Thread by @sewellchan

Watching third and final episode of #USandTheHolocaustPBS. It points out that many US newspapers downplayed the Holocaust. A Black paper, the Pittsburgh Courier, was a notable exception.

newyorker.com/culture/cultur…

Gerhart Riegner, 30, a @WorldJewishCong representative, learned of Nazi plans for mass murder. On 8/8/42 he made a report at the US Consulate in Geneva. It made its way to Washington—with a cover letter saying the report seemed like “a war rumor.”

Some US officials reasoned that, even if the report was true, there was nothing to be done except try to win the war. Some of these officials were antisemitic.

Rabbi Stephen S. Wise alerted @AP that 2m Jews had been slaughtered. (In fact it was 4m.) Only in November 1942 did Americans learn of Nazi plans to wipe out all European Jews. But the news’ impact was blunted bc of competing headlines from N Africa and Stalingrad!

Edward R. Murrow told America, “What is happening is this: millions of human beings, most of them Jews, are being gathered up with ruthless efficiency and murdered.” Jewish orgs worldwide declared 12/2/42 a day of mourning.

12/8/42: Rabbi Wise and three other Jewish leaders told FDR that w/o immediate action Europe’s Jews were doomed.

“We are dealing with an insane man,” he said. The Allies denounced “this bestial policy of cold-blooded extermination.”

But FDR always emphasized that the Nazis persecuted many groups not jut Jews. And the US military de-emphasized Jewish persecution, fearing that troops wouldn’t fight as hard if they thought they were being sent to rescue Jews! 😱

Historian Peter Hayes: 3/4 victims of Holocaust were dead before any American soldiers were in continental Europe. Death camps in Northeast Europe out of range of US planes in UK.

Historian Peter Hayes: US could have publicized the atrocities more and encouraged underground resistance. But Roosevelt and Churchill were wary of propaganda portraying them as tools of the Jews; they were reluctant to be explicit about Jewish victimization.

January 1943 @Gallup poll found that less than half of Americans believed that 2 million Jews had been murdered (let alone the actual number, 4 million).

It’s almost like we can’t bring ourselves to accept the reality of evil depravity…

Peter Bergson, Irgun member, produced avalanche of newspaper ads accusing FDR admin of not doing enough. He put on a 3/9/43 pageant at Madison Square Garden, “We Will Never Die,” featuring celebrities and 200 rabbis and cantors. Told from the POV of the dead.

Jan Karski told FDR: “Without outside help, the Jews in Poland will perish.” Karski then told Justice Felix Frankfurter, who listened in stunned disbelief.

Himmler tried to hide evidence of Holocaust. He dismantled death camps at Sobibor, Belzec, Treblinka; he had inmates dig up the dead, burn their corpses and grind their bones to powder. Then he had the prisoners shot.

“There’s no bottom to the things people will do to one another,” a survivor told @DAMendelsohnNYC.

10/6/43: 400 mostly Orthodox rabbis marched to the Capitol. They sang the national anthem; recited the Kaddish; and met VP Henry A. Wallace.

I’d never heard of this Rabbis’ March til now. To see them on the steps of Lincoln Memorial…is so moving. #USandTheHolocaustPBS

An incredible story of bureaucratic infighting.

On one side, John Pehle, @USTreasury lawyer, wanted to get relief money to Jews.

On other side, Breckinridge Long of @StateDept lied to Congress, suppressed facts, blocked efforts to admit refugees.

US War Refugee Board pressed neutral countries to issue protective documents to Budapest Jews. Of the nearly 150k who survived, some 120k owed their lives to Raoul Wallenberg and other diplomats.

Liberation of Majdanek in August 1944 finally enabled Western reporters to report unambiguously on the industrial scale of the slaughter.

Late 1944 poll: 77% of Americans believed extermination of Jews was happening. But only 1 in 5 believed the number was >1m. By that point it was >5m.

John Pehle urged War Dept to send planes from Italy to bomb rail tracks leading to Auschwitz, and then the death camp itself. But many prisoners would have died, and risking airmen’s lives to bomb non-military target was ruled out.

There isn’t evidence that FDR himself was consulted about bombing Auschwitz, but War Dept official John J. McCloy said FDR had ruled it out. @deborahlipstadt says it was a tragic mistake. @rerbelding says there was no right answer.

Truly remarkable that @BenFerencz—a lawyer, one of the first American soldiers to liberate Buchenwald, and later a Nuremberg prosecutor—is alive at 102. And is on Twitter. A true American hero.

ushmm.org/genocide-preve…

Eisenhower brought military personnel to visit the liberated concentration camp at Ohrdruf. Members of Congress traveled to visit the camps and reported back on unimaginable barbarism.

Survivor Eva Geiringer (friend of Anne Frank) says in the film that returning to Amsterdam was even harder than life in the camps. Her father and brother had been murdered; she wasn’t sure she wanted to live.

Today, Eva is 93, same age Anne would have been.

Countless hours of newsreels, thousands of photos, physical evidence, the personal testimony of Generals Eisenhower, Bradley, Patton and members of Congress — yet still vile Holocaust denial persists to this day. In Germany, it is illegal.

Even at war’s end, only 5% of Americans thought the US should admit more refugees than it had before the war.

By 1953, US would accept 80K Jewish survivors. US also admitted 170K Gentile refugees, including some Nazis and collaborators.

Raphael Lemkin, Polish Jewish refugee to the US who lost 49 members of his family, coined the term “genocide.”

I highly recommend @philippesands’s book “East-West Street,” which tells Lemkin’s story.

theguardian.com/books/2016/may…

Only in 1965 did Congress abolish the discriminatory national-origin quota system that kept out refugees during WW2. But the bill imposed limits on Latin American migration and made no provisions for most of the world’s refugees.

Nell Irvin Painter and @TimothyDSnyder draw explicit connections across white supremacy, antisemitism, and xenophobia.

Bravo to @KenBurns for closing the #USandTheHolocaustPBS w/ footage from attacks in Charlottesville and Pittsburgh — and Jan. 6.

@KenBurns has produced one of the most important documentaries of our time. As the WW2 generation passes on, people worldwide are forgetting its horrors and lessons.

Every American, every student should watch #USandTheHolocaustPBS.

https://twitter.com/kenburns/status/1572737046774714368