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crafting his own race laws.
“To set the table meant we had 
to go pretty far back,
” Novick 
said.
The chronological approach 
places particular emphasis on 
what had already transpired in 
Europe by the time Americans 
got significantly involved: the 
“Holocaust by bullets,
” for exam-
ple, in which more than 1.5 mil-
lion of what would ultimately be 
6 million dead Jews were slaugh-
tered by gunfire and dumped in 
mass graves throughout Nazi-
occupied Eastern Europe before 
the concentration camps were 
even constructed.
As it details the horrors 
unfolding in Europe, the film 
focuses on the rise of Nazi-
sympathizer movements on 
the homefront, including the 
America First Committee, and 
breaks down the tensions within 
the State Department, where 
antisemitic officials in positions 
of power undermined efforts to 
intervene diplomatically on the 
behalf of Jews.
The film also discusses divi-
sions within the American 
Jewish community over whether 
to let in so many Jewish ref-
ugees. Twenty-five percent of 
American Jews at the time didn’t 
want to let any more in, some 
because they looked down on 
the Eastern European refugees 
as poor and unassimilated, and 
others because they were scared 
of making life worse for the Jews 
still in Europe if they spoke out 
too forcefully.
“It took me a while to really 
get my mind around the idea 
that there was a significant 
voice within a powerful Jewish 
American community that 
[believed] we shouldn’t say too 
much because it will just stir the 
pot and awaken more antisemi-
tism,
” Novick said.

There were heroes on the 
homefront, too, and the film 
relays their stories. Varian Fry 
and Raoul Wallenberg, who trav-
eled to Europe to rescue as many 
Jews as they could, are depicted, 
as are the efforts of the U.S. War 
Refugee Board and American 
diplomats such as John Paley. 
The advocacy of figures such as 
Jan Karski, Rabbi Stephen Wise, 
Ben Hecht and Peter Bergson is 
also spotlighted.

ADVISORY BOARD
To depict the history, the film-
makers relied heavily on their 
advisory board (they have one 
for every project they take on) 
to determine how much time 
to devote to various historical 
events, whether to show certain 
images or merely describe them 
and how to describe them. “We 
don’t go anywhere without our 
board of advisers,
” Botstein said.
For The U.S. and the 
Holocaust, the advisers included 
Holocaust historians such as 
Debórah Dwork, Peter Hayes 
and Richard Breitman, as well as 
scholars of race history such as 
Nell Irvin Painter, Mae M. Ngai 
and Howard Bryant.
Often the advisers disagreed 
on how to depict moments in 
history, and this disagreement is 
sometimes reflected in the film 
itself. A debate over whether 
the United States should have 
bombed Auschwitz, or even the 
trains leading into the death 
camp, echoed in the advisers’ 

room just as much as it did in 
the highest levels of government 
in the war’s waning months. The 
film reproduces those debates, 
quoting from historians who 
argue both points.
The film’s treatment of 
Franklin D. Roosevelt is also 
notable given Burns’ demon-
strated interest in the U.S. pres-
ident. Many historians today 
fault Roosevelt for failing to 
take more decisive action to 
prevent further bloodshed at key 
moments in the war. The direc-
tor noted that the new series is 
more critical of FDR’s actions 
during the Holocaust than his 
earlier series The Roosevelts was, 
but Burns still believes the pres-
ident was mostly acting within 
his means as a politician. “He 
could not wave a magic wand,
” 
he said. “He was not the emper-
or or a king.
”
All Burns films are released 
with teaching guides and are 
intended for use in the class-
room, but getting The U.S. and 
the Holocaust into schools was 
of particular importance to the 
filmmakers because they saw 
an opportunity to fit it into the 
dozens of statewide Holocaust 
education mandates that have 
been passed.
And also, Novick said, because 
the filmmakers have noticed 
the rise of various far-right, 
white supremacist ideologies, 
including many figures who 
espouse Holocaust denial. “It’s 
a never-ending battle that has 

to be fought,
” she said. The film 
itself doesn’t engage with such 
denialists.
In their publicity for the film, 
Burns and company are partner-
ing with several organizations 
to try to bring the Holocaust’s 
lessons into the modern day, 
including the International 
Rescue Committee, a refugee 
aid agency, and the U.S. gov-
ernment-funded think tank 
Freedom House.
The producers asked JTA 
not to give away the details of 
the film’s ending — an unusual 
request for a Holocaust docu-
mentary. But the reason is that 
Burns and his team don’t end 
with the camps’ liberation in 
1945. Instead, they come up to 
the present, in unexpected ways.
“Most of our films come up 
to the present,
” Burns said. “
And 
we would be remiss if we did not 
take on this most gargantuan 
of topics, and not say that this 
is rhyming so much with the 
present.
”
When asked why the film 
makes some of the connections 
it makes, Burns quoted a line 
Lipstadt delivers in the film: “If 
‘the time to stop a Holocaust is 
before it happens,
’ then it means 
you have to lay on the table the 
ingredients that go into it. Maybe 
these ingredients don’t add up to 
it … But if you’re seeing people 
assembling, in the kitchen, the 
same ingredients, you’ve got to 
say, you cannot wait until the 
meal is prepared.
” 

President Franklin 
Roosevelt in 
Washington, D.C., 
Nov. 9, 1943 

NATIONAL ARCHIVES AND RECORDS ADMINISTRATION

