"The U.S. and the Holocaust" The Golden Door (Beginnings-1938)

1 00:00:01,070 --> 00:00:03,244 Viewers like you make this program possible. 2 00:00:03,279 --> 00:00:05,350 Support your local PBS station. 3 00:00:07,000 --> 00:00:13,074 Watch Online Movies and Series for FREE www.osdb.link/lm 4 00:00:19,502 --> 00:00:27,502 ♪ 5 00:00:31,031 --> 00:00:34,241 Narrator: On a sunny March afternoon in 1933, 6 00:00:34,275 --> 00:00:36,346 a German businessman and his family 7 00:00:36,381 --> 00:00:39,832 went for a stroll in the center of Frankfurt. 8 00:00:40,971 --> 00:00:43,905 Otto Frank snapped a picture of his wife, Edith, 9 00:00:43,940 --> 00:00:45,528 and their two daughters... 10 00:00:45,562 --> 00:00:47,357 Margot, 7 years old, 11 00:00:47,392 --> 00:00:49,911 and Annelies, just 3. 12 00:00:51,327 --> 00:00:53,122 Otto's ancestors had lived in Germany 13 00:00:53,156 --> 00:00:55,814 since the 16th century. 14 00:00:55,848 --> 00:00:57,747 Merchants and bankers, they were not 15 00:00:57,781 --> 00:01:00,405 particularly observant Jews. 16 00:01:00,439 --> 00:01:04,478 Otto, a proud officer in the Great War, 17 00:01:04,512 --> 00:01:06,169 was a patriotic German. 18 00:01:06,204 --> 00:01:08,723 ♪ 19 00:01:08,758 --> 00:01:13,349 But in January of 1933, Adolf Hitler had come to power 20 00:01:13,383 --> 00:01:17,801 and everything had begun rapidly to change. 21 00:01:17,836 --> 00:01:19,527 Jews, Hitler charged, 22 00:01:19,562 --> 00:01:23,083 were "parasites," not Germans. 23 00:01:23,117 --> 00:01:26,224 Nazi thugs roamed the Frankfurt streets, 24 00:01:26,258 --> 00:01:29,089 beating anyone they thought was Jewish. 25 00:01:30,262 --> 00:01:33,334 Most of the Franks' Gentile friends fell away. 26 00:01:33,369 --> 00:01:37,269 Their landlord insisted they find other quarters. 27 00:01:37,304 --> 00:01:41,687 Margot was made to sit apart from her classmates in school. 28 00:01:41,722 --> 00:01:44,173 ♪ 29 00:01:44,207 --> 00:01:46,968 Man as Frank: The world around me had collapsed. 30 00:01:47,003 --> 00:01:49,454 When most of the people of my country 31 00:01:49,488 --> 00:01:52,802 turned into hordes of nationalistic, cruel, 32 00:01:52,836 --> 00:01:55,184 antisemitic criminals, 33 00:01:55,218 --> 00:01:57,358 I had to face the consequences, 34 00:01:57,393 --> 00:02:00,223 and though this hurt me deeply, I realized that 35 00:02:00,258 --> 00:02:04,400 Germany was not the world, and I left forever. 36 00:02:04,434 --> 00:02:06,678 ♪ 37 00:02:06,712 --> 00:02:09,819 Narrator: By the time Otto Frank photographed his family, 38 00:02:09,853 --> 00:02:12,028 he and Edith were already planning to move 39 00:02:12,062 --> 00:02:15,342 to Amsterdam in the Netherlands. 40 00:02:15,376 --> 00:02:18,448 By early 1934, they would be living in 41 00:02:18,483 --> 00:02:22,487 a spacious, sunny apartment in the city's River Quarter, 42 00:02:22,521 --> 00:02:27,181 alongside hundreds of other Jewish families from Germany. 43 00:02:27,216 --> 00:02:28,872 ♪ 44 00:02:28,907 --> 00:02:33,463 They would eventually try to seek a safe haven in the United States, 45 00:02:33,498 --> 00:02:38,641 only to find, like countless others fleeing Nazism, 46 00:02:38,675 --> 00:02:42,196 that most Americans did not want to let them in. 47 00:02:42,231 --> 00:02:48,961 ♪ 48 00:02:48,996 --> 00:02:51,757 [Gulls squawking] 49 00:02:51,792 --> 00:02:55,485 [Ship's horn blows] 50 00:02:56,314 --> 00:03:00,387 Woman: Here at our sea-washed, sunset gates shall stand 51 00:03:00,421 --> 00:03:03,493 a mighty woman with a torch, whose flame 52 00:03:03,528 --> 00:03:06,876 is the imprisoned lightning, and her name 53 00:03:06,910 --> 00:03:09,430 Mother of Exiles. 54 00:03:09,465 --> 00:03:13,227 From her beacon-hand glows world-wide welcome; 55 00:03:13,262 --> 00:03:16,299 her mild eyes command the air-bridged harbor 56 00:03:16,334 --> 00:03:18,543 that twin cities frame. 57 00:03:20,200 --> 00:03:23,203 "Keep, ancient lands, your storied pomp!" 58 00:03:23,237 --> 00:03:25,964 cries she with silent lips. 59 00:03:27,172 --> 00:03:30,244 "Give me your tired, your poor, 60 00:03:30,279 --> 00:03:33,074 "your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, 61 00:03:33,109 --> 00:03:35,801 "the wretched refuse of your teeming shore. 62 00:03:35,836 --> 00:03:41,290 "Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me, 63 00:03:41,324 --> 00:03:44,776 I lift my lamp beside the golden door!" 64 00:03:44,810 --> 00:03:46,778 ♪ 65 00:03:46,812 --> 00:03:47,951 Emma Lazarus. 66 00:03:47,986 --> 00:03:50,506 ♪ 67 00:03:50,540 --> 00:03:53,163 Narrator: In 1883, Emma Lazarus, 68 00:03:53,198 --> 00:03:55,752 the descendant of Portuguese Jews 69 00:03:55,787 --> 00:03:57,478 who had fled the Inquisition 70 00:03:57,513 --> 00:04:01,793 and found sanctuary in Manhattan before the American Revolution, 71 00:04:01,827 --> 00:04:03,588 had written a poem expressing 72 00:04:03,622 --> 00:04:06,591 what the Statue of Liberty meant to her. 73 00:04:06,625 --> 00:04:07,799 ♪ 74 00:04:07,833 --> 00:04:09,145 But a few years later, 75 00:04:09,179 --> 00:04:11,043 Thomas Bailey Aldrich, 76 00:04:11,078 --> 00:04:12,493 a writer whose family had also 77 00:04:12,528 --> 00:04:15,427 lived in America since colonial times, 78 00:04:15,462 --> 00:04:18,672 wrote another poem warning of what he believed 79 00:04:18,706 --> 00:04:23,573 would happen to his country if the golden door remained open. 80 00:04:23,608 --> 00:04:25,541 ♪ 81 00:04:25,575 --> 00:04:28,751 Man as Aldrich: Wide open and unguarded stand our gates, 82 00:04:28,785 --> 00:04:32,927 and through them presses a wild, motley throng. 83 00:04:32,962 --> 00:04:38,036 In street and alley what strange tongues are these, 84 00:04:38,070 --> 00:04:41,315 accents of menace alien to our air, 85 00:04:41,350 --> 00:04:45,388 voices that once the Tower of Babel knew! 86 00:04:45,423 --> 00:04:50,048 O Liberty, white Goddess! Is it well 87 00:04:50,082 --> 00:04:52,395 to leave the gates unguarded? 88 00:04:52,430 --> 00:04:54,466 ♪ 89 00:04:54,501 --> 00:04:56,641 Man: I think Americans have a very hard time deciding 90 00:04:56,675 --> 00:04:59,437 what kind of country they want to have. 91 00:04:59,471 --> 00:05:01,301 We all tend to think of the United States 92 00:05:01,335 --> 00:05:04,165 as this country with the Statue of Liberty poem, 93 00:05:04,200 --> 00:05:06,685 "Give me your tired, your poor." 94 00:05:06,720 --> 00:05:09,619 But in fact, exclusion of people and shutting them out 95 00:05:09,654 --> 00:05:12,001 has been as American as apple pie. 96 00:05:12,035 --> 00:05:20,035 ♪ 97 00:05:26,360 --> 00:05:28,189 Man: All of my grandparents are 98 00:05:28,224 --> 00:05:31,331 immigrants from Eastern Europe 99 00:05:31,365 --> 00:05:34,748 except one grandmother was born here. 100 00:05:34,782 --> 00:05:38,338 So, I've sort of grew up haunted by stories of, 101 00:05:38,372 --> 00:05:41,893 as they used to say, the old country. 102 00:05:41,927 --> 00:05:43,688 Haunted by this story of 103 00:05:43,722 --> 00:05:45,724 my grandfather's brother and his family, 104 00:05:45,759 --> 00:05:51,316 living in a provincial town in Eastern Poland, 105 00:05:51,351 --> 00:05:53,318 and then they disappeared. 106 00:05:54,837 --> 00:05:58,461 All you think about is that they had been consumed by this 107 00:05:58,496 --> 00:06:01,602 conflagration that consumed all of Europe. 108 00:06:01,637 --> 00:06:09,637 ♪ 109 00:06:17,100 --> 00:06:20,414 Narrator: When Nazi rule began in 1933, 110 00:06:20,449 --> 00:06:23,106 there were 9 million Jews in Europe. 111 00:06:23,141 --> 00:06:24,763 ♪ 112 00:06:24,798 --> 00:06:29,941 12 years later, when the Second World War ended in 1945, 113 00:06:29,975 --> 00:06:34,428 at least two out of every 3 of them had been murdered. 114 00:06:34,463 --> 00:06:37,431 ♪ 115 00:06:37,466 --> 00:06:41,331 Mendelsohn: It's not so easy to put the picture together, 116 00:06:41,366 --> 00:06:45,612 the real scale of what happened to people. 117 00:06:45,646 --> 00:06:47,027 ♪ 118 00:06:47,061 --> 00:06:51,031 It is unbelievable. It boggles the imagination. 119 00:06:51,065 --> 00:06:54,448 ♪ 120 00:06:54,483 --> 00:06:57,555 You don't know what 6 million people looks like. 121 00:06:59,522 --> 00:07:02,456 Narrator: As the catastrophe of what would come to be called 122 00:07:02,491 --> 00:07:04,838 the Holocaust unfolded, 123 00:07:04,872 --> 00:07:07,219 Americans heard about Nazi persecutions 124 00:07:07,254 --> 00:07:10,464 of Jews and others on the radio, 125 00:07:10,499 --> 00:07:13,502 read about it in their newspapers and magazines, 126 00:07:13,536 --> 00:07:16,746 and glimpsed it in newsreels. 127 00:07:16,781 --> 00:07:20,543 Some Americans responded by denouncing the Nazis, 128 00:07:20,578 --> 00:07:24,961 marching in protest, and boycotting German goods. 129 00:07:24,996 --> 00:07:26,480 ♪ 130 00:07:26,515 --> 00:07:29,449 Individual Americans performed heroic acts 131 00:07:29,483 --> 00:07:32,417 to save individual Jews. 132 00:07:32,452 --> 00:07:33,763 ♪ 133 00:07:33,798 --> 00:07:35,178 Some government officials 134 00:07:35,213 --> 00:07:37,077 battled red tape and bigotry 135 00:07:37,111 --> 00:07:40,529 to bring Jewish refugees to America. 136 00:07:40,563 --> 00:07:42,876 ♪ 137 00:07:42,910 --> 00:07:45,326 In the end, the United States admitted 138 00:07:45,361 --> 00:07:49,883 some 225,000 refugees from Nazi terror, 139 00:07:49,917 --> 00:07:53,438 more than any other sovereign nation took in. 140 00:07:53,473 --> 00:07:54,922 ♪ 141 00:07:54,957 --> 00:07:57,753 And by defeating Nazi Germany on the battlefield, 142 00:07:57,787 --> 00:08:00,445 the United States, Great Britain, 143 00:08:00,480 --> 00:08:02,827 the Soviet Union, and their allies 144 00:08:02,861 --> 00:08:07,141 stopped the killing of the surviving Jewish people in Europe. 145 00:08:07,176 --> 00:08:09,489 ♪ 146 00:08:09,523 --> 00:08:12,561 But during the years when escape was still possible, 147 00:08:12,595 --> 00:08:15,874 the American people and their government proved unwilling 148 00:08:15,909 --> 00:08:18,049 to welcome more than a fraction of 149 00:08:18,083 --> 00:08:23,123 the hundreds of thousands of desperate people seeking refuge. 150 00:08:23,157 --> 00:08:25,194 ♪ 151 00:08:25,228 --> 00:08:27,334 Woman: The Holocaust disrupts any idea 152 00:08:27,368 --> 00:08:29,129 that we have of good and evil, 153 00:08:29,163 --> 00:08:30,544 of right and wrong. 154 00:08:30,579 --> 00:08:31,959 This is a story in which 155 00:08:31,994 --> 00:08:34,134 everyone is challenged all the time. 156 00:08:34,168 --> 00:08:35,584 We are challenged as Americans. 157 00:08:35,618 --> 00:08:38,034 We're challenged as parents, as children. 158 00:08:38,069 --> 00:08:40,036 We're challenged as neighbors and as friends 159 00:08:40,071 --> 00:08:42,418 to think about what we would have done, 160 00:08:42,452 --> 00:08:45,766 what we could have done, what we should have done, 161 00:08:45,801 --> 00:08:49,908 and even though the Holocaust physically took place in Europe, 162 00:08:49,943 --> 00:08:52,911 it is a story that Americans have to reckon with, too. 163 00:08:52,946 --> 00:08:54,879 ♪ 164 00:08:54,913 --> 00:08:57,019 Man: We tell ourselves stories as a nation. 165 00:08:57,053 --> 00:08:58,721 One of the stories we tell ourselves is that 166 00:08:58,745 --> 00:09:00,643 we're a land of immigrants. 167 00:09:00,678 --> 00:09:03,335 But in moments of crisis, it becomes very hard for us 168 00:09:03,370 --> 00:09:06,028 to live up to those stories. 169 00:09:06,062 --> 00:09:09,065 I think the impetus should not then be 170 00:09:09,100 --> 00:09:11,827 to wag your finger at people in the past 171 00:09:11,861 --> 00:09:14,864 and think that we're somehow superior to them, 172 00:09:14,899 --> 00:09:19,593 but to struggle to understand why that's such a tension 173 00:09:19,628 --> 00:09:21,319 between having a humanitarian ideal 174 00:09:21,353 --> 00:09:24,011 and then living up to it on the ground. 175 00:09:24,046 --> 00:09:25,565 ♪ 176 00:09:25,599 --> 00:09:27,808 Woman: Part of our national mythology is that 177 00:09:27,843 --> 00:09:32,261 we are a good people, we are a democracy, 178 00:09:32,295 --> 00:09:36,058 and we are a democracy, and in our better moments, 179 00:09:36,092 --> 00:09:38,612 we are very good people. 180 00:09:38,647 --> 00:09:41,615 But that's not all there is to this story, 181 00:09:41,650 --> 00:09:45,481 and I think if we're going to congratulate ourselves 182 00:09:45,515 --> 00:09:49,071 on our democracy, which I think we should, 183 00:09:49,105 --> 00:09:53,558 we also need to face up to the other side. 184 00:09:53,593 --> 00:09:55,284 ♪ 185 00:09:55,318 --> 00:09:58,736 Woman 2: In the past few years, I've begun to wonder 186 00:09:58,770 --> 00:10:02,636 how serious America's commitment to looking at 187 00:10:02,671 --> 00:10:06,571 some of the dark marks in its history really is. 188 00:10:06,606 --> 00:10:07,641 ♪ 189 00:10:07,676 --> 00:10:10,126 How can we learn from the past? 190 00:10:10,161 --> 00:10:11,576 Where did we go wrong? 191 00:10:11,611 --> 00:10:14,993 How can we not go wrong the next time? 192 00:10:15,028 --> 00:10:17,444 And I think while there is 193 00:10:17,478 --> 00:10:20,620 much we can be proud of of this country, 194 00:10:20,654 --> 00:10:23,657 the episode of America and the Holocaust 195 00:10:23,692 --> 00:10:27,178 is not one that redounds to our credit. 196 00:10:27,212 --> 00:10:29,042 ♪ 197 00:10:29,076 --> 00:10:34,979 Man: How did America treat its potential refugees? 198 00:10:35,013 --> 00:10:36,394 ♪ 199 00:10:36,428 --> 00:10:39,121 The refugees, they lost their lives 200 00:10:39,155 --> 00:10:40,743 because those doors... 201 00:10:40,778 --> 00:10:43,712 the golden door was not wide open. 202 00:10:43,746 --> 00:10:51,746 ♪ 203 00:10:56,414 --> 00:10:58,485 [Birds chirping] 204 00:10:58,519 --> 00:11:02,385 [Horse neighs] 205 00:11:02,420 --> 00:11:04,318 Narrator: For centuries, America had 206 00:11:04,353 --> 00:11:06,079 mostly open borders. 207 00:11:06,113 --> 00:11:10,014 Peoples from Europe and the Far East were let in... 208 00:11:10,048 --> 00:11:11,705 and at least tolerated... 209 00:11:11,740 --> 00:11:15,813 as workers, farmers, soldiers, and pioneers 210 00:11:15,847 --> 00:11:19,299 needed to conquer a continent and build a nation. 211 00:11:19,333 --> 00:11:20,887 ♪ 212 00:11:20,921 --> 00:11:22,381 Irvin Painter: This is the good side of us, 213 00:11:22,405 --> 00:11:24,442 the open side of us. 214 00:11:24,476 --> 00:11:28,066 We want to welcome working people. 215 00:11:28,101 --> 00:11:31,725 The other side of that is Native American genocide, 216 00:11:31,760 --> 00:11:35,246 Native Americans being pushed out of their lands. 217 00:11:35,280 --> 00:11:40,078 And then there's also the involuntary immigrants, 218 00:11:40,113 --> 00:11:44,393 the Africans who were transported across the ocean 219 00:11:44,427 --> 00:11:48,846 to become a workforce that could be worked to death. 220 00:11:48,880 --> 00:11:54,506 So, the idea of immigrants at the top, it looks very good, 221 00:11:54,541 --> 00:11:57,751 but that's not all there is to us. 222 00:11:57,786 --> 00:11:59,960 ♪ 223 00:11:59,995 --> 00:12:02,756 Narrator: Before the Civil War, most immigrants had come from 224 00:12:02,791 --> 00:12:06,760 northern Europe... England, Scotland, Ireland, 225 00:12:06,795 --> 00:12:10,350 Germany, Holland, and Scandinavia. 226 00:12:10,384 --> 00:12:12,697 Hayes: I'm named after my ancestor who arrived 227 00:12:12,732 --> 00:12:14,941 at the port of Boston in 1860. 228 00:12:14,975 --> 00:12:17,081 He came from County Cork in Ireland. 229 00:12:17,115 --> 00:12:19,600 He didn't have to fill out anything but a landing card 230 00:12:19,635 --> 00:12:21,119 when he got here 231 00:12:21,154 --> 00:12:24,019 in a time when immigration was free and open. 232 00:12:24,053 --> 00:12:26,849 It became more and more restrictive later. 233 00:12:26,884 --> 00:12:29,472 Narrator: In 1882, Congress passed 234 00:12:29,507 --> 00:12:31,820 the Chinese Exclusion Act, 235 00:12:31,854 --> 00:12:34,167 the first time the United States had barred 236 00:12:34,201 --> 00:12:37,895 the immigration of any people from anywhere. 237 00:12:39,655 --> 00:12:42,796 But between 1870 and 1914, 238 00:12:42,831 --> 00:12:46,213 nearly 25 million people would arrive, 239 00:12:46,248 --> 00:12:49,320 mostly from Southern and Eastern Europe. 240 00:12:49,354 --> 00:12:54,497 They spoke unfamiliar tongues, followed other customs, 241 00:12:54,532 --> 00:12:57,121 worshipped God in different ways. 242 00:12:57,155 --> 00:12:58,605 ♪ 243 00:12:58,639 --> 00:13:01,297 Their sheer numbers inspired a backlash. 244 00:13:01,332 --> 00:13:03,092 ♪ 245 00:13:03,127 --> 00:13:07,062 Man: We Americans must realize that the altruistic ideals 246 00:13:07,096 --> 00:13:09,547 which have controlled our social development 247 00:13:09,581 --> 00:13:11,376 during the past century, 248 00:13:11,411 --> 00:13:13,033 and the maudlin sentimentalism 249 00:13:13,068 --> 00:13:16,209 that has made America "an asylum for the oppressed" 250 00:13:16,243 --> 00:13:20,730 are sweeping the nation toward a racial abyss. 251 00:13:20,765 --> 00:13:22,836 This generation must completely repudiate 252 00:13:22,871 --> 00:13:25,908 the proud boasts of our fathers that they acknowledged 253 00:13:25,943 --> 00:13:29,015 no distinction in "race, creed, or color" 254 00:13:29,049 --> 00:13:31,362 or else turn the page of history 255 00:13:31,396 --> 00:13:34,192 and write: "FINIS AMERICAE." 256 00:13:34,227 --> 00:13:35,711 ♪ 257 00:13:35,745 --> 00:13:37,575 Madison Grant. 258 00:13:39,888 --> 00:13:42,442 Daniel Okrent: They don't speak our language. 259 00:13:42,476 --> 00:13:44,099 They don't really look like us. 260 00:13:44,133 --> 00:13:46,515 They don't have the educations that we have. 261 00:13:46,549 --> 00:13:48,620 And so, you find somebody like Henry Adams 262 00:13:48,655 --> 00:13:50,036 walking across Boston Common 263 00:13:50,070 --> 00:13:53,867 and he describes in his autobiography, 264 00:13:53,902 --> 00:13:57,871 he sees this creature, this furtive Yitzhak or Yakov 265 00:13:57,906 --> 00:14:01,357 reeking of the ghettos, snarling in a guttural Yiddish. 266 00:14:01,392 --> 00:14:05,706 What was this thing? It was utterly alien. 267 00:14:07,536 --> 00:14:09,987 Narrator: Among the new arrivals from Eastern Europe 268 00:14:10,021 --> 00:14:12,506 were more than two million Jews, 269 00:14:12,541 --> 00:14:14,267 most fleeing poverty, 270 00:14:14,301 --> 00:14:18,133 and many escaping antisemitic violence. 271 00:14:19,065 --> 00:14:22,689 Some Jews, who had already been in America for generations, 272 00:14:22,723 --> 00:14:25,416 were also wary of the newcomers. 273 00:14:25,450 --> 00:14:29,972 "We are Americans and they are not," one rabbi said. 274 00:14:30,007 --> 00:14:33,907 "They gnaw the bones of past centuries." 275 00:14:33,942 --> 00:14:36,565 ♪ 276 00:14:36,599 --> 00:14:39,292 By 1910, New York would be home to 277 00:14:39,326 --> 00:14:41,156 more than a million Jews, 278 00:14:41,190 --> 00:14:44,849 more than a quarter of the city's population, 279 00:14:44,884 --> 00:14:48,025 far more than any other city on earth. 280 00:14:48,059 --> 00:14:49,923 ♪ 281 00:14:49,958 --> 00:14:51,683 Hayes: The anxieties about urbanization, 282 00:14:51,718 --> 00:14:56,826 about unlettered, untutored, relatively uneducated peoples 283 00:14:56,861 --> 00:14:59,139 coming in in large numbers, 284 00:14:59,174 --> 00:15:02,315 the sense that disease was a problem, 285 00:15:02,349 --> 00:15:07,044 all of these worries were amalgamated into a belief 286 00:15:07,078 --> 00:15:09,253 that immigrants cause these problems, 287 00:15:09,287 --> 00:15:11,980 and thus immigration should be held down. 288 00:15:12,014 --> 00:15:13,498 ♪ 289 00:15:13,533 --> 00:15:15,949 Narrator: Many white Protestant Americans came to fear 290 00:15:15,984 --> 00:15:19,090 they were about to be outnumbered and outbred 291 00:15:19,125 --> 00:15:21,679 by the newcomers and their offspring... 292 00:15:21,713 --> 00:15:24,199 that they were being replaced. 293 00:15:25,579 --> 00:15:28,375 They embraced a new pseudo-science born in Britain 294 00:15:28,410 --> 00:15:32,966 called eugenics, which falsely claimed with no evidence 295 00:15:33,001 --> 00:15:36,107 that everything from poverty to prostitution, 296 00:15:36,142 --> 00:15:39,593 disabilities to what they called feeble-mindedness 297 00:15:39,628 --> 00:15:43,701 could be eliminated if the individuals they dismissed 298 00:15:43,735 --> 00:15:45,185 as "socially defective" 299 00:15:45,220 --> 00:15:48,085 could be stopped from reproducing. 300 00:15:51,951 --> 00:15:54,125 Man: I wish very much that the wrong people 301 00:15:54,160 --> 00:15:57,370 could be prevented entirely from breeding; 302 00:15:57,404 --> 00:15:59,855 and when the evil nature of these people 303 00:15:59,889 --> 00:16:03,652 is sufficiently flagrant, this should be done. 304 00:16:04,756 --> 00:16:06,275 Criminals should be sterilized, 305 00:16:06,310 --> 00:16:08,829 and feeble-minded persons forbidden to leave 306 00:16:08,864 --> 00:16:10,831 offspring behind them. 307 00:16:11,798 --> 00:16:13,179 Theodore Roosevelt. 308 00:16:15,388 --> 00:16:18,598 Irvin Painter: The idea was that the bad people 309 00:16:18,632 --> 00:16:21,014 have to stop reproducing 310 00:16:21,049 --> 00:16:25,363 and the good people need to reproduce more. 311 00:16:25,398 --> 00:16:31,404 Negative eugenics says sterilize the wrong people, 312 00:16:31,438 --> 00:16:37,513 snuff them out, and that's the eugenics 313 00:16:37,548 --> 00:16:39,722 that the Nazis would pick up on. 314 00:16:40,758 --> 00:16:44,037 Narrator: Colleges and universities taught eugenics. 315 00:16:44,072 --> 00:16:46,971 Medical societies confirmed it. 316 00:16:47,006 --> 00:16:49,249 Clergymen preached it. 317 00:16:49,284 --> 00:16:52,977 John D. Rockefeller and Andrew Carnegie funded it. 318 00:16:53,012 --> 00:16:57,809 And some of the most prominent people in America championed it... 319 00:16:57,844 --> 00:17:01,917 Margaret Sanger, Alexander Graham Bell, 320 00:17:01,951 --> 00:17:05,265 even Helen Keller. 321 00:17:05,300 --> 00:17:06,818 Woman as Keller: It seems to me that 322 00:17:06,853 --> 00:17:08,855 the simplest, wisest thing to do 323 00:17:08,889 --> 00:17:10,684 would be to submit cases like that of 324 00:17:10,719 --> 00:17:15,758 the malformed idiot baby to a jury of expert physicians. 325 00:17:15,793 --> 00:17:17,312 ♪ 326 00:17:17,346 --> 00:17:19,383 If the evidence were presented openly 327 00:17:19,417 --> 00:17:22,593 and the decisions made public before the death of the child, 328 00:17:22,627 --> 00:17:26,873 there would be little danger of mistakes or abuses. 329 00:17:26,907 --> 00:17:30,221 We must decide between a fine humanity 330 00:17:30,256 --> 00:17:32,465 and a cowardly sentimentalism. 331 00:17:32,499 --> 00:17:35,226 ♪ 332 00:17:35,261 --> 00:17:37,228 Narrator: 33 of the 48 states 333 00:17:37,263 --> 00:17:39,782 would eventually enact eugenics laws 334 00:17:39,817 --> 00:17:43,959 mandating the forced sterilization of wards of the state 335 00:17:43,993 --> 00:17:47,963 deemed physically or mentally "unfit"... 336 00:17:47,997 --> 00:17:52,968 people in prisons, hospitals, and asylums. 337 00:17:53,002 --> 00:17:54,901 More than 60,000 Americans 338 00:17:54,935 --> 00:17:57,524 would be sterilized without their consent 339 00:17:57,559 --> 00:17:59,940 before the last of these statutes was 340 00:17:59,975 --> 00:18:04,152 removed from the books in 2014. 341 00:18:04,186 --> 00:18:06,464 ♪ 342 00:18:06,499 --> 00:18:10,158 Eugenics also provided a racist rationale 343 00:18:10,192 --> 00:18:13,540 for those convinced immigration needed to be 344 00:18:13,575 --> 00:18:15,508 drastically curtailed. 345 00:18:16,578 --> 00:18:19,063 Man as Grant: The man of the old stock is being crowded out 346 00:18:19,098 --> 00:18:21,790 of many country districts by these foreigners 347 00:18:21,824 --> 00:18:24,689 just as he is today being literally driven off the streets 348 00:18:24,724 --> 00:18:29,142 of New York City by the swarms of Polish Jews. 349 00:18:30,281 --> 00:18:33,629 These immigrants adopt the language of the American, 350 00:18:33,664 --> 00:18:36,908 they wear his clothes, they steal his name, 351 00:18:36,943 --> 00:18:39,946 and they are beginning to take his women, 352 00:18:39,980 --> 00:18:44,744 but they seldom adopt his religion or understand his ideals. 353 00:18:44,778 --> 00:18:47,505 And while he is being elbowed out of his own home, 354 00:18:47,540 --> 00:18:49,611 the American looks calmly abroad 355 00:18:49,645 --> 00:18:53,062 and urges on others the suicidal ethics 356 00:18:53,097 --> 00:18:56,273 which are exterminating his own race. 357 00:18:58,067 --> 00:19:00,104 Madison Grant. 358 00:19:00,139 --> 00:19:01,070 ♪ 359 00:19:01,105 --> 00:19:02,589 Narrator: Madison Grant was a 360 00:19:02,624 --> 00:19:04,522 widely-admired conservationist... 361 00:19:04,557 --> 00:19:08,457 a friend of presidents, a founder of the Bronx Zoo, 362 00:19:08,492 --> 00:19:12,323 responsible in part for saving the California Redwoods 363 00:19:12,358 --> 00:19:14,394 and preserving the buffalo, 364 00:19:14,429 --> 00:19:18,087 and instrumental in creating Glacier, Denali, 365 00:19:18,122 --> 00:19:20,780 and Everglades National Parks. 366 00:19:20,814 --> 00:19:22,575 ♪ 367 00:19:22,609 --> 00:19:25,129 Okrent: And he was also a violent antisemite 368 00:19:25,164 --> 00:19:27,131 and a violent anti-Italian 369 00:19:27,166 --> 00:19:30,652 and he really was horrified by what he saw happening 370 00:19:30,686 --> 00:19:32,343 on the streets of New York. 371 00:19:32,378 --> 00:19:34,897 So, he publishes a book called "The Passing of the Great Race," 372 00:19:34,932 --> 00:19:37,279 in which he puts forward the idea that 373 00:19:37,314 --> 00:19:41,421 nationalities have eugenic characteristics. 374 00:19:41,456 --> 00:19:43,596 He fills it with all sorts of interesting 375 00:19:43,630 --> 00:19:45,529 historical, so-called data, 376 00:19:45,563 --> 00:19:49,015 which is mostly crazy, but it's very persuasive 377 00:19:49,049 --> 00:19:52,329 and it does give the anti-immigration movement, 378 00:19:52,363 --> 00:19:54,469 it suddenly gives them science. 379 00:19:54,503 --> 00:19:56,781 "Science says if we let them in, 380 00:19:56,816 --> 00:19:59,715 then they're going to destroy the American gene pool." 381 00:19:59,750 --> 00:20:01,130 ♪ 382 00:20:01,165 --> 00:20:02,718 Narrator: For Grant and many others, 383 00:20:02,753 --> 00:20:07,171 Jews were a distinct race, not considered white, 384 00:20:07,206 --> 00:20:10,554 dismissed as "uncouth Asiatics." 385 00:20:10,588 --> 00:20:12,590 ♪ 386 00:20:12,625 --> 00:20:15,214 Grant's supposedly "scientific" claims about 387 00:20:15,248 --> 00:20:18,631 a rigid hierarchy of races was ludicrous... 388 00:20:18,665 --> 00:20:23,222 the biological notion of race itself is a fiction... 389 00:20:23,256 --> 00:20:26,880 but his ideas caught the imagination of those Americans 390 00:20:26,915 --> 00:20:29,883 already opposed to immigration. 391 00:20:31,299 --> 00:20:34,888 Hayes: People tended to increasingly view nationalities 392 00:20:34,923 --> 00:20:38,167 as if they were breeds or species. 393 00:20:38,202 --> 00:20:40,653 To liken nationalities to breeds 394 00:20:40,687 --> 00:20:44,277 was a fundamental categorical mistake. 395 00:20:44,312 --> 00:20:46,486 The biological pool of human beings 396 00:20:46,521 --> 00:20:49,282 between Germans and French, Dutch and English 397 00:20:49,317 --> 00:20:52,630 is nothing like the biological or genetic pool 398 00:20:52,665 --> 00:20:55,978 between poodles and German shepherds. 399 00:20:57,256 --> 00:20:59,913 Narrator: American xenophobia deepened when the U.S. 400 00:20:59,948 --> 00:21:03,296 entered the Great War in 1917. 401 00:21:05,333 --> 00:21:09,509 More than 116,000 American servicemen would die 402 00:21:09,544 --> 00:21:13,030 in a war that was supposed to end all wars... 403 00:21:14,825 --> 00:21:16,620 and did nothing of the kind. 404 00:21:16,654 --> 00:21:19,554 ♪ 405 00:21:19,588 --> 00:21:22,522 After the War, the United States was convulsed 406 00:21:22,557 --> 00:21:26,768 by white-on-black violence in dozens of cities, 407 00:21:26,802 --> 00:21:31,048 anarchist bombings, bloody strikes, and a "Red Scare" 408 00:21:31,082 --> 00:21:36,191 that saw the arrests of 10,000 suspected revolutionaries, 409 00:21:36,225 --> 00:21:41,334 many of them immigrants, some of them Jewish. 410 00:21:41,369 --> 00:21:42,887 ♪ 411 00:21:42,922 --> 00:21:47,064 Irvin Painter: Anti-immigrant sentiment and the Red Scare 412 00:21:47,098 --> 00:21:49,860 came together, so, by the early Twenties, 413 00:21:49,894 --> 00:21:56,522 you have this boiling notion that immigrants are stupid 414 00:21:56,556 --> 00:21:59,559 and immigrants are bolshevists 415 00:21:59,594 --> 00:22:04,564 and immigrants are threatening America. 416 00:22:04,599 --> 00:22:07,395 Hayes: And this justified increasingly in the minds of 417 00:22:07,429 --> 00:22:10,570 people like Madison Grant and Henry Cabot Lodge, 418 00:22:10,605 --> 00:22:13,539 the senator from Massachusetts, who argued that 419 00:22:13,573 --> 00:22:17,232 the way to master the problems was to restrict the inflow 420 00:22:17,266 --> 00:22:20,960 of these destabilizing populations. 421 00:22:20,994 --> 00:22:23,376 Narrator: Antisemitism intensified. 422 00:22:23,411 --> 00:22:27,242 The automobile pioneer Henry Ford blamed Jews 423 00:22:27,276 --> 00:22:30,107 for everything from Lincoln's assassination 424 00:22:30,141 --> 00:22:32,385 to the change he thought he detected 425 00:22:32,420 --> 00:22:36,251 in the flavor of his favorite candy bar. 426 00:22:36,285 --> 00:22:38,598 He bought himself a weekly newspaper, 427 00:22:38,633 --> 00:22:41,912 the "Dearborn Independent," and used it to spread 428 00:22:41,946 --> 00:22:44,604 his antisemitic propaganda. 429 00:22:44,639 --> 00:22:47,400 In a series of 91 weekly articles 430 00:22:47,435 --> 00:22:49,989 called "The International Jew," 431 00:22:50,023 --> 00:22:53,510 he promoted "The Protocols of the Elders of Zion," 432 00:22:53,544 --> 00:22:55,615 a Russian hoax that claimed there was 433 00:22:55,650 --> 00:23:01,034 a global Jewish conspiracy to take over the world. 434 00:23:01,069 --> 00:23:03,278 The Bolshevik Revolution in Russia 435 00:23:03,312 --> 00:23:06,419 had only seemed to confirm those fears. 436 00:23:08,076 --> 00:23:11,528 The articles were eventually reprinted in 4 volumes 437 00:23:11,562 --> 00:23:17,396 and translated into 9 languages, including German. 438 00:23:17,430 --> 00:23:19,467 ♪ 439 00:23:19,501 --> 00:23:23,781 Ford's newspaper continued printing its antisemitic bile 440 00:23:23,816 --> 00:23:27,406 and had the second-highest circulation in the country. 441 00:23:27,440 --> 00:23:29,304 ♪ 442 00:23:29,338 --> 00:23:33,895 Jewish-Americans were already denied membership in private clubs, 443 00:23:33,929 --> 00:23:37,761 not hired by banks or prestigious law firms. 444 00:23:37,795 --> 00:23:39,901 "Restrictive covenants" kept them out of 445 00:23:39,935 --> 00:23:42,144 desirable neighborhoods. 446 00:23:42,179 --> 00:23:45,941 Strict quotas limited the number of Jewish students 447 00:23:45,976 --> 00:23:48,012 enrolled in universities 448 00:23:48,047 --> 00:23:49,704 and barred all but a handful of 449 00:23:49,738 --> 00:23:52,845 Jewish teachers from their faculties. 450 00:23:53,984 --> 00:23:57,815 Hotels advertised rooms only for "Gentiles." 451 00:23:57,850 --> 00:24:00,922 ♪ 452 00:24:00,956 --> 00:24:03,338 Greene: One of the most, I think, maddening things 453 00:24:03,372 --> 00:24:06,410 about antisemitism is an antisemite 454 00:24:06,445 --> 00:24:07,963 will hold a contradictory belief 455 00:24:07,998 --> 00:24:10,414 and it won't bother the antisemite, right? 456 00:24:10,449 --> 00:24:14,314 So, "Jews are capitalists," "Jews are Communists." 457 00:24:14,349 --> 00:24:17,490 Or, "Jewish men are weak and effeminate," 458 00:24:17,525 --> 00:24:20,493 or "Jewish men are a sexual threat to... 459 00:24:20,528 --> 00:24:22,184 to non-Jewish women." 460 00:24:22,219 --> 00:24:24,946 These are contradictory beliefs that are illogical, 461 00:24:24,980 --> 00:24:26,879 that don't bother antisemites. 462 00:24:26,913 --> 00:24:31,331 So, how do you fight back against that with logic? 463 00:24:31,366 --> 00:24:32,585 Lipstadt: What are the stereotypes 464 00:24:32,609 --> 00:24:35,163 associated with antisemitism? 465 00:24:35,197 --> 00:24:40,375 Something to do with money, something to do with smarts, 466 00:24:40,409 --> 00:24:43,930 but not positive or affirmatively, 467 00:24:43,965 --> 00:24:48,107 conniving and a small cabal. 468 00:24:48,141 --> 00:24:49,522 Jews are very few in number, 469 00:24:49,557 --> 00:24:51,973 but they know how to control things. 470 00:24:52,007 --> 00:24:55,666 They are the puppet masters, controlling the puppets. 471 00:24:55,701 --> 00:24:58,669 ♪ 472 00:24:58,704 --> 00:25:01,672 Narrator: In the early 1920s, support grew steadily 473 00:25:01,707 --> 00:25:03,881 for congressional legislation 474 00:25:03,916 --> 00:25:06,539 to permanently restrict immigration, 475 00:25:06,574 --> 00:25:09,922 designed to return to the ethnic mix of America 476 00:25:09,956 --> 00:25:12,752 as it had been before the waves of newcomers 477 00:25:12,787 --> 00:25:15,479 from Southern and Eastern Europe. 478 00:25:16,756 --> 00:25:20,795 A resurgent Ku Klux Klan, now several million strong, 479 00:25:20,829 --> 00:25:23,452 as anti-Catholic and antisemitic 480 00:25:23,487 --> 00:25:25,524 as it was anti-Black, 481 00:25:25,558 --> 00:25:28,388 favored restricting immigration. 482 00:25:28,423 --> 00:25:31,840 So did many Protestant clergymen and union leaders 483 00:25:31,875 --> 00:25:35,603 convinced immigrants drove wages down. 484 00:25:35,637 --> 00:25:38,744 President Calvin Coolidge supported it, too. 485 00:25:38,778 --> 00:25:42,782 "America must be kept American," he said. 486 00:25:44,577 --> 00:25:46,510 Jewish and Catholic organizations 487 00:25:46,545 --> 00:25:48,616 were adamantly opposed. 488 00:25:48,650 --> 00:25:50,376 ♪ 489 00:25:50,410 --> 00:25:54,207 A small band of congressmen... mostly from urban districts, 490 00:25:54,242 --> 00:25:58,177 often immigrants themselves or the children of immigrants... 491 00:25:58,211 --> 00:26:02,250 tried to speak for the new Americans they represented. 492 00:26:02,284 --> 00:26:03,769 ♪ 493 00:26:03,803 --> 00:26:06,599 Man: I knew them. I knew the Irish and the Jews 494 00:26:06,634 --> 00:26:08,981 and the Italians and the Greeks. 495 00:26:09,015 --> 00:26:11,500 I knew the women in the Brooklyn tenements 496 00:26:11,535 --> 00:26:13,813 who scrubbed their floors again and again 497 00:26:13,848 --> 00:26:17,679 in the helpless fight against squalor. 498 00:26:17,714 --> 00:26:19,923 I knew their richness and their laughter 499 00:26:19,957 --> 00:26:21,821 and the disappointing heartbreak of 500 00:26:21,856 --> 00:26:25,031 the struggle in America to adjust. 501 00:26:25,066 --> 00:26:26,619 ♪ 502 00:26:26,654 --> 00:26:29,001 I knew also their pride, 503 00:26:29,035 --> 00:26:31,728 the unfulfilled dream of independence 504 00:26:31,762 --> 00:26:34,903 that had first brought them here. 505 00:26:34,938 --> 00:26:37,872 Emanuel Celler. 506 00:26:37,906 --> 00:26:40,737 Narrator: Freshman Congressman Emanuel Celler 507 00:26:40,771 --> 00:26:43,532 was a third-generation Jewish-American, 508 00:26:43,567 --> 00:26:46,121 who represented Brooklyn's 10th District. 509 00:26:46,156 --> 00:26:50,022 It was one of the most ethnically diverse in the nation, 510 00:26:50,056 --> 00:26:52,645 and he liked to tell his constituents that 511 00:26:52,680 --> 00:26:56,028 his Catholic grandfather had jumped into New York Harbor 512 00:26:56,062 --> 00:26:58,962 to save his Jewish grandmother from drowning 513 00:26:58,996 --> 00:27:02,137 after the boat they had both taken from Germany 514 00:27:02,172 --> 00:27:03,656 began to sink. 515 00:27:03,691 --> 00:27:05,175 ♪ 516 00:27:05,209 --> 00:27:08,972 When Celler came to Washington in the winter of 1923, 517 00:27:09,006 --> 00:27:11,664 he hurled himself into the struggle against 518 00:27:11,699 --> 00:27:14,080 the latest anti-immigration bill, 519 00:27:14,115 --> 00:27:17,912 even before he was able to hire a staff. 520 00:27:17,946 --> 00:27:21,156 He pored over books in the Library of Congress 521 00:27:21,191 --> 00:27:26,058 and brought in scientists to testify against eugenics. 522 00:27:26,092 --> 00:27:29,855 The work of Madison Grant and his fellow eugenicists, 523 00:27:29,889 --> 00:27:33,237 Celler said, was all "bunk and balderdash." 524 00:27:33,272 --> 00:27:38,449 "There is no such thing as superior and inferior races. 525 00:27:38,484 --> 00:27:41,625 One set of people is as good as another." 526 00:27:43,662 --> 00:27:45,802 Man as Celler: This is indeed a new doctrine 527 00:27:45,836 --> 00:27:50,565 for a democratic America, founded on the declaration that 528 00:27:50,599 --> 00:27:52,843 all men are created equal, 529 00:27:52,878 --> 00:27:57,089 a slap in the face to our immigrants who have assimilated 530 00:27:57,123 --> 00:28:02,819 and who have become bone of our bone, flesh of our flesh. 531 00:28:02,853 --> 00:28:04,613 ♪ 532 00:28:04,648 --> 00:28:06,926 Narrator: But nothing Celler or his allies said 533 00:28:06,961 --> 00:28:09,722 could halt the rush toward passage. 534 00:28:09,757 --> 00:28:12,345 The new law, the Johnson-Reed Act, 535 00:28:12,380 --> 00:28:17,799 passed by overwhelming margins in both the House and Senate. 536 00:28:17,834 --> 00:28:22,977 On May 26, 1924, Coolidge signed it into law. 537 00:28:23,011 --> 00:28:24,806 ♪ 538 00:28:24,841 --> 00:28:27,706 It drastically limited the total number of immigrants 539 00:28:27,740 --> 00:28:29,915 admitted to the United States, 540 00:28:29,949 --> 00:28:32,711 and it allotted quotas to each country, 541 00:28:32,745 --> 00:28:35,403 overwhelmingly favoring immigrants from 542 00:28:35,437 --> 00:28:38,717 Northern European countries. 543 00:28:38,751 --> 00:28:41,202 Erbelding: The Johnson-Reed Immigration Act of 1924 544 00:28:41,236 --> 00:28:43,583 is really meant to define who is going to be 545 00:28:43,618 --> 00:28:45,378 an American in the future. 546 00:28:45,413 --> 00:28:49,313 And 85% of it is for people who are born in countries 547 00:28:49,348 --> 00:28:53,007 that they decide in 1924 are white Protestant countries 548 00:28:53,041 --> 00:28:56,700 that will send white Protestant immigrants to the United States. 549 00:28:57,632 --> 00:29:00,911 Narrator: The act did not limit immigrants from the Americas... 550 00:29:00,946 --> 00:29:03,914 who were needed for farm labor... 551 00:29:03,949 --> 00:29:08,022 but it now barred all Asians, not just the Chinese. 552 00:29:08,056 --> 00:29:11,646 One Japanese newspaper labeled the law's passage 553 00:29:11,680 --> 00:29:14,131 "the greatest insult in our history," 554 00:29:14,166 --> 00:29:16,720 and a prominent nationalist declared 555 00:29:16,755 --> 00:29:18,549 it made "an eventual collision 556 00:29:18,584 --> 00:29:22,174 between Japan and America... inevitable." 557 00:29:22,208 --> 00:29:23,865 ♪ 558 00:29:23,900 --> 00:29:27,351 For the first time, before embarking for the United States, 559 00:29:27,386 --> 00:29:30,251 potential immigrants would have to obtain a visa 560 00:29:30,285 --> 00:29:33,875 from American consulates in their countries, 561 00:29:33,910 --> 00:29:36,222 giving State Department bureaucrats 562 00:29:36,257 --> 00:29:37,914 unprecedented control 563 00:29:37,948 --> 00:29:43,160 over who was and who was not worthy of admission. 564 00:29:43,195 --> 00:29:46,992 The new act also made no exception for refugees... 565 00:29:47,026 --> 00:29:52,135 those fleeing disaster, war, or persecution. 566 00:29:53,861 --> 00:29:59,763 In 1921, 805,000 immigrants had come to America. 567 00:29:59,798 --> 00:30:03,180 In 1925, under the new quota system, 568 00:30:03,215 --> 00:30:07,460 just under 150,000 were allowed in. 569 00:30:07,495 --> 00:30:09,014 ♪ 570 00:30:09,048 --> 00:30:11,982 There was no explicit quota for Jews, 571 00:30:12,017 --> 00:30:15,468 and Jews were not specifically named in the law. 572 00:30:15,503 --> 00:30:17,125 But it was not an accident that 573 00:30:17,160 --> 00:30:19,990 most recent Jewish immigrants had come from 574 00:30:20,025 --> 00:30:26,065 the eastern European countries that now had miniscule quotas. 575 00:30:26,100 --> 00:30:29,897 Almost 120,000 Jews had started new lives 576 00:30:29,931 --> 00:30:34,142 in the United States in 1921. 577 00:30:34,177 --> 00:30:38,871 5 years later, only 10,000 were able to do so. 578 00:30:38,906 --> 00:30:40,286 ♪ 579 00:30:40,321 --> 00:30:43,393 "America has closed the doors just in time 580 00:30:43,427 --> 00:30:45,326 "to prevent our Nordic population 581 00:30:45,360 --> 00:30:48,467 from being overrun by the lower races," 582 00:30:48,501 --> 00:30:50,331 said Madison Grant. 583 00:30:50,365 --> 00:30:54,024 "The law's passage was one of the greatest steps forward 584 00:30:54,059 --> 00:30:56,371 in the history of this country." 585 00:30:56,406 --> 00:30:58,270 ♪ 586 00:30:58,304 --> 00:31:00,410 Man as Celler: To say that a handful of men 587 00:31:00,444 --> 00:31:05,553 forced through the Immigration Act of 1924 is false. 588 00:31:05,587 --> 00:31:09,868 The United States was drawing her skirts about her in fear 589 00:31:09,902 --> 00:31:13,147 lest she be contaminated by the alien. 590 00:31:13,181 --> 00:31:14,665 ♪ 591 00:31:14,700 --> 00:31:16,909 The temper of the Congress, I discovered, 592 00:31:16,944 --> 00:31:19,843 is the temper of the country. 593 00:31:20,740 --> 00:31:22,466 Emanuel Celler. 594 00:31:22,501 --> 00:31:25,745 ♪ 595 00:31:29,646 --> 00:31:33,926 Narrator: In 1924, in a prison cell in Landsberg, Bavaria, 596 00:31:33,961 --> 00:31:38,966 Adolf Hitler, the head of the National Socialist German Workers Party... 597 00:31:39,000 --> 00:31:44,109 the Nazis... learned of the new American immigration law. 598 00:31:44,143 --> 00:31:46,663 He had been imprisoned for high treason 599 00:31:46,697 --> 00:31:49,079 after leading a failed coup. 600 00:31:49,114 --> 00:31:52,669 He was pleased that the United States felt itself to be 601 00:31:52,703 --> 00:31:55,879 what he called a "Nordic-Germanic state," 602 00:31:55,914 --> 00:31:58,537 and had acted to preserve its purity 603 00:31:58,571 --> 00:32:01,229 by "excluding certain races." 604 00:32:01,264 --> 00:32:02,782 ♪ 605 00:32:02,817 --> 00:32:05,993 Those ideas mirrored Hitler's own beliefs, 606 00:32:06,027 --> 00:32:07,995 and he was willing to exploit the chaos 607 00:32:08,029 --> 00:32:11,757 that gripped Germany after its defeat in the Great War 608 00:32:11,791 --> 00:32:14,415 to promote them. 609 00:32:14,449 --> 00:32:16,900 At Versailles in 1919, 610 00:32:16,935 --> 00:32:20,007 the victorious Allies had imposed on the Germans 611 00:32:20,041 --> 00:32:24,770 a treaty that required them to give up 10% of their territory 612 00:32:24,804 --> 00:32:27,635 as well as their colonies in Africa, 613 00:32:27,669 --> 00:32:29,982 pay massive reparations, 614 00:32:30,017 --> 00:32:32,709 and disarm completely. 615 00:32:32,743 --> 00:32:36,506 Hitler, who had been an obscure army dispatch messenger 616 00:32:36,540 --> 00:32:37,956 when the war ended, 617 00:32:37,990 --> 00:32:40,199 was among those who convinced themselves 618 00:32:40,234 --> 00:32:44,307 Germany had not been defeated on the battlefield, 619 00:32:44,341 --> 00:32:46,826 that she had been "stabbed in the back" 620 00:32:46,861 --> 00:32:49,484 by socialists and Jews. 621 00:32:49,519 --> 00:32:51,176 ♪ 622 00:32:51,210 --> 00:32:54,282 While behind bars, Hitler worked on a book 623 00:32:54,317 --> 00:32:57,941 entitled "Mein Kampf"... "My Struggle." 624 00:32:57,976 --> 00:33:01,531 History, he argued, was an endless racial conflict 625 00:33:01,565 --> 00:33:05,190 in which the superior so-called "Aryan" race 626 00:33:05,224 --> 00:33:09,470 was being undermined by Jews. 627 00:33:09,504 --> 00:33:12,093 Hayes: The most dangerous of other nationalities, 628 00:33:12,128 --> 00:33:14,578 said the Nazis, were the Jews. 629 00:33:14,613 --> 00:33:17,202 And the reason they were was not only inherited, 630 00:33:17,236 --> 00:33:18,869 that is, there had been a Christian teaching 631 00:33:18,893 --> 00:33:21,309 that these people are corrupting and so forth. 632 00:33:21,344 --> 00:33:23,242 The reason is also they were the people 633 00:33:23,277 --> 00:33:27,246 who brought the notion of conscience, the golden rule, 634 00:33:27,281 --> 00:33:33,080 fair play, international cooperation into the world. 635 00:33:33,114 --> 00:33:34,505 Man: What's particular about the thing that 636 00:33:34,529 --> 00:33:36,462 Hitler puts together is to say, 637 00:33:36,497 --> 00:33:40,639 "The Jews are responsible for every global idea, 638 00:33:40,673 --> 00:33:43,228 "for every universal idea. 639 00:33:43,262 --> 00:33:46,058 "Anything which allows us to see each other as people, 640 00:33:46,093 --> 00:33:50,511 rather than as members of a race, that's the Jews." 641 00:33:50,545 --> 00:33:54,998 Narrator: Germany's 523,000 Jews constituted less than 642 00:33:55,033 --> 00:33:58,243 1% of their country's population. 643 00:33:58,277 --> 00:34:03,248 But 100,000 of them had fought during the Great War. 644 00:34:03,282 --> 00:34:06,906 12,000 had died. 645 00:34:06,941 --> 00:34:09,495 They had overcome centuries of persecution 646 00:34:09,530 --> 00:34:13,603 to become merchants, manufacturers, musicians, 647 00:34:13,637 --> 00:34:16,261 lawyers, writers, scientists, 648 00:34:16,295 --> 00:34:19,747 artists, government officials, 649 00:34:19,781 --> 00:34:22,267 and were loyal Germans. 650 00:34:22,301 --> 00:34:25,408 Stern: We were absolutely integrated 651 00:34:25,442 --> 00:34:30,482 into this town of about 65,000 inhabitants 652 00:34:30,516 --> 00:34:33,519 and felt completely at home. 653 00:34:33,554 --> 00:34:35,038 ♪ 654 00:34:35,073 --> 00:34:36,419 Narrator: The city of Hildesheim, 655 00:34:36,453 --> 00:34:37,799 in northern Germany, 656 00:34:37,834 --> 00:34:41,044 was home to some 1,000 Jewish families. 657 00:34:41,079 --> 00:34:44,220 Julius Stern owned a small shop. 658 00:34:44,254 --> 00:34:46,498 His wife Hedwig was the daughter of 659 00:34:46,532 --> 00:34:48,362 a well-to-do-merchant. 660 00:34:48,396 --> 00:34:50,053 They had 3 children. 661 00:34:50,088 --> 00:34:54,782 Their oldest was Guünther, born in 1922. 662 00:34:54,816 --> 00:34:56,335 ♪ 663 00:34:56,370 --> 00:35:00,408 Stern: My mother was a absolute luminous woman. 664 00:35:00,443 --> 00:35:05,206 And she could write German verses for all occasions 665 00:35:05,241 --> 00:35:11,592 and was praised as the "Poet Laureate" of our family. 666 00:35:11,626 --> 00:35:14,767 I had a neighbor boy who was my best friend 667 00:35:14,802 --> 00:35:19,565 on the slim basis that both of our names were Guünther. 668 00:35:19,600 --> 00:35:24,915 His family was not all that conservative as Protestants. 669 00:35:24,950 --> 00:35:29,334 And we were not that observant as Jews. 670 00:35:30,990 --> 00:35:35,098 Narrator: But to Hitler, all Jews were clannish, stateless, 671 00:35:35,133 --> 00:35:38,101 subhuman "leeches" who drained the strength 672 00:35:38,136 --> 00:35:40,793 of every country in which they lived. 673 00:35:40,828 --> 00:35:43,934 From his cell, he promised to one day make Germany 674 00:35:43,969 --> 00:35:46,558 free of them... and, by so doing, 675 00:35:46,592 --> 00:35:49,147 restore Germany's greatness. 676 00:35:50,217 --> 00:35:52,115 Victory in that struggle, he said, 677 00:35:52,150 --> 00:35:55,981 demanded military might, "Aryan fertility," 678 00:35:56,015 --> 00:35:58,086 and racial purity. 679 00:35:58,121 --> 00:36:01,642 He would seek to destroy the power of what he believed 680 00:36:01,676 --> 00:36:07,268 was a worldwide conspiracy... "International Jewry." 681 00:36:07,303 --> 00:36:11,307 At the same time, he dreamed of reclaiming German territories 682 00:36:11,341 --> 00:36:14,482 and waging a war against the Soviet Union 683 00:36:14,517 --> 00:36:18,176 that would simultaneously destroy what he called 684 00:36:18,210 --> 00:36:19,763 "Jewish Bolshevism" 685 00:36:19,798 --> 00:36:24,043 and win for Germany the "Lebensraum"... Living Space... 686 00:36:24,078 --> 00:36:27,115 to which he believed it was entitled. 687 00:36:28,531 --> 00:36:31,844 Hayes: Hitler saw the expansion of Germany into Eastern Europe 688 00:36:31,879 --> 00:36:37,367 as foreshadowed by what we had done in North America, 689 00:36:37,402 --> 00:36:40,267 the expansion of the white people of the United States 690 00:36:40,301 --> 00:36:44,098 across the continent from east to west, 691 00:36:44,132 --> 00:36:47,791 brushing aside the people who were already here 692 00:36:47,826 --> 00:36:50,863 and confining them to reservations. 693 00:36:50,898 --> 00:36:52,658 ♪ 694 00:36:52,693 --> 00:36:55,420 Narrator: "The immense inner strength" of the United States, 695 00:36:55,454 --> 00:36:59,769 Hitler said, came from the ruthless but necessary act 696 00:36:59,803 --> 00:37:02,323 of murdering native people 697 00:37:02,358 --> 00:37:05,188 and herding the rest into "cages." 698 00:37:05,223 --> 00:37:06,776 ♪ 699 00:37:06,810 --> 00:37:08,502 Snyder: He saw us as the way that 700 00:37:08,536 --> 00:37:12,091 racial superiority is supposed to work. 701 00:37:12,126 --> 00:37:15,198 The higher races conquer the territory. 702 00:37:15,233 --> 00:37:18,201 So, if anything, the attitude before the war 703 00:37:18,236 --> 00:37:21,515 was an attitude of a certain admiration. 704 00:37:21,549 --> 00:37:24,207 Narrator: Hitler hoped that just as the Americans 705 00:37:24,242 --> 00:37:26,313 had conquered "the Wild West," 706 00:37:26,347 --> 00:37:29,592 his countrymen would conquer "the Wild East"... 707 00:37:29,626 --> 00:37:32,526 Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union. 708 00:37:32,560 --> 00:37:36,599 "Our Mississippi," he said, "must be the Volga." 709 00:37:38,048 --> 00:37:39,671 Germans would sweep aside those who 710 00:37:39,705 --> 00:37:42,950 inconveniently occupied those lands... 711 00:37:42,984 --> 00:37:47,368 Poles and other Slavs, as well as Jews... 712 00:37:47,403 --> 00:37:51,096 much as Native Americans had been swept aside. 713 00:37:54,617 --> 00:37:56,653 When Hitler was released from prison 714 00:37:56,688 --> 00:37:58,759 in December of 1924, 715 00:37:58,793 --> 00:38:01,969 the fledgling Weimar Republic that had been born 716 00:38:02,003 --> 00:38:03,902 at the end of the Great War 717 00:38:03,936 --> 00:38:06,491 was finally coming into its own. 718 00:38:07,526 --> 00:38:10,840 Berlin, its capital and largest city, 719 00:38:10,874 --> 00:38:13,636 home to 1/3 of Germany's Jews, 720 00:38:13,670 --> 00:38:16,673 had become the intellectual and creative 721 00:38:16,708 --> 00:38:19,538 center of Europe... 722 00:38:19,573 --> 00:38:24,371 Expressionism on canvas and on the movie screen, 723 00:38:24,405 --> 00:38:29,203 Bauhaus architecture and American jazz, 724 00:38:29,237 --> 00:38:33,380 scientific advancement and avant-garde music, 725 00:38:33,414 --> 00:38:37,832 sexual freedom and leftist politics. 726 00:38:37,867 --> 00:38:40,179 ♪ 727 00:38:40,214 --> 00:38:44,287 Berlin represented everything Hitler hated 728 00:38:44,322 --> 00:38:46,324 and hoped to destroy. 729 00:38:49,361 --> 00:38:56,403 ♪ 730 00:38:56,437 --> 00:39:00,061 In the autumn of 1929, after nearly a decade of 731 00:39:00,096 --> 00:39:03,617 unprecedented economic growth, 732 00:39:03,651 --> 00:39:06,413 the New York stock market crashed. 733 00:39:07,724 --> 00:39:09,657 The Great Depression that followed would be 734 00:39:09,692 --> 00:39:14,559 the worst crisis America had faced since the Civil War. 735 00:39:14,593 --> 00:39:18,701 Before it was over, one out of every 4 wage-earners... 736 00:39:18,735 --> 00:39:21,704 more than 15 million men and women... 737 00:39:21,738 --> 00:39:23,533 would be without work. 738 00:39:24,638 --> 00:39:27,088 Now Americans were even less eager 739 00:39:27,123 --> 00:39:29,436 to welcome workers from foreign lands 740 00:39:29,470 --> 00:39:31,679 than they had been before. 741 00:39:32,680 --> 00:39:36,443 President Herbert Hoover directed all overseas consulates 742 00:39:36,477 --> 00:39:38,721 to strictly enforce what had been 743 00:39:38,755 --> 00:39:42,656 a seemingly minor provision of the immigration law. 744 00:39:42,690 --> 00:39:46,107 From now on, the United States would deny a visa 745 00:39:46,142 --> 00:39:47,971 to any would-be immigrant 746 00:39:48,006 --> 00:39:51,009 "likely to become a public charge," 747 00:39:51,043 --> 00:39:53,736 dependent on government support. 748 00:39:53,770 --> 00:39:55,496 ♪ 749 00:39:55,531 --> 00:39:59,224 Under the slogan "American jobs for real Americans," 750 00:39:59,258 --> 00:40:02,123 Hoover's Labor Department approved raids by 751 00:40:02,158 --> 00:40:04,954 sheriffs, marshals, and vigilantes 752 00:40:04,988 --> 00:40:10,131 that rounded up some 1.8 million people of Mexican descent 753 00:40:10,166 --> 00:40:11,788 and deported them. 754 00:40:12,927 --> 00:40:16,414 It was called the "Mexican Repatriation Program," 755 00:40:16,448 --> 00:40:19,209 but 6 out of 10 of those dispossessed 756 00:40:19,244 --> 00:40:23,110 are believed to have been American citizens. 757 00:40:24,456 --> 00:40:27,977 In 1932, for the first time in American history, 758 00:40:28,011 --> 00:40:32,533 more people left the United States than were allowed in. 759 00:40:33,569 --> 00:40:35,329 Man: You are approaching Ellis Island, 760 00:40:35,363 --> 00:40:37,883 once the gateway for thousands seeking fortune, 761 00:40:37,918 --> 00:40:40,334 and now every month sees hundreds banished 762 00:40:40,368 --> 00:40:42,612 after being convicted by the immigration board 763 00:40:42,647 --> 00:40:45,960 of failing to meet the requirements of good citizenship. 764 00:40:45,995 --> 00:40:47,686 Today's batch of deportees include 765 00:40:47,721 --> 00:40:49,930 a husband and wife, forced apart 766 00:40:49,964 --> 00:40:51,794 by Uncle Sam's stern edict. 767 00:40:51,828 --> 00:40:53,520 And so the symbol of liberty becomes 768 00:40:53,554 --> 00:40:57,144 a fading memory of things that might have been. 769 00:40:57,178 --> 00:41:03,806 ♪ 770 00:41:03,840 --> 00:41:06,291 Narrator: The Great Depression spread relentlessly 771 00:41:06,325 --> 00:41:07,948 around the world. 772 00:41:08,949 --> 00:41:12,297 In Germany, more than a third of the adult population 773 00:41:12,331 --> 00:41:14,161 was without work. 774 00:41:14,195 --> 00:41:18,890 Parliamentary democracy seemed powerless to improve things. 775 00:41:18,924 --> 00:41:21,548 The Weimar Republic was teetering. 776 00:41:21,582 --> 00:41:24,309 Governments came and went. 777 00:41:24,343 --> 00:41:27,761 The search for scapegoats intensified. 778 00:41:27,795 --> 00:41:29,452 ♪ 779 00:41:29,487 --> 00:41:33,111 In the chaos, Hitler saw his chance. 780 00:41:33,145 --> 00:41:34,837 ♪ 781 00:41:34,871 --> 00:41:36,908 [Hitler speaking German] 782 00:41:45,813 --> 00:41:48,022 [Crowd cheering] 783 00:41:48,057 --> 00:41:51,025 Narrator: In 1928, the Nazi share of the vote 784 00:41:51,060 --> 00:41:53,476 had been less than 3%. 785 00:41:53,511 --> 00:41:58,481 By 1932, theirs was the largest party in Germany, 786 00:41:58,516 --> 00:42:01,484 but still not large enough to form a government. 787 00:42:02,934 --> 00:42:04,383 To appeal to moderates, 788 00:42:04,418 --> 00:42:07,007 the Nazis downplayed their antisemitism 789 00:42:07,041 --> 00:42:11,805 and they stepped up street warfare against socialists and Communists 790 00:42:11,839 --> 00:42:17,258 to convince voters that civil war was imminent. 791 00:42:17,293 --> 00:42:21,090 Then, a small group of elite conservatives stepped in 792 00:42:21,124 --> 00:42:24,990 and on January 30, 1933, saw to it 793 00:42:25,025 --> 00:42:27,614 that Hitler was appointed Chancellor... 794 00:42:27,648 --> 00:42:30,548 confident that they could control him. 795 00:42:30,582 --> 00:42:32,964 "We have hired him," one of them told a friend. 796 00:42:32,998 --> 00:42:35,656 "In a few months, we will have pushed him so far 797 00:42:35,691 --> 00:42:38,901 into the corner that he will squeak." 798 00:42:40,143 --> 00:42:42,629 They had misjudged him. 799 00:42:42,663 --> 00:42:44,631 Snyder: The people who brought Hitler to power 800 00:42:44,665 --> 00:42:47,323 didn't necessarily share all of his ideas. 801 00:42:47,357 --> 00:42:48,635 In fact, they didn't. 802 00:42:48,669 --> 00:42:50,568 But what they did believe 803 00:42:50,602 --> 00:42:53,053 was that we can't have democracy anymore, 804 00:42:53,087 --> 00:42:54,917 because if we have democracy, 805 00:42:54,951 --> 00:42:57,540 then the Left and the labor unions, 806 00:42:57,575 --> 00:42:59,611 they're going to take all of the power. 807 00:43:00,716 --> 00:43:02,649 So, the people who brought Hitler to power 808 00:43:02,683 --> 00:43:04,754 were conscious and aware, 809 00:43:04,789 --> 00:43:07,861 and desirous of doing away with democracy. 810 00:43:07,895 --> 00:43:09,932 [Crowd shouting] 811 00:43:10,864 --> 00:43:13,073 Narrator: Within two months, with a ruthlessness that 812 00:43:13,107 --> 00:43:16,110 stunned supporters and opponents alike, 813 00:43:16,145 --> 00:43:19,182 Hitler bullied the parliament... the Reichstag... 814 00:43:19,217 --> 00:43:24,015 into granting him the powers of an absolute dictator. 815 00:43:24,049 --> 00:43:26,673 ♪ 816 00:43:26,707 --> 00:43:28,778 The morning after Hitler took power, 817 00:43:28,813 --> 00:43:33,024 local Nazis staged victory marches throughout the country. 818 00:43:33,058 --> 00:43:34,819 ♪ 819 00:43:34,853 --> 00:43:38,270 In Hildesheim, the Stern family's apartment 820 00:43:38,305 --> 00:43:40,997 overlooked the parade route. 821 00:43:41,032 --> 00:43:44,587 Stern: We stayed home, and my parents said, 822 00:43:44,622 --> 00:43:47,659 "Don't even look out the window." 823 00:43:47,694 --> 00:43:49,247 ♪ 824 00:43:49,281 --> 00:43:54,942 And at the very tail end of that parade were my classmates. 825 00:43:54,977 --> 00:43:56,392 ♪ 826 00:43:56,426 --> 00:44:02,329 My father called my brother into our... 827 00:44:02,363 --> 00:44:04,400 what was called the gute stube, 828 00:44:04,434 --> 00:44:07,403 which was the best room in the apartment. 829 00:44:07,437 --> 00:44:10,855 And he said to us, "Sit down, boys, 830 00:44:10,889 --> 00:44:13,340 I have something to tell you." 831 00:44:13,374 --> 00:44:18,725 And what he said was, "Don't stick out. 832 00:44:18,759 --> 00:44:22,038 He who sticks out, gets stuck." 833 00:44:22,073 --> 00:44:23,281 ♪ 834 00:44:23,315 --> 00:44:26,629 We took him seriously. He said, 835 00:44:26,664 --> 00:44:29,874 "Be like invisible ink." 836 00:44:29,908 --> 00:44:34,913 In other words, what you are will someday come out again, 837 00:44:34,948 --> 00:44:39,815 but at this time, fade into the crowd. 838 00:44:39,849 --> 00:44:46,373 ♪ 839 00:44:46,407 --> 00:44:49,169 Franklin Roosevelt: I, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, 840 00:44:49,203 --> 00:44:52,759 do solemnly swear that I will faithfully execute 841 00:44:52,793 --> 00:44:56,245 the Office of President of the United States... 842 00:44:56,279 --> 00:44:59,213 Narrator: The United States had a new leader that winter, too. 843 00:44:59,248 --> 00:45:01,181 Roosevelt: preserve, protect, and defend... 844 00:45:01,215 --> 00:45:03,942 Narrator: Franklin Delano Roosevelt was sworn in 845 00:45:03,977 --> 00:45:08,498 as the 32nd president on March 4th. 846 00:45:08,533 --> 00:45:09,810 Roosevelt: This is a day of... 847 00:45:09,845 --> 00:45:11,260 Narrator: The economic situation had 848 00:45:11,294 --> 00:45:13,987 steadily worsened since 1929, 849 00:45:14,021 --> 00:45:17,956 so steadily that some Americans on both sides of the aisle 850 00:45:17,991 --> 00:45:23,134 urged the new president also to assume dictatorial powers. 851 00:45:23,168 --> 00:45:25,146 Roosevelt: the Congress shall fail to take one of these... 852 00:45:25,170 --> 00:45:28,208 Narrator: In his inaugural address, he assured Americans 853 00:45:28,242 --> 00:45:32,833 that "the only thing we have to fear is fear itself," 854 00:45:32,868 --> 00:45:36,354 but he also warned that if all else failed... 855 00:45:36,388 --> 00:45:38,805 Roosevelt: I shall ask the Congress for the one 856 00:45:38,839 --> 00:45:42,153 remaining instrument to meet the crisis... 857 00:45:42,187 --> 00:45:49,677 broad executive power to wage a war against the emergency 858 00:45:49,712 --> 00:45:53,785 as great as the power that would be given to me 859 00:45:53,820 --> 00:45:58,031 if we were in fact invaded by a foreign foe. 860 00:45:58,065 --> 00:46:00,343 [Crowd cheering] 861 00:46:00,378 --> 00:46:02,863 Narrator: His wife Eleanor remembered that she'd 862 00:46:02,898 --> 00:46:07,350 found the crowd's enthusiastic reaction to that line 863 00:46:07,385 --> 00:46:08,973 "a little terrifying." 864 00:46:09,007 --> 00:46:11,078 ♪ 865 00:46:11,113 --> 00:46:13,494 During the 100 days that followed, 866 00:46:13,529 --> 00:46:15,082 Roosevelt would sign into law 867 00:46:15,117 --> 00:46:18,810 16 major pieces of domestic legislation 868 00:46:18,845 --> 00:46:23,263 that laid the foundation for what he called the New Deal. 869 00:46:23,297 --> 00:46:28,820 His overriding objective was to put Americans back to work. 870 00:46:28,855 --> 00:46:32,859 Foreign policy was left mostly to the State Department... 871 00:46:32,893 --> 00:46:35,931 small, hide-bound, dominated by 872 00:46:35,965 --> 00:46:40,867 conservative members of the Protestant establishment. 873 00:46:40,901 --> 00:46:44,146 FDR's secretary of state was Cordell Hull, 874 00:46:44,180 --> 00:46:47,908 a former Tennessee senator most concerned with 875 00:46:47,943 --> 00:46:51,049 increasing America's trade with the world 876 00:46:51,084 --> 00:46:53,845 and opposed on principle to interfering in 877 00:46:53,880 --> 00:46:57,228 the domestic affairs of other countries. 878 00:46:57,262 --> 00:47:00,093 ♪ 879 00:47:03,751 --> 00:47:05,961 [Hitler speaking German] 880 00:47:34,230 --> 00:47:37,440 Narrator: Many Germans... Jews and Gentiles alike... 881 00:47:37,475 --> 00:47:42,031 believed that once in power, Hitler would moderate his views. 882 00:47:42,066 --> 00:47:45,000 They took comfort in an old German saying, 883 00:47:45,034 --> 00:47:48,969 "Nothing is eaten as hot as it is cooked." 884 00:47:49,004 --> 00:47:52,248 Others hoped his government would quickly collapse 885 00:47:52,283 --> 00:47:54,561 as so many others had. 886 00:47:54,595 --> 00:47:56,011 [Men chant in German] 887 00:47:56,045 --> 00:47:59,083 Narrator: The Nazis soon dashed those hopes. 888 00:48:00,601 --> 00:48:02,465 Within weeks of taking power, 889 00:48:02,500 --> 00:48:05,917 Hitler's Brownshirt street fighters and black-clad members 890 00:48:05,952 --> 00:48:08,713 of an elite paramilitary organization 891 00:48:08,747 --> 00:48:12,303 called the Schutzstaffel... or SS... 892 00:48:12,337 --> 00:48:17,239 had rounded up some 4,800 socialists and Communists 893 00:48:17,273 --> 00:48:22,658 and soon sent them to the first of many concentration camps... 894 00:48:22,692 --> 00:48:25,557 guarded compounds initially intended to hold 895 00:48:25,592 --> 00:48:28,284 large numbers of political opponents, 896 00:48:28,319 --> 00:48:32,426 stripped of all their rights as citizens. 897 00:48:32,461 --> 00:48:35,636 It was set up about 12 miles from Munich, 898 00:48:35,671 --> 00:48:38,122 near the village of Dachau. 899 00:48:39,709 --> 00:48:42,816 By year's end, more than 100,000 people 900 00:48:42,850 --> 00:48:45,508 had been imprisoned throughout Germany. 901 00:48:45,543 --> 00:48:50,513 ♪ 902 00:48:50,548 --> 00:48:55,035 Meanwhile, Brownshirts stormed up and down German streets, 903 00:48:55,070 --> 00:48:58,004 beating anyone they decided looked Jewish, 904 00:48:58,038 --> 00:49:01,904 chanting, "When Jewish blood spurts off the knife, 905 00:49:01,939 --> 00:49:04,769 everything will be fine again!" 906 00:49:06,978 --> 00:49:08,359 Man: "Chicago Tribune." 907 00:49:09,670 --> 00:49:11,293 Bands of Nazis throughout Germany 908 00:49:11,327 --> 00:49:13,916 carried out wholesale raids calculated 909 00:49:13,951 --> 00:49:18,679 to intimidate the opposition, particularly the Jews. 910 00:49:18,714 --> 00:49:21,096 As hundreds have sworn in affidavits, 911 00:49:21,130 --> 00:49:25,617 men and women were insulted, slapped, punched in the face, 912 00:49:25,652 --> 00:49:27,619 hit over the head with blackjacks, 913 00:49:27,654 --> 00:49:30,968 dragged from their homes in night clothes. 914 00:49:31,899 --> 00:49:33,729 Never have I seen law-abiding citizens 915 00:49:33,763 --> 00:49:35,800 living in such terror. 916 00:49:36,697 --> 00:49:38,009 Edmond Taylor. 917 00:49:39,390 --> 00:49:41,357 Narrator: American newspapers published more than 918 00:49:41,392 --> 00:49:45,223 3,000 stories about antisemitic incidents 919 00:49:45,258 --> 00:49:49,434 during the first 100 days of Nazi rule. 920 00:49:49,469 --> 00:49:51,816 Greene: Americans who picked up their papers, 921 00:49:51,850 --> 00:49:53,231 or who listened to the radio, 922 00:49:53,266 --> 00:49:56,027 had access to a lot of information 923 00:49:56,062 --> 00:49:58,788 about Nazi persecution of Jews. 924 00:49:58,823 --> 00:50:01,032 Is it the lead story? No. 925 00:50:01,067 --> 00:50:03,552 The Depression in the 1930s is the lead story. 926 00:50:03,586 --> 00:50:06,555 But it's not right to say the information wasn't there. 927 00:50:06,589 --> 00:50:08,281 The information was there. 928 00:50:08,315 --> 00:50:10,145 ♪ 929 00:50:10,179 --> 00:50:13,355 Narrator: Many Americans were appalled by what they read. 930 00:50:14,321 --> 00:50:16,530 But others were skeptical... remembering that 931 00:50:16,565 --> 00:50:20,155 lurid anti-German propaganda from the Great War 932 00:50:20,189 --> 00:50:22,778 had turned out to be false. 933 00:50:24,021 --> 00:50:26,540 Jewish-Americans were deeply divided as to 934 00:50:26,575 --> 00:50:30,441 what, if anything, they should try to do about it. 935 00:50:30,475 --> 00:50:32,201 ♪ 936 00:50:32,236 --> 00:50:35,722 I think a lot of American Jews were torn between 937 00:50:35,756 --> 00:50:37,793 wanting to ring the alarm 938 00:50:37,827 --> 00:50:40,865 and not wanting to seem alarmist. 939 00:50:40,899 --> 00:50:42,867 They had just precariously established 940 00:50:42,901 --> 00:50:45,490 their identities as Americans. 941 00:50:45,525 --> 00:50:47,147 ♪ 942 00:50:47,182 --> 00:50:49,391 Lipstadt: What's going to make the situation better? 943 00:50:49,425 --> 00:50:51,496 And no one really knew. 944 00:50:51,531 --> 00:50:55,259 They were also continuously told by political leaders, you know, 945 00:50:55,293 --> 00:50:56,881 if you speak out and make a fuss, 946 00:50:56,915 --> 00:50:59,056 it'll only make it worse. 947 00:50:59,090 --> 00:51:02,749 And there was also the fear, and a legitimate fear, 948 00:51:02,783 --> 00:51:04,337 that if we talk too much about this, 949 00:51:04,371 --> 00:51:06,649 Americans are going to say, "Well, that's right. 950 00:51:06,684 --> 00:51:10,377 You know, Jews are like that. Jews are conniving." 951 00:51:10,412 --> 00:51:11,516 ♪ 952 00:51:11,551 --> 00:51:12,724 Narrator: On March 20th, 953 00:51:12,759 --> 00:51:14,347 despite a heavy rainstorm, 954 00:51:14,381 --> 00:51:18,420 some 1,500 representatives of Jewish organizations 955 00:51:18,454 --> 00:51:22,148 gathered in the ballroom of New York's Hotel Astor, 956 00:51:22,182 --> 00:51:25,841 hoping to find consensus about what to do. 957 00:51:25,875 --> 00:51:30,052 When many called for a mass rally at Madison Square Garden 958 00:51:30,087 --> 00:51:33,297 and other demonstrations across the country, 959 00:51:33,331 --> 00:51:38,543 New York Supreme Court Justice Joseph Proskauer rose to object. 960 00:51:38,578 --> 00:51:42,168 He begged those present to vote against public meetings 961 00:51:42,202 --> 00:51:45,585 that could only further inflame Hitler. 962 00:51:45,619 --> 00:51:49,589 The crowd began to boo, but he continued: 963 00:51:49,623 --> 00:51:52,937 "I ask you to think whether you want Jewish blood 964 00:51:52,971 --> 00:51:56,320 to be seen in the gutters of Germany." 965 00:51:57,700 --> 00:52:03,050 Then Stephen Wise, the best-known rabbi in America, stood up. 966 00:52:03,085 --> 00:52:06,088 Wise demanded that Proskauer apologize 967 00:52:06,123 --> 00:52:09,609 for implying that American Jews could ever be blamed 968 00:52:09,643 --> 00:52:13,199 for what the Nazis did to German Jews. 969 00:52:13,233 --> 00:52:15,062 ♪ 970 00:52:15,097 --> 00:52:17,099 Wise had been born in Budapest 971 00:52:17,134 --> 00:52:20,275 and was already so celebrated that the post office 972 00:52:20,309 --> 00:52:25,694 delivered to him letters addressed only, "Rabbi, USA." 973 00:52:25,728 --> 00:52:29,180 Worldly, charismatic, and a brilliant orator, 974 00:52:29,215 --> 00:52:32,597 he had broken from the world of his orthodox ancestors 975 00:52:32,632 --> 00:52:37,361 to establish the Reform Free Synagogue in Manhattan. 976 00:52:37,395 --> 00:52:42,504 "The time for prudence and caution is past," he said. 977 00:52:42,538 --> 00:52:45,576 Man as Wise: We must speak up like men. 978 00:52:45,610 --> 00:52:48,165 How can we ask our Christian friends 979 00:52:48,199 --> 00:52:50,788 to lift their voices in the protest against 980 00:52:50,822 --> 00:52:53,031 the wrongs suffered by Jews 981 00:52:53,066 --> 00:52:55,137 if we keep silent? 982 00:52:56,173 --> 00:52:58,105 What is happening in Germany today 983 00:52:58,140 --> 00:53:01,039 may happen tomorrow in any other land on Earth 984 00:53:01,074 --> 00:53:05,112 unless it is challenged and rebuked. 985 00:53:05,147 --> 00:53:09,531 It is not the German Jews who are being attacked. 986 00:53:09,565 --> 00:53:11,188 It is the Jews. 987 00:53:13,017 --> 00:53:14,881 Narrator: Rabbi Wise prevailed. 988 00:53:14,915 --> 00:53:17,090 The rally at Madison Square Garden 989 00:53:17,124 --> 00:53:20,162 was scheduled for March 27th. 990 00:53:21,612 --> 00:53:24,615 Meanwhile, Jewish War Veterans led a march 991 00:53:24,649 --> 00:53:26,306 to New York's City Hall, 992 00:53:26,341 --> 00:53:30,828 calling for a worldwide boycott of German merchandise. 993 00:53:31,967 --> 00:53:36,109 When Jewish organizations in England echoed their demand, 994 00:53:36,143 --> 00:53:38,698 the Nazis claimed that this was proof 995 00:53:38,732 --> 00:53:42,736 the Reich was under attack by Jews everywhere. 996 00:53:42,771 --> 00:53:45,946 The Nazis denounced the stories of mistreatment 997 00:53:45,981 --> 00:53:49,191 as lies... Jewish lies. 998 00:53:50,227 --> 00:53:53,195 Hermann Goering, one of Hitler's closest advisors, 999 00:53:53,230 --> 00:53:56,302 assured the foreign press that the German government 1000 00:53:56,336 --> 00:53:59,891 had moved against Bolsheviks, not Jews. 1001 00:53:59,926 --> 00:54:04,689 No one, he promised, would ever be "subjected to persecution 1002 00:54:04,724 --> 00:54:07,451 solely because he is a Jew." 1003 00:54:07,485 --> 00:54:10,316 And he also ordered German Jewish leaders 1004 00:54:10,350 --> 00:54:12,697 to call for an immediate end to all 1005 00:54:12,732 --> 00:54:16,598 "demonstrations hostile to Germany." 1006 00:54:16,632 --> 00:54:21,396 Otherwise, Goering said, "We are going to take our revenge. 1007 00:54:21,430 --> 00:54:25,710 "The Jews in America and England are hoping to injure us. 1008 00:54:25,745 --> 00:54:29,680 We shall know how to deal with their brothers in Germany." 1009 00:54:30,991 --> 00:54:32,407 The American embassy in Berlin 1010 00:54:32,441 --> 00:54:35,479 cabled Secretary of State Cordell Hull 1011 00:54:35,513 --> 00:54:37,791 that it was the Nazis who were lying, 1012 00:54:37,826 --> 00:54:40,691 that the Jewish situation was "rapidly taking 1013 00:54:40,725 --> 00:54:43,038 a turn for the worse." 1014 00:54:43,072 --> 00:54:44,557 But Hull insisted that 1015 00:54:44,591 --> 00:54:47,249 the mistreatment was coming to an end, 1016 00:54:47,284 --> 00:54:50,010 that things would "revert to normal" 1017 00:54:50,045 --> 00:54:53,566 if the protests in America would stop. 1018 00:54:53,600 --> 00:54:56,707 ♪ 1019 00:54:56,741 --> 00:54:59,099 Film announcer: Thousands who waited hours behind police lines 1020 00:54:59,123 --> 00:55:02,609 rushed forward as the doors of Madison Square Garden are opened. 1021 00:55:02,644 --> 00:55:05,163 Jews and Gentiles join in the race for seats 1022 00:55:05,198 --> 00:55:07,649 and 22,000 of them get in. 1023 00:55:10,376 --> 00:55:12,792 Narrator: On March 27, 1933, 1024 00:55:12,826 --> 00:55:16,209 more than 20,000 New Yorkers packed the Garden 1025 00:55:16,243 --> 00:55:19,316 to show their support for German Jews; 1026 00:55:20,351 --> 00:55:24,666 35,000 more gathered around loudspeakers outside. 1027 00:55:25,874 --> 00:55:28,842 Christian clergymen denounced the Nazis. 1028 00:55:28,877 --> 00:55:30,085 ♪ 1029 00:55:30,119 --> 00:55:32,052 Former New York governor Al Smith, 1030 00:55:32,087 --> 00:55:35,159 whose presidential candidacy in 1928 1031 00:55:35,193 --> 00:55:38,438 had been undercut by anti-Catholic bigotry, 1032 00:55:38,473 --> 00:55:42,304 equated the Nazis with the Ku Klux Klan: 1033 00:55:42,339 --> 00:55:44,341 "It don't make any difference to me," he said, 1034 00:55:44,375 --> 00:55:47,896 "whether it's a brown shirt or a night shirt." 1035 00:55:47,930 --> 00:55:50,485 ♪ 1036 00:55:50,519 --> 00:55:53,557 Rabbi Wise was the last to speak. 1037 00:55:55,662 --> 00:55:57,181 Man as Wise: If things are to be worse 1038 00:55:57,215 --> 00:55:59,701 for our brother-Jews in Germany, 1039 00:55:59,735 --> 00:56:03,152 which I cannot bring myself to believe... 1040 00:56:03,187 --> 00:56:06,846 then humbly and sorrowfully, we bow our heads 1041 00:56:06,880 --> 00:56:11,057 in the presence of the tragic fate that threatens, 1042 00:56:11,091 --> 00:56:14,854 and once again appeal to the conscience of Christendom 1043 00:56:14,888 --> 00:56:19,652 to save civilization from the shame that may be imminent. 1044 00:56:19,686 --> 00:56:21,723 [Crowd cheering] 1045 00:56:25,416 --> 00:56:26,417 ♪ 1046 00:56:26,452 --> 00:56:27,936 Narrator: Similar rallies were held 1047 00:56:27,970 --> 00:56:30,214 in Chicago, Philadelphia, 1048 00:56:30,248 --> 00:56:33,251 Boston, Baltimore, and 70 other 1049 00:56:33,286 --> 00:56:36,910 cities and towns across America. 1050 00:56:36,945 --> 00:56:40,604 More than a million Americans were said to have taken part. 1051 00:56:45,471 --> 00:56:47,956 Hitler now claimed that Jews controlled 1052 00:56:47,990 --> 00:56:50,027 the United States government. 1053 00:56:50,061 --> 00:56:52,098 He ordered a one-day boycott of 1054 00:56:52,132 --> 00:56:55,412 Jewish businesses throughout Germany. 1055 00:56:55,446 --> 00:56:57,897 Brownshirts stationed themselves outside 1056 00:56:57,931 --> 00:57:01,107 shops and office buildings to intimidate 1057 00:57:01,141 --> 00:57:04,490 anyone who tried to venture inside. 1058 00:57:04,524 --> 00:57:06,768 [Men speaking German] 1059 00:57:08,701 --> 00:57:13,568 ♪ 1060 00:57:13,602 --> 00:57:15,224 Narrator: Again and again, 1061 00:57:15,259 --> 00:57:17,399 Jewish-Americans would find themselves 1062 00:57:17,434 --> 00:57:19,436 in an agonizing quandary: 1063 00:57:19,470 --> 00:57:22,577 if they kept quiet about Nazi persecution, 1064 00:57:22,611 --> 00:57:26,443 it looked as though they'd abandoned their fellow Jews; 1065 00:57:26,477 --> 00:57:29,135 if they protested, they ran the risk of 1066 00:57:29,169 --> 00:57:31,655 seeming to confirm Hitler's delusions 1067 00:57:31,689 --> 00:57:34,968 about the power of Jews around the world. 1068 00:57:35,003 --> 00:57:37,246 [Men chanting in German] 1069 00:57:47,809 --> 00:57:49,949 Narrator: Rabbi Wise hoped that President Roosevelt 1070 00:57:49,983 --> 00:57:53,262 could be persuaded to issue a formal rebuke 1071 00:57:53,297 --> 00:57:55,851 of the Nazi regime. 1072 00:57:55,886 --> 00:57:58,440 FDR loathed Hitler, whose "Mein Kampf" 1073 00:57:58,475 --> 00:58:00,822 he had read in the original German, 1074 00:58:00,856 --> 00:58:04,481 and whom he privately called "a madman." 1075 00:58:05,551 --> 00:58:07,794 He and Eleanor Roosevelt had both been brought up 1076 00:58:07,829 --> 00:58:10,590 in a rarified patrician world in which 1077 00:58:10,625 --> 00:58:13,731 antisemitism was commonplace. 1078 00:58:14,732 --> 00:58:18,046 But life in the multi-ethnic world of New York politics 1079 00:58:18,080 --> 00:58:20,427 had altered their perspective. 1080 00:58:20,462 --> 00:58:24,639 FDR was seen as a friend by American Jews. 1081 00:58:24,673 --> 00:58:26,019 ♪ 1082 00:58:26,054 --> 00:58:28,332 Lipstadt: He knew a lot of Jews and he's close, 1083 00:58:28,366 --> 00:58:30,921 he's a neighbor of Morgenthau, 1084 00:58:30,955 --> 00:58:34,131 who will go on to be secretary of the treasury. 1085 00:58:34,165 --> 00:58:35,753 [Cheering and applause] 1086 00:58:35,788 --> 00:58:37,962 But he wants to be very careful. 1087 00:58:37,997 --> 00:58:43,347 He knows he has a horrific financial situation 1088 00:58:43,381 --> 00:58:45,349 facing the United States. 1089 00:58:45,383 --> 00:58:47,178 [Crowd cheering] 1090 00:58:47,213 --> 00:58:49,664 Narrator: In 1932, FDR had been 1091 00:58:49,698 --> 00:58:52,943 the first major party candidate ever publicly 1092 00:58:52,977 --> 00:58:55,946 to denounce prejudice against Jews 1093 00:58:55,980 --> 00:58:59,570 and had been rewarded with between 70% and 80% 1094 00:58:59,605 --> 00:59:02,021 of the Jewish-American vote. 1095 00:59:02,055 --> 00:59:03,574 ♪ 1096 00:59:03,609 --> 00:59:05,300 The federal government had always been 1097 00:59:05,334 --> 00:59:09,753 the private preserve of white Anglo-Saxon Protestants. 1098 00:59:09,787 --> 00:59:13,411 FDR opened it up to men and women of talent, 1099 00:59:13,446 --> 00:59:15,552 regardless of their faith. 1100 00:59:15,586 --> 00:59:19,141 He appointed more Jews to his administration 1101 00:59:19,176 --> 00:59:21,488 than any president before him. 1102 00:59:22,628 --> 00:59:25,803 But much of their counsel continued to be divided, 1103 00:59:25,838 --> 00:59:29,048 and most of those closest to Roosevelt warned that 1104 00:59:29,082 --> 00:59:33,777 speaking out would only further endanger Jews in Germany... 1105 00:59:33,811 --> 00:59:37,746 and intensify antisemitism at home. 1106 00:59:37,781 --> 00:59:39,092 ♪ 1107 00:59:39,127 --> 00:59:41,647 Lipstadt: If anything, they pulled him back. 1108 00:59:41,681 --> 00:59:43,959 Don't get involved, don't make a statement, 1109 00:59:43,994 --> 00:59:45,892 you'll only make it worse. 1110 00:59:45,927 --> 00:59:48,515 ♪ 1111 00:59:48,550 --> 00:59:50,587 Narrator: Roosevelt would for now side with 1112 00:59:50,621 --> 00:59:53,762 those who urged caution, hoping that 1113 00:59:53,797 --> 00:59:58,111 conciliatory gestures to Hitler on other fronts 1114 00:59:58,146 --> 01:00:00,458 might encourage moderation. 1115 01:00:04,255 --> 01:00:06,499 [Children shouting indistinctly] 1116 01:00:09,364 --> 01:00:11,884 [Man speaking German] 1117 01:00:11,918 --> 01:00:14,403 Stern: It was a gradual process. 1118 01:00:14,438 --> 01:00:16,613 [Man speaking German] 1119 01:00:17,993 --> 01:00:23,378 First, there were some kids who didn't greet you anymore. 1120 01:00:23,412 --> 01:00:30,765 But it was so gradual that you accepted, or not accepted, 1121 01:00:30,799 --> 01:00:35,977 but tried to ignore these early manifestations 1122 01:00:36,011 --> 01:00:41,638 of a change of ideology into evil. 1123 01:00:41,672 --> 01:00:45,020 ♪ 1124 01:00:45,055 --> 01:00:47,471 Man: Everything was fine until, I don't know, 1125 01:00:47,505 --> 01:00:49,438 I was maybe 3 or 4. 1126 01:00:49,473 --> 01:00:51,717 One of the kids that I played with 1127 01:00:51,751 --> 01:00:54,858 called me a dirty Jew and beat me up. 1128 01:00:54,892 --> 01:00:59,379 So, after that, I stopped going to play in the courtyard. 1129 01:00:59,414 --> 01:01:01,071 Narrator: Sol Messinger's parents, 1130 01:01:01,105 --> 01:01:04,074 like thousands of other Polish Jews, 1131 01:01:04,108 --> 01:01:05,662 had emigrated to Germany, 1132 01:01:05,696 --> 01:01:09,976 hoping to escape poverty and antisemitism. 1133 01:01:10,011 --> 01:01:12,910 They settled in Berlin, which had been one of 1134 01:01:12,945 --> 01:01:15,361 the most tolerant cities in Europe. 1135 01:01:15,395 --> 01:01:17,259 ♪ 1136 01:01:17,294 --> 01:01:20,366 Messinger: Across the street from us, on the ground floor, 1137 01:01:20,400 --> 01:01:22,575 there were many shops. 1138 01:01:22,609 --> 01:01:25,026 About half of them were Jewish owned. 1139 01:01:25,060 --> 01:01:30,756 And I remember one day, I saw crowds of people forming. 1140 01:01:30,790 --> 01:01:34,380 And eventually somebody threw a rock through the window, 1141 01:01:34,414 --> 01:01:35,726 broke the windows. 1142 01:01:35,761 --> 01:01:36,945 And the people went into the stores 1143 01:01:36,969 --> 01:01:39,765 and simply took the merchandise. 1144 01:01:39,799 --> 01:01:41,732 There were policemen standing there, 1145 01:01:41,767 --> 01:01:44,770 and they did absolutely nothing. 1146 01:01:44,804 --> 01:01:46,737 They just allowed it to happen. 1147 01:01:46,772 --> 01:01:48,187 ♪ 1148 01:01:48,221 --> 01:01:51,190 Narrator: Susan and Joseph Hilsenrath lived with 1149 01:01:51,224 --> 01:01:55,159 their parents and little brother in western Germany. 1150 01:01:55,194 --> 01:01:58,231 Susan Hilsenrath: I was born in a small town in Germany, 1151 01:01:58,266 --> 01:02:00,061 in Bad Kreuznach. 1152 01:02:00,095 --> 01:02:04,410 Our life was pretty good. My father had a linen store. 1153 01:02:04,444 --> 01:02:06,067 And we, he was doing really well 1154 01:02:06,101 --> 01:02:08,794 and taking good care of his family. 1155 01:02:08,828 --> 01:02:12,798 We were very happy living in our house 1156 01:02:12,832 --> 01:02:16,733 until Hitler came into power. 1157 01:02:16,767 --> 01:02:19,666 They boycotted my father's store. 1158 01:02:19,701 --> 01:02:23,291 He wasn't able to make a living for us anymore. 1159 01:02:23,325 --> 01:02:25,707 Joseph Hilsenrath: With the rise of the Nazis, of course, 1160 01:02:25,742 --> 01:02:28,054 he had to close his business. 1161 01:02:29,573 --> 01:02:36,822 And he peddled fruits and vegetables as... 1162 01:02:36,856 --> 01:02:39,445 to... just to make a living. 1163 01:02:39,479 --> 01:02:41,930 And, but he managed, somehow. 1164 01:02:41,965 --> 01:02:44,933 I'm flabbergasted when I think about it. 1165 01:02:44,968 --> 01:02:49,524 We moved to an apartment, and then another apartment. 1166 01:02:49,558 --> 01:02:53,114 So, it was, each step was a down step. 1167 01:02:53,148 --> 01:02:58,222 And it was always because we were Jewish, we had to move. 1168 01:02:58,257 --> 01:03:00,121 Susan Hilsenrath: My parents did want us 1169 01:03:00,155 --> 01:03:05,885 to have a normal childhood in an impossible situation. 1170 01:03:05,920 --> 01:03:07,714 I mean, we couldn't help but see. 1171 01:03:07,749 --> 01:03:09,958 I mean, we were intelligent children. 1172 01:03:09,993 --> 01:03:13,341 But we didn't understand, really, 1173 01:03:13,375 --> 01:03:16,551 that it was going to get any worse. 1174 01:03:16,585 --> 01:03:18,035 And I guess maybe a lot of Jews 1175 01:03:18,070 --> 01:03:20,831 that were living in Germany at the time 1176 01:03:20,866 --> 01:03:25,077 didn't know that it was going to get worse, but it did. 1177 01:03:25,111 --> 01:03:26,975 ♪ 1178 01:03:27,010 --> 01:03:30,151 Narrator: On the evening of May 10, 1933, 1179 01:03:30,185 --> 01:03:34,603 students in Berlin and some 30 other university towns 1180 01:03:34,638 --> 01:03:36,847 raided their campus libraries, 1181 01:03:36,882 --> 01:03:40,368 carried out armloads of books by Jewish authors 1182 01:03:40,402 --> 01:03:44,337 and by those Gentile writers deemed by the Nazis 1183 01:03:44,372 --> 01:03:46,857 to embody an un-German spirit, 1184 01:03:46,892 --> 01:03:50,136 and flung them into bonfires. 1185 01:03:50,171 --> 01:03:53,760 Writings by Sigmund Freud and Albert Einstein, 1186 01:03:53,795 --> 01:03:57,764 Thomas Mann and Ernest Hemingway and Rosa Luxemburg 1187 01:03:57,799 --> 01:04:01,907 and scores of others all went up in flames. 1188 01:04:02,942 --> 01:04:05,634 The book-burning marked the end of a month 1189 01:04:05,669 --> 01:04:07,947 during which the Reich had promulgated 1190 01:04:07,982 --> 01:04:11,675 its first openly anti-Jewish laws. 1191 01:04:11,709 --> 01:04:13,194 With certain exceptions, 1192 01:04:13,228 --> 01:04:17,784 men and women of so-called non-Aryan ancestry 1193 01:04:17,819 --> 01:04:20,787 were ordered to leave government service. 1194 01:04:20,822 --> 01:04:23,618 Jewish doctors and dentists were barred 1195 01:04:23,652 --> 01:04:27,725 from treating patients enrolled in the government health system. 1196 01:04:27,760 --> 01:04:31,729 Jews were no longer permitted to enter the legal profession. 1197 01:04:31,764 --> 01:04:34,215 Jewish editors and journalists, 1198 01:04:34,249 --> 01:04:39,013 artists, and musicians lost their livelihoods. 1199 01:04:39,047 --> 01:04:44,363 Joseph Goebbels, Hitler's Minister of Public Enlightenment and Propaganda, 1200 01:04:44,397 --> 01:04:47,642 presided over the book-burning in Berlin. 1201 01:04:47,676 --> 01:04:53,648 He exulted that it marked the end of Jewish intellectualism. 1202 01:04:53,682 --> 01:04:55,892 Lipstadt: It's step by step. 1203 01:04:55,926 --> 01:04:57,859 Jewish judges are fired. 1204 01:04:57,894 --> 01:05:00,724 Jewish lawyers who work in the courts are fired. 1205 01:05:00,758 --> 01:05:02,933 Jewish teachers are fired. 1206 01:05:02,968 --> 01:05:05,729 The Nazis were very attuned 1207 01:05:05,763 --> 01:05:08,283 to what the public reaction would be. 1208 01:05:08,318 --> 01:05:11,355 It was drip, drip, drip. 1209 01:05:11,390 --> 01:05:12,494 They're judging. 1210 01:05:12,529 --> 01:05:13,875 They're very careful 1211 01:05:13,910 --> 01:05:17,051 of what the German people will accept. 1212 01:05:18,328 --> 01:05:21,434 Narrator: Hitler eliminated opposition parties, 1213 01:05:21,469 --> 01:05:23,747 crushed the labor unions, 1214 01:05:23,781 --> 01:05:28,269 and would eventually order the murder of potential rivals. 1215 01:05:28,303 --> 01:05:29,960 [Hitler speaking German] 1216 01:05:29,995 --> 01:05:32,721 Narrator: The goal of the Nazi government, Goebbels said, 1217 01:05:32,756 --> 01:05:35,241 was that "there should be only one opinion, 1218 01:05:35,276 --> 01:05:39,349 one party, and one faith in Germany." 1219 01:05:41,178 --> 01:05:45,596 Woman: There are to be no minorities of opinion in the new Germany 1220 01:05:45,631 --> 01:05:48,772 and no division of loyalties. 1221 01:05:48,806 --> 01:05:51,223 Most men will wear uniforms, 1222 01:05:51,257 --> 01:05:53,363 the badge of their membership in that secret, 1223 01:05:53,397 --> 01:05:55,882 mystic community of blood-brothers, 1224 01:05:55,917 --> 01:05:57,505 the German state. 1225 01:05:57,539 --> 01:06:00,922 Women will, by preference, wear kitchen aprons 1226 01:06:00,957 --> 01:06:03,097 and will stay home and take care of the children, 1227 01:06:03,131 --> 01:06:07,170 which they will gladly bear in large numbers for Germany. 1228 01:06:07,204 --> 01:06:10,035 They will not hold political opinions, 1229 01:06:10,069 --> 01:06:14,246 but then, neither will anyone else. 1230 01:06:14,280 --> 01:06:15,557 Dorothy Thompson. 1231 01:06:15,592 --> 01:06:17,663 "Saturday Evening Post." 1232 01:06:17,697 --> 01:06:21,184 Narrator: It was not easy for foreign correspondents 1233 01:06:21,218 --> 01:06:24,394 to report what was really happening in Germany. 1234 01:06:24,428 --> 01:06:27,431 Sources were often too frightened to talk. 1235 01:06:27,466 --> 01:06:31,090 Reporters were reluctant to quote witnesses by name 1236 01:06:31,125 --> 01:06:34,369 for fear of betraying them to the secret police, 1237 01:06:34,404 --> 01:06:36,716 called the Gestapo. 1238 01:06:36,751 --> 01:06:39,409 The Nazis controlled the German press 1239 01:06:39,443 --> 01:06:43,792 and exhorted foreigners to "report on affairs in Germany 1240 01:06:43,827 --> 01:06:46,554 without attempting to interpret them." 1241 01:06:46,588 --> 01:06:50,834 What that meant, the American journalist William L. Shirer 1242 01:06:50,868 --> 01:06:52,629 wrote in his diary, 1243 01:06:52,663 --> 01:06:56,771 "is that we should jump on the bandwagon of Nazi propaganda." 1244 01:06:57,910 --> 01:07:02,570 But the best American journalists did write about what was going on, 1245 01:07:02,604 --> 01:07:06,367 however much the Nazi government tried to hide it. 1246 01:07:07,299 --> 01:07:10,233 Edgar Ansel Mowrer of the "Chicago Daily News" 1247 01:07:10,267 --> 01:07:14,133 covered Hitler's rise to power with such brutal candor 1248 01:07:14,168 --> 01:07:16,894 that in the summer of 1933, 1249 01:07:16,929 --> 01:07:19,932 the Nazis made it clear they could no longer 1250 01:07:19,966 --> 01:07:22,693 guarantee his safety in Berlin. 1251 01:07:23,901 --> 01:07:25,765 As Mowrer was leaving the country, 1252 01:07:25,800 --> 01:07:30,839 a Nazi official asked when he thought he might return to Germany. 1253 01:07:30,874 --> 01:07:33,946 The American answered, "When I come back 1254 01:07:33,980 --> 01:07:37,122 with about two million of my countrymen." 1255 01:07:38,537 --> 01:07:42,127 Dorothy Thompson's turn would come the following summer. 1256 01:07:42,161 --> 01:07:45,509 She had covered Europe off and on since 1920, 1257 01:07:45,544 --> 01:07:48,374 earning a reputation for vivid reporting 1258 01:07:48,409 --> 01:07:51,239 and for making herself part of her stories. 1259 01:07:51,274 --> 01:07:55,036 She had interviewed Hitler for "Cosmopolitan" magazine 1260 01:07:55,071 --> 01:07:56,831 before he came to power 1261 01:07:56,865 --> 01:08:01,560 and had dismissed him then as "formless, faceless, insecure, 1262 01:08:01,594 --> 01:08:05,529 the very prototype of the little man." 1263 01:08:05,564 --> 01:08:08,118 But she had also read "Mein Kampf," 1264 01:08:08,153 --> 01:08:11,501 saw that Hitler's nightmare vision of Germany's future 1265 01:08:11,535 --> 01:08:13,641 was fast becoming a reality, 1266 01:08:13,675 --> 01:08:16,713 and refused to mince words while saying so. 1267 01:08:16,747 --> 01:08:21,580 "The situation for the Jews is just ghastly, helpless," she said. 1268 01:08:21,614 --> 01:08:25,825 "Not only are the reports about the atrocities unexaggerated, 1269 01:08:25,860 --> 01:08:28,207 they are underrated." 1270 01:08:28,242 --> 01:08:31,003 She returned to America for a time, 1271 01:08:31,037 --> 01:08:35,318 but continued to write for the "Jewish Daily Bulletin" in New York. 1272 01:08:36,250 --> 01:08:40,702 When she visited Germany again in the summer of 1934, 1273 01:08:40,737 --> 01:08:45,086 Hitler, who had never forgotten her scornful article about him 1274 01:08:45,121 --> 01:08:48,054 and was appalled that she, a non-Jew, 1275 01:08:48,089 --> 01:08:50,505 had written for a Jewish publication, 1276 01:08:50,540 --> 01:08:55,924 personally ordered her out of the country within 24 hours. 1277 01:08:57,961 --> 01:09:00,136 On the morning of August 26th, 1278 01:09:00,170 --> 01:09:02,241 she boarded a train for France, 1279 01:09:02,276 --> 01:09:06,245 her arms filled with American Beauty roses given her 1280 01:09:06,280 --> 01:09:08,765 by her admiring colleagues. 1281 01:09:08,799 --> 01:09:11,077 "I really was put out of Germany 1282 01:09:11,112 --> 01:09:14,115 for the crime of blasphemy," she commented. 1283 01:09:14,150 --> 01:09:16,842 "My offense was to think that Hitler 1284 01:09:16,876 --> 01:09:19,914 is just an ordinary man." 1285 01:09:19,948 --> 01:09:21,571 Thompson: There seems to me to be 1286 01:09:21,605 --> 01:09:24,712 a certain misunderstanding about the Hitler movement. 1287 01:09:24,746 --> 01:09:28,474 A great many people seem to think that the persecution of the Jews, 1288 01:09:28,509 --> 01:09:31,270 which has followed the accession to power of Hitler, 1289 01:09:31,305 --> 01:09:33,548 is the result of something that they have done. 1290 01:09:33,583 --> 01:09:36,586 As a matter of fact, antisemitism has been a plank 1291 01:09:36,620 --> 01:09:40,106 in the National Socialist platform for 13 years. 1292 01:09:40,141 --> 01:09:43,006 So-called civilized people didn't believe 1293 01:09:43,040 --> 01:09:44,249 that if they came to power, 1294 01:09:44,283 --> 01:09:45,698 they would carry this program out. 1295 01:09:45,733 --> 01:09:47,424 ♪ 1296 01:09:47,459 --> 01:09:49,392 Narrator: Thompson's expulsion made her 1297 01:09:49,426 --> 01:09:52,257 an instant celebrity in the United States. 1298 01:09:52,291 --> 01:09:54,811 She undertook a 30-city lecture tour, 1299 01:09:54,845 --> 01:09:58,228 warning that, "Germany has gone to war already 1300 01:09:58,263 --> 01:10:01,024 and the rest of the world does not believe it." 1301 01:10:01,058 --> 01:10:02,612 And in a syndicated column, 1302 01:10:02,646 --> 01:10:05,891 she called upon Washington again and again 1303 01:10:05,925 --> 01:10:09,515 to ease the barriers that kept desperate German Jews 1304 01:10:09,550 --> 01:10:12,415 from emigrating to the United States. 1305 01:10:13,450 --> 01:10:16,557 But the State Department claimed that very few 1306 01:10:16,591 --> 01:10:19,249 actually wanted to come to America. 1307 01:10:19,284 --> 01:10:20,768 ♪ 1308 01:10:20,802 --> 01:10:22,804 Erbelding: In the 1930s and 1940s, 1309 01:10:22,839 --> 01:10:24,565 you could be openly antisemitic 1310 01:10:24,599 --> 01:10:27,223 and serve as a State Department official. 1311 01:10:27,257 --> 01:10:28,914 The rest of Washington is changing. 1312 01:10:28,948 --> 01:10:31,261 They're changing under the Roosevelt Administration. 1313 01:10:31,296 --> 01:10:32,952 They're changing with the New Deal. 1314 01:10:32,987 --> 01:10:35,196 But State Department officials were more conservative, 1315 01:10:35,231 --> 01:10:37,819 they were more antisemitic, they were more nativist, 1316 01:10:37,854 --> 01:10:42,376 at least openly, than anywhere else in Washington. 1317 01:10:42,410 --> 01:10:44,792 Narrator: Consular officials in Berlin 1318 01:10:44,826 --> 01:10:46,483 and everywhere else in Europe 1319 01:10:46,518 --> 01:10:50,211 continued zealously to enforce the old directive 1320 01:10:50,246 --> 01:10:53,283 to deny a visa to any would-be immigrant 1321 01:10:53,318 --> 01:10:55,665 "likely to become a public charge," 1322 01:10:55,699 --> 01:10:59,082 and therefore required extensive data 1323 01:10:59,116 --> 01:11:02,327 on each applicant's financial resources. 1324 01:11:02,361 --> 01:11:04,018 Lipstadt: The American diplomat 1325 01:11:04,052 --> 01:11:06,400 at certain consulates giving out visas 1326 01:11:06,434 --> 01:11:09,161 would have to essentially engage in divination. 1327 01:11:09,195 --> 01:11:12,475 Is this person likely to become a public charge? 1328 01:11:12,509 --> 01:11:14,891 Well, they say they have an uncle who will support them, 1329 01:11:14,925 --> 01:11:18,032 we have all these letters, but an uncle is not a parent, it's not a sibling. 1330 01:11:18,066 --> 01:11:20,034 You couldn't come if you already had a job, 1331 01:11:20,068 --> 01:11:22,554 because that meant you were taking a job away from America. 1332 01:11:22,588 --> 01:11:24,383 You couldn't come if you didn't have a job, 1333 01:11:24,418 --> 01:11:26,523 because it meant you might end up on the dole 1334 01:11:26,558 --> 01:11:29,146 or have to get government support. 1335 01:11:29,181 --> 01:11:31,528 Narrator: They also continued to insist upon 1336 01:11:31,563 --> 01:11:35,739 duplicate copies of birth certificates and government documents 1337 01:11:35,774 --> 01:11:39,398 attesting to an applicant's good character. 1338 01:11:39,433 --> 01:11:42,712 "It seems quite preposterous," one man recalled, 1339 01:11:42,746 --> 01:11:44,438 "to have to go to your enemy 1340 01:11:44,472 --> 01:11:47,682 and ask for a character reference." 1341 01:11:48,925 --> 01:11:50,513 Having made it nearly impossible 1342 01:11:50,547 --> 01:11:53,378 for Jewish Germans to obtain visas, 1343 01:11:53,412 --> 01:11:56,795 the State Department then cited the lack of applicants 1344 01:11:56,829 --> 01:11:58,521 to reassure the White House 1345 01:11:58,555 --> 01:12:01,938 that there was no immigration crisis. 1346 01:12:01,972 --> 01:12:05,700 Congressman Emanuel Celler accused the consular service 1347 01:12:05,735 --> 01:12:09,911 of having "a heartbeat muffled in protocol." 1348 01:12:09,946 --> 01:12:14,433 Frances Perkins, Roosevelt's Secretary of Labor, 1349 01:12:14,468 --> 01:12:17,643 sided with critics of the State Department. 1350 01:12:17,678 --> 01:12:21,682 The first woman ever to serve in a presidential cabinet, 1351 01:12:21,716 --> 01:12:25,168 she had known and worked with immigrants all her life, 1352 01:12:25,202 --> 01:12:29,414 believed the United States should be a haven for refugees, 1353 01:12:29,448 --> 01:12:32,934 and promoted a plan to make their entry easier. 1354 01:12:32,969 --> 01:12:37,698 But the State Department refused to relax its rules. 1355 01:12:37,732 --> 01:12:43,186 "If ships begin to arrive in New York City laden with Jewish immigrants," 1356 01:12:43,220 --> 01:12:45,395 one consular official wrote, 1357 01:12:45,430 --> 01:12:48,709 "the predominant Gentile population of the country 1358 01:12:48,743 --> 01:12:50,711 "will claim they have been betrayed 1359 01:12:50,745 --> 01:12:54,646 through a sleeping State Department." 1360 01:12:54,680 --> 01:13:00,134 Public opinion overwhelmingly opposed loosening restrictions. 1361 01:13:00,168 --> 01:13:02,170 Lipstadt: People were out of jobs. 1362 01:13:02,205 --> 01:13:03,931 People were standing on food lines. 1363 01:13:03,965 --> 01:13:06,174 "You're going to ask me to worry about the persecution 1364 01:13:06,209 --> 01:13:10,731 "of 600,000 or 585,000 Jews in Germany? 1365 01:13:10,765 --> 01:13:12,974 I can't feed my family." 1366 01:13:14,217 --> 01:13:17,634 Narrator: And Roosevelt's willingness to work alongside Jews 1367 01:13:17,669 --> 01:13:20,396 had already become a source of controversy. 1368 01:13:20,430 --> 01:13:25,470 Right-wing orators now denounced what they called the Jew Deal. 1369 01:13:25,504 --> 01:13:28,714 Others claimed FDR himself was a Jew 1370 01:13:28,749 --> 01:13:31,545 whose real name was Rosenfeld. 1371 01:13:31,579 --> 01:13:33,305 ♪ 1372 01:13:33,339 --> 01:13:37,723 Antisemitic organizations proliferated across the United States, 1373 01:13:37,758 --> 01:13:42,279 more than 100 of them before the decade's end. 1374 01:13:42,314 --> 01:13:45,317 On the East Coast, William Dudley Pelley, 1375 01:13:45,351 --> 01:13:49,597 a mystic who believed he took his orders directly from Jesus, 1376 01:13:49,632 --> 01:13:52,497 led a para-military fascist organization 1377 01:13:52,531 --> 01:13:55,223 modeled after the Nazi Brownshirts 1378 01:13:55,258 --> 01:13:58,088 called the Silver Legion of America 1379 01:13:58,123 --> 01:14:02,852 and claimed there were 22 million Communists in the United States, 1380 01:14:02,886 --> 01:14:06,614 all of them following orders from rabbis. 1381 01:14:06,649 --> 01:14:10,549 In the Midwest, an evangelist named Gerald Winrod 1382 01:14:10,584 --> 01:14:12,620 assured his radio listeners 1383 01:14:12,655 --> 01:14:16,452 that Roosevelt was a "devil" controlled by Jews, 1384 01:14:16,486 --> 01:14:18,799 while Hitler was a "man's man" 1385 01:14:18,833 --> 01:14:22,596 and a stalwart defender of Christianity. 1386 01:14:22,630 --> 01:14:26,496 A group that called itself the Friends of the New Germany 1387 01:14:26,531 --> 01:14:29,844 desecrated synagogue walls with swastikas. 1388 01:14:29,879 --> 01:14:31,397 ♪ 1389 01:14:31,432 --> 01:14:33,192 And Father Charles Coughlin, 1390 01:14:33,227 --> 01:14:36,955 a Detroit priest with a radio audience of millions, 1391 01:14:36,989 --> 01:14:40,683 blamed "Shylocks" and "international bankers," 1392 01:14:40,717 --> 01:14:44,238 code words for Jews, for the Depression. 1393 01:14:44,272 --> 01:14:49,864 Would drive the money changers from the temple, and you did it. 1394 01:14:49,899 --> 01:14:51,694 [All cheering] 1395 01:14:51,728 --> 01:14:57,113 Lipstadt: He begins to give overtly, unquestionably 1396 01:14:57,147 --> 01:14:59,564 antisemitic sermons, 1397 01:14:59,598 --> 01:15:01,600 many of which come straight out of Goebbels, 1398 01:15:01,635 --> 01:15:05,293 many of which come straight out of German propaganda. 1399 01:15:05,328 --> 01:15:08,227 And millions of Americans tune in. 1400 01:15:08,262 --> 01:15:10,022 ♪ 1401 01:15:10,057 --> 01:15:13,543 Narrator: A visitor to the White House reported that FDR 1402 01:15:13,578 --> 01:15:16,891 was "quite apprehensive of the growing antisemitic 1403 01:15:16,926 --> 01:15:21,344 and pro-Nazi sentiment in the United States." 1404 01:15:21,378 --> 01:15:22,828 [Whistle blows] 1405 01:15:22,863 --> 01:15:25,555 Meanwhile in early 1935, 1406 01:15:25,590 --> 01:15:28,006 Hitler revealed that he had begun to build 1407 01:15:28,040 --> 01:15:30,560 an air force, the Luftwaffe, 1408 01:15:30,595 --> 01:15:33,563 and called for a massive rearmament program... 1409 01:15:33,598 --> 01:15:37,740 artillery, submarines, an immense army, 1410 01:15:37,774 --> 01:15:42,434 all of it in flagrant violation of the Versailles Treaty. 1411 01:15:44,643 --> 01:15:52,643 ♪ 1412 01:15:53,514 --> 01:15:57,138 On the night of July 26, 1935, 1413 01:15:57,173 --> 01:16:01,211 the SS Bremen was preparing to set sail for Germany 1414 01:16:01,246 --> 01:16:03,593 from Pier 86 in Manhattan. 1415 01:16:03,628 --> 01:16:05,043 ♪ 1416 01:16:05,077 --> 01:16:06,631 She flew two flags... 1417 01:16:06,665 --> 01:16:08,943 the imperial German colors 1418 01:16:08,978 --> 01:16:13,638 and at the bow, the crooked cross of the Nazi swastika. 1419 01:16:14,915 --> 01:16:18,401 1,300 passengers and elegantly-dressed friends 1420 01:16:18,435 --> 01:16:20,645 had come aboard to see them off. 1421 01:16:20,679 --> 01:16:24,683 So had several thousand curiosity-seekers. 1422 01:16:24,718 --> 01:16:30,033 A dozen New York merchant seamen had also slipped aboard. 1423 01:16:30,068 --> 01:16:33,623 The American Communist Party Club on 10th Street 1424 01:16:33,658 --> 01:16:37,938 had sent them to avenge a sailor who had been jailed in Hamburg 1425 01:16:37,972 --> 01:16:41,320 for possessing anti-Nazi literature. 1426 01:16:42,563 --> 01:16:45,255 When it was time for guests to disembark, 1427 01:16:45,290 --> 01:16:47,913 the seamen charged toward the bow. 1428 01:16:47,948 --> 01:16:51,745 New York cops and German crewmen tried to stop them. 1429 01:16:51,779 --> 01:16:54,023 One officer was badly beaten, 1430 01:16:54,057 --> 01:16:56,819 one invader was shot in the thigh. 1431 01:16:56,853 --> 01:17:00,616 But two men managed to make it to the Nazi flag, 1432 01:17:00,650 --> 01:17:02,479 and as onlookers cheered, 1433 01:17:02,514 --> 01:17:05,966 they cut it loose and hurled it into the Hudson. 1434 01:17:06,000 --> 01:17:08,451 ♪ 1435 01:17:08,485 --> 01:17:11,937 6 men were arrested and arraigned before a judge, 1436 01:17:11,972 --> 01:17:15,354 a Russian immigrant named Louis Brodsky. 1437 01:17:15,389 --> 01:17:19,704 He jailed one protestor because he had worn brass knuckles. 1438 01:17:19,738 --> 01:17:22,051 But he let the others go. 1439 01:17:22,085 --> 01:17:23,708 The swastika, he said, 1440 01:17:23,742 --> 01:17:26,676 was nothing but "a black flag of piracy." 1441 01:17:26,711 --> 01:17:29,748 It represented "a revolt against civilization, 1442 01:17:29,783 --> 01:17:34,615 a merciless war against religion, against freedoms." 1443 01:17:35,581 --> 01:17:39,378 Nazi leaders eagerly exploited the incident. 1444 01:17:39,413 --> 01:17:43,382 An "impudent Jew in his bottomless hatred for Germany," 1445 01:17:43,417 --> 01:17:47,628 Hermann Goering said, had insulted the whole country. 1446 01:17:47,663 --> 01:17:51,114 A formal protest was made to the State Department. 1447 01:17:51,149 --> 01:17:56,016 Secretary Hull said he would not question Judge Brodsky's decision, 1448 01:17:56,050 --> 01:17:59,502 but he did express "regret" that the judge had indulged 1449 01:17:59,536 --> 01:18:02,643 in "expressions offensive to another government 1450 01:18:02,678 --> 01:18:06,129 with which we have official relations." 1451 01:18:06,164 --> 01:18:08,200 Hitler was not mollified. 1452 01:18:08,235 --> 01:18:12,653 At the annual Nazi party rally at Nuremberg in September, 1453 01:18:12,688 --> 01:18:16,450 the swastika was declared the German national flag. 1454 01:18:16,484 --> 01:18:21,731 "It," Goering said, "has become for us a holy symbol. 1455 01:18:21,766 --> 01:18:25,873 It is the anti-Jewish symbol for the world." 1456 01:18:27,116 --> 01:18:31,776 At Nuremberg, the Nazis also issued a series of new 1457 01:18:31,810 --> 01:18:36,021 and still more harsh antisemitic laws. 1458 01:18:37,402 --> 01:18:41,026 Jews, and potentially anyone opposed to the Reich, 1459 01:18:41,061 --> 01:18:44,961 would become subjects, not citizens, of Germany, 1460 01:18:44,996 --> 01:18:48,275 with no political rights at all. 1461 01:18:48,309 --> 01:18:52,348 To uphold the supposed racial purity of the German people, 1462 01:18:52,382 --> 01:18:55,834 these laws banned marriage or sexual relations 1463 01:18:55,869 --> 01:18:58,803 between Jews and persons of what they called 1464 01:18:58,837 --> 01:19:01,253 "German or kindred blood." 1465 01:19:01,288 --> 01:19:03,117 ♪ 1466 01:19:03,152 --> 01:19:05,810 The German jurists who wrote these laws 1467 01:19:05,844 --> 01:19:09,572 had closely studied statutes in the United States 1468 01:19:09,606 --> 01:19:13,058 that had for decades reduced African Americans 1469 01:19:13,093 --> 01:19:14,957 to second-class citizens 1470 01:19:14,991 --> 01:19:19,409 and barred interracial marriage in 30 states. 1471 01:19:19,444 --> 01:19:21,170 ♪ 1472 01:19:21,204 --> 01:19:24,173 Greene: Even as the Nazis are writing the Nuremberg Laws 1473 01:19:24,207 --> 01:19:27,486 that stripped Jews of their citizenship in 1935, 1474 01:19:27,521 --> 01:19:31,352 they're looking to Jim Crow laws in the United States 1475 01:19:31,387 --> 01:19:34,735 to understand segregation here. 1476 01:19:34,770 --> 01:19:37,048 Hayes: And when the Nazis were reproached 1477 01:19:37,082 --> 01:19:40,085 for discrimination against Jews in Germany, 1478 01:19:40,120 --> 01:19:43,882 their first answer was "Mississippi." 1479 01:19:43,917 --> 01:19:46,229 They were able to say, "In the United States, 1480 01:19:46,264 --> 01:19:49,405 "you say that we should not treat these people 1481 01:19:49,439 --> 01:19:53,098 "whom we regard as inferior badly, but you do it. 1482 01:19:53,133 --> 01:19:54,859 "You have lynching in the United States. 1483 01:19:54,893 --> 01:19:56,757 "You make it difficult for them to vote. 1484 01:19:56,792 --> 01:19:59,484 So how dare you reproach us for this?" 1485 01:19:59,518 --> 01:20:01,555 ♪ 1486 01:20:01,589 --> 01:20:05,007 Erbelding: African American newspapers at the time here in the U.S., 1487 01:20:05,041 --> 01:20:07,043 they're saying, "You, the American people, 1488 01:20:07,078 --> 01:20:09,183 "seem to be upset about what Hitler is doing. 1489 01:20:09,218 --> 01:20:11,047 "You're not looking down the street. 1490 01:20:11,082 --> 01:20:13,394 "We, too, are being persecuted. 1491 01:20:13,429 --> 01:20:16,777 "We, too, are being attacked by our own neighbors. 1492 01:20:16,812 --> 01:20:18,848 "Where are the marches for us? 1493 01:20:18,883 --> 01:20:20,574 "Where are the petitions for us? 1494 01:20:20,608 --> 01:20:23,819 Where are the rallies for us?" 1495 01:20:23,853 --> 01:20:25,613 Narrator: In one respect, 1496 01:20:25,648 --> 01:20:29,825 the Nazi statutes were less harsh than many U.S. state laws 1497 01:20:29,859 --> 01:20:32,828 that defined a person of color as anyone 1498 01:20:32,862 --> 01:20:36,348 who had a single drop of Negro blood. 1499 01:20:36,383 --> 01:20:40,214 Instead, they categorized people as full Jews, 1500 01:20:40,249 --> 01:20:43,045 Jews by definition, and mongrels 1501 01:20:43,079 --> 01:20:46,048 of the first and second degrees. 1502 01:20:46,082 --> 01:20:52,433 ♪ 1503 01:20:52,468 --> 01:20:55,126 Man: There has been no tragedy in modern times 1504 01:20:55,160 --> 01:20:57,818 equal in its awful effects to the fight 1505 01:20:57,853 --> 01:20:59,855 on the Jew in Germany. 1506 01:20:59,889 --> 01:21:02,029 It is an attack on civilization 1507 01:21:02,064 --> 01:21:04,169 comparable only to such horrors 1508 01:21:04,204 --> 01:21:08,898 as the Spanish Inquisition and the African slave trade. 1509 01:21:08,933 --> 01:21:12,246 Adolf Hitler hardly ever makes a speech today 1510 01:21:12,281 --> 01:21:15,801 without belittling, blaming, or cursing Jews. 1511 01:21:15,836 --> 01:21:18,701 Every misfortune of the world is in whole 1512 01:21:18,735 --> 01:21:21,290 or in part blamed on Jews. 1513 01:21:22,705 --> 01:21:25,225 There is a campaign of race prejudice 1514 01:21:25,259 --> 01:21:27,710 which surpasses in vindictive cruelty 1515 01:21:27,744 --> 01:21:31,956 and public insult anything I have ever seen, 1516 01:21:31,990 --> 01:21:35,062 and I have seen much. 1517 01:21:35,097 --> 01:21:37,340 W.E.B. DuBois. 1518 01:21:37,375 --> 01:21:39,342 ♪ 1519 01:21:39,377 --> 01:21:42,690 One night when my mother and I 1520 01:21:42,725 --> 01:21:45,831 were out of town visiting my grandparents, 1521 01:21:45,866 --> 01:21:49,490 a group of Brownshirts 1522 01:21:49,525 --> 01:21:54,771 came and beat my father up. 1523 01:21:54,806 --> 01:21:57,947 We came back the next day. 1524 01:21:57,982 --> 01:22:02,020 And my mother took one look at him 1525 01:22:02,055 --> 01:22:05,127 and screamed out, you know, 1526 01:22:05,161 --> 01:22:07,888 "What have they done to you, Julius?" 1527 01:22:09,165 --> 01:22:13,307 It is a deep ingrained feeling 1528 01:22:13,342 --> 01:22:16,414 that your parents are your protectors. 1529 01:22:16,448 --> 01:22:19,003 Now there is no protector. 1530 01:22:19,037 --> 01:22:23,214 Nobody is immune from persecution. 1531 01:22:23,248 --> 01:22:25,009 ♪ 1532 01:22:25,043 --> 01:22:28,288 Hayes: In the 1930s, the objective of Nazi policy 1533 01:22:28,322 --> 01:22:32,430 was to make life in Germany for Jews so miserable 1534 01:22:32,464 --> 01:22:34,190 that they would leave. 1535 01:22:34,225 --> 01:22:37,849 And a fair number of German Jews understood right away. 1536 01:22:37,883 --> 01:22:39,644 There were 60,000 German Jews, 1537 01:22:39,678 --> 01:22:41,059 more than 10% of the population, 1538 01:22:41,094 --> 01:22:43,855 that left the country in 1933-'34. 1539 01:22:43,889 --> 01:22:46,168 They were fortunate in the fact that 1540 01:22:46,202 --> 01:22:49,343 in the initial shock of discrimination against the Jews, 1541 01:22:49,378 --> 01:22:53,071 of outrages against Jews, the neighboring countries, 1542 01:22:53,106 --> 01:22:56,281 the Netherlands, Belgium, France, Czechoslovakia, 1543 01:22:56,316 --> 01:22:59,319 were relatively accepting of people who left. 1544 01:22:59,353 --> 01:23:01,666 And so, in that first wave of people, 1545 01:23:01,700 --> 01:23:04,186 they got refuge in other countries. 1546 01:23:04,220 --> 01:23:06,636 As the 1930s went on, however, 1547 01:23:06,671 --> 01:23:08,707 the willingness of these countries nearby 1548 01:23:08,742 --> 01:23:11,917 to accept refugees declined. 1549 01:23:11,952 --> 01:23:14,368 And as more and more German Jews realized 1550 01:23:14,403 --> 01:23:16,336 they needed to get out of the country, 1551 01:23:16,370 --> 01:23:19,718 it became harder and harder for them to get out. 1552 01:23:23,170 --> 01:23:25,241 ♪ 1553 01:23:25,276 --> 01:23:29,797 Man as Celler: To expect sportsmanship from the Nazis is impossible, 1554 01:23:29,832 --> 01:23:34,837 for they obtained power by treachery, violence, and bloodshed. 1555 01:23:34,871 --> 01:23:38,772 To regard these men as true guardians of sports, 1556 01:23:38,806 --> 01:23:43,363 to turn the Olympics games over to their administration 1557 01:23:43,397 --> 01:23:46,642 is to invite the possibility that the Olympic games 1558 01:23:46,676 --> 01:23:48,920 shall be befouled. 1559 01:23:48,954 --> 01:23:50,715 Emmanuel Celler. 1560 01:23:50,749 --> 01:23:52,648 ♪ 1561 01:23:52,682 --> 01:23:56,755 Narrator: In 1936, both the Winter and Summer Olympics 1562 01:23:56,790 --> 01:23:58,826 were held in Germany. 1563 01:23:58,861 --> 01:24:03,245 Hitler saw an opportunity to show the world a reinvigorated, 1564 01:24:03,279 --> 01:24:06,041 allegedly peace-loving country, 1565 01:24:06,075 --> 01:24:09,837 its jobless rate slashed by public works programs 1566 01:24:09,872 --> 01:24:12,530 and massive, rapid rearmament. 1567 01:24:13,807 --> 01:24:17,983 Some in Europe and America had threatened to boycott the Games 1568 01:24:18,018 --> 01:24:20,883 because of the Nazi treatment of Jews. 1569 01:24:20,917 --> 01:24:25,543 But Avery Brundage, the president of the American Olympic Committee, 1570 01:24:25,577 --> 01:24:30,272 who privately admired Hitler and personally disliked Jews, 1571 01:24:30,306 --> 01:24:32,964 urged Americans not to be swept up 1572 01:24:32,998 --> 01:24:37,279 in what he called a "Jew-Nazi altercation." 1573 01:24:37,313 --> 01:24:40,213 Congressman Celler denounced Brundage 1574 01:24:40,247 --> 01:24:42,491 as the Nazis' "willing dupe." 1575 01:24:44,079 --> 01:24:46,564 On March 7, 1936, 1576 01:24:46,598 --> 01:24:50,085 less than 3 weeks after the Winter Olympics, 1577 01:24:50,119 --> 01:24:54,019 Hitler sent some 30,000 troops into the Rhineland, 1578 01:24:54,054 --> 01:24:56,815 a German region that had provided a buffer 1579 01:24:56,850 --> 01:24:59,024 between Germany and France, 1580 01:24:59,059 --> 01:25:01,855 which according to the Treaty of Versailles 1581 01:25:01,889 --> 01:25:04,892 was to remain demilitarized. 1582 01:25:04,927 --> 01:25:07,757 Thousands of German-speaking residents 1583 01:25:07,792 --> 01:25:10,726 lined the roads to cheer them. 1584 01:25:10,760 --> 01:25:12,969 "The Fuührer is immensely happy," 1585 01:25:13,004 --> 01:25:16,111 Joseph Goebbels noted in his diary that night. 1586 01:25:16,145 --> 01:25:18,147 "France won't take action, 1587 01:25:18,182 --> 01:25:24,326 England remains passive, and America uninterested." 1588 01:25:24,360 --> 01:25:26,466 ♪ 1589 01:25:26,500 --> 01:25:29,676 At the same time, Berlin was being transformed 1590 01:25:29,710 --> 01:25:33,611 into a colossal stage set for the Summer Olympics. 1591 01:25:33,645 --> 01:25:38,409 Some 1,500 reporters were expected from all over the world, 1592 01:25:38,443 --> 01:25:41,446 and the Nazi regime made sure that they would see 1593 01:25:41,481 --> 01:25:43,897 only what it wanted seen. 1594 01:25:43,931 --> 01:25:48,143 They removed every sign forbidding Jews entry to restaurants, 1595 01:25:48,177 --> 01:25:51,560 kept antisemitic publications off newsstands, 1596 01:25:51,594 --> 01:25:56,220 and ordered newspapers not to report antisemitic incidents. 1597 01:25:57,290 --> 01:25:59,464 They also rounded up and interned 1598 01:25:59,499 --> 01:26:02,329 several hundred Roma and Sinti people, 1599 01:26:02,364 --> 01:26:07,127 often derogatorily referred to as gypsies. 1600 01:26:07,162 --> 01:26:10,199 "We must be more charming than the Parisians," 1601 01:26:10,234 --> 01:26:12,167 Goebbels told Berliners, 1602 01:26:12,201 --> 01:26:14,652 "more easy-going than the Viennese, 1603 01:26:14,686 --> 01:26:17,482 "more cosmopolitan than the Londoners, 1604 01:26:17,517 --> 01:26:21,245 and more practical than New Yorkers." 1605 01:26:21,279 --> 01:26:25,214 But anti-Nazi Germans managed to slip between the pages 1606 01:26:25,249 --> 01:26:28,424 of a popular guidebook a map peppered 1607 01:26:28,459 --> 01:26:32,497 with the locations of the scores of jails and prisons 1608 01:26:32,532 --> 01:26:36,225 and concentration camps in which the regimes' enemies 1609 01:26:36,260 --> 01:26:38,676 had been safely locked away. 1610 01:26:39,918 --> 01:26:44,233 Still, the Nazi genius for propaganda and pageantry 1611 01:26:44,268 --> 01:26:47,167 overcame most visitors' doubts. 1612 01:26:48,858 --> 01:26:51,275 Man: The daily spectacle was breathtaking 1613 01:26:51,309 --> 01:26:54,347 in its beauty and magnificence. 1614 01:26:54,381 --> 01:26:58,765 The stadium was a tournament of color that caught the throat, 1615 01:26:58,799 --> 01:27:03,287 the massed splendor of the banners made the gaudy decorations 1616 01:27:03,321 --> 01:27:05,496 of America's great parades, 1617 01:27:05,530 --> 01:27:09,154 presidential inaugurations, and World's Fairs 1618 01:27:09,189 --> 01:27:13,918 seem like shoddy carnivals in comparison. 1619 01:27:13,952 --> 01:27:16,645 Thomas Wolfe. 1620 01:27:16,679 --> 01:27:18,578 [Gunshot] 1621 01:27:18,612 --> 01:27:21,650 Narrator: The Nazis were pleased when German athletes 1622 01:27:21,684 --> 01:27:23,410 amassed the most medals. 1623 01:27:23,445 --> 01:27:27,242 But when Jesse Owens set 3 Olympic records 1624 01:27:27,276 --> 01:27:31,004 and won 4 gold medals, they were appalled. 1625 01:27:31,038 --> 01:27:33,213 "That's a scandal," Goebbels wrote. 1626 01:27:33,248 --> 01:27:36,147 "White humanity should be ashamed." 1627 01:27:36,181 --> 01:27:39,184 In the future, Hitler assured his inner circle, 1628 01:27:39,219 --> 01:27:42,118 the Olympics would always be held in Berlin 1629 01:27:42,153 --> 01:27:47,296 and no "primitive men" would ever again be allowed to take part. 1630 01:27:49,333 --> 01:27:51,369 U.S. Ambassador William Dodd 1631 01:27:51,404 --> 01:27:54,338 had not been fooled by the Nazi pageantry 1632 01:27:54,372 --> 01:27:57,272 and kept his distance from the Games. 1633 01:27:57,306 --> 01:28:00,240 Germany's Jews, he informed Washington, 1634 01:28:00,275 --> 01:28:03,968 were anticipating the withdrawal of the world's attention 1635 01:28:04,002 --> 01:28:06,557 "with fear and trembling." 1636 01:28:09,007 --> 01:28:10,906 Once the visitors had left, 1637 01:28:10,940 --> 01:28:14,910 the Nazis resumed their indoctrination of the German people. 1638 01:28:14,944 --> 01:28:18,120 "We must bring up a new type of human being," 1639 01:28:18,154 --> 01:28:19,777 Hitler had proclaimed. 1640 01:28:19,811 --> 01:28:23,505 "We have undertaken to give the Germans an education 1641 01:28:23,539 --> 01:28:28,406 that begins with the child and ends with the old fighter." 1642 01:28:28,441 --> 01:28:31,616 His portrait hung in every school room. 1643 01:28:31,651 --> 01:28:35,931 Small children were made to recite poems in his praise. 1644 01:28:35,965 --> 01:28:41,661 Children's books were filled with venomous caricatures of Jews. 1645 01:28:41,695 --> 01:28:46,217 Millions of adolescents were made to join the Hitler Youth. 1646 01:28:46,251 --> 01:28:49,289 Parents of children who refused to join 1647 01:28:49,324 --> 01:28:53,742 were investigated, fired, sometimes imprisoned. 1648 01:28:53,776 --> 01:29:01,232 ♪ 1649 01:29:01,266 --> 01:29:05,305 Stern: My mother had a good insight. 1650 01:29:05,340 --> 01:29:09,344 She said, "This will get worse and worse. 1651 01:29:09,378 --> 01:29:13,831 I will write to your Uncle Benno in America." 1652 01:29:13,865 --> 01:29:18,767 She wrote and said, "Can you save us?" 1653 01:29:18,801 --> 01:29:20,389 Back came the answer. 1654 01:29:20,424 --> 01:29:23,565 He said, "You know, I have lost my job 1655 01:29:23,599 --> 01:29:26,119 "as a baker and pastry maker, 1656 01:29:26,153 --> 01:29:30,330 "and so I can take one of you, 1657 01:29:30,365 --> 01:29:33,298 but not all of you." 1658 01:29:33,333 --> 01:29:34,852 Behind my back, 1659 01:29:34,886 --> 01:29:39,650 a parental conference must have taken place. 1660 01:29:39,684 --> 01:29:43,447 And they said, "OK, we'll send the oldest," 1661 01:29:43,481 --> 01:29:48,486 and with a mission of trying to find other Americans 1662 01:29:48,521 --> 01:29:50,937 who could vouch for us. 1663 01:29:50,971 --> 01:29:53,802 Narrator: Guünther was just 15 1664 01:29:53,836 --> 01:29:57,184 and ambivalent about leaving home. 1665 01:29:57,219 --> 01:29:59,601 Stern: There were countervailing thoughts. 1666 01:29:59,635 --> 01:30:03,777 One of them is that you were... 1667 01:30:03,812 --> 01:30:07,885 are going towards a terrific adventure. 1668 01:30:07,919 --> 01:30:10,957 And then this dismal feeling, 1669 01:30:10,991 --> 01:30:16,790 everything I know would be forcefully torn apart. 1670 01:30:16,825 --> 01:30:18,689 ♪ 1671 01:30:18,723 --> 01:30:21,139 Narrator: Guünther finally agreed to go 1672 01:30:21,174 --> 01:30:24,764 and to try to find someone in America with enough money 1673 01:30:24,798 --> 01:30:27,560 to sponsor the rest of the family. 1674 01:30:27,594 --> 01:30:30,494 While his father began the laborious task 1675 01:30:30,528 --> 01:30:34,981 of filling out the paperwork to obtain a visa for his son, 1676 01:30:35,015 --> 01:30:36,776 he hired a local English teacher 1677 01:30:36,810 --> 01:30:38,985 who had lived for a time in Brooklyn 1678 01:30:39,019 --> 01:30:42,678 to teach Guünther everything he could about America. 1679 01:30:42,713 --> 01:30:44,715 ♪ 1680 01:30:44,749 --> 01:30:46,475 A few months later, 1681 01:30:46,510 --> 01:30:49,651 Guünther's parents again called the family together. 1682 01:30:49,685 --> 01:30:52,585 Stern: They took me once more in this good room, 1683 01:30:52,619 --> 01:30:56,520 and there was papers all laid out. 1684 01:30:58,142 --> 01:31:01,594 It was the affidavit in concert 1685 01:31:01,628 --> 01:31:06,840 with a American-Jewish Women's Organization. 1686 01:31:06,875 --> 01:31:10,810 They said, "You also have a date in about a month 1687 01:31:10,844 --> 01:31:15,366 at the American consulate in Hamburg." 1688 01:31:15,400 --> 01:31:17,575 Narrator: Guünther was filled with fear. 1689 01:31:17,610 --> 01:31:20,578 He knew that unsympathetic American officials 1690 01:31:20,613 --> 01:31:24,064 in some cities, like the consul in Stuttgart, 1691 01:31:24,099 --> 01:31:26,619 routinely turned applicants down 1692 01:31:26,653 --> 01:31:30,174 over one technicality or another. 1693 01:31:30,208 --> 01:31:32,210 Stern: If you were confronted, 1694 01:31:32,245 --> 01:31:34,281 like the one in Stuttgart, 1695 01:31:34,316 --> 01:31:38,458 by a virulent antisemite, 1696 01:31:38,493 --> 01:31:44,015 he followed the letter of the law beyond its intent. 1697 01:31:44,050 --> 01:31:47,018 That kind of news got around. 1698 01:31:47,053 --> 01:31:49,711 Narrator: Guünther's appointment was with the consul 1699 01:31:49,745 --> 01:31:53,335 in Hamburg, Malcolm C. Burke. 1700 01:31:54,267 --> 01:31:57,546 Stern: I was prepared to be grilled. 1701 01:31:57,581 --> 01:32:01,619 He started out, you know, very routinely. 1702 01:32:01,654 --> 01:32:04,657 "Where do you come from? What's your parents like?" 1703 01:32:04,691 --> 01:32:09,040 And then, he said... I'll never forget that question... 1704 01:32:09,075 --> 01:32:12,250 "How much is 48 and 52?" 1705 01:32:14,183 --> 01:32:15,668 That was it. 1706 01:32:15,702 --> 01:32:19,913 He put his name on my Youth Identity papers. 1707 01:32:19,948 --> 01:32:24,262 And there I was, ready to immigrate. 1708 01:32:24,297 --> 01:32:27,093 Had we lived in Stuttgart, I was out. 1709 01:32:28,197 --> 01:32:32,857 Snyder: Almost all of the major rescuers were diplomats, 1710 01:32:32,892 --> 01:32:36,861 people who seemed most of the time to have unglamorous lives, 1711 01:32:36,896 --> 01:32:39,312 people who seemed most of the time to just be pushing 1712 01:32:39,346 --> 01:32:42,039 one piece of paper from here to there. 1713 01:32:42,073 --> 01:32:44,144 But it turns out that one piece of paper, 1714 01:32:44,179 --> 01:32:47,113 pushed from the right here to the right there, 1715 01:32:47,147 --> 01:32:48,666 can save a life. 1716 01:32:49,633 --> 01:32:52,083 Narrator: In the fall of 1937, 1717 01:32:52,118 --> 01:32:55,535 the date of Guünther's departure was set. 1718 01:32:56,674 --> 01:32:59,643 Stern: It was a highly charged, 1719 01:32:59,677 --> 01:33:03,336 emotional couple of weeks. 1720 01:33:03,370 --> 01:33:07,478 My mother had taken me on very long walks 1721 01:33:07,512 --> 01:33:08,893 through the city 1722 01:33:08,928 --> 01:33:12,276 in the few days we still had together. 1723 01:33:13,622 --> 01:33:17,005 I had played games against my brother Werner, 1724 01:33:17,039 --> 01:33:18,972 and he against me. 1725 01:33:19,007 --> 01:33:23,770 And all that was going to be taken away. 1726 01:33:23,805 --> 01:33:31,805 ♪ 1727 01:33:33,159 --> 01:33:35,540 Narrator: In November, Guünther Stern 1728 01:33:35,575 --> 01:33:38,889 arrived in New York City aboard a German ship. 1729 01:33:38,923 --> 01:33:41,236 ♪ 1730 01:33:41,270 --> 01:33:45,999 After the German Jewish Children's Aid Society determined his English 1731 01:33:46,034 --> 01:33:48,795 was good enough for him to travel alone, 1732 01:33:48,830 --> 01:33:52,074 he boarded a train and headed for St. Louis, 1733 01:33:52,109 --> 01:33:55,630 where his aunt and uncle were waiting for him. 1734 01:33:57,079 --> 01:33:58,978 5 days after he got there, 1735 01:33:59,012 --> 01:34:01,428 Guünther was attending high school. 1736 01:34:01,463 --> 01:34:06,157 He got his first job washing dishes at a downtown hotel. 1737 01:34:06,192 --> 01:34:09,816 But the plight of his family back in Germany 1738 01:34:09,851 --> 01:34:13,199 and the responsibility he felt for finding a way 1739 01:34:13,233 --> 01:34:15,442 to bring them to America, too, 1740 01:34:15,477 --> 01:34:17,928 never left him for long. 1741 01:34:20,413 --> 01:34:22,622 [Film projector whirs] 1742 01:34:26,488 --> 01:34:28,801 In the summer of 1937, 1743 01:34:28,835 --> 01:34:31,666 Herman and Lotte Bland of Chicago, 1744 01:34:31,700 --> 01:34:34,082 who had come to America from Poland, 1745 01:34:34,116 --> 01:34:36,636 took their two sons to see the country 1746 01:34:36,671 --> 01:34:38,673 where they had been born. 1747 01:34:40,536 --> 01:34:42,021 Leonard, their oldest, 1748 01:34:42,055 --> 01:34:45,645 carried a brand-new 16-milimeter camera. 1749 01:34:48,544 --> 01:34:50,995 Harold, who turned 8 on the trip, 1750 01:34:51,030 --> 01:34:53,688 was deeply affected by the poverty 1751 01:34:53,722 --> 01:34:56,760 and the antisemitism he saw there. 1752 01:35:00,591 --> 01:35:03,318 In Suwalki, they met Lotte's cousins, 1753 01:35:03,352 --> 01:35:07,667 and she installed a new headstone on her parents' grave. 1754 01:35:08,841 --> 01:35:10,912 In the town's central square, 1755 01:35:10,946 --> 01:35:14,881 Leonard noticed that someone had scratched "Kill the Jews" 1756 01:35:14,916 --> 01:35:19,023 in wet cement, and he captured it on film. 1757 01:35:19,058 --> 01:35:21,888 Minutes later, Polish policemen arrived 1758 01:35:21,923 --> 01:35:24,719 and detained the whole family. 1759 01:35:24,753 --> 01:35:27,722 Officers tore the film from Leonard's camera, 1760 01:35:27,756 --> 01:35:29,931 and after several tense hours, 1761 01:35:29,965 --> 01:35:33,348 finally allowed the frightened Blands to leave. 1762 01:35:33,382 --> 01:35:37,697 ♪ 1763 01:35:37,732 --> 01:35:40,665 In the years to come, nearly all of Suwalki's 1764 01:35:40,700 --> 01:35:45,049 14,000 Jewish inhabitants would be murdered. 1765 01:35:47,811 --> 01:35:49,605 ♪ 1766 01:35:49,640 --> 01:35:53,057 Even the Jewish cemetery would be destroyed, 1767 01:35:53,092 --> 01:35:57,924 as if the generations buried there had never existed. 1768 01:35:57,959 --> 01:36:02,032 ♪ 1769 01:36:04,103 --> 01:36:06,036 [Airplanes whirring] 1770 01:36:13,768 --> 01:36:17,392 In 1937, the world's authoritarian regimes 1771 01:36:17,426 --> 01:36:21,741 were entering a new, more threatening phase of conquest. 1772 01:36:22,984 --> 01:36:25,918 Hitler had taken back the Rhineland. 1773 01:36:27,195 --> 01:36:30,232 Benito Mussolini's Italian fascist troops 1774 01:36:30,267 --> 01:36:33,788 had crushed Libya and invaded Ethiopia, 1775 01:36:33,822 --> 01:36:36,583 dropping bombs and deploying mustard gas 1776 01:36:36,618 --> 01:36:38,862 against helpless civilians. 1777 01:36:40,656 --> 01:36:44,039 Japanese forces invaded China. 1778 01:36:46,801 --> 01:36:49,838 In Spain, German and Italian warplanes 1779 01:36:49,873 --> 01:36:51,840 conducted terror bombing raids 1780 01:36:51,875 --> 01:36:54,601 in support of a fascist uprising 1781 01:36:54,636 --> 01:36:57,673 against a duly elected left-wing government 1782 01:36:57,708 --> 01:37:00,538 supported by the Soviet Union. 1783 01:37:02,299 --> 01:37:06,303 Neither France nor England nor the United States 1784 01:37:06,337 --> 01:37:08,236 was willing to intervene. 1785 01:37:08,270 --> 01:37:10,169 ♪ 1786 01:37:10,203 --> 01:37:15,174 Franklin Roosevelt had been re-elected by a landslide in 1936. 1787 01:37:15,208 --> 01:37:19,730 4 years of the New Deal had helped restore American confidence 1788 01:37:19,764 --> 01:37:22,906 and begun to put the country back to work. 1789 01:37:22,940 --> 01:37:25,632 But Roosevelt was an internationalist 1790 01:37:25,667 --> 01:37:29,498 presiding over an isolationist country. 1791 01:37:29,533 --> 01:37:32,985 Senate hearings had convinced millions of Americans 1792 01:37:33,019 --> 01:37:36,057 that Wall Street bankers, munitions makers, 1793 01:37:36,091 --> 01:37:38,991 and British propagandists had conspired 1794 01:37:39,025 --> 01:37:43,547 to trick the United States into entering the Great War. 1795 01:37:43,581 --> 01:37:47,896 Gerald Nye: American commercial interest is selfish and greedy. 1796 01:37:47,931 --> 01:37:51,866 Sensing the opportunity for profit from war 1797 01:37:51,900 --> 01:37:54,627 would do as they have done in the past 1798 01:37:54,661 --> 01:37:57,561 if left to pursue their own course. 1799 01:37:58,942 --> 01:38:02,946 Narrator: 125,000 college students had staged 1800 01:38:02,980 --> 01:38:05,396 a one-hour Strike for Peace, 1801 01:38:05,431 --> 01:38:08,710 and 60,000 of them signed a pledge never 1802 01:38:08,744 --> 01:38:13,715 "to support the United States in any war it may conduct." 1803 01:38:13,749 --> 01:38:15,924 Congress had shrunk the Army, 1804 01:38:15,959 --> 01:38:19,100 kept the country out of international organizations, 1805 01:38:19,134 --> 01:38:21,757 and passed two Neutrality Acts, 1806 01:38:21,792 --> 01:38:28,557 barring the sale of arms or war materiel to any belligerent anywhere. 1807 01:38:28,592 --> 01:38:34,425 In Chicago, President Roosevelt publicly expressed his alarm. 1808 01:38:34,460 --> 01:38:38,947 Roosevelt: The epidemic of world lawlessness is spreading. 1809 01:38:39,983 --> 01:38:43,331 And mark this well, 1810 01:38:43,365 --> 01:38:48,992 when an epidemic of physical disease starts to spread, 1811 01:38:49,026 --> 01:38:51,166 the community approves 1812 01:38:51,201 --> 01:38:56,482 and joins in a quarantine of the patients 1813 01:38:56,516 --> 01:39:00,244 in order to protect the health of the community 1814 01:39:00,279 --> 01:39:03,799 against the spread of the disease. 1815 01:39:03,834 --> 01:39:06,802 [Applause] 1816 01:39:06,837 --> 01:39:09,460 Narrator: Outraged pacifists now charged 1817 01:39:09,495 --> 01:39:13,361 that Roosevelt was starting America down the slope to war 1818 01:39:13,395 --> 01:39:15,432 by calling for a quarantine. 1819 01:39:15,466 --> 01:39:18,918 Isolationist congressmen threatened to impeach him. 1820 01:39:18,953 --> 01:39:22,335 The leaders of his own party remained silent. 1821 01:39:22,370 --> 01:39:25,304 "It is a terrible thing," he told an aide, 1822 01:39:25,338 --> 01:39:28,790 "to look over your shoulder when you are trying to lead 1823 01:39:28,824 --> 01:39:31,931 and find no one there." 1824 01:39:31,966 --> 01:39:35,038 Erbelding: There is no real perception in the 1930s 1825 01:39:35,072 --> 01:39:38,006 that America is a force for good in the world, 1826 01:39:38,041 --> 01:39:40,905 or that we should be involved in the world at all. 1827 01:39:40,940 --> 01:39:44,254 There is no sense among the American people, 1828 01:39:44,288 --> 01:39:46,508 among the American government, among the international community, 1829 01:39:46,532 --> 01:39:48,948 that it's anyone else's business what is happening 1830 01:39:48,983 --> 01:39:50,985 within, you know, your own country. 1831 01:39:51,019 --> 01:39:54,574 It is not illegal what Hitler is doing to the Jews 1832 01:39:54,609 --> 01:39:56,507 under International Law. 1833 01:39:56,542 --> 01:39:58,164 You can attack your own citizens 1834 01:39:58,199 --> 01:40:00,684 under International Law at this point. 1835 01:40:00,718 --> 01:40:02,375 ♪ 1836 01:40:02,410 --> 01:40:05,792 Narrator: American corporations, like those of other countries, 1837 01:40:05,827 --> 01:40:10,349 continued to conduct business as usual with the Hitler regime. 1838 01:40:10,383 --> 01:40:14,663 The Nazis awarded Henry Ford their highest civilian medal, 1839 01:40:14,698 --> 01:40:18,529 and his German plant began supplying the German army 1840 01:40:18,564 --> 01:40:20,945 with 1,500 vehicles a year, 1841 01:40:20,980 --> 01:40:23,017 after turning down an offer 1842 01:40:23,051 --> 01:40:25,881 to build airplane engines for Britain. 1843 01:40:25,916 --> 01:40:30,921 Woolworth's German subsidiary fired all its Jewish employees 1844 01:40:30,955 --> 01:40:33,372 as the price of doing business. 1845 01:40:33,406 --> 01:40:37,065 So did the Berlin office of the Associated Press. 1846 01:40:37,100 --> 01:40:38,998 ♪ 1847 01:40:39,033 --> 01:40:41,794 All but one of the major Hollywood studios 1848 01:40:41,828 --> 01:40:43,692 went along with the Nazis, too, 1849 01:40:43,727 --> 01:40:47,593 even though many of the men who ran them were Jewish. 1850 01:40:47,627 --> 01:40:51,321 Joseph Goebbels had closed the lucrative German market 1851 01:40:51,355 --> 01:40:56,119 to any film "considered detrimental to German prestige." 1852 01:40:56,153 --> 01:40:59,881 For a time, the German vice-consul in Los Angeles 1853 01:40:59,915 --> 01:41:03,712 had the power to approve or disapprove scripts 1854 01:41:03,747 --> 01:41:06,577 before production began. 1855 01:41:06,612 --> 01:41:10,271 Between 1933 and 1939, not a single word 1856 01:41:10,305 --> 01:41:15,069 was uttered against the Nazis on screen. 1857 01:41:15,103 --> 01:41:16,587 ♪ 1858 01:41:16,622 --> 01:41:20,350 The 80 million Americans who went to the movies each week 1859 01:41:20,384 --> 01:41:24,250 got brief glimpses of Nazi Germany from newsreels 1860 01:41:24,285 --> 01:41:28,151 made by Pathé, Paramount, Fox Movietone, 1861 01:41:28,185 --> 01:41:30,912 and Hearst Metrotone News. 1862 01:41:30,946 --> 01:41:33,294 But the footage was usually confined 1863 01:41:33,328 --> 01:41:36,469 to film produced by the Nazis. 1864 01:41:36,504 --> 01:41:38,161 ♪ 1865 01:41:38,195 --> 01:41:40,275 Film announcer: In united Germany is the rallying cry 1866 01:41:40,301 --> 01:41:42,613 of Chancellor Hitler as he tours the country. 1867 01:41:42,648 --> 01:41:45,064 In Westphalia, he is greeted by a tremendous throng 1868 01:41:45,099 --> 01:41:46,824 of enthusiastic admirers. 1869 01:41:46,859 --> 01:41:49,724 [All cheering] 1870 01:41:49,758 --> 01:41:52,589 Narrator: "The March of Time," a series of shorts 1871 01:41:52,623 --> 01:41:56,903 made in association with "Time" magazine, was different. 1872 01:41:56,938 --> 01:41:59,147 In January of 1938, 1873 01:41:59,182 --> 01:42:02,461 it offered a film called "Inside Nazi Germany" 1874 01:42:02,495 --> 01:42:05,878 that included scenes shot by American cameramen 1875 01:42:05,912 --> 01:42:09,088 when Nazi minders were not looking. 1876 01:42:09,123 --> 01:42:11,194 Film announcer: Still going on as pitilessly, 1877 01:42:11,228 --> 01:42:13,196 as brutally as it did 5 years ago 1878 01:42:13,230 --> 01:42:16,371 is Goebbels' persecution of the Jews. 1879 01:42:16,406 --> 01:42:19,098 Sign-posts at city limits bear the legend, 1880 01:42:19,133 --> 01:42:22,170 "Jews not wanted. Jews keep out." 1881 01:42:22,205 --> 01:42:24,483 Nazi Germany faces her destiny 1882 01:42:24,517 --> 01:42:27,796 with one of the greatest war machines in history. 1883 01:42:29,143 --> 01:42:31,766 And the inevitable destiny of the great war machines 1884 01:42:31,800 --> 01:42:35,701 of the past has been to destroy the peace of the world, 1885 01:42:35,735 --> 01:42:39,567 its people, and the governments of their time. 1886 01:42:39,601 --> 01:42:42,432 ♪ 1887 01:42:49,680 --> 01:42:53,788 Woman: The Nazis wanted to annex Austria, 1888 01:42:53,822 --> 01:42:58,413 and there was supposed to be a voting if Austria wanted it. 1889 01:42:58,448 --> 01:43:00,933 Hitler didn't wait for a vote, 1890 01:43:00,967 --> 01:43:04,902 just marched in in March 1938. 1891 01:43:07,284 --> 01:43:10,080 All our friends and the whole city 1892 01:43:10,114 --> 01:43:16,190 became immediately enthusiastic and Nazis. 1893 01:43:16,224 --> 01:43:18,882 They stood in the street with swastika flags 1894 01:43:18,916 --> 01:43:19,883 and Heil Hitler. 1895 01:43:19,917 --> 01:43:22,403 Crowd: Heil Hitler! 1896 01:43:22,437 --> 01:43:26,648 Heil Hitler! 1897 01:43:26,683 --> 01:43:29,582 Narrator: Hitler called the unification 1898 01:43:29,617 --> 01:43:31,826 of his native Austria with Germany 1899 01:43:31,860 --> 01:43:34,069 his greatest accomplishment, 1900 01:43:34,104 --> 01:43:37,038 and he basked in the enthusiasm of the crowds 1901 01:43:37,072 --> 01:43:39,247 that had greeted him in Vienna. 1902 01:43:39,282 --> 01:43:44,390 "Such a stream of love as I have never experienced," he called it. 1903 01:43:46,254 --> 01:43:49,188 One quarter of a million Jews had somehow managed 1904 01:43:49,223 --> 01:43:51,570 to escape Hitler's Germany. 1905 01:43:51,604 --> 01:43:58,024 But now 192,000 Austrian Jews had come under his control 1906 01:43:58,059 --> 01:44:01,027 and were stripped of any citizenship. 1907 01:44:01,062 --> 01:44:06,757 SS men and Gestapo agents were let loose to beat and humiliate them 1908 01:44:06,792 --> 01:44:11,521 and force them to clean anti-Nazi slogans off the sidewalk. 1909 01:44:11,555 --> 01:44:15,835 ♪ 1910 01:44:15,870 --> 01:44:21,358 Eva Geiringer was not quite 9 when the Germans entered Vienna. 1911 01:44:21,393 --> 01:44:23,118 Geiringer: And it was just terrible, 1912 01:44:23,153 --> 01:44:26,329 from one day to the next, the attitude changed. 1913 01:44:26,363 --> 01:44:28,779 ♪ 1914 01:44:28,814 --> 01:44:32,335 Suddenly I was not allowed to go and play 1915 01:44:32,369 --> 01:44:35,924 with my Catholic friends. 1916 01:44:35,959 --> 01:44:37,512 My brother Heinz, 1917 01:44:37,547 --> 01:44:40,481 who was at that time 12 years old, he came home. 1918 01:44:40,515 --> 01:44:44,036 He looked terrible. He was badly beaten up. 1919 01:44:44,070 --> 01:44:47,004 And when my parents questioned him, he said, 1920 01:44:47,039 --> 01:44:48,661 "My own friends did that, 1921 01:44:48,696 --> 01:44:52,493 and the teachers just watched to see it happening." 1922 01:44:52,527 --> 01:44:55,496 Narrator: Eva's father, a shoe manufacturer, 1923 01:44:55,530 --> 01:44:59,362 soon joined would-be immigrants, most of them Jews, 1924 01:44:59,396 --> 01:45:03,124 clamoring at consulates for visas to somewhere, 1925 01:45:03,158 --> 01:45:06,541 anywhere that seemed to offer safety. 1926 01:45:06,576 --> 01:45:09,820 Geiringer: People started to queue at consulates. 1927 01:45:09,855 --> 01:45:14,825 You had to have an entry visa and an exit visa by then. 1928 01:45:14,860 --> 01:45:16,240 And you know this. 1929 01:45:16,275 --> 01:45:18,381 So Hitler wanted to get rid of the Jews, 1930 01:45:18,415 --> 01:45:22,454 but to get an exit visa was as well difficult. 1931 01:45:22,488 --> 01:45:24,697 I didn't want to leave, you know? 1932 01:45:24,732 --> 01:45:27,597 I know it didn't feel nice anymore. 1933 01:45:27,631 --> 01:45:30,324 But still, I had my relatives there, 1934 01:45:30,358 --> 01:45:31,842 and it was my language, 1935 01:45:31,877 --> 01:45:34,397 and I loved it there. 1936 01:45:34,431 --> 01:45:37,158 And my parents said, "Well, it won't be long." 1937 01:45:37,192 --> 01:45:39,160 And you know, "We'll come back again." 1938 01:45:39,194 --> 01:45:42,681 The people, even in '38, didn't believe 1939 01:45:42,715 --> 01:45:46,547 that Hitler will be able to stay in power for very long. 1940 01:45:47,858 --> 01:45:50,309 Narrator: Eva's father would finally manage 1941 01:45:50,344 --> 01:45:52,380 to get his family to the Netherlands 1942 01:45:52,415 --> 01:45:55,176 and launch a new business there. 1943 01:45:55,210 --> 01:45:57,523 He was one of the lucky ones. 1944 01:45:57,558 --> 01:46:01,700 The Nazis stepped up their discriminatory decrees. 1945 01:46:01,734 --> 01:46:04,150 Throughout the newly-expanded Reich, 1946 01:46:04,185 --> 01:46:09,501 Jews would soon be required to register all Jewish-owned businesses 1947 01:46:09,535 --> 01:46:12,573 and all their personal property from houses 1948 01:46:12,607 --> 01:46:16,784 and art collections down to their dinnerware and jewelry, 1949 01:46:16,818 --> 01:46:20,960 an obvious prelude to confiscation. 1950 01:46:20,995 --> 01:46:25,344 Those with first names the Nazis didn't recognize as Jewish 1951 01:46:25,379 --> 01:46:28,347 were made to adopt new middle names, 1952 01:46:28,382 --> 01:46:31,902 Israel for men and Sara for women. 1953 01:46:31,937 --> 01:46:35,768 All Jews holding passports had to have them stamped 1954 01:46:35,803 --> 01:46:38,115 with the red letter "J." 1955 01:46:38,150 --> 01:46:42,637 Before 1938, would-be emigrants to the United States 1956 01:46:42,672 --> 01:46:45,399 already had to wait 3 or 4 months 1957 01:46:45,433 --> 01:46:48,263 before they could get an interview for their visa 1958 01:46:48,298 --> 01:46:50,231 with consulate officials. 1959 01:46:50,265 --> 01:46:54,925 Now the steady stream of frightened people became a torrent, 1960 01:46:54,960 --> 01:46:58,688 and they faced a wait of two or three years. 1961 01:46:58,722 --> 01:47:00,931 ♪ 1962 01:47:00,966 --> 01:47:05,488 Woman as Thompson: It is a fantastic commentary on the inhumanity of our times 1963 01:47:05,522 --> 01:47:08,214 that for thousands and thousands of people, 1964 01:47:08,249 --> 01:47:10,665 a piece of paper with a stamp on it 1965 01:47:10,700 --> 01:47:14,048 is the difference between life and death, 1966 01:47:14,082 --> 01:47:18,190 and that scores of people have blown their brains out 1967 01:47:18,224 --> 01:47:21,400 because they could not get it. 1968 01:47:21,435 --> 01:47:23,160 Dorothy Thompson. 1969 01:47:23,195 --> 01:47:25,577 ♪ 1970 01:47:25,611 --> 01:47:28,821 Narrator: It was now impossible even for the State Department 1971 01:47:28,856 --> 01:47:33,412 to deny that there was a growing immigration crisis. 1972 01:47:33,447 --> 01:47:35,518 Alone among world leaders, 1973 01:47:35,552 --> 01:47:39,314 FDR tried to ease it, at least a little. 1974 01:47:39,349 --> 01:47:43,422 At his cabinet meeting 4 days after Hitler entered Vienna, 1975 01:47:43,457 --> 01:47:45,769 Roosevelt announced that he was combining 1976 01:47:45,804 --> 01:47:49,601 the small Austrian quota with the larger German quota 1977 01:47:49,635 --> 01:47:52,155 in order to give Austrian refugees 1978 01:47:52,189 --> 01:47:55,089 a better chance of obtaining visas. 1979 01:47:55,123 --> 01:47:59,369 But when FDR asked his Vice President John Nance Garner, 1980 01:47:59,403 --> 01:48:01,475 a former Speaker of the House, 1981 01:48:01,509 --> 01:48:05,099 if Congress could now be persuaded to increase the quota, 1982 01:48:05,133 --> 01:48:06,963 he said no. 1983 01:48:06,997 --> 01:48:10,691 If his former colleagues could vote in secret, he explained, 1984 01:48:10,725 --> 01:48:14,729 they'd shut down immigration entirely. 1985 01:48:14,764 --> 01:48:17,974 No one in the room disagreed. 1986 01:48:18,008 --> 01:48:21,460 Snyder: FDR was dealing with a society 1987 01:48:21,495 --> 01:48:23,773 that he knew to be vulnerable 1988 01:48:23,807 --> 01:48:27,362 to the German antisemitic propaganda. 1989 01:48:27,397 --> 01:48:32,644 What he had to do is find ways to save Jews 1990 01:48:32,678 --> 01:48:34,853 without drawing too much American attention 1991 01:48:34,887 --> 01:48:37,338 to the fact that he was doing it. 1992 01:48:37,372 --> 01:48:40,065 Lipstadt: Could FDR have spoken out more strongly? 1993 01:48:40,099 --> 01:48:42,999 Could he have exerted more influence? Certainly. 1994 01:48:43,033 --> 01:48:48,383 But there was no groundswell of opinion in the Congress. 1995 01:48:48,418 --> 01:48:50,316 So, when people pin it on him, 1996 01:48:50,351 --> 01:48:52,215 "A," it's assuming that he could have 1997 01:48:52,249 --> 01:48:53,941 just turned everything around. 1998 01:48:53,975 --> 01:48:56,944 And "B," it's forgetting the public opinion 1999 01:48:56,978 --> 01:49:01,914 was strongly opposed to immigration in general, 2000 01:49:01,949 --> 01:49:04,261 refugees in particular, 2001 01:49:04,296 --> 01:49:06,574 penniless refugees even more so, 2002 01:49:06,609 --> 01:49:08,645 and Jewish refugees all the more. 2003 01:49:08,680 --> 01:49:12,235 It's on a lot of people. It's on everyone. 2004 01:49:13,616 --> 01:49:16,584 Greene: In 1938, Americans are asked 2005 01:49:16,619 --> 01:49:19,000 whether they think the persecution of Jews in Germany 2006 01:49:19,035 --> 01:49:21,589 has been Jews' own fault. 2007 01:49:21,624 --> 01:49:26,525 And two-thirds of Americans say partly or entirely. 2008 01:49:26,560 --> 01:49:29,528 Something bad is happening to the Jews abroad 2009 01:49:29,563 --> 01:49:33,014 and an inclination of a lot of Americans is to blame the Jews. 2010 01:49:33,049 --> 01:49:34,982 ♪ 2011 01:49:35,016 --> 01:49:38,433 Narrator: Roosevelt called for a conference in Evian, France, 2012 01:49:38,468 --> 01:49:42,783 for the international community to discuss a collective solution 2013 01:49:42,817 --> 01:49:45,337 to the problem of "political refugees" 2014 01:49:45,371 --> 01:49:47,166 seeking to flee Hitler. 2015 01:49:47,201 --> 01:49:52,862 He was careful not to say that most of those in flight were Jews. 2016 01:49:52,896 --> 01:49:54,518 ♪ 2017 01:49:54,553 --> 01:49:57,418 Erbelding: There is a sense in the U.S. Government 2018 01:49:57,452 --> 01:50:00,421 that antisemitism is so strong in America 2019 01:50:00,455 --> 01:50:02,423 that they don't want people to think that, 2020 01:50:02,457 --> 01:50:04,459 or even get the hint, 2021 01:50:04,494 --> 01:50:06,289 that the United States might be going to do 2022 01:50:06,323 --> 01:50:09,913 anything particular for the Jews, to rescue the Jews. 2023 01:50:09,948 --> 01:50:12,640 Narrator: Since the U.S. Congress was not willing 2024 01:50:12,675 --> 01:50:15,091 to alter America's quota system, 2025 01:50:15,125 --> 01:50:17,990 Roosevelt would not ask any other country 2026 01:50:18,025 --> 01:50:21,856 to change its own laws to take in more immigrants, 2027 01:50:21,891 --> 01:50:24,618 though it was his hope that other countries 2028 01:50:24,652 --> 01:50:28,967 might volunteer to do so at the upcoming conference. 2029 01:50:30,244 --> 01:50:34,938 In July, representatives of 32 countries met for a week 2030 01:50:34,973 --> 01:50:39,978 and managed only to form an Intergovernmental Committee for Refugees 2031 01:50:40,012 --> 01:50:44,672 without any funds or power to assist them. 2032 01:50:44,707 --> 01:50:47,710 Representatives of all 32 nations at that conference 2033 01:50:47,744 --> 01:50:50,782 stand up and say, "This is a horrible problem. 2034 01:50:50,816 --> 01:50:53,439 Let us tell you why we can't let in refugees now." 2035 01:50:53,474 --> 01:50:56,615 Narrator: The French delegate claimed France had reached 2036 01:50:56,650 --> 01:51:01,033 "the extreme point of saturation as regards refugees." 2037 01:51:01,068 --> 01:51:04,692 4 Central American countries jointly said 2038 01:51:04,727 --> 01:51:08,385 they had no need for merchants and intellectuals, 2039 01:51:08,420 --> 01:51:10,525 by which they meant Jews. 2040 01:51:10,560 --> 01:51:15,703 The Australian spokesman said, "As we have no real racial problem, 2041 01:51:15,738 --> 01:51:19,362 we are not desirous of importing one." 2042 01:51:19,396 --> 01:51:21,709 Great Britain refused to increase 2043 01:51:21,744 --> 01:51:23,573 and then sharply limited 2044 01:51:23,607 --> 01:51:26,714 the number of Jews allowed into Palestine, 2045 01:51:26,749 --> 01:51:30,028 the Middle Eastern territory they controlled. 2046 01:51:31,236 --> 01:51:35,102 Representatives of Jewish organizations were present, 2047 01:51:35,136 --> 01:51:36,862 but only as observers. 2048 01:51:36,897 --> 01:51:39,520 A young Golda Meir remembered her 2049 01:51:39,554 --> 01:51:42,903 "sorrow, rage, frustration, and horror" 2050 01:51:42,937 --> 01:51:45,768 at not being allowed to speak. 2051 01:51:47,010 --> 01:51:49,668 So, what you have is a week's worth of nations 2052 01:51:49,703 --> 01:51:51,946 standing up one after the other saying, 2053 01:51:51,981 --> 01:51:53,776 "This is terrible, but we don't want any. 2054 01:51:53,810 --> 01:51:55,570 This is awful, but we don't want any." 2055 01:51:55,605 --> 01:51:57,158 At which point, the Germans say, 2056 01:51:57,193 --> 01:52:00,506 "You don't want the Jews any more than we do." 2057 01:52:00,541 --> 01:52:05,132 Narrator: Chaim Weizmann, the president of the World Zionist Organization, 2058 01:52:05,166 --> 01:52:09,239 dedicated to creating a Jewish state in Palestine, said 2059 01:52:09,274 --> 01:52:14,175 the globe was now "divided into places where Jews cannot live 2060 01:52:14,210 --> 01:52:17,903 and places into which they cannot enter." 2061 01:52:17,938 --> 01:52:22,425 ♪ 2062 01:52:22,459 --> 01:52:24,634 Film announcer: Today the wings of the German air fleet 2063 01:52:24,668 --> 01:52:27,085 cast a threatening shadow across central Europe. 2064 01:52:27,119 --> 01:52:29,673 From the sky and from the highway comes the rumble 2065 01:52:29,708 --> 01:52:33,160 of the dictator's creed, "Might makes right." 2066 01:52:33,194 --> 01:52:37,129 ♪ 2067 01:52:37,164 --> 01:52:39,442 Caught between the pan-German pincers 2068 01:52:39,476 --> 01:52:44,827 is little Czechoslovakia, a republic of 15 million souls. 2069 01:52:44,861 --> 01:52:47,243 Narrator: In the late summer of 1938, 2070 01:52:47,277 --> 01:52:50,971 Adolf Hitler claimed the right to seize the Sudetenland, 2071 01:52:51,005 --> 01:52:54,526 the German-speaking region of Czechoslovakia. 2072 01:52:54,560 --> 01:52:57,218 Newscaster: And as the tension rises almost to breaking point, 2073 01:52:57,253 --> 01:52:59,220 might is answered with might, 2074 01:52:59,255 --> 01:53:01,050 Czechoslovakia mobilizes. 2075 01:53:01,084 --> 01:53:03,466 Narrator: France and the Soviet Union had signed 2076 01:53:03,500 --> 01:53:07,263 a mutual defense pact with the Czechs. 2077 01:53:07,297 --> 01:53:09,679 Britain mobilized. 2078 01:53:09,713 --> 01:53:12,751 But in the end, no country proved willing 2079 01:53:12,786 --> 01:53:15,754 to come to the defense of Czechoslovakia. 2080 01:53:16,928 --> 01:53:21,139 Instead, at a September 30th meeting with Hitler in Munich, 2081 01:53:21,173 --> 01:53:23,831 the British prime minister, Neville Chamberlain, 2082 01:53:23,866 --> 01:53:26,592 and the French premier, Edouard Daladier, 2083 01:53:26,627 --> 01:53:31,218 told the Czechs they had no choice but to give up their territory, 2084 01:53:31,252 --> 01:53:34,014 in exchange for a pledge by Hitler 2085 01:53:34,048 --> 01:53:37,845 that he would make no further territorial demands. 2086 01:53:37,880 --> 01:53:41,884 ♪ 2087 01:53:41,918 --> 01:53:46,785 Nazi Germany had become the most powerful nation in Europe. 2088 01:53:47,890 --> 01:53:51,755 But it also faced a new problem. 2089 01:53:51,790 --> 01:53:54,137 Hayes: There's a fundamental contradiction 2090 01:53:54,172 --> 01:53:57,313 between the two central teachings of Nazi ideology. 2091 01:53:57,347 --> 01:54:02,318 The first central teaching is that the Jews have to be removed 2092 01:54:02,352 --> 01:54:05,562 because they are corrupting and endanger the state. 2093 01:54:06,701 --> 01:54:08,289 But the second central teaching is 2094 01:54:08,324 --> 01:54:10,913 for Germany to be a great power, it must get living space. 2095 01:54:10,947 --> 01:54:13,225 It must expand into enough territory 2096 01:54:13,260 --> 01:54:16,470 that will give it food production to sustain its population 2097 01:54:16,504 --> 01:54:20,439 and the natural resources that will sustain its power. 2098 01:54:20,474 --> 01:54:22,372 Well, in Europe of the 1930s, 2099 01:54:22,407 --> 01:54:25,410 these two principles worked fundamentally against each other, 2100 01:54:25,444 --> 01:54:28,620 because where the Nazis wanted the living space 2101 01:54:28,654 --> 01:54:32,451 was exactly the spot on the globe with the highest density 2102 01:54:32,486 --> 01:54:33,867 of Jewish population... 2103 01:54:33,901 --> 01:54:36,628 Poland, Ukraine, Lithuania. 2104 01:54:36,662 --> 01:54:39,562 And so, the Nazis discovered in the course of the 1930s 2105 01:54:39,596 --> 01:54:43,704 as they drove about 69% of the Jews out of Germany, 2106 01:54:43,738 --> 01:54:45,844 that they also then expanded into Austria 2107 01:54:45,879 --> 01:54:48,536 and the Sudetenland and Czechoslovakia. 2108 01:54:48,571 --> 01:54:50,193 And with each of those steps, 2109 01:54:50,228 --> 01:54:53,403 they began to acquire more Jews that almost canceled out 2110 01:54:53,438 --> 01:54:56,717 all of the numbers that they had driven out to date. 2111 01:54:59,478 --> 01:55:00,928 [Pounding on door] 2112 01:55:00,963 --> 01:55:02,388 Messinger: It was the middle of the night, 2113 01:55:02,412 --> 01:55:05,312 and there was a pounding on the door. 2114 01:55:05,346 --> 01:55:06,796 My father opened the door, 2115 01:55:06,830 --> 01:55:09,626 and sure enough, these two policemen were there. 2116 01:55:09,661 --> 01:55:11,387 And they said to my father, 2117 01:55:11,421 --> 01:55:13,423 "Get dressed. You're coming with us." 2118 01:55:13,458 --> 01:55:15,770 My mother was holding me. 2119 01:55:15,805 --> 01:55:18,083 And I started to cry. 2120 01:55:18,118 --> 01:55:22,294 And one of the policemen said to my mother, 2121 01:55:22,329 --> 01:55:25,090 "Shut the kid up or I'll kill him." 2122 01:55:25,125 --> 01:55:28,887 And they took my father away. 2123 01:55:28,922 --> 01:55:32,166 The next morning, we went down to the police station. 2124 01:55:32,201 --> 01:55:34,928 My mother wanted to find out what happened to my father. 2125 01:55:34,962 --> 01:55:36,826 When we got to the police station, 2126 01:55:36,860 --> 01:55:41,348 there were about 100 or 150 other Jewish women standing there. 2127 01:55:42,797 --> 01:55:44,558 And it became clear to my mother 2128 01:55:44,592 --> 01:55:49,770 that they had taken all Jewish men of Polish origin 2129 01:55:49,804 --> 01:55:52,186 and shipped them back to Poland. 2130 01:55:53,394 --> 01:55:57,433 Narrator: It was the first mass deportation of Jews from Germany. 2131 01:55:57,467 --> 01:56:01,782 17,000 Polish Jews were declared stateless, 2132 01:56:01,816 --> 01:56:03,887 stripped of their possessions, 2133 01:56:03,922 --> 01:56:07,581 and driven across the border into Poland. 2134 01:56:07,615 --> 01:56:10,101 Snyder: In Eastern Europe, there was a saying that, 2135 01:56:10,135 --> 01:56:15,106 "What holds the body and the soul together is a passport." 2136 01:56:15,140 --> 01:56:18,040 What's meant is that documentation, 2137 01:56:18,074 --> 01:56:21,008 the idea that you're somebody's citizen, 2138 01:56:21,043 --> 01:56:23,528 that there's a state somewhere looking after you 2139 01:56:23,562 --> 01:56:29,465 is fundamental to your ability to survive in the modern world. 2140 01:56:29,499 --> 01:56:33,193 ♪ 2141 01:56:33,227 --> 01:56:36,437 Man: It is not, after all, a crime to be Jewish. 2142 01:56:36,472 --> 01:56:40,234 I am not a dog. I have a right to live. 2143 01:56:40,269 --> 01:56:44,031 My people have a right to exist on this earth. 2144 01:56:45,274 --> 01:56:49,347 And yet everywhere, they are hunted down like animals. 2145 01:56:49,381 --> 01:56:51,245 Herschel Grynszpan. 2146 01:56:51,280 --> 01:56:53,178 ♪ 2147 01:56:53,213 --> 01:56:57,113 Narrator: In the fall of 1938, Herschel Grynszpan, 2148 01:56:57,148 --> 01:57:01,083 a 17-year-old living in Paris, learned that his family, 2149 01:57:01,117 --> 01:57:03,223 like Sol Messinger's father, 2150 01:57:03,257 --> 01:57:06,950 had been among those deported from Germany to Poland. 2151 01:57:06,985 --> 01:57:09,056 Herschel's sister wrote to him 2152 01:57:09,091 --> 01:57:12,853 from a squalid refugee camp begging for help. 2153 01:57:12,887 --> 01:57:15,269 He could provide none. 2154 01:57:15,304 --> 01:57:19,066 He had no papers and no ability to earn a living, 2155 01:57:19,101 --> 01:57:23,105 just one more person without a country on a continent 2156 01:57:23,139 --> 01:57:27,281 increasingly haunted by those who had nowhere to go. 2157 01:57:29,042 --> 01:57:33,529 In Paris on November 7th, Grynszpan bought a pistol, 2158 01:57:33,563 --> 01:57:35,220 entered the German embassy, 2159 01:57:35,255 --> 01:57:37,809 and asked to see the ambassador. 2160 01:57:37,843 --> 01:57:41,606 In his pocket was a postcard addressed to his parents. 2161 01:57:41,640 --> 01:57:45,817 He asked God to forgive him for what he was about to do. 2162 01:57:45,851 --> 01:57:48,026 "I must protest," he wrote, 2163 01:57:48,061 --> 01:57:52,203 "so that the whole world hears my protest." 2164 01:57:52,237 --> 01:57:55,137 Ushered into the office of a junior German official 2165 01:57:55,171 --> 01:57:57,242 named Ernst Vom Rath, 2166 01:57:57,277 --> 01:57:59,796 Grynszpan pulled out his pistol, 2167 01:57:59,831 --> 01:58:02,005 shouted that he was acting in the name 2168 01:58:02,040 --> 01:58:04,560 of all Jews deported from Germany, 2169 01:58:04,594 --> 01:58:09,875 and fired 5 times, hitting his target in the stomach. 2170 01:58:09,910 --> 01:58:13,983 Rath would die two days later on November 9th. 2171 01:58:16,158 --> 01:58:20,817 Grynszpan was arrested and disappeared. 2172 01:58:20,852 --> 01:58:23,130 [Drumming] 2173 01:58:23,165 --> 01:58:27,134 Nazi leaders saw a golden opportunity. 2174 01:58:27,169 --> 01:58:29,930 Goebbels instructed the German press 2175 01:58:29,964 --> 01:58:31,932 to denounce the assassination 2176 01:58:31,966 --> 01:58:35,038 as a deliberate attack by "world Jewry" 2177 01:58:35,073 --> 01:58:37,144 that would result in what he called 2178 01:58:37,179 --> 01:58:40,527 the "heaviest consequences" for German Jews. 2179 01:58:41,631 --> 01:58:44,427 Hitler ordered up a massive, coordinated, 2180 01:58:44,462 --> 01:58:48,535 physical assault on Jews in hundreds of communities 2181 01:58:48,569 --> 01:58:51,779 aimed at forcing as many of them as possible 2182 01:58:51,814 --> 01:58:54,196 to flee their country. 2183 01:58:54,230 --> 01:58:58,027 It was staged as a spontaneous uprising, 2184 01:58:58,061 --> 01:59:01,237 so some Stormtroopers and members of the Gestapo 2185 01:59:01,272 --> 01:59:05,207 wore civilian clothes as they attacked Jewish homes, 2186 01:59:05,241 --> 01:59:08,382 shops, synagogues, cemeteries, 2187 01:59:08,417 --> 01:59:11,661 and any Jews they happened upon. 2188 01:59:11,696 --> 01:59:13,422 [Distant shouts] 2189 01:59:16,321 --> 01:59:20,429 Schoolchildren were encouraged to join in. 2190 01:59:20,463 --> 01:59:25,365 Firemen stood by and allowed Jewish properties to burn. 2191 01:59:25,399 --> 01:59:28,989 The police protected only shops and homes 2192 01:59:29,023 --> 01:59:31,716 owned by so-called Aryans. 2193 01:59:31,750 --> 01:59:33,580 [Glass shatters] 2194 01:59:33,614 --> 01:59:37,825 It would be remembered as the Night of Broken Glass... 2195 01:59:37,860 --> 01:59:39,413 Kristallnacht. 2196 01:59:39,448 --> 01:59:41,898 ♪ 2197 01:59:41,933 --> 01:59:43,417 Susan Hilsenrath: I was 9 years old, 2198 01:59:43,452 --> 01:59:47,801 and my brother and I were sleeping in our bedroom. 2199 01:59:47,835 --> 01:59:50,424 Maybe it was around 11:00. 2200 01:59:50,459 --> 01:59:55,429 And all of a sudden some bricks and rocks 2201 01:59:55,464 --> 01:59:58,639 were being thrown through our window. 2202 01:59:58,674 --> 02:00:00,158 And I was really scared, 2203 02:00:00,193 --> 02:00:02,402 and I covered myself up with a blanket. 2204 02:00:02,436 --> 02:00:05,232 And my brother, who was a year younger than I am, 2205 02:00:05,267 --> 02:00:08,856 went to the window, and he pulled himself up, 2206 02:00:08,891 --> 02:00:10,582 and he looked outside and he said, 2207 02:00:10,617 --> 02:00:14,483 "Suzie, it is our neighbors that are throwing 2208 02:00:14,517 --> 02:00:17,071 the bricks and rocks through the window." 2209 02:00:17,106 --> 02:00:19,626 Then we were in our parents' bedroom, 2210 02:00:19,660 --> 02:00:24,320 and we were all huddled together trying to decide what to do. 2211 02:00:24,355 --> 02:00:26,564 Then they were carrying this lamp post, 2212 02:00:26,598 --> 02:00:29,739 and they smashed it through our front door 2213 02:00:29,774 --> 02:00:33,226 which was made out of glass. 2214 02:00:33,260 --> 02:00:36,263 Narrator: In Berlin, 6-year-old Sol Messinger, 2215 02:00:36,298 --> 02:00:39,439 anxious about his absent father in Poland, 2216 02:00:39,473 --> 02:00:42,752 huddled together with his mother in their apartment. 2217 02:00:42,787 --> 02:00:47,309 Messinger: I saw that the synagogue had been burned. 2218 02:00:47,343 --> 02:00:52,175 When I talk about it, I sort of can smell the smoke. 2219 02:00:52,210 --> 02:00:55,317 This was the synagogue in which we had prayed, 2220 02:00:55,351 --> 02:00:59,182 where my father used to take me on Shabbat, 2221 02:00:59,217 --> 02:01:04,602 and... and there it was smoldering. 2222 02:01:04,636 --> 02:01:09,089 Narrator: The Germans destroyed 1,400 synagogues 2223 02:01:09,123 --> 02:01:11,678 and other Jewish religious sites, 2224 02:01:11,712 --> 02:01:16,959 wrecked and looted some 7,500 Jewish-owned businesses, 2225 02:01:16,993 --> 02:01:19,375 murdered at least 91 people, 2226 02:01:19,410 --> 02:01:23,172 and drove another 300 to kill themselves. 2227 02:01:23,206 --> 02:01:27,590 Many more were beaten, raped, humiliated. 2228 02:01:27,625 --> 02:01:29,178 ♪ 2229 02:01:29,212 --> 02:01:32,630 Susan Hilsenrath: I saw the rabbi on his veranda. 2230 02:01:32,664 --> 02:01:36,116 And two SS men, I guess that's what they were, 2231 02:01:36,150 --> 02:01:38,670 they were holding him by the arms. 2232 02:01:38,705 --> 02:01:42,536 And another one came along and cut off his beard. 2233 02:01:42,571 --> 02:01:45,505 And that was a very shocking thing to me at the time 2234 02:01:45,539 --> 02:01:50,130 because it was a symbol that he was the rabbi. 2235 02:01:50,164 --> 02:01:53,064 And it was very shocking that anybody could do 2236 02:01:53,098 --> 02:01:56,309 such a thing to the rabbi of our town. 2237 02:01:56,343 --> 02:01:59,104 My father had saved some money. 2238 02:01:59,139 --> 02:02:00,899 He had saved it under the mattress 2239 02:02:00,934 --> 02:02:02,556 because at that time 2240 02:02:02,591 --> 02:02:04,696 Jewish people couldn't keep their money in the bank. 2241 02:02:04,731 --> 02:02:07,285 So he gave me the money and he told me to put it 2242 02:02:07,320 --> 02:02:10,392 in my underwear, in my underpants. 2243 02:02:10,426 --> 02:02:12,808 So he figured that if anything should happen, 2244 02:02:12,842 --> 02:02:15,397 they're not going to look in the little girl's underwear 2245 02:02:15,431 --> 02:02:18,331 to see if there was any money. 2246 02:02:18,365 --> 02:02:21,886 Narrator: The Nazis rounded up some 30,000 Jewish men 2247 02:02:21,920 --> 02:02:23,336 all across Germany 2248 02:02:23,370 --> 02:02:25,579 and marched them through jeering crowds 2249 02:02:25,614 --> 02:02:29,342 to trucks and buses that carried them to Dachau 2250 02:02:29,376 --> 02:02:32,310 and to newly-constructed concentration camps 2251 02:02:32,345 --> 02:02:35,658 at Sachsenhausen and Buchenwald. 2252 02:02:35,693 --> 02:02:39,662 There, they were crowded together, beaten, starved, 2253 02:02:39,697 --> 02:02:42,320 and allowed out only if they signed over 2254 02:02:42,355 --> 02:02:44,426 all their property to the state 2255 02:02:44,460 --> 02:02:47,532 and agreed to leave the country. 2256 02:02:47,567 --> 02:02:51,640 ♪ 2257 02:02:51,674 --> 02:02:54,332 Susan Hilsenrath: Before the Night of the Broken Glass, 2258 02:02:54,367 --> 02:02:58,060 my father wanted to stay in Germany, 2259 02:02:58,094 --> 02:03:03,272 but my mother was always wanting to come to the United States 2260 02:03:03,306 --> 02:03:05,792 because she had heard such wonderful things 2261 02:03:05,826 --> 02:03:08,070 about the United States. 2262 02:03:08,104 --> 02:03:10,417 But after the Night of the Broken Glass, 2263 02:03:10,452 --> 02:03:12,730 both of them wanted to get out, 2264 02:03:12,764 --> 02:03:17,597 and I think all of the Jews in Germany wanted to get out. 2265 02:03:18,839 --> 02:03:24,707 It was the primary goal was to get to the United States, 2266 02:03:24,742 --> 02:03:27,469 represented by the Statue of Liberty. 2267 02:03:27,503 --> 02:03:31,024 As a child, I heard about the Statue of Liberty. 2268 02:03:31,058 --> 02:03:34,130 I heard what it stands for. 2269 02:03:34,165 --> 02:03:36,754 It was the goal. 2270 02:03:36,788 --> 02:03:38,790 ♪ 2271 02:03:44,106 --> 02:03:47,661 Man as Frank: What can one say in times like these? 2272 02:03:47,696 --> 02:03:50,492 We have to be grateful for what we still have 2273 02:03:50,526 --> 02:03:53,287 and not give up hope. 2274 02:03:53,322 --> 02:03:55,669 It is miserably cold here, too, 2275 02:03:55,704 --> 02:03:57,499 and we think constantly of those 2276 02:03:57,533 --> 02:04:02,262 who, unlike ourselves, have no warm place to stay. 2277 02:04:03,332 --> 02:04:04,816 Otto Frank. 2278 02:04:04,851 --> 02:04:06,784 ♪ 2279 02:04:06,818 --> 02:04:10,132 Narrator: Otto and Edith Frank had been living comfortably 2280 02:04:10,166 --> 02:04:13,342 in Amsterdam for over 4 years now. 2281 02:04:13,376 --> 02:04:15,862 He had established a successful business. 2282 02:04:15,896 --> 02:04:19,555 Their eldest daughter Margot was doing well in school. 2283 02:04:19,590 --> 02:04:23,076 So was her younger sister Annelies. 2284 02:04:23,110 --> 02:04:26,286 ♪ 2285 02:04:26,320 --> 02:04:28,322 But after Kristallnacht, 2286 02:04:28,357 --> 02:04:30,635 a flood of new Jewish refugees 2287 02:04:30,670 --> 02:04:32,637 poured across the German border, 2288 02:04:32,672 --> 02:04:35,157 bringing with them horror stories 2289 02:04:35,191 --> 02:04:36,745 of what they'd been through. 2290 02:04:36,779 --> 02:04:39,092 ♪ 2291 02:04:39,126 --> 02:04:43,959 Seeking to put still more distance between his family and the Nazis, 2292 02:04:43,993 --> 02:04:48,515 Otto Frank traveled to the U.S. consulate in Rotterdam 2293 02:04:48,550 --> 02:04:51,449 and added his name to the ever-growing list 2294 02:04:51,484 --> 02:04:55,557 of Jews from Greater Germany and Czechoslovakia 2295 02:04:55,591 --> 02:04:59,630 hoping somehow to escape to America. 2296 02:04:59,664 --> 02:05:07,664 ♪ 2296 02:05:08,305 --> 02:06:08,788 Do you want subtitles for any video? -=[ ai.OpenSubtitles.com ]=-