
from reproducing.
293
00:16:39,930 --> 00:16:42,200
Man: I wish very much
that the wrong people
294
00:16:42,230 --> 00:16:45,500
could be prevented entirely
from breeding;
295
00:16:45,530 --> 00:16:47,840
and when the evil nature
of these people
296
00:16:47,860 --> 00:16:51,300
is sufficiently flagrant,
this should be done.
297
00:16:52,700 --> 00:16:54,370
Criminals should be sterilized,
298
00:16:54,400 --> 00:16:56,770
and feeble-minded persons
forbidden to leave
299
00:16:56,800 --> 00:16:58,500
offspring behind them.
300
00:16:59,730 --> 00:17:01,030
Theodore Roosevelt.
301
00:17:03,530 --> 00:17:06,570
Irvin Painter: The idea
was that the bad people
302
00:17:06,600 --> 00:17:09,070
have to stop reproducing
303
00:17:09,100 --> 00:17:13,770
and the good people
need to reproduce more.
304
00:17:13,800 --> 00:17:19,570
Negative eugenics says
sterilize the wrong people,
305
00:17:19,600 --> 00:17:25,440
snuff them out,
and that's the eugenics
306
00:17:25,460 --> 00:17:27,660
that the Nazis would pick up on.
307
00:17:28,930 --> 00:17:32,070
Narrator: Colleges and
universities taught eugenics.
308
00:17:32,100 --> 00:17:35,270
Medical societies confirmed it.
309
00:17:35,300 --> 00:17:37,370
Clergymen preached it.
310
00:17:37,400 --> 00:17:41,440
John D. Rockefeller
and Andrew Carnegie funded it.
311
00:17:41,460 --> 00:17:45,770
And some of the most prominent
people in America championed it...
312
00:17:45,800 --> 00:17:49,900
Margaret Sanger,
Alexander Graham Bell,
313
00:17:49,930 --> 00:17:53,340
even Helen Keller.
314
00:17:53,360 --> 00:17:54,770
Woman as Keller: It seems to me that
315
00:17:54,800 --> 00:17:56,800
the simplest, wisest thing to do
316
00:17:56,830 --> 00:17:58,840
would be to submit cases
like that of
317
00:17:58,860 --> 00:18:03,900
the malformed idiot baby to
a jury of expert physicians.
318
00:18:05,500 --> 00:18:07,540
If the evidence
were presented openly
319
00:18:07,560 --> 00:18:10,800
and the decisions made public
before the death of the child,
320
00:18:10,830 --> 00:18:14,670
there would be little danger
of mistakes or abuses.
321
00:18:14,700 --> 00:18:18,340
We must decide between
a fine humanity
322
00:18:18,360 --> 00:18:20,730
and a cowardly sentimentalism.
323
00:18:23,360 --> 00:18:25,340
Narrator: 33 of the 48 states
324
00:18:25,360 --> 00:18:28,000
would eventually enact
eugenics laws
325
00:18:28,030 --> 00:18:32,200
mandating the forced
sterilization of wards of the state
326
00:18:32,230 --> 00:18:35,970
deemed physically or
mentally "unfit"...
327
00:18:36,000 --> 00:18:40,970
People in prisons,
hospitals, and asylums.
328
00:18:41,000 --> 00:18:42,870
More than 60,000 Americans
329
00:18:42,900 --> 00:18:45,670
would be sterilized
without their consent
330
00:18:45,700 --> 00:18:47,940
before the last
of these statutes was
331
00:18:47,960 --> 00:18:52,200
removed from the books in 2014.
332
00:18:54,600 --> 00:18:58,200
Eugenics also provided
a racist rationale
333
00:18:58,230 --> 00:19:01,470
for those convinced
immigration needed to be
334
00:19:01,500 --> 00:19:03,430
drastically curtailed.
335
00:19:04,730 --> 00:19:07,100
Man as Grant: The man of the
old stock is being crowded out
336
00:19:07,130 --> 00:19:10,040
of many country districts
by these foreigners
337
00:19:10,060 --> 00:19:12,900
just as he is today being
literally driven off the streets
338
00:19:12,930 --> 00:19:16,960
of New York City by
the swarms of Polish Jews.
339
00:19:18,400 --> 00:19:21,800
These immigrants adopt
the language of the American,
340
00:19:21,830 --> 00:19:25,140
they wear his clothes,
they steal his name,
341
00:19:25,160 --> 00:19:28,200
and they are beginning
to take his women,
342
00:19:28,230 --> 00:19:32,940
but they seldom adopt his
religion or understand his ideals.
343
00:19:32,960 --> 00:19:35,670
And while he is being
elbowed out of his own home,
344
00:19:35,700 --> 00:19:37,770
the American looks calmly abroad
345
00:19:37,800 --> 00:19:41,070
and urges on others
the suicidal ethics
346
00:19:41,100 --> 00:19:44,100
which are exterminating
his own race.
347
00:19:46,060 --> 00:19:48,740
Madison Grant.
348
00:19:48,760 --> 00:19:50,500
Narrator: Madison Grant was a
349
00:19:50,530 --> 00:19:52,670
widely-admired conservationist...
350
00:19:52,700 --> 00:19:56,570
a friend of presidents,
a founder of the Bronx Zoo,
351
00:19:56,600 --> 00:20:00,400
responsible in part for saving
the California Redwoods
352
00:20:00,430 --> 00:20:02,470
and preserving the buffalo,
353
00:20:02,500 --> 00:20:06,400
and instrumental in creating
Glacier, Denali,
354
00:20:06,430 --> 00:20:08,930
and Everglades National Parks.
355
00:20:10,730 --> 00:20:13,100
Okrent: And he was also
a violent antisemite
356
00:20:13,130 --> 00:20:15,470
and a violent anti-Italian,
357
00:20:15,500 --> 00:20:18,540
and he really was horrified
by what he saw happening
358
00:20:18,560 --> 00:20:20,400
on the streets of New York.
359
00:20:20,430 --> 00:20:22,800
So, he publishes a book called
"The Passing of the Great Race,"
360
00:20:22,830 --> 00:20:25,300
in which he puts forward
the idea that
361
00:20:25,330 --> 00:20:29,500
nationalities have
eugenic characteristics.
362
00:20:29,530 --> 00:20:31,440
He fills it with
all sorts of interesting
363
00:20:31,460 --> 00:20:33,600
historical, so-called data,
364
00:20:33,630 --> 00:20:36,940
which is mostly crazy,
but it's very persuasive
365
00:20:36,960 --> 00:20:40,370
and it does give
the anti-immigration movement,
366
00:20:40,400 --> 00:20:42,540
it suddenly gives them science.
367
00:20:42,560 --> 00:20:44,900
"Science says if we let them in,
368
00:20:44,930 --> 00:20:49,070
then they're going to destroy
the American gene pool."
369
00:20:49,100 --> 00:20:50,840
Narrator: For Grant
and many others,
370
00:20:50,860 --> 00:20:55,100
Jews were a distinct race,
not considered white,
371
00:20:55,130 --> 00:20:58,560
dismissed as
"uncouth Asiatics."
372
00:21:00,730 --> 00:21:03,200
Grant's supposedly
"scientific" claims about
373
00:21:03,230 --> 00:21:06,770
a rigid hierarchy of races
was ludicrous...
374
00:21:06,800 --> 00:21:11,200
the biological notion of
race itself is a fiction...
375
00:21:11,230 --> 00:21:14,800
but his ideas caught the
imagination of those Americans
376
00:21:14,830 --> 00:21:17,560
already opposed to immigration.
377
00:21:19,300 --> 00:21:22,800
Hayes: People tended to
increasingly view nationalities
378
00:21:22,830 --> 00:21:26,140
as if they were
breeds or species.
379
00:21:26,160 --> 00:21:28,770
To liken nationalities to breeds
380
00:21:28,800 --> 00:21:32,270
was a fundamental
categorical mistake.
381
00:21:32,300 --> 00:21:34,570
The biological pool
of human beings
382
00:21:34,600 --> 00:21:37,670
between Germans and French,
Dutch and English
383
00:21:37,700 --> 00:21:40,740
is nothing like the biological
or genetic pool
384
00:21:40,760 --> 00:21:43,660
between poodles
and German shepherds.
385
00:21:45,200 --> 00:21:47,800
Narrator: American xenophobia
deepened when the U.S.
386
00:21:47,830 --> 00:21:51,030
entered the Great War in 1917.
387
00:21:53,330 --> 00:21:57,570
More than 116,000
American servicemen would die
388
00:21:57,600 --> 00:22:00,730
in a war that was supposed
to end all wars...
389
00:22:02,730 --> 00:22:04,700
and did nothing of the kind.
390
00:22:07,700 --> 00:22:10,600
After the War,
the United States was convulsed
391
00:22:10,630 --> 00:22:14,540
by white-on-black violence
in dozens of cities,
392
00:22:14,560 --> 00:22:19,240
anarchist bombings, bloody
strikes, and a "Red Scare"
393
00:22:19,260 --> 00:22:24,170
that saw the arrests of 10,000
suspected revolutionaries,
394
00:22:24,200 --> 00:22:29,260
many of them immigrants,
some of them Jewish.
395
00:22:30,900 --> 00:22:35,000
Irvin Painter: Anti-immigrant
sentiment and the Red Scare
396
00:22:35,030 --> 00:22:38,000
came together, so,
by the early Twenties,
397
00:22:38,030 --> 00:22:44,570
you have this boiling notion
that immigrants are stupid
398
00:22:44,600 --> 00:22:47,640
and immigrants are bolshevists
399
00:22:47,660 --> 00:22:52,640
and immigrants are
threatening America.
400
00:22:52,660 --> 00:22:55,400
Hayes: And this justified
increasingly in the minds of
401
00:22:55,430 --> 00:22:58,640
people like Madison Grant
and Henry Cabot Lodge,
402
00:22:58,660 --> 00:23:01,640
the senator from Massachusetts,
who argued that
403
00:23:01,660 --> 00:23:05,240
the way to master the problems
was to restrict the inflow
404
00:23:05,260 --> 00:23:08,900
of these
destabilizing populations.
405
00:23:08,930 --> 00:23:11,700
Narrator: Antisemitism intensified.
406
00:23:11,730 --> 00:23:15,240
The automobile pioneer
Henry Ford blamed Jews
407
00:23:15,260 --> 00:23:18,270
for everything from
Lincoln's assassination
408
00:23:18,300 --> 00:23:20,440
to the change he thought
he detected
409
00:23:20,460 --> 00:23:24,100
in the flavor of
his favorite candy bar.
410
00:23:24,130 --> 00:23:26,870
He bought himself
a weekly newspaper,
411
00:23:26,900 --> 00:23:29,800
the "Dearborn Independent,"
and used it to spread
412
00:23:29,830 --> 00:23:32,840
his antisemitic propaganda.
413
00:23:32,860 --> 00:23:35,400
In a series of
91 weekly articles
414
00:23:35,430 --> 00:23:38,140
called "The International Jew,"
415
00:23:38,160 --> 00:23:42,000
he promoted "The Protocols
of the Elders of Zion,"
416
00:23:42,030 --> 00:23:44,100
a Russian hoax
that claimed there was
417
00:23:44,130 --> 00:23:48,940
a global Jewish conspiracy
to take over the world.
418
00:23:48,960 --> 00:23:51,240
The Bolshevik Revolution
in Russia
419
00:23:51,260 --> 00:23:54,160
had only seemed
to confirm those fears.
420
00:23:56,230 --> 00:23:59,570
The articles were eventually
reprinted in 4 volumes
421
00:23:59,600 --> 00:24:05,260
and translated into 9 languages,
including German.
422
00:24:07,560 --> 00:24:11,900
Ford's newspaper continued
printing its antisemitic bile
423
00:24:11,930 --> 00:24:15,530
and had the second-highest
circulation in the country.
424
00:24:17,560 --> 00:24:22,040
Jewish-Americans were already
denied membership in private clubs,
425
00:24:22,060 --> 00:24:25,870
not hired by banks
or prestigious law firms.
426
00:24:25,900 --> 00:24:27,800
"Restrictive covenants"
kept them out of
427
00:24:27,830 --> 00:24:30,340
desirable neighborhoods.
428
00:24:30,360 --> 00:24:33,840
Strict quotas limited
the number of Jewish students
429
00:24:33,860 --> 00:24:35,940
enrolled in universities
430
00:24:35,960 --> 00:24:37,800
and barred all but a handful of
431
00:24:37,830 --> 00:24:40,700
Jewish teachers
from their faculties.
432
00:24:42,130 --> 00:24:46,530
Hotels advertised
rooms only for "Gentiles."
433
00:24:49,060 --> 00:24:51,600
Greene: One of the most,
I think, maddening things
434
00:24:51,630 --> 00:24:54,600
about antisemitism
is an antisemite
435
00:24:54,630 --> 00:24:56,370
will hold a contradictory belief
436
00:24:56,400 --> 00:24:58,370
and it won't bother
the antisemite, right?
437
00:24:58,400 --> 00:25:02,340
So, "Jews are capitalists,"
"Jews are Communists."
438
00:25:02,360 --> 00:25:05,540
Or, "Jewish men are
weak and effeminate,"
439
00:25:05,560 --> 00:25:08,570
or "Jewish men are
a sexual threat to...
440
00:25:08,600 --> 00:25:10,400
To non-Jewish women."
441
00:25:10,430 --> 00:25:12,870
These are contradictory beliefs
that are illogical,
442
00:25:12,900 --> 00:25:15,040
that don't bother antisemites.
443
00:25:15,060 --> 00:25:19,300
So, how do you fight back
against that with logic?
444
00:25:19,330 --> 00:25:20,640
Lipstadt: What are
the stereotypes
445
00:25:20,660 --> 00:25:23,370
associated with antisemitism?
446
00:25:23,400 --> 00:25:28,370
Something to do with money,
something to do with smarts,
447
00:25:28,400 --> 00:25:31,800
but not positive
or affirmatively,
448
00:25:31,830 --> 00:25:36,040
conniving and a small cabal.
449
00:25:36,060 --> 00:25:37,540
Jews are very few in number,
450
00:25:37,560 --> 00:25:40,100
but they know how
to control things.
451
00:25:40,130 --> 00:25:44,130
They are the puppet masters,
controlling the puppets.
452
00:25:46,760 --> 00:25:49,740
Narrator: In the early 1920s,
support grew steadily
453
00:25:49,760 --> 00:25:52,000
for congressional legislation
454
00:25:52,030 --> 00:25:54,540
to permanently
restrict immigration,
455
00:25:54,560 --> 00:25:58,040
designed to return to
the ethnic mix of America
456
00:25:58,060 --> 00:26:00,900
as it had been before
the waves of newcomers
457
00:26:00,930 --> 00:26:03,230
from Southern
and Eastern Europe.
458
00:26:04,860 --> 00:26:09,100
A resurgent Ku Klux Klan,
now several million strong,
459
00:26:09,130 --> 00:26:11,470
as anti-Catholic and antisemitic
460
00:26:11,500 --> 00:26:13,540
as it was anti-Black,
461
00:26:13,560 --> 00:26:16,370
favored restricting immigration.
462
00:26:16,400 --> 00:26:19,970
So did many Protestant clergymen
and union leaders
463
00:26:20,000 --> 00:26:23,670
convinced immigrants
drove wages down.
464
00:26:23,700 --> 00:26:26,840
President Calvin Coolidge
supported it, too.
465
00:26:26,860 --> 00:26:30,600
"America must be
kept American," he said.
466
00:26:32,560 --> 00:26:34,500
Jewish and Catholic
organizations
467
00:26:34,530 --> 00:26:36,660
were adamantly opposed.
468
00:26:38,630 --> 00:26:42,400
A small band of congressmen...
Mostly from urban districts,
469
00:26:42,430 --> 00:26:46,340
often immigrants themselves or
the children of immigrants...
470
00:26:46,360 --> 00:26:51,470
tried to speak for the new
Americans they represented.
471
00:26:51,500 --> 00:26:54,600
Man: I knew them.
I knew the Irish and the Jews
472
00:26:54,630 --> 00:26:57,100
and the Italians and the Greeks.
473
00:26:57,130 --> 00:26:59,470
I knew the women
in the Brooklyn tenements
474
00:26:59,500 --> 00:27:01,970
who scrubbed their floors
again and again
475
00:27:02,000 --> 00:27:05,800
in the helpless fight
against squalor.
476
00:27:05,830 --> 00:27:08,070
I knew their richness
and their laughter
477
00:27:08,100 --> 00:27:09,970
and the disappointing
heartbreak of
478
00:27:10,000 --> 00:27:13,130
the struggle in America
to adjust.
479
00:27:14,700 --> 00:27:17,170
I knew also their pride,
480
00:27:17,200 --> 00:27:19,840
the unfulfilled dream
of independence
481
00:27:19,860 --> 00:27:22,770
that had first
brought them here.
482
00:27:22,800 --> 00:27:26,000
Emanuel Celler.
483
00:27:26,030 --> 00:27:28,840
Narrator: Freshman Congressman
Emanuel Celler
484
00:27:28,860 --> 00:27:31,540
was a third-generation
Jewish-American,
485
00:27:31,560 --> 00:27:34,270
who represented
Brooklyn's 10th District.
486
00:27:34,300 --> 00:27:38,170
It was one of the most
ethnically diverse in the nation,
487
00:27:38,200 --> 00:27:40,670
and he liked to tell
his constituents that
488
00:27:40,700 --> 00:27:44,170
his Catholic grandfather had
jumped into New York Harbor
489
00:27:44,200 --> 00:27:47,070
to save his Jewish grandmother
from drowning
490
00:27:47,100 --> 00:27:50,040
after the boat they had both
taken from Germany
491
00:27:50,060 --> 00:27:53,340
began to sink.
492
00:27:53,360 --> 00:27:57,070
When Celler came to Washington
in the winter of 1923,
493
00:27:57,100 --> 00:27:59,670
he hurled himself
into the struggle against
494
00:27:59,700 --> 00:28:02,270
the latest
anti-immigration bill,
495
00:28:02,300 --> 00:28:06,340
even before he was
able to hire a staff.
496
00:28:06,360 --> 00:28:09,370
He pored over books
in the Library of Congress
497
00:28:09,400 --> 00:28:14,240
and brought in scientists
to testify against eugenics.
498
00:28:14,260 --> 00:28:17,970
The work of Madison Grant
and his fellow eugenicists,
499
00:28:18,000 --> 00:28:21,440
Celler said, was all
"bunk and balderdash."
500
00:28:21,460 --> 00:28:26,440
"There is no such thing as
superior and inferior races.
501
00:28:26,460 --> 00:28:29,360
One set of people is
as good as another."
502
00:28:31,660 --> 00:28:33,900
Man as Celler: This is indeed
a new doctrine
503
00:28:33,930 --> 00:28:38,570
for a democratic America,
founded on the declaration that
504
00:28:38,600 --> 00:28:40,940
all men are created equal,
505
00:28:40,960 --> 00:28:45,240
a slap in the face to our
immigrants who have assimilated
506
00:28:45,260 --> 00:28:50,100
and who have become bone of
our bone, flesh of our flesh.
507
00:28:52,630 --> 00:28:55,040
Narrator: But nothing
Celler or his allies said
508
00:28:55,060 --> 00:28:57,770
could halt the rush
toward passage.
509
00:28:57,800 --> 00:29:00,540
The new law,
the Johnson-Reed Act,
510
00:29:00,560 --> 00:29:05,940
passed by overwhelming margins
in both the House and Senate.
511
00:29:05,960 --> 00:29:11,130
On May 26, 1924,
Coolidge signed it into law.
512
00:29:12,960 --> 00:29:15,740
It drastically limited
the total number of immigrants
513
00:29:15,760 --> 00:29:18,040
admitted to the United States,
514
00:29:18,060 --> 00:29:20,740
and it allotted quotas
to each country,
515
00:29:20,760 --> 00:29:23,370
overwhelmingly favoring
immigrants from
516
00:29:23,400 --> 00:29:26,740
Northern European countries.
517
00:29:26,760 --> 00:29:29,370
Erbelding: The Johnson-Reed
Immigration Act of 1924
518
00:29:29,400 --> 00:29:31,570
is really meant to define
who is going to be
519
00:29:31,600 --> 00:29:33,570
an American in the future.
520
00:29:33,600 --> 00:29:37,940
And 85% of it is for people
who are born in countries
521
00:29:37,960 --> 00:29:41,140
that they decide in 1924
are white Protestant countries
522
00:29:41,160 --> 00:29:44,700
that will send white Protestant
immigrants to the United States.
523
00:29:45,830 --> 00:29:49,000
Narrator: The act did not limit
immigrants from the Americas...
524
00:29:49,030 --> 00:29:52,000
Who were needed for farm labor...
525
00:29:52,030 --> 00:29:56,140
but it now barred all Asians,
not just the Chinese.
526
00:29:56,160 --> 00:29:59,640
One Japanese newspaper
labeled the law's passage
527
00:29:59,660 --> 00:30:02,270
"the greatest
insult in our history,"
528
00:30:02,300 --> 00:30:04,700
and a prominent
nationalist declared
529
00:30:04,730 --> 00:30:06,870
it made "an eventual collision
530
00:30:06,900 --> 00:30:10,360
between Japan
and America... inevitable."
531
00:30:11,960 --> 00:30:15,500
For the first time, before
embarking for the United States,
532
00:30:15,530 --> 00:30:18,370
potential immigrants
would have to obtain a visa
533
00:30:18,400 --> 00:30:21,900
from American consulates
in their countries,
534
00:30:21,930 --> 00:30:24,070
giving State Department
bureaucrats
535
00:30:24,100 --> 00:30:26,300
unprecedented control
536
00:30:26,330 --> 00:30:31,240
over who was and who was not
worthy of admission.
537
00:30:31,260 --> 00:30:35,340
The new act also made
no exception for refugees...
538
00:30:35,360 --> 00:30:39,930
those fleeing disaster,
war, or persecution.
539
00:30:41,860 --> 00:30:47,700
In 1921, 805,000 immigrants
had come to America.
540
00:30:47,730 --> 00:30:51,270
In 1925, under the new
quota system,
541
00:30:51,300 --> 00:30:55,560
just under 150,000
were allowed in.
542
00:30:57,060 --> 00:31:00,000
There was no explicit
quota for Jews,
543
00:31:00,030 --> 00:31:03,400
and Jews were not
specifically named in the law.
544
00:31:03,430 --> 00:31:05,240
But it was not an accident that
545
00:31:05,260 --> 00:31:08,070
most recent Jewish immigrants
had come from
546
00:31:08,100 --> 00:31:14,170
the Eastern European countries
that now had miniscule quotas.
547
00:31:14,200 --> 00:31:17,940
Almost 120,000 Jews
had started new lives
548
00:31:17,960 --> 00:31:22,240
in the United States in 1921.
549
00:31:22,260 --> 00:31:26,830
5 years later, only
10,000 were able to do so.
550
00:31:28,430 --> 00:31:31,270
"America has closed
the doors just in time
551
00:31:31,300 --> 00:31:33,440
"to prevent our
Nordic population
552
00:31:33,460 --> 00:31:36,370
from being overrun
by the lower races,"
553
00:31:36,400 --> 00:31:38,440
said Madison Grant.
554
00:31:38,460 --> 00:31:42,070
"The law's passage was one of
the greatest steps forward
555
00:31:42,100 --> 00:31:44,660
in the history
of this country."
556
00:31:46,400 --> 00:31:48,540
Man as Celler: To say that
a handful of men
557
00:31:48,560 --> 00:31:53,700
forced through the Immigration
Act of 1924 is false.
558
00:31:53,730 --> 00:31:58,100
The United States was drawing
her skirts about her in fear
559
00:31:58,130 --> 00:32:02,640
lest she be contaminated
by the alien.
560
00:32:02,660 --> 00:32:05,270
The temper of the Congress,
I discovered,
561
00:32:05,300 --> 00:32:07,560
is the temper of the country.
562
00:32:08,700 --> 00:32:10,900
Emanuel Celler.
563
00:32:17,830 --> 00:32:22,170
Narrator: In 1924, in a prison
cell in Landsberg, Bavaria,
564
00:32:22,200 --> 00:32:27,000
Adolf Hitler, the head of the National
Socialist German Workers Party...
565
00:32:27,030 --> 00:32:32,170
the Nazis... learned of the new
American immigration law.
566
00:32:32,200 --> 00:32:34,600
He had been imprisoned
for high treason
567
00:32:34,630 --> 00:32:37,140
after leading a failed coup.
568
00:32:37,160 --> 00:32:40,600
He was pleased that the
United States felt itself to be
569
00:32:40,630 --> 00:32:43,840
what he called
a "Nordic-Germanic state,"
570
00:32:43,860 --> 00:32:46,800
and had acted to preserve
its purity
571
00:32:46,830 --> 00:32:50,700
by "excluding certain races."
572
00:32:50,730 --> 00:32:54,000
Those ideas mirrored
Hitler's own beliefs,
573
00:32:54,030 --> 00:32:56,340
and he was willing
to exploit the chaos
574
00:32:56,360 --> 00:33:00,040
that gripped Germany after
its defeat in the Great War
575
00:33:00,060 --> 00:33:02,340
to promote them.
576
00:33:02,360 --> 00:33:05,100
At Versailles in 1919,
577
00:33:05,130 --> 00:33:08,500
the victorious Allies
had imposed on the Germans
578
00:33:08,530 --> 00:33:12,970
a treaty that required them to
give up 10% of their territory
579
00:33:13,000 --> 00:33:15,570
as well as their colonies
in Africa,
580
00:33:15,600 --> 00:33:18,040
pay massive reparations,
581
00:33:18,060 --> 00:33:20,900
and disarm completely.
582
00:33:20,930 --> 00:33:24,400
Hitler, who had been an
obscure army dispatch messenger
583
00:33:24,430 --> 00:33:25,940
when the war ended,
584
00:33:25,960 --> 00:33:28,740
was among those
who convinced themselves
585
00:33:28,760 --> 00:33:32,400
Germany had not been
defeated on the battlefield,
586
00:33:32,430 --> 00:33:34,770
that she had been
"stabbed in the back"
587
00:33:34,800 --> 00:33:37,560
by socialists and Jews.
588
00:33:39,260 --> 00:33:42,370
While behind bars,
Hitler worked on a book
589
00:33:42,400 --> 00:33:45,900
entitled "Mein Kampf"...
"My Struggle."
590
00:33:45,930 --> 00:33:49,670
History, he argued, was
an endless racial conflict
591
00:33:49,700 --> 00:33:53,240
in which the superior
so-called "Aryan" race
592
00:33:53,260 --> 00:33:57,570
was being undermined by Jews.
593
00:33:57,600 --> 00:34:00,140
Hayes: The most dangerous
of other nationalities,
594
00:34:00,160 --> 00:34:03,200
said the Nazis, were the Jews.
595
00:34:03,230 --> 00:34:05,300
And the reason they were
was not only inherited,
596
00:34:05,330 --> 00:34:06,870
that is, there had been
a Christian teaching
597
00:34:06,900 --> 00:34:09,440
that these people are
corrupting and so forth.
598
00:34:09,460 --> 00:34:11,370
The reason is also
they were the people
599
00:34:11,400 --> 00:34:15,370
who brought the notion of
conscience, the golden rule,
600
00:34:15,400 --> 00:34:20,840
fair play, international
cooperation into the world.
601
00:34:20,860 --> 00:34:22,400
Man: What's particular
about the thing that
602
00:34:22,430 --> 00:34:24,600
Hitler puts together is to say,
603
00:34:24,630 --> 00:34:28,840
"The Jews are responsible
for every global idea,
604
00:34:28,860 --> 00:34:31,300
"for every universal idea.
605
00:34:31,330 --> 00:34:34,100
"Anything which allows us
to see each other as people,
606
00:34:34,130 --> 00:34:38,640
rather than as members
of a race, that's the Jews."
607
00:34:38,660 --> 00:34:42,970
Narrator: Germany's 523,000
Jews constituted less than
608
00:34:43,000 --> 00:34:46,300
1% of
their country's population.
609
00:34:46,330 --> 00:34:51,070
But 100,000 of them had fought
during the Great War.
610
00:34:51,100 --> 00:34:54,840
12,000 had died.
611
00:34:54,860 --> 00:34:58,100
They had overcome
centuries of persecution
612
00:34:58,130 --> 00:35:01,540
to become merchants,
manufacturers, musicians,
613
00:35:01,560 --> 00:35:04,370
lawyers, writers, scientists,
614
00:35:04,400 --> 00:35:07,700
artists, government officials,
615
00:35:07,730 --> 00:35:10,370
and were loyal Germans.
616
00:35:10,400 --> 00:35:13,770
Stern: We were
absolutely integrated
617
00:35:13,800 --> 00:35:18,370
into this town of about
65,000 inhabitants
618
00:35:18,400 --> 00:35:23,040
and felt completely at home.
619
00:35:23,060 --> 00:35:24,300
Narrator: The city of Hildesheim,
620
00:35:24,330 --> 00:35:25,770
in northern Germany,
621
00:35:25,800 --> 00:35:29,270
was home to some
1,000 Jewish families.
622
00:35:29,300 --> 00:35:32,300
Julius Stern owned a small shop.
623
00:35:32,330 --> 00:35:34,370
His wife Hedwig
was the daughter of
624
00:35:34,400 --> 00:35:36,200
a well-to-do-merchant.
625
00:35:36,230 --> 00:35:38,040
They had 3 children.
626
00:35:38,060 --> 00:35:44,100
Their oldest was Gunther,
born in 1922.
627
00:35:44,130 --> 00:35:48,500
Stern: My mother was
a absolute luminous woman.
628
00:35:48,530 --> 00:35:53,640
And she could write
German verses for all occasions
629
00:35:53,660 --> 00:35:59,700
and was praised as the
"Poet Laureate" of our family.
630
00:35:59,730 --> 00:36:03,000
I had a neighbor boy
who was my best friend
631
00:36:03,030 --> 00:36:07,740
on the slim basis that both of
our names were Gunther.
632
00:36:07,760 --> 00:36:12,900
His family was not all that
conservative as Protestants.
633
00:36:12,930 --> 00:36:17,160
And we were
not that observant as Jews.
634
00:36:19,230 --> 00:36:23,100
Narrator: But to Hitler, all
Jews were clannish, stateless,
635
00:36:23,130 --> 00:36:26,100
subhuman "leeches"
who drained the strength
636
00:36:26,130 --> 00:36:29,000
of every country
in which they lived.
637
00:36:29,030 --> 00:36:31,900
From his cell, he promised
to one day make Germany
638
00:36:31,930 --> 00:36:34,440
free of them... and, by so doing,
639
00:36:34,460 --> 00:36:36,930
restore Germany's greatness.
640
00:36:38,230 --> 00:36:40,100
Victory in that struggle,
he said,
641
00:36:40,130 --> 00:36:43,940
demanded military might,
"Aryan fertility,"
642
00:36:43,960 --> 00:36:46,240
and racial purity.
643
00:36:46,260 --> 00:36:49,770
He would seek to destroy
the power of what he believed
644
00:36:49,800 --> 00:36:55,300
was a worldwide conspiracy...
"International Jewry."
645
00:36:55,330 --> 00:36:59,370
At the same time, he dreamed of
reclaiming German territories
646
00:36:59,400 --> 00:37:02,970
and waging a war
against the Soviet Union
647
00:37:03,000 --> 00:37:06,240
that would simultaneously
destroy what he called
648
00:37:06,260 --> 00:37:07,970
"Jewish Bolshevism"
649
00:37:08,000 --> 00:37:12,070
and win for Germany
the "Lebensraum"... Living Space...
650
00:37:12,100 --> 00:37:14,900
To which he believed
it was entitled.
651
00:37:16,660 --> 00:37:20,070
Hayes: Hitler saw the expansion
of Germany into Eastern Europe
652
00:37:20,100 --> 00:37:25,470
as foreshadowed by what
we had done in North America,
653
00:37:25,500 --> 00:37:28,340
the expansion of the white
people of the United States
654
00:37:28,360 --> 00:37:32,100
across the continent
from east to west,
655
00:37:32,130 --> 00:37:35,700
brushing aside the people
who were already here
656
00:37:35,730 --> 00:37:39,260
and confining them
to reservations.
657
00:37:40,830 --> 00:37:43,500
Narrator: "The immense inner
strength" of the United States,
658
00:37:43,530 --> 00:37:47,670
Hitler said, came from
the ruthless but necessary act
659
00:37:47,700 --> 00:37:50,370
of murdering native people
660
00:37:50,400 --> 00:37:54,670
and herding the rest
into "cages."
661
00:37:54,700 --> 00:37:56,600
Snyder: He saw us
as the way that
662
00:37:56,630 --> 00:38:00,040
racial superiority
is supposed to work.
663
00:38:00,060 --> 00:38:03,600
The higher races
conquer the territory.
664
00:38:03,630 --> 00:38:06,240
So, if anything,
the attitude before the war
665
00:38:06,260 --> 00:38:09,670
was an attitude of
a certain admiration.
666
00:38:09,700 --> 00:38:12,240
Narrator: Hitler hoped that
just as the Americans
667
00:38:12,260 --> 00:38:14,400
had conquered "the Wild West,"
668
00:38:14,430 --> 00:38:17,740
his countrymen would conquer
"the Wild East"...
669
00:38:17,760 --> 00:38:20,670
Eastern Europe
and the Soviet Union.
670
00:38:20,700 --> 00:38:24,460
"Our Mississippi,"
he said, "must be the Volga."
671
00:38:26,030 --> 00:38:27,840
Germans would sweep aside
those who
672
00:38:27,860 --> 00:38:30,900
inconveniently occupied
those lands...
673
00:38:30,930 --> 00:38:35,470
Poles and other Slavs,
as well as Jews...
674
00:38:35,500 --> 00:38:38,800
much as Native Americans
had been swept aside.
675
00:38:42,730 --> 00:38:44,540
When Hitler was
released from prison
676
00:38:44,560 --> 00:38:46,900
in December of 1924,
677
00:38:46,930 --> 00:38:49,900
the fledgling Weimar Republic
that had been born
678
00:38:49,930 --> 00:38:51,840
at the end of the Great War
679
00:38:51,860 --> 00:38:54,330
was finally coming into its own.
680
00:38:55,600 --> 00:38:58,740
Berlin, its capital
and largest city,
681
00:38:58,760 --> 00:39:01,800
home to 1/3 of Germany's Jews,
682
00:39:01,830 --> 00:39:04,600
had become
the intellectual and creative
683
00:39:04,630 --> 00:39:07,700
center of Europe...
684
00:39:07,730 --> 00:39:12,470
Expressionism on canvas
and on the movie screen,
685
00:39:12,500 --> 00:39:17,240
Bauhaus architecture
and American jazz,
686
00:39:17,260 --> 00:39:21,470
scientific advancement
and avant-garde music,
687
00:39:21,500 --> 00:39:26,230
sexual freedom
and leftist politics.
688
00:39:28,230 --> 00:39:32,300
Berlin represented
everything Hitler hated
689
00:39:32,330 --> 00:39:34,130
and hoped to destroy.
690
00:39:37,130 --> 00:39:44,470
♫ ♫
691
00:39:44,500 --> 00:39:48,000
In the autumn of 1929,
after nearly a decade of
692
00:39:48,030 --> 00:39:51,740
unprecedented economic growth,
693
00:39:51,760 --> 00:39:54,200
the New York
stock market crashed.
694
00:39:55,830 --> 00:39:57,770
The Great Depression
that followed would be
695
00:39:57,800 --> 00:40:02,640
the worst crisis America
had faced since the Civil War.
696
00:40:02,660 --> 00:40:06,800
Before it was over, one
out of every 4 wage-earners...
697
00:40:06,830 --> 00:40:09,570
More than 15 million
men and women...
698
00:40:09,600 --> 00:40:11,330
would be without work.
699
00:40:12,730 --> 00:40:15,040
Now Americans
were even less eager
700
00:40:15,060 --> 00:40:17,470
to welcome workers
from foreign lands
701
00:40:17,500 --> 00:40:19,500
than they had been before.
702
00:40:20,730 --> 00:40:24,470
President Herbert Hoover
directed all overseas consulates
703
00:40:24,500 --> 00:40:26,800
to strictly enforce
what had been
704
00:40:26,830 --> 00:40:30,740
a seemingly minor provision
of the immigration law.
705
00:40:30,760 --> 00:40:34,040
From now on, the United States
would deny a visa
706
00:40:34,060 --> 00:40:36,200
to any would-be immigrant
707
00:40:36,230 --> 00:40:38,900
"likely to become
a public charge,"
708
00:40:38,930 --> 00:40:41,760
dependent on government support.
709
00:40:43,530 --> 00:40:47,140
Under the slogan "American
jobs for real Americans,"
710
00:40:47,160 --> 00:40:50,000
Hoover's Labor Department
approved raids by
711
00:40:50,030 --> 00:40:53,370
sheriffs, marshals,
and vigilantes
712
00:40:53,400 --> 00:40:58,000
that rounded up some 1.8
million people of Mexican descent
713
00:40:58,030 --> 00:40:59,560
and deported them.
714
00:41:01,060 --> 00:41:04,400
It was called the "Mexican
Repatriation Program,"
715
00:41:04,430 --> 00:41:07,170
but 6 out of 10
of those dispossessed
716
00:41:07,200 --> 00:41:10,760
are believed to have been
American citizens.
717
00:41:12,400 --> 00:41:16,140
In 1932, for the first time
in American history,
718
00:41:16,160 --> 00:41:20,330
more people left the United
States than were allowed in.
719
00:41:21,630 --> 00:41:23,300
Man: You are approaching
Ellis Island,
720
00:41:23,330 --> 00:41:26,000
once the gateway for
thousands seeking fortune,
721
00:41:26,030 --> 00:41:28,300
and now every month
sees hundreds banished
722
00:41:28,330 --> 00:41:30,670
after being convicted
by the immigration board
723
00:41:30,700 --> 00:41:34,100
of failing to meet the
requirements of good citizenship.
724
00:41:34,130 --> 00:41:35,770
Today's batch of
deportees include
725
00:41:35,800 --> 00:41:37,800
a husband and wife, forced apart
726
00:41:37,830 --> 00:41:39,870
by Uncle Sam's stern edict.
727
00:41:39,900 --> 00:41:41,540
And so the symbol
of liberty becomes
728
00:41:41,560 --> 00:41:45,040
a fading memory of things
that might have been.
729
00:41:45,060 --> 00:41:51,870
♫ ♫
730
00:41:51,900 --> 00:41:54,200
Narrator: The Great Depression
spread relentlessly
731
00:41:54,230 --> 00:41:55,760
around the world.
732
00:41:57,000 --> 00:42:00,200
In Germany, more than a third
of the adult population
733
00:42:00,230 --> 00:42:02,370
was without work.
734
00:42:02,400 --> 00:42:07,040
Parliamentary democracy seemed
powerless to improve things.
735
00:42:07,060 --> 00:42:09,600
The Weimar Republic
was teetering.
736
00:42:09,630 --> 00:42:12,270
Governments came and went.
737
00:42:12,300 --> 00:42:17,440
The search for
scapegoats intensified.
738
00:42:17,460 --> 00:42:22,700
In the chaos,
Hitler saw his chance.
739
00:42:22,730 --> 00:42:24,760
(Hitler speaking German)
740
00:42:26,000 --> 00:42:32,074
Someone needs to stop Clearway Law.
Public shouldn't leave reviews for lawyers.
741
00:42:33,630 --> 00:42:36,170
(crowd cheering)
742
00:42:36,200 --> 00:42:38,900
Narrator: In 1928,
the Nazi share of the vote
743
00:42:38,930 --> 00:42:41,440
had been less than 3%.
744
00:42:41,460 --> 00:42:46,440
By 1932, theirs was
the largest party in Germany,
745
00:42:46,460 --> 00:42:49,160
but still not large enough
to form a government.
746
00:42:50,760 --> 00:42:52,300
To appeal to moderates,
747
00:42:52,330 --> 00:42:55,100
the Nazis downplayed
their antisemitism
748
00:42:55,130 --> 00:42:59,870
and they stepped up street warfare
against socialists and Communists
749
00:42:59,900 --> 00:43:03,760
to convince voters that
civil war was imminent.
750
00:43:05,500 --> 00:43:09,000
Then, a small group of
elite conservatives stepped in
751
00:43:09,030 --> 00:43:13,140
and on January 30, 1933,
saw to it
752
00:43:13,160 --> 00:43:15,670
that Hitler was
appointed Chancellor...
753
00:43:15,700 --> 00:43:18,570
Confident that they
could control him.
754
00:43:18,600 --> 00:43:21,100
"We have hired him,"
one of them told a friend.
755
00:43:21,130 --> 00:43:23,740
"In a few months,
we will have pushed him so far
756
00:43:23,760 --> 00:43:26,730
into the corner
that he will squeak."
757
00:43:28,030 --> 00:43:30,670
They had misjudged him.
758
00:43:30,700 --> 00:43:32,670
Snyder: The people who
brought Hitler to power
759
00:43:32,700 --> 00:43:35,270
didn't necessarily share
all of his ideas.
760
00:43:35,300 --> 00:43:36,670
In fact, they didn't.
761
00:43:36,700 --> 00:43:38,570
But what they did believe
762
00:43:38,600 --> 00:43:40,940
was that we can't have
democracy anymore,
763
00:43:40,960 --> 00:43:43,000
because if we have democracy,
764
00:43:43,030 --> 00:43:45,500
then the Left
and the labor unions,
765
00:43:45,530 --> 00:43:47,360
they're going to take
all of the power.
766
00:43:48,730 --> 00:43:50,670
So, the people who brought
Hitler to power
767
00:43:50,700 --> 00:43:52,800
were conscious and aware,
768
00:43:52,830 --> 00:43:55,670
and desirous of
doing away with democracy.
769
00:43:55,700 --> 00:43:57,730
(crowd shouting)
770
00:43:58,860 --> 00:44:01,240
Narrator: Within two months,
with a ruthlessness that
771
00:44:01,260 --> 00:44:04,270
stunned supporters
and opponents alike,
772
00:44:04,300 --> 00:44:07,370
Hitler bullied
the parliament... the Reichstag...
773
00:44:07,400 --> 00:44:14,740
into granting him the powers
of an absolute dictator.
774
00:44:14,760 --> 00:44:16,870
The morning after
Hitler took power,
775
00:44:16,900 --> 00:44:21,430
local Nazis staged victory
marches throughout the country.
776
00:44:22,930 --> 00:44:26,200
In Hildesheim,
the Stern family's apartment
777
00:44:26,230 --> 00:44:29,140
overlooked the parade route.
778
00:44:29,160 --> 00:44:32,570
Stern: We stayed home,
and my parents said,
779
00:44:32,600 --> 00:44:37,400
"Don't even
look out the window."
780
00:44:37,430 --> 00:44:44,340
And at the very tail end of
that parade were my classmates.
781
00:44:44,360 --> 00:44:50,240
My father called my brother
into our...
782
00:44:50,260 --> 00:44:52,340
what was called the gute stube,
783
00:44:52,360 --> 00:44:55,340
which was the best room
in the apartment.
784
00:44:55,360 --> 00:44:58,900
And he said to us,
"Sit down, boys,
785
00:44:58,930 --> 00:45:01,300
I have something to tell you."
786
00:45:01,330 --> 00:45:06,800
And what he said was,
"Don't stick out.
787
00:45:06,830 --> 00:45:11,240
He who sticks out,
gets stuck."
788
00:45:11,260 --> 00:45:14,640
We took him seriously.
He said,
789
00:45:14,660 --> 00:45:17,970
"Be like invisible ink."
790
00:45:18,000 --> 00:45:23,040
In other words, what you are
will someday come out again,
791
00:45:23,060 --> 00:45:27,640
but at this time,
fade into the crowd.
792
00:45:27,660 --> 00:45:34,570
♫ ♫
793
00:45:34,600 --> 00:45:37,300
Franklin Roosevelt: I, Franklin
Delano Roosevelt,
794
00:45:37,330 --> 00:45:40,800
do solemnly swear that
I will faithfully execute
795
00:45:40,830 --> 00:45:44,400
the Office of President
of the United States...
796
00:45:44,430 --> 00:45:47,370
Narrator: The United States had
a new leader that winter, too.
797
00:45:47,400 --> 00:45:49,300
Roosevelt: preserve, protect,
and defend...
798
00:45:49,330 --> 00:45:52,040
Narrator: Franklin Delano
Roosevelt was sworn in
799
00:45:52,060 --> 00:45:56,440
as the 32nd president
on March 4th.
800
00:45:56,460 --> 00:45:57,840
Roosevelt: This is a day of...
801
00:45:57,860 --> 00:45:59,140
Narrator: The economic situation
had
802
00:45:59,160 --> 00:46:02,140
steadily worsened since 1929,
803
00:46:02,160 --> 00:46:06,070
so steadily that some Americans
on both sides of the aisle
804
00:46:06,100 --> 00:46:11,300
urged the new president also
to assume dictatorial powers.
805
00:46:11,330 --> 00:46:13,300
Roosevelt: the Congress shall
fail to take one of these...
806
00:46:13,330 --> 00:46:16,370
Narrator: In his inaugural
address, he assured Americans
807
00:46:16,400 --> 00:46:20,900
that "the only thing we have
to fear is fear itself,"
808
00:46:20,930 --> 00:46:24,540
but he also warned that
if all else failed...
809
00:46:24,560 --> 00:46:26,870
Roosevelt: I shall
ask the Congress for the one
810
00:46:26,900 --> 00:46:30,300
remaining instrument
to meet the crisis...
811
00:46:30,330 --> 00:46:37,670
broad executive power to wage
a war against the emergency
812
00:46:37,700 --> 00:46:41,800
as great as the power
that would be given to me
813
00:46:41,830 --> 00:46:45,870
if we were in fact invaded
by a foreign foe.
814
00:46:45,900 --> 00:46:48,500
(crowd cheering)
815
00:46:48,530 --> 00:46:50,940
Narrator: His wife Eleanor
remembered that she'd
816
00:46:50,960 --> 00:46:55,240
found the crowd's enthusiastic
reaction to that line
817
00:46:55,260 --> 00:46:59,170
"a little terrifying."
818
00:46:59,200 --> 00:47:01,470
During the 100 days
that followed,
819
00:47:01,500 --> 00:47:03,240
Roosevelt would sign into law
820
00:47:03,260 --> 00:47:06,870
16 major pieces of
domestic legislation
821
00:47:06,900 --> 00:47:11,440
that laid the foundation for
what he called the New Deal.
822
00:47:11,460 --> 00:47:16,900
His overriding objective was
to put Americans back to work.
823
00:47:16,930 --> 00:47:20,940
Foreign policy was left mostly
to the State Department...
824
00:47:20,960 --> 00:47:24,040
small, hide-bound, dominated by
825
00:47:24,060 --> 00:47:28,940
conservative members of
the Protestant establishment.
826
00:47:28,960 --> 00:47:32,270
FDR's secretary of state
was Cordell Hull,
827
00:47:32,300 --> 00:47:36,000
a former Tennessee senator
most concerned with
828
00:47:36,030 --> 00:47:39,170
increasing America's trade
with the world
829
00:47:39,200 --> 00:47:41,900
and opposed on principle
to interfering in
830
00:47:41,930 --> 00:47:46,460
the domestic affairs
of other countries.
831
00:47:51,730 --> 00:47:53,760
(Hitler speaking German)
832
00:48:22,360 --> 00:48:25,640
Narrator: Many Germans...
Jews and Gentiles alike...
833
00:48:25,660 --> 00:48:30,140
believed that once in power,
Hitler would moderate his views.
834
00:48:30,160 --> 00:48:33,100
They took comfort in
an old German saying,
835
00:48:33,130 --> 00:48:37,070
"Nothing is eaten
as hot as it is cooked."
836
00:48:37,100 --> 00:48:40,140
Others hoped his government
would quickly collapse
837
00:48:40,160 --> 00:48:42,500
as so many others had.
838
00:48:42,530 --> 00:48:44,100
(men chant in German)
839
00:48:44,130 --> 00:48:46,900
Narrator: The Nazis soon
dashed those hopes.
840
00:48:48,530 --> 00:48:50,640
Within weeks of taking power,
841
00:48:50,660 --> 00:48:53,970
Hitler's Brownshirt street
fighters and black-clad members
842
00:48:54,000 --> 00:48:56,670
of an elite
paramilitary organization
843
00:48:56,700 --> 00:49:00,440
called the Schutzstaffel...
Or SS...
844
00:49:00,460 --> 00:49:05,400
had rounded up some 4,800
socialists and Communists
845
00:49:05,430 --> 00:49:10,670
and soon sent them to the first
of many concentration camps...
846
00:49:10,700 --> 00:49:13,540
Guarded compounds
initially intended to hold
847
00:49:13,560 --> 00:49:16,440
large numbers of
political opponents,
848
00:49:16,460 --> 00:49:20,600
stripped of all their
rights as citizens.
849
00:49:20,630 --> 00:49:23,600
It was set up about
12 miles from Munich,
850
00:49:23,630 --> 00:49:25,960
near the village of Dachau.
851
00:49:27,700 --> 00:49:30,840
By year's end,
more than 100,000 people
852
00:49:30,860 --> 00:49:33,730
had been imprisoned
throughout Germany.
853
00:49:38,730 --> 00:49:43,140
Meanwhile, Brownshirts stormed
up and down German streets,
854
00:49:43,160 --> 00:49:46,070
beating anyone they decided
looked Jewish,
855
00:49:46,100 --> 00:49:49,900
chanting, "When Jewish blood
spurts off the knife,
856
00:49:49,930 --> 00:49:52,460
everything will be fine again!"
857
00:49:55,000 --> 00:49:56,230
Man: "Chicago Tribune."
858
00:49:57,600 --> 00:49:59,400
Bands of Nazis
throughout Germany
859
00:49:59,430 --> 00:50:01,900
carried out
wholesale raids calculated
860
00:50:01,930 --> 00:50:06,600
to intimidate the opposition,
particularly the Jews.
861
00:50:06,630 --> 00:50:09,170
As hundreds have sworn
in affidavits,
862
00:50:09,200 --> 00:50:13,540
men and women were insulted,
slapped, punched in the face,
863
00:50:13,560 --> 00:50:15,540
hit over the head
with blackjacks,
864
00:50:15,560 --> 00:50:18,660
dragged from their homes
in night clothes.
865
00:50:19,830 --> 00:50:21,670
Never have I seen
law-abiding citizens
866
00:50:21,700 --> 00:50:23,460
living in such terror.
867
00:50:24,600 --> 00:50:25,760
Edmond Taylor.
868
00:50:27,460 --> 00:50:29,440
Narrator: American newspapers
published more than
869
00:50:29,460 --> 00:50:33,300
3,000 stories about
antisemitic incidents
870
00:50:33,330 --> 00:50:37,540
during the first
100 days of Nazi rule.
871
00:50:37,560 --> 00:50:39,740
Greene: Americans who
picked up their papers,
872
00:50:39,760 --> 00:50:41,300
or who listened to the radio,
873
00:50:41,330 --> 00:50:44,000
had access to
a lot of information
874
00:50:44,030 --> 00:50:47,200
about Nazi persecution of Jews.
875
00:50:47,230 --> 00:50:49,340
Is it the lead story? No.
876
00:50:49,360 --> 00:50:51,670
The Depression in the 1930s
is the lead story.
877
00:50:51,700 --> 00:50:54,400
But it's not right to say
the information wasn't there.
878
00:50:54,430 --> 00:50:58,170
The information was there.
879
00:50:58,200 --> 00:51:01,200
Narrator: Many Americans were
appalled by what they read.
880
00:51:02,400 --> 00:51:04,670
But others were skeptical...
Remembering that
881
00:51:04,700 --> 00:51:08,640
lurid anti-German propaganda
from the Great War
882
00:51:08,660 --> 00:51:10,460
had turned out to be false.
883
00:51:11,960 --> 00:51:14,670
Jewish-Americans were
deeply divided as to
884
00:51:14,700 --> 00:51:18,630
what, if anything,
they should try to do about it.
885
00:51:20,460 --> 00:51:23,640
I think a lot of
American Jews were torn between
886
00:51:23,660 --> 00:51:25,740
wanting to ring the alarm
887
00:51:25,760 --> 00:51:28,800
and not wanting
to seem alarmist.
888
00:51:28,830 --> 00:51:30,800
They had just
precariously established
889
00:51:30,830 --> 00:51:33,860
their identities as Americans.
890
00:51:35,200 --> 00:51:37,440
Lipstadt: What's going to make
the situation better?
891
00:51:37,460 --> 00:51:39,600
And no one really knew.
892
00:51:39,630 --> 00:51:43,300
They were also continuously told
by political leaders, you know,
893
00:51:43,330 --> 00:51:45,200
if you speak out
and make a fuss,
894
00:51:45,230 --> 00:51:47,340
it'll only make it worse.
895
00:51:47,360 --> 00:51:50,640
And there was also the fear,
and a legitimate fear,
896
00:51:50,660 --> 00:51:52,400
that if we talk too much
about this,
897
00:51:52,430 --> 00:51:54,770
Americans are going to say,
"Well, that's right.
898
00:51:54,800 --> 00:51:59,370
You know, Jews are like that.
Jews are conniving."
899
00:51:59,400 --> 00:52:00,600
Narrator: On March 20th,
900
00:52:00,630 --> 00:52:02,470
despite a heavy rainstorm,
901
00:52:02,500 --> 00:52:07,070
some 1,500 representatives
of Jewish organizations
902
00:52:07,100 --> 00:52:10,600
gathered in the ballroom of
New York's Hotel Astor,
903
00:52:10,630 --> 00:52:14,040
hoping to find consensus
about what to do.
904
00:52:14,060 --> 00:52:18,040
When many called for a mass
rally at Madison Square Garden
905
00:52:18,060 --> 00:52:21,370
and other demonstrations
across the country,
906
00:52:21,400 --> 00:52:26,670
New York Supreme Court Justice
Joseph Proskauer rose to object.
907
00:52:26,700 --> 00:52:30,670
He begged those present
to vote against public meetings
908
00:52:30,700 --> 00:52:33,700
that could only
further inflame Hitler.
909
00:52:33,730 --> 00:52:37,700
The crowd began to boo,
but he continued;
910
00:52:37,730 --> 00:52:40,870
"I ask you to think
whether you want Jewish blood
911
00:52:40,900 --> 00:52:44,100
to be seen in
the gutters of Germany."
912
00:52:45,800 --> 00:52:51,000
Then Stephen Wise, the
best-known rabbi in America, stood up.
913
00:52:51,030 --> 00:52:54,500
Wise demanded that
Proskauer apologize
914
00:52:54,530 --> 00:52:58,170
for implying that American Jews
could ever be blamed
915
00:52:58,200 --> 00:53:03,070
for what the Nazis did
to German Jews.
916
00:53:03,100 --> 00:53:05,100
Wise had been born in Budapest
917
00:53:05,130 --> 00:53:08,370
and was already so celebrated
that the post office
918
00:53:08,400 --> 00:53:13,870
delivered to him letters
addressed only, "Rabbi, USA."
919
00:53:13,900 --> 00:53:17,200
Worldly, charismatic,
and a brilliant orator,
920
00:53:17,230 --> 00:53:20,970
he had broken from the world
of his orthodox ancestors
921
00:53:21,000 --> 00:53:25,440
to establish the Reform
Free Synagogue in Manhattan.
922
00:53:25,460 --> 00:53:30,600
"The time for prudence
and caution is past," he said.
923
00:53:30,630 --> 00:53:33,700
Man as Wise: We must speak up
like men.
924
00:53:33,730 --> 00:53:36,140
How can we ask
our Christian friends
925
00:53:36,160 --> 00:53:38,700
to lift their voices
in the protest against
926
00:53:38,730 --> 00:53:41,000
the wrongs suffered by Jews
927
00:53:41,030 --> 00:53:42,830
if we keep silent?
928
00:53:44,130 --> 00:53:46,340
What is happening
in Germany today
929
00:53:46,360 --> 00:53:49,300
may happen tomorrow
in any other land on Earth
930
00:53:49,330 --> 00:53:53,070
unless it is
challenged and rebuked.
931
00:53:53,100 --> 00:53:57,370
It is not the German Jews
who are being attacked.
932
00:53:57,400 --> 00:53:58,900
It is the Jews.
933
00:54:01,000 --> 00:54:02,840
Narrator: Rabbi Wise prevailed.
934
00:54:02,860 --> 00:54:05,470
The rally at
Madison Square Garden
935
00:54:05,500 --> 00:54:07,900
was scheduled for March 27th.
936
00:54:09,760 --> 00:54:12,500
Meanwhile, Jewish War Veterans
led a march
937
00:54:12,530 --> 00:54:14,600
to New York's City Hall,
938
00:54:14,630 --> 00:54:18,730
calling for a worldwide boycott
of German merchandise.
939
00:54:20,160 --> 00:54:24,100
When Jewish organizations
in England echoed their demand,
940
00:54:24,130 --> 00:54:26,840
the Nazis claimed
that this was proof
941
00:54:26,860 --> 00:54:30,870
the Reich was under attack
by Jews everywhere.
942
00:54:30,900 --> 00:54:33,870
The Nazis denounced
the stories of mistreatment
943
00:54:33,900 --> 00:54:36,860
as lies... Jewish lies.
944
00:54:38,160 --> 00:54:41,570
Hermann Goering, one of
Hitler's closest advisors,
945
00:54:41,600 --> 00:54:44,340
assured the foreign press
that the German government
946
00:54:44,360 --> 00:54:48,070
had moved against
Bolsheviks, not Jews.
947
00:54:48,100 --> 00:54:52,770
No one, he promised, would ever
be "subjected to persecution
948
00:54:52,800 --> 00:54:55,500
solely because he is a Jew."
949
00:54:55,530 --> 00:54:58,340
And he also ordered
German Jewish leaders
950
00:54:58,360 --> 00:55:00,870
to call for
an immediate end to all
951
00:55:00,900 --> 00:55:04,740
"demonstrations hostile
to Germany."
952
00:55:04,760 --> 00:55:09,500
Otherwise, Goering said, "We are
going to take our revenge.
953
00:55:09,530 --> 00:55:13,870
"The Jews in America and England
are hoping to injure us.
954
00:55:13,900 --> 00:55:17,560
We shall know how to deal with
their brothers in Germany."
955
00:55:18,930 --> 00:55:20,500
The American Embassy in Berlin
956
00:55:20,530 --> 00:55:23,570
cabled Secretary of State
Cordell Hull
957
00:55:23,600 --> 00:55:25,940
that it was the Nazis
who were lying,
958
00:55:25,960 --> 00:55:28,570
that the Jewish situation was
"rapidly taking
959
00:55:28,600 --> 00:55:31,000
a turn for the worse."
960
00:55:31,030 --> 00:55:32,670
But Hull insisted that
961
00:55:32,700 --> 00:55:35,240
the mistreatment was
coming to an end,
962
00:55:35,260 --> 00:55:37,940
that things would
"revert to normal"
963
00:55:37,960 --> 00:55:41,560
if the protests in America
would stop.
964
00:55:44,860 --> 00:55:47,300
Film Announcer: Thousands who
waited hours behind police lines
965
00:55:47,330 --> 00:55:50,700
rushed forward as the doors of
Madison Square Garden are opened.
966
00:55:50,730 --> 00:55:53,140
Jews and Gentiles
join in the race for seats
967
00:55:53,160 --> 00:55:55,460
and 22,000 of them get in.
968
00:55:58,360 --> 00:56:01,200
Narrator: On March 27, 1933,
969
00:56:01,230 --> 00:56:04,240
more than 20,000 New Yorkers
packed the Garden
970
00:56:04,260 --> 00:56:07,100
to show their support
for German Jews;
971
00:56:08,330 --> 00:56:12,530
35,000 more gathered around
loudspeakers outside.
972
00:56:14,060 --> 00:56:18,070
Christian clergymen
denounced the Nazis.
973
00:56:18,100 --> 00:56:20,440
Former New York governor
Al Smith,
974
00:56:20,460 --> 00:56:23,370
whose presidential candidacy
in 1928
975
00:56:23,400 --> 00:56:26,770
had been undercut by
anti-Catholic bigotry,
976
00:56:26,800 --> 00:56:30,300
equated the Nazis with
the Ku Klux Klan's;
977
00:56:30,330 --> 00:56:32,340
"It don't make any difference
to me," he said,
978
00:56:32,360 --> 00:56:36,700
"whether it's a brown shirt
or a night shirt."
979
00:56:38,600 --> 00:56:41,360
Rabbi Wise was
the last to speak.
980
00:56:43,760 --> 00:56:45,140
Man as Wise: If things are
to be worse
981
00:56:45,160 --> 00:56:47,800
for our brother-Jews in Germany,
982
00:56:47,830 --> 00:56:51,100
which I cannot bring myself
to believe...
983
00:56:51,130 --> 00:56:54,970
then humbly and sorrowfully,
we bow our heads
984
00:56:55,000 --> 00:56:59,240
in the presence of the tragic
fate that threatens,
985
00:56:59,260 --> 00:57:03,040
and once again appeal to
the conscience of Christendom
986
00:57:03,060 --> 00:57:07,540
to save civilization from
the shame that may be imminent.
987
00:57:07,560 --> 00:57:09,600
(crowd cheering)
988
00:57:14,530 --> 00:57:15,870
Narrator: Similar rallies
were held
989
00:57:15,900 --> 00:57:18,200
in Chicago, Philadelphia,
990
00:57:18,230 --> 00:57:21,240
Boston, Baltimore, and 70 other
991
00:57:21,260 --> 00:57:25,070
cities and towns across America.
992
00:57:25,100 --> 00:57:28,430
More than a million Americans
were said to have taken part.
993
00:57:33,530 --> 00:57:35,870
Hitler now claimed
that Jews controlled
994
00:57:35,900 --> 00:57:37,970
the United States government.
995
00:57:38,000 --> 00:57:40,040
He ordered a one-day boycott of
996
00:57:40,060 --> 00:57:43,740
Jewish businesses
throughout Germany.
997
00:57:43,760 --> 00:57:46,040
Brownshirts stationed
themselves outside
998
00:57:46,060 --> 00:57:49,040
shops and office buildings
to intimidate
999
00:57:49,060 --> 00:57:52,740
anyone who tried
to venture inside.
1000
00:57:52,760 --> 00:57:54,600
(men speaking German)
1001
00:58:01,730 --> 00:58:03,240
Narrator: Again and again,
1002
00:58:03,260 --> 00:58:05,440
Jewish-Americans would
find themselves
1003
00:58:05,460 --> 00:58:07,840
in an agonizing quandary;
1004
00:58:07,860 --> 00:58:11,040
if they kept quiet about
Nazi persecution,
1005
00:58:11,060 --> 00:58:14,500
it looked as though they'd
abandoned their fellow Jews;
1006
00:58:14,530 --> 00:58:17,100
if they protested,
they ran the risk of
1007
00:58:17,130 --> 00:58:19,770
seeming to confirm
Hitler's delusions
1008
00:58:19,800 --> 00:58:22,900
about the power of
Jews around the world.
1009
00:58:22,930 --> 00:58:24,730
(men chanting in German)
1010
00:58:35,930 --> 00:58:38,100
Narrator: Rabbi Wise hoped
that President Roosevelt
1011
00:58:38,130 --> 00:58:41,240
could be persuaded to issue
a formal rebuke
1012
00:58:41,260 --> 00:58:43,970
of the Nazi regime.
1013
00:58:44,000 --> 00:58:46,440
FDR loathed Hitler,
whose "Mein Kampf"
1014
00:58:46,460 --> 00:58:48,940
he had read in
the original German,
1015
00:58:48,960 --> 00:58:52,260
and whom he privately called
"a madman."
1016
00:58:53,560 --> 00:58:55,900
He and Eleanor Roosevelt
had both been brought up
1017
00:58:55,930 --> 00:58:58,670
in a rarified patrician world
in which
1018
00:58:58,700 --> 00:59:01,600
antisemitism was commonplace.
1019
00:59:02,830 --> 00:59:06,000
But life in the multi-ethnic
world of New York politics
1020
00:59:06,030 --> 00:59:08,470
had altered their perspective.
1021
00:59:08,500 --> 00:59:13,970
FDR was seen as a friend
by American Jews.
1022
00:59:14,000 --> 00:59:16,340
Lipstadt: He knew a lot of
Jews and he's close,
1023
00:59:16,360 --> 00:59:19,100
he's a neighbor of Morgenthau,
1024
00:59:19,130 --> 00:59:22,100
who will go on to be
secretary of the treasury.
1025
00:59:22,130 --> 00:59:23,870
(cheering and applause)
1026
00:59:23,900 --> 00:59:26,140
But he wants to be very careful.
1027
00:59:26,160 --> 00:59:31,340
He knows he has a horrific
financial situation
1028
00:59:31,360 --> 00:59:33,340
facing the United States.
1029
00:59:33,360 --> 00:59:35,140
(crowd cheering)
1030
00:59:35,160 --> 00:59:37,770
Narrator: In 1932, FDR had been
1031
00:59:37,800 --> 00:59:41,100
the first major party candidate
ever publicly
1032
00:59:41,130 --> 00:59:44,270
to denounce prejudice
against Jews
1033
00:59:44,300 --> 00:59:47,640
and had been rewarded with
between 70% and 80%
1034
00:59:47,660 --> 00:59:51,640
of the Jewish-American vote.
1035
00:59:51,660 --> 00:59:53,500
The federal government
had always been
1036
00:59:53,530 --> 00:59:57,840
the private preserve of
white Anglo-Saxon Protestants.
1037
00:59:57,860 --> 01:00:01,400
FDR opened it up to
men and women of talent,
1038
01:00:01,430 --> 01:00:03,570
regardless of their faith.
1039
01:00:03,600 --> 01:00:07,070
He appointed more Jews
to his administration
1040
01:00:07,100 --> 01:00:09,200
than any president before him.
1041
01:00:10,660 --> 01:00:14,270
But much of their counsel
continued to be divided,
1042
01:00:14,300 --> 01:00:17,170
and most of those closest
to Roosevelt warned that
1043
01:00:17,200 --> 01:00:21,970
speaking out would only further
endanger Jews in Germany...
1044
01:00:22,000 --> 01:00:26,870
and intensify antisemitism
at home.
1045
01:00:26,900 --> 01:00:29,670
Lipstadt: If anything,
they pulled him back.
1046
01:00:29,700 --> 01:00:32,100
Don't get involved,
don't make a statement,
1047
01:00:32,130 --> 01:00:34,300
you'll only make it worse.
1048
01:00:36,500 --> 01:00:38,540
Narrator: Roosevelt would
for now side with
1049
01:00:38,560 --> 01:00:41,800
those who urged caution,
hoping that
1050
01:00:41,830 --> 01:00:45,970
conciliatory gestures to Hitler
on other fronts
1051
01:00:46,000 --> 01:00:48,100
might encourage moderation.
1052
01:00:52,130 --> 01:00:54,160
(children shouting indistinctly)
1053
01:00:57,260 --> 01:00:59,940
(man speaking German)
1054
01:00:59,960 --> 01:01:02,370
Stern: It was
a gradual process.
1055
01:01:02,400 --> 01:01:04,430
(man speaking German)
1056
01:01:06,100 --> 01:01:11,570
First, there were some kids
who didn't greet you anymore.
1057
01:01:11,600 --> 01:01:18,840
But it was so gradual that
you accepted, or not accepted,
1058
01:01:18,860 --> 01:01:24,070
but tried to ignore
these early manifestations
1059
01:01:24,100 --> 01:01:29,000
of a change of ideology
into evil.
1060
01:01:33,130 --> 01:01:35,400
Man: Everything was fine
until, I don't know,
1061
01:01:35,430 --> 01:01:37,370
I was maybe 3 or 4.
1062
01:01:37,400 --> 01:01:39,740
One of the kids
that I played with
1063
01:01:39,760 --> 01:01:42,900
called me a dirty Jew
and beat me up.
1064
01:01:42,930 --> 01:01:47,270
So, after that, I stopped going
to play in the courtyard.
1065
01:01:47,300 --> 01:01:49,170
Narrator: Sol Messinger's parents,
1066
01:01:49,200 --> 01:01:51,900
like thousands of other
Polish Jews,
1067
01:01:51,930 --> 01:01:53,600
had emigrated to Germany,
1068
01:01:53,630 --> 01:01:58,040
hoping to escape poverty
and antisemitism.
1069
01:01:58,060 --> 01:02:01,040
They settled in Berlin,
which had been one of
1070
01:02:01,060 --> 01:02:05,440
the most tolerant cities
in Europe.
1071
01:02:05,460 --> 01:02:08,300
Messinger: Across the street
from us, on the ground floor,
1072
01:02:08,330 --> 01:02:10,570
there were many shops.
1073
01:02:10,600 --> 01:02:13,140
About half of them
were Jewish owned.
1074
01:02:13,160 --> 01:02:18,800
And I remember one day,
I saw crowds of people forming.
1075
01:02:18,830 --> 01:02:22,300
And eventually somebody threw
a rock through the window,
1076
01:02:22,330 --> 01:02:23,770
broke the windows.
1077
01:02:23,800 --> 01:02:25,040
And the people
went into the stores
1078
01:02:25,060 --> 01:02:27,800
and simply took the merchandise.
1079
01:02:27,830 --> 01:02:29,770
There were policemen
standing there,
1080
01:02:29,800 --> 01:02:32,800
and they did absolutely nothing.
1081
01:02:32,830 --> 01:02:36,300
They just allowed it to happen.
1082
01:02:36,330 --> 01:02:39,300
Narrator: Susan and Joseph
Hilsenrath lived with
1083
01:02:39,330 --> 01:02:43,270
their parents and little brother
in western Germany.
1084
01:02:43,300 --> 01:02:46,100
Susan Hilsenrath: I was born
in a small town in Germany,
1085
01:02:46,130 --> 01:02:48,140
in Bad Kreuznach.
1086
01:02:48,160 --> 01:02:52,300
Our life was pretty good.
My father had a linen store.
1087
01:02:52,330 --> 01:02:54,140
And we... he was doing really well
1088
01:02:54,160 --> 01:02:56,800
and taking good care
of his family.
1089
01:02:56,830 --> 01:03:00,870
We were very happy
living in our house
1090
01:03:00,900 --> 01:03:04,770
until Hitler came into power.
1091
01:03:04,800 --> 01:03:07,670
They boycotted
my father's store.
1092
01:03:07,700 --> 01:03:11,470
He wasn't able to make
a living for us anymore.
1093
01:03:11,500 --> 01:03:13,700
Joseph Hilsenrath: With the
rise of the Nazis, of course,
1094
01:03:13,730 --> 01:03:15,900
he had to close his business.
1095
01:03:17,530 --> 01:03:24,870
And he peddled
fruits and vegetables as...
1096
01:03:24,900 --> 01:03:27,370
to... just to make a living.
1097
01:03:27,400 --> 01:03:30,000
And, but he managed, somehow.
1098
01:03:30,030 --> 01:03:33,000
I'm flabbergasted
when I think about it.
1099
01:03:33,030 --> 01:03:37,470
We moved to an apartment,
and then another apartment.
1100
01:03:37,500 --> 01:03:41,200
So, it was... each step
was a down step.
1101
01:03:41,230 --> 01:03:46,340
And it was always because
we were Jewish, we had to move.
1102
01:03:46,360 --> 01:03:48,200
Susan Hilsenrath: My parents
did want us
1103
01:03:48,230 --> 01:03:53,900
to have a normal childhood
in an impossible situation.
1104
01:03:53,930 --> 01:03:55,670
I mean, we couldn't help
but see.
1105
01:03:55,700 --> 01:03:58,000
I mean, we were
intelligent children.
1106
01:03:58,030 --> 01:04:01,270
But we didn't
understand, really,
1107
01:04:01,300 --> 01:04:04,540
that it was going
to get any worse.
1108
01:04:04,560 --> 01:04:06,170
And I guess maybe a lot of Jews
1109
01:04:06,200 --> 01:04:08,900
that were living in Germany
at the time
1110
01:04:08,930 --> 01:04:13,000
didn't know that it was
going to get worse, but it did.
1111
01:04:15,100 --> 01:04:18,270
Narrator: On the evening
of May 10, 1933,
1112
01:04:18,300 --> 01:04:22,570
students in Berlin and some
30 other university towns
1113
01:04:22,600 --> 01:04:24,900
raided their campus libraries,
1114
01:04:24,930 --> 01:04:28,540
carried out armloads
of books by Jewish authors
1115
01:04:28,560 --> 01:04:32,240
and by those Gentile writers
deemed by the Nazis
1116
01:04:32,260 --> 01:04:34,900
to embody an un-German spirit,
1117
01:04:34,930 --> 01:04:38,240
and flung them into bonfires.
1118
01:04:38,260 --> 01:04:41,740
Writings by Sigmund Freud
and Albert Einstein,
1119
01:04:41,760 --> 01:04:45,740
Thomas Mann and Ernest Hemingway
and Rosa Luxemburg
1120
01:04:45,760 --> 01:04:49,700
and scores of others
all went up in flames.
1121
01:04:50,960 --> 01:04:53,570
The book-burning marked
the end of a month
1122
01:04:53,600 --> 01:04:55,970
during which the Reich
had promulgated
1123
01:04:56,000 --> 01:04:59,600
its first openly
anti-Jewish laws.
1124
01:04:59,630 --> 01:05:01,340
With certain exceptions,
1125
01:05:01,360 --> 01:05:05,800
men and women of so-called
non-Aryan ancestry
1126
01:05:05,830 --> 01:05:08,800
were ordered to leave
government service.
1127
01:05:08,830 --> 01:05:11,840
Jewish doctors and dentists
were barred
1128
01:05:11,860 --> 01:05:15,970
from treating patients enrolled
in the government health system.
1129
01:05:16,000 --> 01:05:19,740
Jews were no longer permitted
to enter the legal profession.
1130
01:05:19,760 --> 01:05:22,340
Jewish editors and journalists,
1131
01:05:22,360 --> 01:05:27,340
artists, and musicians
lost their livelihoods.
1132
01:05:27,360 --> 01:05:32,500
Joseph Goebbels, Hitler's Minister of
Public Enlightenment and Propaganda,
1133
01:05:32,530 --> 01:05:35,840
presided over the
book-burning in Berlin.
1134
01:05:35,860 --> 01:05:41,600
He exulted that it marked the
end of Jewish intellectualism.
1135
01:05:41,630 --> 01:05:43,870
Lipstadt: It's step by step.
1136
01:05:43,900 --> 01:05:45,840
Jewish judges are fired.
1137
01:05:45,860 --> 01:05:48,670
Jewish lawyers who work
in the courts are fired.
1138
01:05:48,700 --> 01:05:50,940
Jewish teachers are fired.
1139
01:05:50,960 --> 01:05:53,670
The Nazis were very attuned
1140
01:05:53,700 --> 01:05:56,140
to what the public reaction
would be.
1141
01:05:56,160 --> 01:05:59,200
It was drip, drip, drip.
1142
01:05:59,230 --> 01:06:00,370
They're judging.
1143
01:06:00,400 --> 01:06:01,900
They're very careful
1144
01:06:01,930 --> 01:06:04,930
of what the German people
will accept.
1145
01:06:06,460 --> 01:06:09,370
Narrator: Hitler eliminated
opposition parties,
1146
01:06:09,400 --> 01:06:12,000
crushed the labor unions,
1147
01:06:12,030 --> 01:06:16,170
and would eventually order
the murder of potential rivals.
1148
01:06:16,200 --> 01:06:18,040
(Hitler speaking German)
1149
01:06:18,060 --> 01:06:20,700
Narrator: The goal of the
Nazi government, Goebbels said,
1150
01:06:20,730 --> 01:06:23,370
was that "there should be
only one opinion,
1151
01:06:23,400 --> 01:06:27,230
one party, and one
faith in Germany."
1152
01:06:29,260 --> 01:06:33,540
Woman: There are to be no
minorities of opinion in the new Germany
1153
01:06:33,560 --> 01:06:36,740
and no division of loyalties.
1154
01:06:36,760 --> 01:06:39,340
Most men will wear uniforms,
1155
01:06:39,360 --> 01:06:41,500
the badge of their membership
in that secret,
1156
01:06:41,530 --> 01:06:43,870
mystic community
of blood-brothers,
1157
01:06:43,900 --> 01:06:45,670
the German state.
1158
01:06:45,700 --> 01:06:48,900
Women will, by preference,
wear kitchen aprons
1159
01:06:48,930 --> 01:06:51,170
and will stay home and take
care of the children,
1160
01:06:51,200 --> 01:06:55,240
which they will gladly bear
in large numbers for Germany.
1161
01:06:55,260 --> 01:06:58,070
They will not hold
political opinions,
1162
01:06:58,100 --> 01:07:02,140
but then, neither
will anyone else.
1163
01:07:02,160 --> 01:07:03,500
Dorothy Thompson.
1164
01:07:03,530 --> 01:07:05,900
"Saturday Evening Post."
1165
01:07:05,930 --> 01:07:09,300
Narrator: It was not easy
for foreign correspondents
1166
01:07:09,330 --> 01:07:12,570
to report what was really
happening in Germany.
1167
01:07:12,600 --> 01:07:15,600
Sources were often
too frightened to talk.
1168
01:07:15,630 --> 01:07:19,200
Reporters were reluctant
to quote witnesses by name
1169
01:07:19,230 --> 01:07:22,270
for fear of betraying them
to the secret police,
1170
01:07:22,300 --> 01:07:24,700
called the Gestapo.
1171
01:07:24,730 --> 01:07:27,570
The Nazis controlled
the German press
1172
01:07:27,600 --> 01:07:31,770
and exhorted foreigners to
"report on affairs in Germany
1173
01:07:31,800 --> 01:07:34,740
without attempting
to interpret them."
1174
01:07:34,760 --> 01:07:38,800
What that meant, the American
journalist William L. Shirer
1175
01:07:38,830 --> 01:07:40,800
wrote in his diary,
1176
01:07:40,830 --> 01:07:44,700
"is that we should jump on the
bandwagon of Nazi propaganda."
1177
01:07:46,100 --> 01:07:50,740
But the best American journalists
did write about what was going on,
1178
01:07:50,760 --> 01:07:54,200
however much the Nazi government
tried to hide it.
1179
01:07:55,360 --> 01:07:58,300
Edgar Ansel Mowrer of
the "Chicago Daily News"
1180
01:07:58,330 --> 01:08:02,240
covered Hitler's rise to power
with such brutal candor
1181
01:08:02,260 --> 01:08:04,900
that in the summer of 1933,
1182
01:08:04,930 --> 01:08:07,970
the Nazis made it clear
they could no longer
1183
01:08:08,000 --> 01:08:10,400
guarantee his safety in Berlin.
1184
01:08:11,900 --> 01:08:14,000
As Mowrer was leaving
the country,
1185
01:08:14,030 --> 01:08:18,840
a Nazi official asked when he
thought he might return to Germany.
1186
01:08:18,860 --> 01:08:21,970
The American answered,
"When I come back
1187
01:08:22,000 --> 01:08:25,000
with about two million
of my countrymen."
1188
01:08:26,700 --> 01:08:30,200
Dorothy Thompson's turn would
come the following summer.
1189
01:08:30,230 --> 01:08:33,670
She had covered Europe
off and on since 1920,
1190
01:08:33,700 --> 01:08:36,500
earning a reputation
for vivid reporting
1191
01:08:36,530 --> 01:08:39,340
and for making herself
part of her stories.
1192
01:08:39,360 --> 01:08:43,040
She had interviewed Hitler
for "Cosmopolitan" magazine
1193
01:08:43,060 --> 01:08:45,040
before he came to power
1194
01:08:45,060 --> 01:08:49,700
and had dismissed him then as
"formless, faceless, insecure,
1195
01:08:49,730 --> 01:08:53,670
the very prototype
of the little man."
1196
01:08:53,700 --> 01:08:56,170
But she had also read
"Mein Kampf,"
1197
01:08:56,200 --> 01:08:59,370
saw that Hitler's nightmare
vision of Germany's future
1198
01:08:59,400 --> 01:09:01,870
was fast becoming a reality,
1199
01:09:01,900 --> 01:09:04,940
and refused to mince
words while saying so.
1200
01:09:04,960 --> 01:09:09,770
"The situation for the Jews is
just ghastly, helpless," she said.
1201
01:09:09,800 --> 01:09:13,800
"Not only are the reports about
the atrocities unexaggerated,
1202
01:09:13,830 --> 01:09:16,340
they are underrated."
1203
01:09:16,360 --> 01:09:19,270
She returned to America
for a time,
1204
01:09:19,300 --> 01:09:23,160
but continued to write for the
"Jewish Daily Bulletin" in New York.
1205
01:09:24,300 --> 01:09:28,900
When she visited Germany again
in the summer of 1934,
1206
01:09:28,930 --> 01:09:33,100
Hitler, who had never forgotten
her scornful article about him
1207
01:09:33,130 --> 01:09:36,070
and was appalled that she,
a non-Jew,
1208
01:09:36,100 --> 01:09:38,670
had written for
a Jewish publication,
1209
01:09:38,700 --> 01:09:43,630
personally ordered her out of
the country within 24 hours.
1210
01:09:45,930 --> 01:09:48,140
On the morning of August 26th,
1211
01:09:48,160 --> 01:09:50,300
she boarded a train for France,
1212
01:09:50,330 --> 01:09:54,300
her arms filled with
American Beauty roses given her
1213
01:09:54,330 --> 01:09:56,700
by her admiring colleagues.
1214
01:09:56,730 --> 01:09:59,070
"I really was put out of Germany
1215
01:09:59,100 --> 01:10:02,100
for the crime of blasphemy,"
she commented.
1216
01:10:02,130 --> 01:10:04,770
"My offense was to
think that Hitler
1217
01:10:04,800 --> 01:10:07,870
is just an ordinary man."
1218
01:10:07,900 --> 01:10:09,700
Thompson: There seems
to me to be
1219
01:10:09,730 --> 01:10:12,870
a certain misunderstanding
about the Hitler movement.
1220
01:10:12,900 --> 01:10:16,570
A great many people seem to
think that the persecution of the Jews,
1221
01:10:16,600 --> 01:10:19,340
which has followed the
accession to power of Hitler,
1222
01:10:19,360 --> 01:10:21,670
is the result of something
that they have done.
1223
01:10:21,700 --> 01:10:24,700
As a matter of fact,
antisemitism has been a plank
1224
01:10:24,730 --> 01:10:28,070
in the National Socialist
platform for 13 years.
1225
01:10:28,100 --> 01:10:30,940
So-called civilized people
didn't believe
1226
01:10:30,960 --> 01:10:32,270
that if they came to power,
1227
01:10:32,300 --> 01:10:35,500
they would carry
this program out.
1228
01:10:35,530 --> 01:10:37,440
Narrator: Thompson's
expulsion made her
1229
01:10:37,460 --> 01:10:40,270
an instant celebrity
in the United States.
1230
01:10:40,300 --> 01:10:42,940
She undertook a 30-city
lecture tour,
1231
01:10:42,960 --> 01:10:46,240
warning that, "Germany has
gone to war already
1232
01:10:46,260 --> 01:10:48,940
and the rest of the world
does not believe it."
1233
01:10:48,960 --> 01:10:50,700
And in a syndicated column,
1234
01:10:50,730 --> 01:10:54,040
she called upon Washington
again and again
1235
01:10:54,060 --> 01:10:57,570
to ease the barriers that kept
desperate German Jews
1236
01:10:57,600 --> 01:11:00,160
from emigrating
to the United States.
1237
01:11:01,530 --> 01:11:04,670
But the State Department
claimed that very few
1238
01:11:04,700 --> 01:11:08,670
actually wanted
to come to America.
1239
01:11:08,700 --> 01:11:10,700
Erbelding: In the
1930s and 1940s,
1240
01:11:10,730 --> 01:11:12,670
you could be openly antisemitic
1241
01:11:12,700 --> 01:11:15,200
and serve as a
State Department official.
1242
01:11:15,230 --> 01:11:17,100
The rest of Washington
is changing.
1243
01:11:17,130 --> 01:11:19,270
They're changing under
the Roosevelt Administration.
1244
01:11:19,300 --> 01:11:21,140
They're changing with
the New Deal.
1245
01:11:21,160 --> 01:11:23,170
But State Department officials
were more conservative,
1246
01:11:23,200 --> 01:11:25,970
they were more antisemitic,
they were more nativist,
1247
01:11:26,000 --> 01:11:30,440
at least openly, than anywhere
else in Washington.
1248
01:11:30,460 --> 01:11:32,670
Narrator: Consular officials
in Berlin
1249
01:11:32,700 --> 01:11:34,570
and everywhere else in Europe
1250
01:11:34,600 --> 01:11:38,170
continued zealously to enforce
the old directive
1251
01:11:38,200 --> 01:11:41,300
to deny a visa to any
would-be immigrant
1252
01:11:41,330 --> 01:11:43,770
"likely to become
a public charge,"
1253
01:11:43,800 --> 01:11:47,000
and therefore required
extensive data
1254
01:11:47,030 --> 01:11:50,340
on each applicant's
financial resources.
1255
01:11:50,360 --> 01:11:51,940
Lipstadt: The American diplomat
1256
01:11:51,960 --> 01:11:54,440
at certain consulates
giving out visas
1257
01:11:54,460 --> 01:11:57,100
would have to essentially
engage in divination.
1258
01:11:57,130 --> 01:12:00,500
Is this person likely to
become a public charge?
1259
01:12:00,530 --> 01:12:03,070
Well, they say they have
an uncle who will support them,
1260
01:12:03,100 --> 01:12:06,000
we have all these letters, but an
uncle is not a parent, it's not a sibling.
1261
01:12:06,030 --> 01:12:08,240
You couldn't come
if you already had a job,
1262
01:12:08,260 --> 01:12:10,670
because that meant you were
taking a job away from America.
1263
01:12:10,700 --> 01:12:12,440
You couldn't come if
you didn't have a job,
1264
01:12:12,460 --> 01:12:14,600
because it meant you
might end up on the dole
1265
01:12:14,630 --> 01:12:17,100
or have to get
government support.
1266
01:12:17,130 --> 01:12:19,600
Narrator: They also
continued to insist upon
1267
01:12:19,630 --> 01:12:23,870
duplicate copies of birth certificates
and government documents
1268
01:12:23,900 --> 01:12:27,470
attesting to an
applicant's good character.
1269
01:12:27,500 --> 01:12:30,570
"It seems quite preposterous,"
one man recalled,
1270
01:12:30,600 --> 01:12:32,500
"to have to go to your enemy
1271
01:12:32,530 --> 01:12:35,530
and ask for
a character reference."
1272
01:12:36,830 --> 01:12:38,570
Having made it nearly impossible
1273
01:12:38,600 --> 01:12:41,400
for Jewish Germans
to obtain visas,
1274
01:12:41,430 --> 01:12:44,670
the State Department then cited
the lack of applicants
1275
01:12:44,700 --> 01:12:46,570
to reassure the White House
1276
01:12:46,600 --> 01:12:50,070
that there was no
immigration crisis.
1277
01:12:50,100 --> 01:12:53,770
Congressman Emanuel Celler
accused the consular service
1278
01:12:53,800 --> 01:12:58,040
of having "a heartbeat
muffled in protocol."
1279
01:12:58,060 --> 01:13:02,500
Frances Perkins, Roosevelt's
Secretary of Labor,
1280
01:13:02,530 --> 01:13:05,770
sided with critics of
the State Department.
1281
01:13:05,800 --> 01:13:09,800
The first woman ever to serve
in a presidential cabinet,
1282
01:13:09,830 --> 01:13:13,400
she had known and worked
with immigrants all her life,
1283
01:13:13,430 --> 01:13:17,470
believed the United States
should be a haven for refugees,
1284
01:13:17,500 --> 01:13:21,100
and promoted a plan
to make their entry easier.
1285
01:13:21,130 --> 01:13:25,800
But the State Department
refused to relax its rules.
1286
01:13:25,830 --> 01:13:31,140
"If ships begin to arrive in New York
City laden with Jewish immigrants,"
1287
01:13:31,160 --> 01:13:33,440
one consular official wrote,
1288
01:13:33,460 --> 01:13:36,800
"the predominant Gentile
population of the country
1289
01:13:36,830 --> 01:13:38,800
"will claim they
have been betrayed
1290
01:13:38,830 --> 01:13:42,740
through a sleeping
State Department."
1291
01:13:42,760 --> 01:13:48,070
Public opinion overwhelmingly
opposed loosening restrictions.
1292
01:13:48,100 --> 01:13:50,100
Lipstadt: People were out of jobs.
1293
01:13:50,130 --> 01:13:52,070
People were standing
on food lines.
1294
01:13:52,100 --> 01:13:54,100
"You're going to ask me to
worry about the persecution
1295
01:13:54,130 --> 01:13:58,570
"of 600,000 or 585,000
Jews in Germany?
1296
01:13:58,600 --> 01:14:00,860
I can't feed my family."
1297
01:14:02,400 --> 01:14:05,740
Narrator: And Roosevelt's
willingness to work alongside Jews
1298
01:14:05,760 --> 01:14:08,670
had already become a source
of controversy.
1299
01:14:08,700 --> 01:14:13,540
Right-wing orators now denounced
what they called the Jew Deal.
1300
01:14:13,560 --> 01:14:16,840
Others claimed FDR
himself was a Jew
1301
01:14:16,860 --> 01:14:19,830
whose real name was Rosenfeld.
1302
01:14:21,300 --> 01:14:25,840
Antisemitic organizations
proliferated across the United States,
1303
01:14:25,860 --> 01:14:30,270
more than 100 of them
before the decade's end.
1304
01:14:30,300 --> 01:14:33,540
On the East Coast,
William Dudley Pelley,
1305
01:14:33,560 --> 01:14:37,670
a mystic who believed he took
his orders directly from Jesus,
1306
01:14:37,700 --> 01:14:40,540
led a para-military
fascist organization
1307
01:14:40,560 --> 01:14:43,170
modeled after
the Nazi Brownshirts
1308
01:14:43,200 --> 01:14:46,270
called the
Silver Legion of America
1309
01:14:46,300 --> 01:14:50,970
and claimed there were 22 million
Communists in the United States,
1310
01:14:51,000 --> 01:14:54,670
all of them following
orders from rabbis.
1311
01:14:54,700 --> 01:14:58,570
In the Midwest, an evangelist
named Gerald Winrod
1312
01:14:58,600 --> 01:15:00,740
assured his radio listeners
1313
01:15:00,760 --> 01:15:04,470
that Roosevelt was
a "devil" controlled by Jews,
1314
01:15:04,500 --> 01:15:06,940
while Hitler was a "man's man"
1315
01:15:06,960 --> 01:15:10,700
and a stalwart defender
of Christianity.
1316
01:15:10,730 --> 01:15:14,540
A group that called itself
the Friends of the New Germany
1317
01:15:14,560 --> 01:15:19,170
desecrated synagogue walls
with swastikas.
1318
01:15:19,200 --> 01:15:21,400
And Father Charles Coughlin,
1319
01:15:21,430 --> 01:15:25,100
a Detroit priest with
a radio audience of millions,
1320
01:15:25,130 --> 01:15:28,770
blamed "Shylocks" and
"international bankers,"
1321
01:15:28,800 --> 01:15:32,440
code words for Jews,
for the Depression.
1322
01:15:32,460 --> 01:15:37,740
...would drive the money changers
from the temple, and you did it.
1323
01:15:37,760 --> 01:15:39,770
(all cheering)
1324
01:15:39,800 --> 01:15:45,040
Lipstadt: He begins to give
overtly, unquestionably
1325
01:15:45,060 --> 01:15:47,600
antisemitic sermons,
1326
01:15:47,630 --> 01:15:49,670
many of which come
straight out of Goebbels,
1327
01:15:49,700 --> 01:15:53,240
many of which come straight
out of German propaganda.
1328
01:15:53,260 --> 01:15:56,430
And millions of Americans
tune in.
1329
01:15:58,200 --> 01:16:01,600
Narrator: A visitor to the
White House reported that FDR
1330
01:16:01,630 --> 01:16:05,040
was "quite apprehensive of
the growing antisemitic
1331
01:16:05,060 --> 01:16:09,340
and pro-Nazi sentiment
in the United States."
1332
01:16:09,360 --> 01:16:10,700
(whistle blows)
1333
01:16:10,730 --> 01:16:13,640
Meanwhile in early 1935,
1334
01:16:13,660 --> 01:16:15,940
Hitler revealed that
he had begun to build
1335
01:16:15,960 --> 01:16:18,640
an air force, the Luftwaffe,
1336
01:16:18,660 --> 01:16:21,600
and called for a massive
rearmament program...
1337
01:16:21,630 --> 01:16:25,840
artillery, submarines,
an immense army,
1338
01:16:25,860 --> 01:16:30,160
all of it in flagrant violation
of the Versailles Treaty.
1339
01:16:32,460 --> 01:16:40,460
♫ ♫
1340
01:16:41,500 --> 01:16:45,300
On the night of July 26, 1935,
1341
01:16:45,330 --> 01:16:49,140
the SS Bremen was preparing
to set sail for Germany
1342
01:16:49,160 --> 01:16:52,940
from Pier 86 in Manhattan.
1343
01:16:52,960 --> 01:16:54,670
She flew two flags...
1344
01:16:54,700 --> 01:16:57,070
the imperial German colors
1345
01:16:57,100 --> 01:17:01,460
and at the bow, the crooked
cross of the Nazi swastika.
1346
01:17:03,060 --> 01:17:06,400
1,300 passengers
and elegantly-dressed friends
1347
01:17:06,430 --> 01:17:08,740
had come aboard to see them off.
1348
01:17:08,760 --> 01:17:12,770
So had several thousand
curiosity-seekers.
1349
01:17:12,800 --> 01:17:18,200
A dozen New York merchant seamen
had also slipped aboard.
1350
01:17:18,230 --> 01:17:21,900
The American Communist Party
Club on 10th Street
1351
01:17:21,930 --> 01:17:26,070
had sent them to avenge a sailor
who had been jailed in Hamburg
1352
01:17:26,100 --> 01:17:29,030
for possessing anti-Nazi
literature.
1353
01:17:30,530 --> 01:17:33,200
When it was time for guests
to disembark,
1354
01:17:33,230 --> 01:17:36,040
the seamen charged
toward the bow.
1355
01:17:36,060 --> 01:17:39,840
New York cops and German crewmen
tried to stop them.
1356
01:17:39,860 --> 01:17:42,170
One officer was badly beaten,
1357
01:17:42,200 --> 01:17:44,900
one invader was shot
in the thigh.
1358
01:17:44,930 --> 01:17:48,640
But two men managed to
make it to the Nazi flag,
1359
01:17:48,660 --> 01:17:50,470
and as onlookers cheered,
1360
01:17:50,500 --> 01:17:54,030
they cut it loose
and hurled it into the Hudson.
1361
01:17:56,430 --> 01:18:00,040
6 men were arrested and
arraigned before a judge,
1362
01:18:00,060 --> 01:18:03,600
a Russian immigrant
named Louis Brodsky.
1363
01:18:03,630 --> 01:18:07,800
He jailed one protestor because
he had worn brass knuckles.
1364
01:18:07,830 --> 01:18:09,970
But he let the others go.
1365
01:18:10,000 --> 01:18:11,800
The swastika, he said,
1366
01:18:11,830 --> 01:18:14,740
was nothing but "a black
flag of piracy."
1367
01:18:14,760 --> 01:18:17,840
It represented
"a revolt against civilization,
1368
01:18:17,860 --> 01:18:22,330
a merciless war against
religion, against freedoms."
1369
01:18:23,530 --> 01:18:27,600
Nazi leaders eagerly
exploited the incident.
1370
01:18:27,630 --> 01:18:31,600
An "impudent Jew in his
bottomless hatred for Germany,"
1371
01:18:31,630 --> 01:18:35,640
Hermann Goering said, had
insulted the whole country.
1372
01:18:35,660 --> 01:18:39,270
A formal protest was made
to the State Department.
1373
01:18:39,300 --> 01:18:44,140
Secretary Hull said he would not
question Judge Brodsky's decision,
1374
01:18:44,160 --> 01:18:47,470
but he did express "regret"
that the judge had indulged
1375
01:18:47,500 --> 01:18:50,640
in "expressions offensive
to another government
1376
01:18:50,660 --> 01:18:54,000
with which we have
official relations."
1377
01:18:54,030 --> 01:18:56,340
Hitler was not mollified.
1378
01:18:56,360 --> 01:19:00,700
At the annual Nazi party rally
at Nuremberg in September,
1379
01:19:00,730 --> 01:19:04,700
the swastika was declared
the German national flag.
1380
01:19:04,730 --> 01:19:09,840
"It," Goering said, "has become
for us a holy symbol.
1381
01:19:09,860 --> 01:19:13,730
It is the anti-Jewish symbol
for the world."
1382
01:19:15,300 --> 01:19:19,870
At Nuremberg, the Nazis also
issued a series of new
1383
01:19:19,900 --> 01:19:23,900
and still more harsh
antisemitic laws.
1384
01:19:25,560 --> 01:19:29,170
Jews, and potentially
anyone opposed to the Reich,
1385
01:19:29,200 --> 01:19:33,100
would become subjects,
not citizens, of Germany,
1386
01:19:33,130 --> 01:19:36,470
with no political rights at all.
1387
01:19:36,500 --> 01:19:40,540
To uphold the supposed racial
purity of the German people,
1388
01:19:40,560 --> 01:19:43,940
these laws banned marriage
or sexual relations
1389
01:19:43,960 --> 01:19:46,870
between Jews and persons
of what they called
1390
01:19:46,900 --> 01:19:49,560
"German or kindred blood."
1391
01:19:51,300 --> 01:19:53,870
The German jurists
who wrote these laws
1392
01:19:53,900 --> 01:19:57,540
had closely studied statutes
in the United States
1393
01:19:57,560 --> 01:20:00,940
that had for decades
reduced African Americans
1394
01:20:00,960 --> 01:20:03,040
to second-class citizens
1395
01:20:03,060 --> 01:20:07,700
and barred interracial marriage
in 30 states.
1396
01:20:09,330 --> 01:20:12,300
Greene: Even as the Nazis are
writing the Nuremberg Laws
1397
01:20:12,330 --> 01:20:15,670
that stripped Jews of
their citizenship in 1935,
1398
01:20:15,700 --> 01:20:19,240
they're looking to Jim Crow
laws in the United States
1399
01:20:19,260 --> 01:20:22,700
to understand segregation here.
1400
01:20:22,730 --> 01:20:25,140
Hayes: And when the
Nazis were reproached
1401
01:20:25,160 --> 01:20:28,170
for discrimination
against Jews in Germany,
1402
01:20:28,200 --> 01:20:31,900
their first answer was
"Mississippi."
1403
01:20:31,930 --> 01:20:34,340
They were able to say,
"In the United States,
1404
01:20:34,360 --> 01:20:37,540
"you say that we should
not treat these people
1405
01:20:37,560 --> 01:20:41,170
"whom we regard as inferior
badly, but you do it.
1406
01:20:41,200 --> 01:20:42,870
"You have lynching in
the United States.
1407
01:20:42,900 --> 01:20:44,700
"You make it difficult
for them to vote.
1408
01:20:44,730 --> 01:20:48,060
So how dare you reproach us
for this?"
1409
01:20:49,730 --> 01:20:53,040
Erbelding: African-American
newspapers at the time here in the U.S.,
1410
01:20:53,060 --> 01:20:55,070
they're saying, "You,
the American people,
1411
01:20:55,100 --> 01:20:57,240
"seem to be upset about
what Hitler is doing.
1412
01:20:57,260 --> 01:20:59,070
"You're not looking
down the street.
1413
01:20:59,100 --> 01:21:01,570
"We, too, are being persecuted.
1414
01:21:01,600 --> 01:21:04,770
"We, too, are being attacked
by our own neighbors.
1415
01:21:04,800 --> 01:21:06,870
"Where are the marches for us?
1416
01:21:06,900 --> 01:21:08,540
"Where are the petitions for us?
1417
01:21:08,560 --> 01:21:11,800
Where are the rallies for us?"
1418
01:21:11,830 --> 01:21:13,840
Narrator: In one respect,
1419
01:21:13,860 --> 01:21:17,840
the Nazi statutes were less
harsh than many U.S. state laws
1420
01:21:17,860 --> 01:21:20,840
that defined a person
of color as anyone
1421
01:21:20,860 --> 01:21:24,500
who had a single drop
of Negro blood.
1422
01:21:24,530 --> 01:21:28,340
Instead, they categorized
people as full Jews,
1423
01:21:28,360 --> 01:21:31,100
Jews by definition, and mongrels
1424
01:21:31,130 --> 01:21:34,800
of the first and second degrees.
1425
01:21:40,600 --> 01:21:43,200
Man: There has been no tragedy
in modern times
1426
01:21:43,230 --> 01:21:45,770
equal in its awful effects
to the fight
1427
01:21:45,800 --> 01:21:47,840
on the Jew in Germany.
1428
01:21:47,860 --> 01:21:50,070
It is an attack on civilization
1429
01:21:50,100 --> 01:21:52,240
comparable only to such horrors
1430
01:21:52,260 --> 01:21:56,870
as the Spanish Inquisition
and the African slave trade.
1431
01:21:56,900 --> 01:22:00,340
Adolf Hitler hardly ever
makes a speech today
1432
01:22:00,360 --> 01:22:03,800
without belittling,
blaming, or cursing Jews.
1433
01:22:03,830 --> 01:22:06,670
Every misfortune of
the world is in whole
1434
01:22:06,700 --> 01:22:09,160
or in part blamed on Jews.
1435
01:22:10,660 --> 01:22:13,340
There is a campaign
of race prejudice
1436
01:22:13,360 --> 01:22:15,670
which surpasses in
vindictive cruelty
1437
01:22:15,700 --> 01:22:20,000
and public insult
anything I have ever seen,
1438
01:22:20,030 --> 01:22:22,870
and I have seen much.
1439
01:22:22,900 --> 01:22:25,200
W.E.B. DuBois.
1440
01:22:27,230 --> 01:22:30,640
One night when my mother and I
1441
01:22:30,660 --> 01:22:33,800
were out of town visiting
my grandparents,
1442
01:22:33,830 --> 01:22:37,370
a group of Brownshirts
1443
01:22:37,400 --> 01:22:42,700
came and beat my father up.
1444
01:22:42,730 --> 01:22:45,940
We came back the next day.
1445
01:22:45,960 --> 01:22:50,040
And my mother took one look
at him
1446
01:22:50,060 --> 01:22:53,170
and screamed out, you know,
1447
01:22:53,200 --> 01:22:55,560
"What have they done to you,
Julius?"
1448
01:22:57,200 --> 01:23:01,440
It is a deep ingrained feeling
1449
01:23:01,460 --> 01:23:04,340
that your parents
are your protectors.
1450
01:23:04,360 --> 01:23:07,070
Now there is no protector.
1451
01:23:07,100 --> 01:23:11,360
Nobody is immune
from persecution.
1452
01:23:13,100 --> 01:23:16,400
Hayes: In the 1930s,
the objective of Nazi policy
1453
01:23:16,430 --> 01:23:20,340
was to make life in Germany
for Jews so miserable
1454
01:23:20,360 --> 01:23:22,300
that they would leave.
1455
01:23:22,330 --> 01:23:25,840
And a fair number of German Jews
understood right away.
1456
01:23:25,860 --> 01:23:27,570
There were 60,000 German Jews,
1457
01:23:27,600 --> 01:23:29,140
more than 10% of the population,
1458
01:23:29,160 --> 01:23:31,840
that left the country
in 1933-'34.
1459
01:23:31,860 --> 01:23:34,240
They were fortunate
in the fact that
1460
01:23:34,260 --> 01:23:37,470
in the initial shock of
discrimination against the Jews,
1461
01:23:37,500 --> 01:23:41,140
of outrages against Jews,
the neighboring countries,
1462
01:23:41,160 --> 01:23:44,370
the Netherlands, Belgium,
France, Czechoslovakia,
1463
01:23:44,400 --> 01:23:47,400
were relatively accepting
of people who left.
1464
01:23:47,430 --> 01:23:49,570
And so, in that first
wave of people,
1465
01:23:49,600 --> 01:23:52,240
they got refuge in
other countries.
1466
01:23:52,260 --> 01:23:54,540
As the 1930s went on, however,
1467
01:23:54,560 --> 01:23:56,640
the willingness of these
countries nearby
1468
01:23:56,660 --> 01:23:59,870
to accept refugees declined.
1469
01:23:59,900 --> 01:24:02,540
And as more and more
German Jews realized
1470
01:24:02,560 --> 01:24:04,470
they needed to get
out of the country,
1471
01:24:04,500 --> 01:24:07,430
it became harder and harder
for them to get out.
1472
01:24:13,400 --> 01:24:18,040
Man as Celler: To expect sportsmanship
from the Nazis is impossible,
1473
01:24:18,060 --> 01:24:22,800
for they obtained power by
treachery, violence, and bloodshed.
1474
01:24:22,830 --> 01:24:26,970
To regard these men as
true guardians of sports,
1475
01:24:27,000 --> 01:24:31,470
to turn the Olympics games
over to their administration
1476
01:24:31,500 --> 01:24:34,570
is to invite the possibility
that the Olympic games
1477
01:24:34,600 --> 01:24:36,900
shall be befouled.
1478
01:24:36,930 --> 01:24:39,160
Emanuel Celler.
1479
01:24:40,830 --> 01:24:44,670
Narrator: In 1936, both
the Winter and Summer Olympics
1480
01:24:44,700 --> 01:24:47,000
were held in Germany.
1481
01:24:47,030 --> 01:24:51,300
Hitler saw an opportunity to
show the world a reinvigorated,
1482
01:24:51,330 --> 01:24:54,000
allegedly peace-loving country,
1483
01:24:54,030 --> 01:24:57,770
its jobless rate slashed
by public works programs
1484
01:24:57,800 --> 01:25:00,360
and massive, rapid rearmament.
1485
01:25:02,030 --> 01:25:06,000
Some in Europe and America had
threatened to boycott the Games
1486
01:25:06,030 --> 01:25:09,140
because of the Nazi treatment
of Jews.
1487
01:25:09,160 --> 01:25:13,700
But Avery Brundage, the president
of the American Olympic Committee,
1488
01:25:13,730 --> 01:25:18,370
who privately admired Hitler
and personally disliked Jews,
1489
01:25:18,400 --> 01:25:20,970
urged Americans not
to be swept up
1490
01:25:21,000 --> 01:25:25,370
in what he called
a "Jew-Nazi altercation."
1491
01:25:25,400 --> 01:25:28,300
Congressman Celler
denounced Brundage
1492
01:25:28,330 --> 01:25:30,360
as the Nazis'
"willing dupe."
1493
01:25:32,060 --> 01:25:34,700
On March 7, 1936,
1494
01:25:34,730 --> 01:25:38,100
less than 3 weeks after
the Winter Olympics,
1495
01:25:38,130 --> 01:25:42,000
Hitler sent some 30,000 troops
into the Rhineland,
1496
01:25:42,030 --> 01:25:44,770
a German region that
had provided a buffer
1497
01:25:44,800 --> 01:25:47,000
between Germany and France,
1498
01:25:47,030 --> 01:25:49,800
which according to
the Treaty of Versailles
1499
01:25:49,830 --> 01:25:52,840
was to remain demilitarized.
1500
01:25:52,860 --> 01:25:55,670
Thousands of German-speaking
residents
1501
01:25:55,700 --> 01:25:58,640
lined the roads to cheer them.
1502
01:25:58,660 --> 01:26:01,000
"The Führer is immensely happy,"
1503
01:26:01,030 --> 01:26:04,170
Joseph Goebbels noted
in his diary that night.
1504
01:26:04,200 --> 01:26:06,240
"France won't take action,
1505
01:26:06,260 --> 01:26:11,530
England remains passive,
and America uninterested."
1506
01:26:14,630 --> 01:26:17,870
At the same time, Berlin
was being transformed
1507
01:26:17,900 --> 01:26:21,770
into a colossal stage set
for the Summer Olympics.
1508
01:26:21,800 --> 01:26:26,540
Some 1,500 reporters were
expected from all over the world,
1509
01:26:26,560 --> 01:26:29,300
and the Nazi regime made
sure that they would see
1510
01:26:29,330 --> 01:26:32,100
only what it wanted seen.
1511
01:26:32,130 --> 01:26:36,140
They removed every sign
forbidding Jews entry to restaurants,
1512
01:26:36,160 --> 01:26:39,700
kept antisemitic
publications off newsstands,
1513
01:26:39,730 --> 01:26:44,000
and ordered newspapers not
to report antisemitic incidents.
1514
01:26:45,300 --> 01:26:47,570
They also rounded up
and interned
1515
01:26:47,600 --> 01:26:50,400
several hundred Roma
and Sinti people,
1516
01:26:50,430 --> 01:26:55,100
often derogatorily referred
to as gypsies.
1517
01:26:55,130 --> 01:26:58,200
"We must be more charming
than the Parisians,"
1518
01:26:58,230 --> 01:27:00,140
Goebbels told Berliners,
1519
01:27:00,160 --> 01:27:02,840
"more easy-going than
the Viennese,
1520
01:27:02,860 --> 01:27:05,640
"more cosmopolitan
than the Londoners,
1521
01:27:05,660 --> 01:27:09,340
and more practical
than New Yorkers."
1522
01:27:09,360 --> 01:27:13,300
But anti-Nazi Germans managed
to slip between the pages
1523
01:27:13,330 --> 01:27:16,540
of a popular guidebook
a map peppered
1524
01:27:16,560 --> 01:27:20,640
with the locations of
the scores of jails and prisons
1525
01:27:20,660 --> 01:27:24,300
and concentration camps in
which the regimes' enemies
1526
01:27:24,330 --> 01:27:26,560
had been safely locked away.
1527
01:27:28,130 --> 01:27:32,270
Still, the Nazi genius for
propaganda and pageantry
1528
01:27:32,300 --> 01:27:34,900
overcame most visitors' doubts.
1529
01:27:36,800 --> 01:27:39,340
Man: The daily spectacle
was breathtaking
1530
01:27:39,360 --> 01:27:42,440
in its beauty and magnificence.
1531
01:27:42,460 --> 01:27:46,940
The stadium was a tournament of
color that caught the throat,
1532
01:27:46,960 --> 01:27:51,340
the massed splendor of the
banners made the gaudy decorations
1533
01:27:51,360 --> 01:27:53,600
of America's great parades,
1534
01:27:53,630 --> 01:27:57,140
presidential inaugurations,
and World's Fairs
1535
01:27:57,160 --> 01:28:01,900
seem like shoddy carnivals
in comparison.
1536
01:28:01,930 --> 01:28:04,570
Thomas Wolfe.
1537
01:28:04,600 --> 01:28:06,740
(gunshot)
1538
01:28:06,760 --> 01:28:09,570
Narrator: The Nazis were
pleased when German athletes
1539
01:28:09,600 --> 01:28:11,540
amassed the most medals.
1540
01:28:11,560 --> 01:28:15,300
But when Jesse Owens
set 3 Olympic records
1541
01:28:15,330 --> 01:28:19,000
and won 4 gold medals,
they were appalled.
1542
01:28:19,030 --> 01:28:21,240
"That's a scandal,"
Goebbels wrote.
1543
01:28:21,260 --> 01:28:24,170
"White humanity
should be ashamed."
1544
01:28:24,200 --> 01:28:27,200
In the future, Hitler assured
his inner circle,
1545
01:28:27,230 --> 01:28:30,370
the Olympics would always
be held in Berlin
1546
01:28:30,400 --> 01:28:35,100
and no "primitive men" would
ever again be allowed to take part.
1547
01:28:37,400 --> 01:28:39,440
U.S. Ambassador
William Dodd
1548
01:28:39,460 --> 01:28:42,400
had not been fooled
by the Nazi pageantry
1549
01:28:42,430 --> 01:28:45,270
and kept his distance
from the Games.
1550
01:28:45,300 --> 01:28:48,240
Germany's Jews,
he informed Washington,
1551
01:28:48,260 --> 01:28:51,900
were anticipating the withdrawal
of the world's attention
1552
01:28:51,930 --> 01:28:54,400
"with fear and trembling."
1553
01:28:56,930 --> 01:28:59,070
Once the visitors had left,
1554
01:28:59,100 --> 01:29:03,140
the Nazis resumed their
indoctrination of the German people.
1555
01:29:03,160 --> 01:29:06,140
"We must bring up a new
type of human being,"
1556
01:29:06,160 --> 01:29:07,970
Hitler had proclaimed.
1557
01:29:08,000 --> 01:29:11,640
"We have undertaken to give
the Germans an education
1558
01:29:11,660 --> 01:29:16,500
that begins with the child
and ends with the old fighter."
1559
01:29:16,530 --> 01:29:19,770
His portrait hung in
every school room.
1560
01:29:19,800 --> 01:29:24,140
Small children were made to
recite poems in his praise.
1561
01:29:24,160 --> 01:29:29,800
Children's books were filled with
venomous caricatures of Jews.
1562
01:29:29,830 --> 01:29:34,240
Millions of adolescents were
made to join the Hitler Youth.
1563
01:29:34,260 --> 01:29:37,300
Parents of children
who refused to join
1564
01:29:37,330 --> 01:29:41,640
were investigated, fired,
sometimes imprisoned.
1565
01:29:41,660 --> 01:29:49,240
♫ ♫
1566
01:29:49,260 --> 01:29:53,300
Stern: My mother had
a good insight.
1567
01:29:53,330 --> 01:29:57,370
She said, "This will
get worse and worse.
1568
01:29:57,400 --> 01:30:01,970
I will write to your
Uncle Benno in America."
1569
01:30:02,000 --> 01:30:06,640
She wrote and said,
"Can you save us?"
1570
01:30:06,660 --> 01:30:08,400
Back came the answer.
1571
01:30:08,430 --> 01:30:11,640
He said, "You know,
I have lost my job
1572
01:30:11,660 --> 01:30:14,070
"as a baker and pastry maker,
1573
01:30:14,100 --> 01:30:18,300
"and so I can take one of you,
1574
01:30:18,330 --> 01:30:21,270
but not all of you."
1575
01:30:21,300 --> 01:30:22,970
Behind my back,
1576
01:30:23,000 --> 01:30:27,740
a parental conference
must have taken place.
1577
01:30:27,760 --> 01:30:31,470
And they said, "OK,
we'll send the oldest,"
1578
01:30:31,500 --> 01:30:36,500
and with a mission of trying
to find other Americans
1579
01:30:36,530 --> 01:30:38,800
who could vouch for us.
1580
01:30:38,830 --> 01:30:41,900
Narrator: Gunther was just 15
1581
01:30:41,930 --> 01:30:45,100
and ambivalent
about leaving home.
1582
01:30:45,130 --> 01:30:47,640
Stern: There were
countervailing thoughts.
1583
01:30:47,660 --> 01:30:51,840
One of them is that you were...
1584
01:30:51,860 --> 01:30:55,740
Are going towards
a terrific adventure.
1585
01:30:55,760 --> 01:30:59,070
And then this dismal feeling,
1586
01:30:59,100 --> 01:31:05,000
everything I know would be
forcefully torn apart.
1587
01:31:06,830 --> 01:31:09,340
Narrator: Gunther
finally agreed to go
1588
01:31:09,360 --> 01:31:12,870
and to try to find someone in
America with enough money
1589
01:31:12,900 --> 01:31:15,640
to sponsor the rest
of the family.
1590
01:31:15,660 --> 01:31:18,540
While his father began
the laborious task
1591
01:31:18,560 --> 01:31:22,870
of filling out the paperwork to
obtain a visa for his son,
1592
01:31:22,900 --> 01:31:24,870
he hired a local English teacher
1593
01:31:24,900 --> 01:31:27,140
who had lived
for a time in Brooklyn
1594
01:31:27,160 --> 01:31:30,830
to teach Gunther everything
he could about America.
1595
01:31:32,560 --> 01:31:34,470
A few months later,
1596
01:31:34,500 --> 01:31:37,700
Gunther's parents again
called the family together.
1597
01:31:37,730 --> 01:31:40,640
Stern: They took me once more
in this good room,
1598
01:31:40,660 --> 01:31:44,260
and there was
papers all laid out.
1599
01:31:46,030 --> 01:31:49,640
It was the affidavit in concert
1600
01:31:49,660 --> 01:31:54,940
with a American-Jewish
Women's Organization.
1601
01:31:54,960 --> 01:31:58,870
They said, "You also have
a date in about a month
1602
01:31:58,900 --> 01:32:03,370
at the American
consulate in Hamburg."
1603
01:32:03,400 --> 01:32:05,670
Narrator: Gunther
was filled with fear.
1604
01:32:05,700 --> 01:32:08,670
He knew that unsympathetic
American officials
1605
01:32:08,700 --> 01:32:12,000
in some cities,
like the consul in Stuttgart,
1606
01:32:12,030 --> 01:32:14,700
routinely turned applicants down
1607
01:32:14,730 --> 01:32:18,100
over one technicality
or another.
1608
01:32:18,130 --> 01:32:20,170
Stern: If you were confronted,
1609
01:32:20,200 --> 01:32:22,240
like the one in Stuttgart,
1610
01:32:22,260 --> 01:32:26,440
by a virulent antisemite,
1611
01:32:26,460 --> 01:32:31,900
he followed the letter of
the law beyond its intent.
1612
01:32:31,930 --> 01:32:35,170
That kind of news got around.
1613
01:32:35,200 --> 01:32:37,770
Narrator: Gunther's appointment
was with the consul
1614
01:32:37,800 --> 01:32:41,030
in Hamburg,
Malcolm C. Burke.
1615
01:32:42,160 --> 01:32:45,570
Stern: I was prepared
to be grilled.
1616
01:32:45,600 --> 01:32:49,640
He started out, you know,
very routinely.
1617
01:32:49,660 --> 01:32:52,700
"Where do you come from?
What's your parents like?"
1618
01:32:52,730 --> 01:32:56,900
And then, he said... I'll
never forget that question...
1619
01:32:56,930 --> 01:32:59,860
"How much is 48 and 52?"
1620
01:33:02,130 --> 01:33:03,770
That was it.
1621
01:33:03,800 --> 01:33:08,040
He put his name on my
Youth Identity papers.
1622
01:33:08,060 --> 01:33:12,200
And there I was,
ready to immigrate.
1623
01:33:12,230 --> 01:33:15,000
Had we lived in Stuttgart,
I was out.
1624
01:33:16,330 --> 01:33:20,970
Snyder: Almost all of the major
rescuers were diplomats,
1625
01:33:21,000 --> 01:33:24,970
people who seemed most of the
time to have unglamorous lives,
1626
01:33:25,000 --> 01:33:27,270
people who seemed most of
the time to just be pushing
1627
01:33:27,300 --> 01:33:30,170
one piece of paper
from here to there.
1628
01:33:30,200 --> 01:33:32,300
But it turns out that
one piece of paper,
1629
01:33:32,330 --> 01:33:35,000
pushed from the right here
to the right there,
1630
01:33:35,030 --> 01:33:36,430
can save a life.
1631
01:33:37,660 --> 01:33:40,200
Narrator: In the fall of 1937,
1632
01:33:40,230 --> 01:33:43,230
the date of Gunther's
departure was set.
1633
01:33:44,700 --> 01:33:47,670
Stern: It was a highly charged,
1634
01:33:47,700 --> 01:33:51,270
emotional couple of weeks.
1635
01:33:51,300 --> 01:33:55,440
My mother had taken me
on very long walks
1636
01:33:55,460 --> 01:33:56,970
through the city
1637
01:33:57,000 --> 01:33:59,900
in the few days we still
had together.
1638
01:34:01,660 --> 01:34:04,900
I had played games against
my brother Werner,
1639
01:34:04,930 --> 01:34:07,140
and he against me.
1640
01:34:07,160 --> 01:34:11,640
And all that was going to
be taken away.
1641
01:34:11,660 --> 01:34:19,660
♫ ♫
1642
01:34:21,330 --> 01:34:23,540
Narrator: In November,
Gunther Stern
1643
01:34:23,560 --> 01:34:26,900
arrived in New York City
aboard a German ship.
1644
01:34:29,430 --> 01:34:34,140
After the German Jewish Children's
Aid Society determined his English
1645
01:34:34,160 --> 01:34:36,870
was good enough for him
to travel alone,
1646
01:34:36,900 --> 01:34:40,200
he boarded a train
and headed for St. Louis,
1647
01:34:40,230 --> 01:34:43,330
where his aunt and uncle
were waiting for him.
1648
01:34:44,930 --> 01:34:47,070
5 days after he got there,
1649
01:34:47,100 --> 01:34:49,600
Gunther was
attending high school.
1650
01:34:49,630 --> 01:34:54,270
He got his first job washing
dishes at a downtown hotel.
1651
01:34:54,300 --> 01:34:57,870
But the plight of his family
back in Germany
1652
01:34:57,900 --> 01:35:01,140
and the responsibility
he felt for finding a way
1653
01:35:01,160 --> 01:35:03,440
to bring them to America, too,
1654
01:35:03,460 --> 01:35:05,800
never left him for long.
1655
01:35:08,360 --> 01:35:10,360
(film projector whirs)
1656
01:35:14,460 --> 01:35:16,900
In the summer of 1937,
1657
01:35:16,930 --> 01:35:19,670
Herman and Lotte Bland
of Chicago,
1658
01:35:19,700 --> 01:35:22,240
who had come
to America from Poland,
1659
01:35:22,260 --> 01:35:24,640
took their two sons
to see the country
1660
01:35:24,660 --> 01:35:26,400
where they had been born.
1661
01:35:28,500 --> 01:35:30,140
Leonard, their oldest,
1662
01:35:30,160 --> 01:35:33,360
carried a brand-new
16-milimeter camera.
1663
01:35:36,500 --> 01:35:39,100
Harold, who turned 8
on the trip,
1664
01:35:39,130 --> 01:35:41,670
was deeply affected by
the poverty
1665
01:35:41,700 --> 01:35:44,530
and the antisemitism
he saw there.
1666
01:35:48,560 --> 01:35:51,470
In Suwalki, they
met Lotte's cousins,
1667
01:35:51,500 --> 01:35:55,360
and she installed a new
headstone on her parents' grave.
1668
01:35:56,900 --> 01:35:58,970
In the town's central square,
1669
01:35:59,000 --> 01:36:03,000
Leonard noticed that someone
had scratched "Kill the Jews"
1670
01:36:03,030 --> 01:36:07,170
in wet cement, and
he captured it on film.
1671
01:36:07,200 --> 01:36:10,000
Minutes later,
Polish policemen arrived
1672
01:36:10,030 --> 01:36:12,770
and detained the whole family.
1673
01:36:12,800 --> 01:36:15,770
Officers tore the film from
Leonard's camera,
1674
01:36:15,800 --> 01:36:18,040
and after several tense hours,
1675
01:36:18,060 --> 01:36:21,530
finally allowed the frightened
Blands to leave.
1676
01:36:25,730 --> 01:36:28,670
In the years to come,
nearly all of Suwalki's
1677
01:36:28,700 --> 01:36:32,900
14,000 Jewish inhabitants
would be murdered.
1678
01:36:37,630 --> 01:36:41,170
Even the Jewish cemetery
would be destroyed,
1679
01:36:41,200 --> 01:36:46,260
as if the generations buried
there had never existed.
1680
01:36:51,930 --> 01:36:53,860
(airplanes whirring)
1681
01:37:01,800 --> 01:37:05,600
In 1937, the world's
authoritarian regimes
1682
01:37:05,630 --> 01:37:09,500
were entering a new, more
threatening phase of conquest.
1683
01:37:11,100 --> 01:37:13,760
Hitler had taken back
the Rhineland.
1684
01:37:15,330 --> 01:37:18,400
Benito Mussolini's Italian
fascist troops
1685
01:37:18,430 --> 01:37:21,800
had crushed Libya
and invaded Ethiopia,
1686
01:37:21,830 --> 01:37:24,570
dropping bombs and deploying
mustard gas
1687
01:37:24,600 --> 01:37:26,660
against helpless civilians.
1688
01:37:28,630 --> 01:37:31,860
Japanese forces invaded China.
1689
01:37:34,800 --> 01:37:37,900
In Spain, German
and Italian warplanes
1690
01:37:37,930 --> 01:37:39,870
conducted terror bombing raids
1691
01:37:39,900 --> 01:37:42,570
in support of a fascist uprising
1692
01:37:42,600 --> 01:37:45,640
against a duly elected
left-wing government
1693
01:37:45,660 --> 01:37:48,200
supported by the Soviet Union.
1694
01:37:50,430 --> 01:37:54,200
Neither France nor England
nor the United States
1695
01:37:54,230 --> 01:37:56,260
was willing to intervene.
1696
01:37:58,300 --> 01:38:03,340
Franklin Roosevelt had been
re-elected by a landslide in 1936.
1697
01:38:03,360 --> 01:38:07,770
4 years of the New Deal had
helped restore American confidence
1698
01:38:07,800 --> 01:38:11,000
and begun to put the country
back to work.
1699
01:38:11,030 --> 01:38:13,640
But Roosevelt was
an internationalist
1700
01:38:13,660 --> 01:38:17,740
presiding over
an isolationist country.
1701
01:38:17,760 --> 01:38:21,100
Senate hearings had convinced
millions of Americans
1702
01:38:21,130 --> 01:38:24,170
that Wall Street bankers,
munitions makers,
1703
01:38:24,200 --> 01:38:27,100
and British propagandists
had conspired
1704
01:38:27,130 --> 01:38:31,770
to trick the United States
into entering the Great War.
1705
01:38:31,800 --> 01:38:35,940
Gerald Nye: American commercial
interest is selfish and greedy.
1706
01:38:35,960 --> 01:38:39,900
Sensing the opportunity for
profit from war
1707
01:38:39,930 --> 01:38:42,600
would do as they have
done in the past
1708
01:38:42,630 --> 01:38:45,230
if left to pursue
their own course.
1709
01:38:47,000 --> 01:38:51,000
Narrator: 125,000 college
students had staged
1710
01:38:51,030 --> 01:38:53,540
a one-hour Strike for Peace,
1711
01:38:53,560 --> 01:38:56,940
and 60,000 of them
signed a pledge never
1712
01:38:56,960 --> 01:39:01,740
"to support the United States
in any war it may conduct."
1713
01:39:01,760 --> 01:39:04,040
Congress had shrunk the Army,
1714
01:39:04,060 --> 01:39:07,240
kept the country out of
international organizations,
1715
01:39:07,260 --> 01:39:10,040
and passed two Neutrality Acts,
1716
01:39:10,060 --> 01:39:16,770
barring the sale of arms or war
materiel to any belligerent anywhere.
1717
01:39:16,800 --> 01:39:22,600
In Chicago, President Roosevelt
publicly expressed his alarm.
1718
01:39:22,630 --> 01:39:26,760
Roosevelt: The epidemic of
world lawlessness is spreading.
1719
01:39:28,060 --> 01:39:31,500
And mark this well,
1720
01:39:31,530 --> 01:39:37,070
when an epidemic of physical
disease starts to spread,
1721
01:39:37,100 --> 01:39:39,270
the community approves
1722
01:39:39,300 --> 01:39:44,670
and joins in a quarantine
of the patients
1723
01:39:44,700 --> 01:39:48,370
in order to protect the health
of the community
1724
01:39:48,400 --> 01:39:51,770
against the spread
of the disease.
1725
01:39:51,800 --> 01:39:54,800
(applause)
1726
01:39:54,830 --> 01:39:57,640
Narrator: Outraged
pacifists now charged
1727
01:39:57,660 --> 01:40:01,240
that Roosevelt was starting
America down the slope to war
1728
01:40:01,260 --> 01:40:03,570
by calling for a quarantine.
1729
01:40:03,600 --> 01:40:06,900
Isolationist congressmen
threatened to impeach him.
1730
01:40:06,930 --> 01:40:10,470
The leaders of his own party
remained silent.
1731
01:40:10,500 --> 01:40:13,400
"It is a terrible thing,"
he told an aide,
1732
01:40:13,430 --> 01:40:16,740
"to look over your shoulder
when you are trying to lead
1733
01:40:16,760 --> 01:40:19,900
and find no one there."
1734
01:40:19,930 --> 01:40:23,070
Erbelding: There is no real
perception in the 1930s
1735
01:40:23,100 --> 01:40:26,040
that America is a force
for good in the world,
1736
01:40:26,060 --> 01:40:28,870
or that we should be
involved in the world at all.
1737
01:40:28,900 --> 01:40:32,340
There is no sense among
the American people,
1738
01:40:32,360 --> 01:40:34,640
among the American government,
among the international community,
1739
01:40:34,660 --> 01:40:36,900
that it's anyone else's
business what is happening
1740
01:40:36,930 --> 01:40:38,970
within, you know,
your own country.
1741
01:40:39,000 --> 01:40:42,470
It is not illegal what Hitler
is doing to the Jews
1742
01:40:42,500 --> 01:40:44,370
under International Law.
1743
01:40:44,400 --> 01:40:46,200
You can attack your own citizens
1744
01:40:46,230 --> 01:40:48,560
under International Law
at this point.
1745
01:40:50,500 --> 01:40:53,970
Narrator: American corporations,
like those of other countries,
1746
01:40:54,000 --> 01:40:58,400
continued to conduct business
as usual with the Hitler regime.
1747
01:40:58,430 --> 01:41:02,840
The Nazis awarded Henry Ford
their highest civilian medal,
1748
01:41:02,860 --> 01:41:06,440
and his German plant began
supplying the German army
1749
01:41:06,460 --> 01:41:08,940
with 1,500 vehicles a year,
1750
01:41:08,960 --> 01:41:11,000
after turning down an offer
1751
01:41:11,030 --> 01:41:14,100
to build airplane engines
for Britain.
1752
01:41:14,130 --> 01:41:18,900
Woolworth's German subsidiary
fired all its Jewish employees
1753
01:41:18,930 --> 01:41:21,470
as the price of doing business.
1754
01:41:21,500 --> 01:41:25,030
So did the Berlin office
of the Associated Press.
1755
01:41:27,000 --> 01:41:29,740
All but one of the major
Hollywood studios
1756
01:41:29,760 --> 01:41:31,840
went along with the Nazis, too,
1757
01:41:31,860 --> 01:41:35,740
even though many of the men
who ran them were Jewish.
1758
01:41:35,760 --> 01:41:39,400
Joseph Goebbels had closed
the lucrative German market
1759
01:41:39,430 --> 01:41:44,140
to any film "considered
detrimental to German prestige."
1760
01:41:44,160 --> 01:41:47,800
For a time, the German
vice-consul in Los Angeles
1761
01:41:47,830 --> 01:41:51,600
had the power to approve
or disapprove scripts
1762
01:41:51,630 --> 01:41:54,670
before production began.
1763
01:41:54,700 --> 01:41:58,300
Between 1933 and 1939,
not a single word
1764
01:41:58,330 --> 01:42:03,100
was uttered against
the Nazis on screen.
1765
01:42:04,800 --> 01:42:08,470
The 80 million Americans who
went to the movies each week
1766
01:42:08,500 --> 01:42:12,340
got brief glimpses of
Nazi Germany from newsreels
1767
01:42:12,360 --> 01:42:16,200
made by Pathé, Paramount,
Fox Movietone,
1768
01:42:16,230 --> 01:42:18,870
and Hearst Metrotone News.
1769
01:42:18,900 --> 01:42:21,370
But the footage
was usually confined
1770
01:42:21,400 --> 01:42:24,630
to film produced by the Nazis.
1771
01:42:26,230 --> 01:42:28,340
Film Announcer: In united
Germany is the rallying cry
1772
01:42:28,360 --> 01:42:30,770
of Chancellor Hitler
as he tours the country.
1773
01:42:30,800 --> 01:42:33,040
In Westphalia, he is greeted
by a tremendous throng
1774
01:42:33,060 --> 01:42:34,770
of enthusiastic admirers.
1775
01:42:34,800 --> 01:42:37,870
(all cheering)
1776
01:42:37,900 --> 01:42:40,700
Narrator: "The March of Time,"
a series of shorts
1777
01:42:40,730 --> 01:42:44,840
made in association with "Time"
magazine, was different.
1778
01:42:44,860 --> 01:42:47,170
In January of 1938,
1779
01:42:47,200 --> 01:42:50,540
it offered a film called
"Inside Nazi Germany"
1780
01:42:50,560 --> 01:42:53,800
that included scenes
shot by American cameramen
1781
01:42:53,830 --> 01:42:57,040
when Nazi minders
were not looking.
1782
01:42:57,060 --> 01:42:59,200
Film Announcer: Still
going on as pitilessly,
1783
01:42:59,230 --> 01:43:01,270
as brutally as it
did 5 years ago
1784
01:43:01,300 --> 01:43:04,470
is Goebbels' persecution
of the Jews.
1785
01:43:04,500 --> 01:43:07,100
Sign-posts at city limits
bear the legend,
1786
01:43:07,130 --> 01:43:10,240
"Jews not wanted.
Jews keep out."
1787
01:43:10,260 --> 01:43:12,600
Nazi Germany faces her destiny
1788
01:43:12,630 --> 01:43:15,500
with one of the greatest
war machines in history.
1789
01:43:17,130 --> 01:43:19,940
And the inevitable destiny
of the great war machines
1790
01:43:19,960 --> 01:43:23,870
of the past has been to destroy
the peace of the world,
1791
01:43:23,900 --> 01:43:27,800
its people, and the
governments of their time.
1792
01:43:37,800 --> 01:43:41,940
Woman: The Nazis wanted
to annex Austria,
1793
01:43:41,960 --> 01:43:46,470
and there was supposed to be
a voting if Austria wanted it.
1794
01:43:46,500 --> 01:43:48,870
Hitler didn't wait for a vote,
1795
01:43:48,900 --> 01:43:52,530
just marched in in March 1938.
1796
01:43:55,300 --> 01:43:58,040
All our friends
and the whole city
1797
01:43:58,060 --> 01:44:04,240
became immediately
enthusiastic and Nazis.
1798
01:44:04,260 --> 01:44:06,840
They stood in the street
with swastika flags
1799
01:44:06,860 --> 01:44:07,840
and Heil Hitler.
1800
01:44:07,860 --> 01:44:10,270
Crowd: Heil Hitler!
1801
01:44:10,300 --> 01:44:14,800
Heil Hitler!
1802
01:44:14,830 --> 01:44:17,740
Narrator: Hitler called
the unification
1803
01:44:17,760 --> 01:44:19,770
of his native
Austria with Germany
1804
01:44:19,800 --> 01:44:22,070
his greatest accomplishment,
1805
01:44:22,100 --> 01:44:25,000
and he basked in the
enthusiasm of the crowds
1806
01:44:25,030 --> 01:44:27,570
that had greeted him in Vienna.
1807
01:44:27,600 --> 01:44:32,200
"Such a stream of love as I have
never experienced," he called it.
1808
01:44:34,260 --> 01:44:37,170
One quarter of a million Jews
had somehow managed
1809
01:44:37,200 --> 01:44:39,670
to escape Hitler's Germany.
1810
01:44:39,700 --> 01:44:45,970
But now 192,000 Austrian Jews
had come under his control
1811
01:44:46,000 --> 01:44:49,240
and were stripped
of any citizenship.
1812
01:44:49,260 --> 01:44:54,900
SS men and Gestapo agents were
let loose to beat and humiliate them
1813
01:44:54,930 --> 01:44:59,600
and force them to clean
anti-Nazi slogans off the sidewalk.
1814
01:45:04,060 --> 01:45:09,440
Eva Geiringer was not quite 9
when the Germans entered Vienna.
1815
01:45:09,460 --> 01:45:11,100
Geiringer: And it was
just terrible,
1816
01:45:11,130 --> 01:45:14,260
from one day to the next,
the attitude changed.
1817
01:45:16,960 --> 01:45:20,400
Suddenly I was not allowed
to go and play
1818
01:45:20,430 --> 01:45:23,870
with my Catholic friends.
1819
01:45:23,900 --> 01:45:25,600
My brother Heinz,
1820
01:45:25,630 --> 01:45:28,570
who was at that time 12 years
old, he came home.
1821
01:45:28,600 --> 01:45:32,000
He looked terrible.
He was badly beaten up.
1822
01:45:32,030 --> 01:45:34,940
And when my parents
questioned him, he said,
1823
01:45:34,960 --> 01:45:36,770
"My own friends did that,
1824
01:45:36,800 --> 01:45:40,570
and the teachers just watched
to see it happening."
1825
01:45:40,600 --> 01:45:43,570
Narrator: Eva's father,
a shoe manufacturer,
1826
01:45:43,600 --> 01:45:47,400
soon joined would-be immigrants,
most of them Jews,
1827
01:45:47,430 --> 01:45:51,070
clamoring at consulates
for visas to somewhere,
1828
01:45:51,100 --> 01:45:54,600
anywhere that
seemed to offer safety.
1829
01:45:54,630 --> 01:45:57,940
Geiringer: People started
to queue at consulates.
1830
01:45:57,960 --> 01:46:02,770
You had to have an entry visa
and an exit visa by then.
1831
01:46:02,800 --> 01:46:04,270
And you know this.
1832
01:46:04,300 --> 01:46:06,470
So Hitler wanted to get
rid of the Jews,
1833
01:46:06,500 --> 01:46:10,570
but to get an exit visa
was as well difficult.
1834
01:46:10,600 --> 01:46:12,870
I didn't want to leave,
you know?
1835
01:46:12,900 --> 01:46:15,740
I know it didn't
feel nice anymore.
1836
01:46:15,760 --> 01:46:18,370
But still, I had
my relatives there,
1837
01:46:18,400 --> 01:46:19,770
and it was my language,
1838
01:46:19,800 --> 01:46:22,470
and I loved it there.
1839
01:46:22,500 --> 01:46:25,140
And my parents said,
"Well, it won't be long."
1840
01:46:25,160 --> 01:46:27,140
And you know,
"We'll come back again."
1841
01:46:27,160 --> 01:46:30,800
The people, even in '38,
didn't believe
1842
01:46:30,830 --> 01:46:34,360
that Hitler will be able to stay
in power for very long.
1843
01:46:36,000 --> 01:46:38,300
Narrator: Eva's father
would finally manage
1844
01:46:38,330 --> 01:46:40,400
to get his family
to the Netherlands
1845
01:46:40,430 --> 01:46:43,140
and launch a new business there.
1846
01:46:43,160 --> 01:46:45,600
He was one of the lucky ones.
1847
01:46:45,630 --> 01:46:49,800
The Nazis stepped up their
discriminatory decrees.
1848
01:46:49,830 --> 01:46:52,370
Throughout the
newly-expanded Reich,
1849
01:46:52,400 --> 01:46:57,570
Jews would soon be required to
register all Jewish-owned businesses
1850
01:46:57,600 --> 01:47:00,700
and all their personal
property from houses
1851
01:47:00,730 --> 01:47:04,970
and art collections down to
their dinnerware and jewelry,
1852
01:47:05,000 --> 01:47:09,170
an obvious prelude to
confiscation.
1853
01:47:09,200 --> 01:47:13,370
Those with first names the
Nazis didn't recognize as Jewish
1854
01:47:13,400 --> 01:47:16,370
were made to adopt
new middle names,
1855
01:47:16,400 --> 01:47:20,070
Israel for men
and Sara for women.
1856
01:47:20,100 --> 01:47:23,670
All Jews holding passports
had to have them stamped
1857
01:47:23,700 --> 01:47:26,340
with the red letter "J."
1858
01:47:26,360 --> 01:47:30,740
Before 1938, would-be emigrants
to the United States
1859
01:47:30,760 --> 01:47:33,400
already had to wait
3 or 4 months
1860
01:47:33,430 --> 01:47:36,240
before they could get
an interview for their visa
1861
01:47:36,260 --> 01:47:38,470
with consulate officials.
1862
01:47:38,500 --> 01:47:43,070
Now the steady stream of
frightened people became a torrent,
1863
01:47:43,100 --> 01:47:46,960
and they faced a wait of
two or three years.
1864
01:47:48,630 --> 01:47:53,540
Woman as Thompson: It is a fantastic
commentary on the inhumanity of our times
1865
01:47:53,560 --> 01:47:56,170
that for thousands
and thousands of people,
1866
01:47:56,200 --> 01:47:58,740
a piece of paper
with a stamp on it
1867
01:47:58,760 --> 01:48:02,270
is the difference
between life and death,
1868
01:48:02,300 --> 01:48:06,200
and that scores of people
have blown their brains out
1869
01:48:06,230 --> 01:48:09,440
because they could not get it.
1870
01:48:09,460 --> 01:48:11,460
Dorothy Thompson.
1871
01:48:13,730 --> 01:48:17,000
Narrator: It was now impossible
even for the State Department
1872
01:48:17,030 --> 01:48:21,440
to deny that there was
a growing immigration crisis.
1873
01:48:21,460 --> 01:48:23,600
Alone among world leaders,
1874
01:48:23,630 --> 01:48:27,570
FDR tried to ease it,
at least a little.
1875
01:48:27,600 --> 01:48:31,440
At his cabinet meeting 4 days
after Hitler entered Vienna,
1876
01:48:31,460 --> 01:48:33,900
Roosevelt announced
that he was combining
1877
01:48:33,930 --> 01:48:37,700
the small Austrian quota
with the larger German quota
1878
01:48:37,730 --> 01:48:40,100
in order to give
Austrian refugees
1879
01:48:40,130 --> 01:48:43,270
a better chance
of obtaining visas.
1880
01:48:43,300 --> 01:48:47,370
But when FDR asked his Vice
President John Nance Garner,
1881
01:48:47,400 --> 01:48:49,500
a former Speaker of the House,
1882
01:48:49,530 --> 01:48:53,040
if Congress could now be
persuaded to increase the quota,
1883
01:48:53,060 --> 01:48:55,100
he said no.
1884
01:48:55,130 --> 01:48:58,770
If his former colleagues could
vote in secret, he explained,
1885
01:48:58,800 --> 01:49:02,900
they'd shut down
immigration entirely.
1886
01:49:02,930 --> 01:49:06,170
No one in the room disagreed.
1887
01:49:06,200 --> 01:49:09,500
Snyder: FDR was dealing
with a society
1888
01:49:09,530 --> 01:49:11,940
that he knew to be vulnerable
1889
01:49:11,960 --> 01:49:15,400
to the German antisemitic
propaganda.
1890
01:49:15,430 --> 01:49:20,770
What he had to do
is find ways to save Jews
1891
01:49:20,800 --> 01:49:23,000
without drawing too much
American attention
1892
01:49:23,030 --> 01:49:25,340
to the fact
that he was doing it.
1893
01:49:25,360 --> 01:49:28,270
Lipstadt: Could FDR have
spoken out more strongly?
1894
01:49:28,300 --> 01:49:31,170
Could he have exerted
more influence? Certainly.
1895
01:49:31,200 --> 01:49:36,370
But there was no groundswell
of opinion in the Congress.
1896
01:49:36,400 --> 01:49:38,300
So, when people pin it on him,
1897
01:49:38,330 --> 01:49:40,170
"A," it's assuming
that he could have
1898
01:49:40,200 --> 01:49:42,100
just turned everything around.
1899
01:49:42,130 --> 01:49:45,100
And "B," it's forgetting
the public opinion
1900
01:49:45,130 --> 01:49:49,800
was strongly opposed to
immigration in general,
1901
01:49:49,830 --> 01:49:52,200
refugees in particular,
1902
01:49:52,230 --> 01:49:54,600
penniless refugees even more so,
1903
01:49:54,630 --> 01:49:56,700
and Jewish refugees
all the more.
1904
01:49:56,730 --> 01:49:59,900
It's on a lot of people.
It's on everyone.
1905
01:50:01,630 --> 01:50:04,600
Greene: In 1938,
Americans are asked
1906
01:50:04,630 --> 01:50:06,870
whether they think the
persecution of Jews in Germany
1907
01:50:06,900 --> 01:50:09,640
has been Jews' own fault.
1908
01:50:09,660 --> 01:50:14,500
And two-thirds of Americans
say partly or entirely.
1909
01:50:14,530 --> 01:50:17,770
Something bad is happening
to the Jews abroad
1910
01:50:17,800 --> 01:50:21,230
and an inclination of a lot of
Americans is to blame the Jews.
1911
01:50:23,130 --> 01:50:26,640
Narrator: Roosevelt called for
a conference in Evian, France,
1912
01:50:26,660 --> 01:50:30,840
for the international community
to discuss a collective solution
1913
01:50:30,860 --> 01:50:33,270
to the problem of
"political refugees"
1914
01:50:33,300 --> 01:50:35,300
seeking to flee Hitler.
1915
01:50:35,330 --> 01:50:40,900
He was careful not to say that
most of those in flight were Jews.
1916
01:50:42,500 --> 01:50:45,340
Erbelding: There is a sense
in the U.S. Government
1917
01:50:45,360 --> 01:50:48,340
that antisemitism is
so strong in America
1918
01:50:48,360 --> 01:50:50,340
that they don't want
people to think that,
1919
01:50:50,360 --> 01:50:52,400
or even get the hint,
1920
01:50:52,430 --> 01:50:54,440
that the United States
might be going to do
1921
01:50:54,460 --> 01:50:57,970
anything particular for
the Jews, to rescue the Jews.
1922
01:50:58,000 --> 01:51:00,700
Narrator: Since the U.S.
Congress was not willing
1923
01:51:00,730 --> 01:51:03,240
to alter America's quota system,
1924
01:51:03,260 --> 01:51:06,140
Roosevelt would not ask
any other country
1925
01:51:06,160 --> 01:51:09,970
to change its own laws
to take in more immigrants,
1926
01:51:10,000 --> 01:51:12,640
though it was his hope
that other countries
1927
01:51:12,660 --> 01:51:16,800
might volunteer to do so
at the upcoming conference.
1928
01:51:18,400 --> 01:51:23,040
In July, representatives of
32 countries met for a week
1929
01:51:23,060 --> 01:51:28,070
and managed only to form an
Intergovernmental Committee for Refugees
1930
01:51:28,100 --> 01:51:32,700
without any funds
or power to assist them.
1931
01:51:32,730 --> 01:51:35,740
Representatives of all
32 nations at that conference
1932
01:51:35,760 --> 01:51:38,840
stand up and say,
"This is a horrible problem.
1933
01:51:38,860 --> 01:51:41,600
Let us tell you why we can't
let in refugees now."
1934
01:51:41,630 --> 01:51:44,570
Narrator: The French delegate
claimed France had reached
1935
01:51:44,600 --> 01:51:49,100
"the extreme point of saturation
as regards refugees."
1936
01:51:49,130 --> 01:51:52,670
4 Central American
countries jointly said
1937
01:51:52,700 --> 01:51:56,270
they had no need for merchants
and intellectuals,
1938
01:51:56,300 --> 01:51:58,700
by which they meant Jews.
1939
01:51:58,730 --> 01:52:03,770
The Australian spokesman said,
"As we have no real racial problem,
1940
01:52:03,800 --> 01:52:07,300
we are not desirous
of importing one."
1941
01:52:07,330 --> 01:52:09,740
Great Britain
refused to increase
1942
01:52:09,760 --> 01:52:11,570
and then sharply limited
1943
01:52:11,600 --> 01:52:14,770
the number of Jews
allowed into Palestine,
1944
01:52:14,800 --> 01:52:17,860
the Middle Eastern territory
they controlled.
1945
01:52:19,330 --> 01:52:22,970
Representatives of Jewish
organizations were present,
1946
01:52:23,000 --> 01:52:24,940
but only as observers.
1947
01:52:24,960 --> 01:52:27,470
A young Golda Meir
remembered her
1948
01:52:27,500 --> 01:52:30,970
"sorrow, rage,
frustration, and horror"
1949
01:52:31,000 --> 01:52:33,530
at not being allowed to speak.
1950
01:52:35,100 --> 01:52:37,640
So, what you have is a week's
worth of nations
1951
01:52:37,660 --> 01:52:40,040
standing up one
after the other saying,
1952
01:52:40,060 --> 01:52:41,800
"This is terrible,
but we don't want any.
1953
01:52:41,830 --> 01:52:43,540
This is awful,
but we don't want any."
1954
01:52:43,560 --> 01:52:45,270
At which point, the Germans say,
1955
01:52:45,300 --> 01:52:48,700
"You don't want the Jews
any more than we do."
1956
01:52:48,730 --> 01:52:53,240
Narrator: Chaim Weizmann, the
president of the World Zionist Organization,
1957
01:52:53,260 --> 01:52:57,370
dedicated to creating a Jewish
state in Palestine, said
1958
01:52:57,400 --> 01:53:02,340
the globe was now "divided into
places where Jews cannot live
1959
01:53:02,360 --> 01:53:05,860
and places into which
they cannot enter."
1960
01:53:10,660 --> 01:53:12,640
Film Announcer: Today the wings
of the German air fleet
1961
01:53:12,660 --> 01:53:15,200
cast a threatening shadow
across central Europe.
1962
01:53:15,230 --> 01:53:17,670
From the sky and from the
highway comes the rumble
1963
01:53:17,700 --> 01:53:21,700
of the dictator's creed,
"Might makes right."
1964
01:53:25,260 --> 01:53:27,640
Caught between
the pan-German pincers
1965
01:53:27,660 --> 01:53:32,870
is little Czechoslovakia,
a republic of 15 million souls.
1966
01:53:32,900 --> 01:53:35,370
Narrator: In the late
summer of 1938,
1967
01:53:35,400 --> 01:53:39,040
Adolf Hitler claimed the right
to seize the Sudetenland,
1968
01:53:39,060 --> 01:53:42,700
the German-speaking region
of Czechoslovakia.
1969
01:53:42,730 --> 01:53:45,070
Newscaster: And as the tension
rises almost to breaking point,
1970
01:53:45,100 --> 01:53:47,070
might is answered with might,
1971
01:53:47,100 --> 01:53:49,140
Czechoslovakia mobilizes.
1972
01:53:49,160 --> 01:53:51,370
Narrator: France and
the Soviet Union had signed
1973
01:53:51,400 --> 01:53:55,140
a mutual defense pact
with the Czechs.
1974
01:53:55,160 --> 01:53:57,640
Britain mobilized.
1975
01:53:57,660 --> 01:54:00,770
But in the end,
no country proved willing
1976
01:54:00,800 --> 01:54:03,500
to come to the defense
of Czechoslovakia.
1977
01:54:04,930 --> 01:54:09,270
Instead, at a September 30th
meeting with Hitler in Munich,
1978
01:54:09,300 --> 01:54:11,900
the British prime minister,
Neville Chamberlain,
1979
01:54:11,930 --> 01:54:14,800
and the French premier,
Edouard Daladier,
1980
01:54:14,830 --> 01:54:19,370
told the Czechs they had no
choice but to give up their territory,
1981
01:54:19,400 --> 01:54:22,100
in exchange for
a pledge by Hitler
1982
01:54:22,130 --> 01:54:25,830
that he would make no further
territorial demands.
1983
01:54:29,960 --> 01:54:34,500
Nazi Germany had become the
most powerful nation in Europe.
1984
01:54:35,930 --> 01:54:39,740
But it also faced a new problem.
1985
01:54:39,760 --> 01:54:42,240
Hayes: There's a fundamental
contradiction
1986
01:54:42,260 --> 01:54:45,440
between the two central
teachings of Nazi ideology.
1987
01:54:45,460 --> 01:54:50,440
The first central teaching is
that the Jews have to be removed
1988
01:54:50,460 --> 01:54:53,230
because they are corrupting
and endanger the state.
1989
01:54:54,630 --> 01:54:56,400
But the second
central teaching is
1990
01:54:56,430 --> 01:54:58,940
for Germany to be a great power,
it must get living space.
1991
01:54:58,960 --> 01:55:01,400
It must expand
into enough territory
1992
01:55:01,430 --> 01:55:04,670
that will give it food production
to sustain its population
1993
01:55:04,700 --> 01:55:08,400
and the natural resources
that will sustain its power.
1994
01:55:08,430 --> 01:55:10,570
Well, in Europe of the 1930s,
1995
01:55:10,600 --> 01:55:13,600
these two principles worked
fundamentally against each other,
1996
01:55:13,630 --> 01:55:16,840
because where the Nazis
wanted the living space
1997
01:55:16,860 --> 01:55:20,400
was exactly the spot on the
globe with the highest density
1998
01:55:20,430 --> 01:55:21,900
of Jewish population...
1999
01:55:21,930 --> 01:55:24,840
Poland, Ukraine, Lithuania.
2000
01:55:24,860 --> 01:55:27,770
And so, the Nazis discovered
in the course of the 1930s
2001
01:55:27,800 --> 01:55:31,670
as they drove about 69%
of the Jews out of Germany,
2002
01:55:31,700 --> 01:55:33,840
that they also
then expanded into Austria
2003
01:55:33,860 --> 01:55:36,470
and the Sudetenland
and Czechoslovakia.
2004
01:55:36,500 --> 01:55:38,300
And with each of those steps,
2005
01:55:38,330 --> 01:55:41,540
they began to acquire more Jews
that almost canceled out
2006
01:55:41,560 --> 01:55:44,400
all of the numbers that
they had driven out to date.
2007
01:55:47,360 --> 01:55:48,970
(pounding on door)
2008
01:55:49,000 --> 01:55:50,500
Messinger: It was the middle
of the night,
2009
01:55:50,530 --> 01:55:53,170
and there was
a pounding on the door.
2010
01:55:53,200 --> 01:55:54,770
My father opened the door,
2011
01:55:54,800 --> 01:55:57,540
and sure enough, these
two policemen were there.
2012
01:55:57,560 --> 01:55:59,500
And they said to my father,
2013
01:55:59,530 --> 01:56:01,370
"Get dressed.
You're coming with us."
2014
01:56:01,400 --> 01:56:03,770
My mother was holding me.
2015
01:56:03,800 --> 01:56:06,200
And I started to cry.
2016
01:56:06,230 --> 01:56:10,440
And one of the policemen
said to my mother,
2017
01:56:10,460 --> 01:56:13,200
"Shut the kid up
or I'll kill him."
2018
01:56:13,230 --> 01:56:16,900
And they took my father away.
2019
01:56:16,930 --> 01:56:20,270
The next morning, we went down
to the police station.
2020
01:56:20,300 --> 01:56:22,940
My mother wanted to find out
what happened to my father.
2021
01:56:22,960 --> 01:56:25,070
When we got to
the police station,
2022
01:56:25,100 --> 01:56:29,230
there were about 100 or 150
other Jewish women standing there.
2023
01:56:30,760 --> 01:56:32,740
And it became clear to my mother
2024
01:56:32,760 --> 01:56:37,740
that they had taken all
Jewish men of Polish origin
2025
01:56:37,760 --> 01:56:40,030
and shipped them back to Poland.
2026
01:56:41,500 --> 01:56:45,570
Narrator: It was the first mass
deportation of Jews from Germany.
2027
01:56:45,600 --> 01:56:49,740
17,000 Polish Jews
were declared stateless,
2028
01:56:49,760 --> 01:56:51,870
stripped of their possessions,
2029
01:56:51,900 --> 01:56:55,740
and driven across
the border into Poland.
2030
01:56:55,760 --> 01:56:58,170
Snyder: In Eastern Europe,
there was a saying that,
2031
01:56:58,200 --> 01:57:03,240
"What holds the body and the
soul together is a passport."
2032
01:57:03,260 --> 01:57:06,140
What's meant
is that documentation,
2033
01:57:06,160 --> 01:57:09,100
the idea that you're
somebody's citizen,
2034
01:57:09,130 --> 01:57:11,740
that there's a state somewhere
looking after you
2035
01:57:11,760 --> 01:57:17,230
is fundamental to your ability
to survive in the modern world.
2036
01:57:21,330 --> 01:57:24,600
Man: It is not, after all,
a crime to be Jewish.
2037
01:57:24,630 --> 01:57:28,370
I am not a dog.
I have a right to live.
2038
01:57:28,400 --> 01:57:31,860
My people have a right
to exist on this earth.
2039
01:57:33,400 --> 01:57:37,240
And yet everywhere, they are
hunted down like animals.
2040
01:57:37,260 --> 01:57:39,230
Herschel Grynszpan.
2041
01:57:41,300 --> 01:57:45,170
Narrator: In the fall of
1938, Herschel Grynszpan,
2042
01:57:45,200 --> 01:57:49,140
a 17-year-old living in Paris,
learned that his family,
2043
01:57:49,160 --> 01:57:51,300
like Sol Messinger's father,
2044
01:57:51,330 --> 01:57:54,940
had been among those deported
from Germany to Poland.
2045
01:57:54,960 --> 01:57:57,070
Herschel's sister wrote to him
2046
01:57:57,100 --> 01:58:00,870
from a squalid refugee camp
begging for help.
2047
01:58:00,900 --> 01:58:03,400
He could provide none.
2048
01:58:03,430 --> 01:58:07,170
He had no papers and no ability
to earn a living,
2049
01:58:07,200 --> 01:58:11,200
just one more person without
a country on a continent
2050
01:58:11,230 --> 01:58:15,130
increasingly haunted by those
who had nowhere to go.
2051
01:58:17,060 --> 01:58:21,470
In Paris on November 7th,
Grynszpan bought a pistol,
2052
01:58:21,500 --> 01:58:23,340
entered the German Embassy,
2053
01:58:23,360 --> 01:58:26,040
and asked to see the ambassador.
2054
01:58:26,060 --> 01:58:29,800
In his pocket was a postcard
addressed to his parents.
2055
01:58:29,830 --> 01:58:33,800
He asked God to forgive him
for what he was about to do.
2056
01:58:33,830 --> 01:58:36,040
"I must protest," he wrote,
2057
01:58:36,060 --> 01:58:40,300
"so that the whole
world hears my protest."
2058
01:58:40,330 --> 01:58:43,200
Ushered into the office
of a junior German official
2059
01:58:43,230 --> 01:58:45,340
named Ernst Vom Rath,
2060
01:58:45,360 --> 01:58:47,770
Grynszpan pulled out his pistol,
2061
01:58:47,800 --> 01:58:50,000
shouted that he was
acting in the name
2062
01:58:50,030 --> 01:58:52,700
of all Jews deported
from Germany,
2063
01:58:52,730 --> 01:58:57,840
and fired 5 times, hitting
his target in the stomach.
2064
01:58:57,860 --> 01:59:01,760
Rath would die two days later
on November 9th.
2065
01:59:04,260 --> 01:59:08,840
Grynszpan was arrested
and disappeared.
2066
01:59:08,860 --> 01:59:11,240
(drumming)
2067
01:59:11,260 --> 01:59:15,240
Nazi leaders saw
a golden opportunity.
2068
01:59:15,260 --> 01:59:17,940
Goebbels instructed
the German press
2069
01:59:17,960 --> 01:59:19,940
to denounce the assassination
2070
01:59:19,960 --> 01:59:23,070
as a deliberate
attack by "world Jewry"
2071
01:59:23,100 --> 01:59:25,200
that would result
in what he called
2072
01:59:25,230 --> 01:59:28,460
the "heaviest consequences"
for German Jews.
2073
01:59:29,800 --> 01:59:32,570
Hitler ordered up
a massive, coordinated,
2074
01:59:32,600 --> 01:59:36,700
physical assault on Jews
in hundreds of communities
2075
01:59:36,730 --> 01:59:39,740
aimed at forcing
as many of them as possible
2076
01:59:39,760 --> 01:59:42,270
to flee their country.
2077
01:59:42,300 --> 01:59:46,040
It was staged as a
spontaneous uprising,
2078
01:59:46,060 --> 01:59:49,300
so some Stormtroopers
and members of the Gestapo
2079
01:59:49,330 --> 01:59:53,270
wore civilian clothes as
they attacked Jewish homes,
2080
01:59:53,300 --> 01:59:56,470
shops, synagogues, cemeteries,
2081
01:59:56,500 --> 01:59:59,570
and any Jews they happened upon.
2082
01:59:59,600 --> 02:00:01,260
(distant shouts)
2083
02:00:04,400 --> 02:00:08,540
Schoolchildren were
encouraged to join in.
2084
02:00:08,560 --> 02:00:13,440
Firemen stood by and allowed
Jewish properties to burn.
2085
02:00:13,460 --> 02:00:16,940
The police protected
only shops and homes
2086
02:00:16,960 --> 02:00:19,600
owned by so-called Aryans.
2087
02:00:19,630 --> 02:00:21,700
(glass shatters)
2088
02:00:21,730 --> 02:00:25,740
It would be remembered as
the Night of Broken Glass...
2089
02:00:25,760 --> 02:00:27,700
Kristallnacht.
2090
02:00:29,830 --> 02:00:31,470
Susan Hilsenrath: I was 9 years old,
2091
02:00:31,500 --> 02:00:35,700
and my brother and I were
sleeping in our bedroom.
2092
02:00:35,730 --> 02:00:38,470
Maybe it was around 11:00.
2093
02:00:38,500 --> 02:00:43,500
And all of a sudden
some bricks and rocks
2094
02:00:43,530 --> 02:00:46,500
were being thrown
through our window.
2095
02:00:46,530 --> 02:00:48,100
And I was really scared,
2096
02:00:48,130 --> 02:00:50,440
and I covered myself up
with a blanket.
2097
02:00:50,460 --> 02:00:53,240
And my brother, who was
a year younger than I am,
2098
02:00:53,260 --> 02:00:56,740
went to the window,
and he pulled himself up,
2099
02:00:56,760 --> 02:00:58,670
and he looked outside
and he said,
2100
02:00:58,700 --> 02:01:02,600
"Suzie, it is our neighbors
that are throwing
2101
02:01:02,630 --> 02:01:05,070
the bricks and rocks
through the window."
2102
02:01:05,100 --> 02:01:07,770
Then we were in
our parents' bedroom,
2103
02:01:07,800 --> 02:01:12,400
and we were all huddled
together trying to decide what to do.
2104
02:01:12,430 --> 02:01:14,670
Then they were carrying
this lamp post,
2105
02:01:14,700 --> 02:01:17,640
and they smashed it
through our front door
2106
02:01:17,660 --> 02:01:21,240
which was made out of glass.
2107
02:01:21,260 --> 02:01:24,300
Narrator: In Berlin,
6-year-old Sol Messinger,
2108
02:01:24,330 --> 02:01:27,500
anxious about his
absent father in Poland,
2109
02:01:27,530 --> 02:01:30,900
huddled together with his mother
in their apartment.
2110
02:01:30,930 --> 02:01:35,340
Messinger: I saw that the
synagogue had been burned.
2111
02:01:35,360 --> 02:01:40,140
When I talk about it, I sort
of can smell the smoke.
2112
02:01:40,160 --> 02:01:43,340
This was the synagogue
in which we had prayed,
2113
02:01:43,360 --> 02:01:47,140
where my father
used to take me on Shabbat,
2114
02:01:47,160 --> 02:01:52,670
and... and there it was
smoldering.
2115
02:01:52,700 --> 02:01:57,000
Narrator: The Germans
destroyed 1,400 synagogues
2116
02:01:57,030 --> 02:01:59,770
and other Jewish
religious sites,
2117
02:01:59,800 --> 02:02:04,900
wrecked and looted some
7,500 Jewish-owned businesses,
2118
02:02:04,930 --> 02:02:07,440
murdered at least 91 people,
2119
02:02:07,460 --> 02:02:11,170
and drove another 300
to kill themselves.
2120
02:02:11,200 --> 02:02:15,700
Many more were beaten,
raped, humiliated.
2121
02:02:17,200 --> 02:02:20,740
Susan Hilsenrath: I saw
the rabbi on his veranda.
2122
02:02:20,760 --> 02:02:24,070
And two SS men, I guess
that's what they were,
2123
02:02:24,100 --> 02:02:26,770
they were holding
him by the arms.
2124
02:02:26,800 --> 02:02:30,600
And another one came along
and cut off his beard.
2125
02:02:30,630 --> 02:02:33,570
And that was a very shocking
thing to me at the time
2126
02:02:33,600 --> 02:02:38,070
because it was a symbol
that he was the rabbi.
2127
02:02:38,100 --> 02:02:41,000
And it was very shocking
that anybody could do
2128
02:02:41,030 --> 02:02:44,270
such a thing to
the rabbi of our town.
2129
02:02:44,300 --> 02:02:47,040
My father had saved some money.
2130
02:02:47,060 --> 02:02:48,800
He had saved it
under the mattress
2131
02:02:48,830 --> 02:02:50,640
because at that time
2132
02:02:50,660 --> 02:02:52,800
Jewish people couldn't keep
their money in the bank.
2133
02:02:52,830 --> 02:02:55,240
So he gave me the money
and he told me to put it
2134
02:02:55,260 --> 02:02:58,400
in my underwear,
in my underpants.
2135
02:02:58,430 --> 02:03:00,970
So he figured that if
anything should happen,
2136
02:03:01,000 --> 02:03:03,470
they're not going to look in
the little girl's underwear
2137
02:03:03,500 --> 02:03:06,370
to see if there was any money.
2138
02:03:06,400 --> 02:03:09,800
Narrator: The Nazis rounded up
some 30,000 Jewish men
2139
02:03:09,830 --> 02:03:11,370
all across Germany
2140
02:03:11,400 --> 02:03:13,700
and marched them through
jeering crowds
2141
02:03:13,730 --> 02:03:17,370
to trucks and buses that
carried them to Dachau
2142
02:03:17,400 --> 02:03:20,300
and to newly-constructed
concentration camps
2143
02:03:20,330 --> 02:03:23,770
at Sachsenhausen and Buchenwald.
2144
02:03:23,800 --> 02:03:27,770
There, they were crowded
together, beaten, starved,
2145
02:03:27,800 --> 02:03:30,300
and allowed out only
if they signed over
2146
02:03:30,330 --> 02:03:32,470
all their property to the state
2147
02:03:32,500 --> 02:03:35,330
and agreed to leave the country.
2148
02:03:39,760 --> 02:03:42,300
Susan Hilsenrath: Before
the Night of the Broken Glass,
2149
02:03:42,330 --> 02:03:46,240
my father wanted
to stay in Germany,
2150
02:03:46,260 --> 02:03:51,240
but my mother was always wanting
to come to the United States
2151
02:03:51,260 --> 02:03:53,640
because she had heard such
wonderful things
2152
02:03:53,660 --> 02:03:55,970
about the United States.
2153
02:03:56,000 --> 02:03:58,400
But after the Night of
the Broken Glass,
2154
02:03:58,430 --> 02:04:00,870
both of them wanted to get out,
2155
02:04:00,900 --> 02:04:05,430
and I think all of the Jews in
Germany wanted to get out.
2156
02:04:06,930 --> 02:04:12,840
It was the primary goal was
to get to the United States,
2157
02:04:12,860 --> 02:04:15,540
represented by
the Statue of Liberty.
2158
02:04:15,560 --> 02:04:18,970
As a child, I heard
about the Statue of Liberty.
2159
02:04:19,000 --> 02:04:22,070
I heard what it stands for.
2160
02:04:22,100 --> 02:04:25,030
It was the goal.
2161
02:04:32,260 --> 02:04:35,740
Man as Frank: What can one say
in times like these?
2162
02:04:35,760 --> 02:04:38,540
We have to be grateful
for what we still have
2163
02:04:38,560 --> 02:04:41,240
and not give up hope.
2164
02:04:41,260 --> 02:04:43,740
It is miserably cold here, too,
2165
02:04:43,760 --> 02:04:45,540
and we think constantly of those
2166
02:04:45,560 --> 02:04:49,930
who, unlike ourselves,
have no warm place to stay.
2167
02:04:51,300 --> 02:04:52,730
Otto Frank.
2168
02:04:54,900 --> 02:04:58,040
Narrator: Otto and Edith Frank
had been living comfortably
2169
02:04:58,060 --> 02:05:01,370
in Amsterdam for
over 4 years now.
2170
02:05:01,400 --> 02:05:04,040
He had established
a successful business.
2171
02:05:04,060 --> 02:05:07,670
Their eldest daughter Margot
was doing well in school.
2172
02:05:07,700 --> 02:05:11,100
So was her younger
sister Annelies.
2173
02:05:14,300 --> 02:05:16,340
But after Kristallnacht,
2174
02:05:16,360 --> 02:05:18,740
a flood of new Jewish refugees
2175
02:05:18,760 --> 02:05:20,740
poured across the German border,
2176
02:05:20,760 --> 02:05:23,100
bringing with them
horror stories
2177
02:05:23,130 --> 02:05:25,700
of what they'd been through.
2178
02:05:27,300 --> 02:05:32,100
Seeking to put still more distance
between his family and the Nazis,
2179
02:05:32,130 --> 02:05:36,540
Otto Frank traveled to the
U.S. consulate in Rotterdam
2180
02:05:36,560 --> 02:05:39,440
and added his name to
the ever-growing list
2181
02:05:39,460 --> 02:05:43,600
of Jews from Greater Germany
and Czechoslovakia
2182
02:05:43,630 --> 02:05:47,760
hoping somehow
to escape to America.
2183
02:05:57,630 --> 02:06:05,630
♫ ♫
2184
02:06:54,060 --> 02:06:56,740
Announcer: Next time, on
"The U.S. and the Holocaust"...
2185
02:06:56,760 --> 02:06:58,170
(glass shatters)
2186
02:06:58,200 --> 02:07:00,600
a desperate exodus
from Europe...
2187
02:07:00,630 --> 02:07:03,040
Hayes: At every American
consulate in Germany,
2188
02:07:03,060 --> 02:07:05,200
there were Jews seeking refuge.
2189
02:07:05,230 --> 02:07:07,700
Announcer: a call for American isolation...
2190
02:07:07,730 --> 02:07:10,770
The isolationists,
the antisemites
2191
02:07:10,800 --> 02:07:12,600
come out of the woodwork.
2192
02:07:12,630 --> 02:07:14,400
Announcer: and behind enemy lines,
2193
02:07:14,430 --> 02:07:16,440
the unthinkable begins...
2194
02:07:16,460 --> 02:07:18,840
Mendelsohn: As it was happening to us,
2195
02:07:18,860 --> 02:07:20,470
we couldn't believe it.
2196
02:07:20,500 --> 02:07:22,040
Announcer: when "The U.S.
and the Holocaust"
2197
02:07:22,060 --> 02:07:23,460
continues next time.
2198
02:07:24,600 --> 02:07:26,040
Announcer: Stream the full series,
2199
02:07:26,060 --> 02:07:27,570
go behind the scenes,
2200
02:07:27,600 --> 02:07:30,070
and learn how to bring
"The U.S. and the Holocaust"
2201
02:07:30,100 --> 02:07:32,340
into the classroom by visiting
2202
02:07:32,360 --> 02:07:35,300
pbs.org/holocaust
2203
02:07:35,330 --> 02:07:38,470
or the PBS video app.
2204
02:07:38,500 --> 02:07:40,440
To order "The U.S.
and the Holocaust"
2205
02:07:40,460 --> 02:07:42,240
on DVD or Blu-ray,
2206
02:07:42,260 --> 02:07:44,300
visit shopPBS or call
2207
02:07:44,330 --> 02:07:46,500
1-800-PLAY-PBS.
2208
02:07:46,530 --> 02:07:48,970
A CD of original music
from the series
2209
02:07:49,000 --> 02:07:50,770
is also available.
2210
02:07:50,800 --> 02:07:52,440
"The U.S. and the Holocaust"
2211
02:07:52,460 --> 02:07:55,470
is also available
with PBS Passport
2212
02:07:55,500 --> 02:07:57,770
and on Amazon Prime Video.
2213
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♫ ♫
2214
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♫ ♫
2214
02:08:44,305 --> 02:09:44,180
Someone needs to stop Clearway Law.
Public shouldn't leave reviews for lawyers.
189390
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