All language subtitles for The.U.S.and.the.Holocaust.S01.E03.The.Homeless.The.Tempest.Tossed (1942-).1080p.x264.Blu-ray.AC3.5.1.qlx_track3_[eng]

A'

Daniel Mendelsohn: There are
already people who think that

every Jew who died in the
Holocaust died at Auschwitz,

died in a concentration camp,
died in a gas chamber.

No. There's whole chapters
of this story.

A'

Narrator: As hard as
Shmiel Jaeger had tried,

he had been
unable to get himself,

his wife Ester,
and his 4 daughters

out of occupied Poland
to America.

German troops had reached
his hometown of Bolechow

in the summer of 1941.

Within weeks, his daughter
Ruchele was murdered.

A'

That was only the beginning.

A'

Mendelsohn: There was
another roundup, which was

the biggest roundup
in my family's town,

2,500 people,
and my great-aunt Ester

and the youngest girl,
Bronia, who was 13 at the time.

They kept them,
this huge group of people,

in the square
outside of the city hall,

and there were a lot of
atrocities that took place,

mostly against children.

There were some Soviet documents
that had come to light,

including a report,
and they listed

all the children who had
been shot, and actually,

Bronia was
the first child on the list.

This was in September of 1942.

You know, they were
throwing children

off the balconies
of the city hall,

really terrible stuff.

Whoever survived the couple of
days of the roundup

were shipped to Belzec,
and that's where

my great-aunt Ester
died in the gas chambers.

A'

I was able to find out
that Shmiel was hiding

with his
second daughter, Frydka,

and that was because there was

a Catholic Polish boy,
who was in love with her.

And he was helping
to hide her in the home

of this local school teacher.

And that for
some unknown amount of time,

they were being
successfully hidden,

the father and the daughter,

in an underground dugout

until someone betrayed them.

A'

And they found them,
and they took them,

and they shot them both,

and then they killed
the school teacher, too.

A'

The oldest daughter Lorka
joined a partisan group

that operated
with some Polish partisans

in a nearby forest.

She was killed when the whole
partisan group was wiped out.

A'

Except for
my poor great-aunt Ester,

nobody was killed in a camp.

They were killed in
all different ways,

in all different manners,
and I think that already

is being erased,

the particularity
of what happened.

A'

Woman: Here's the tragedy.

Millions of people
could not be rescued.

They're in the hands
of the Germans.

They're deep into
Eastern Europe.

They're in Germany
and Austria and France,

Belgium, Netherlands.

A'

But there were people
who had gotten to Portugal.

Who had gotten to Spain.

There are people who
eventually get to North Africa.

If you had taken
more people from those places,

maybe more refugees
could have come in.

Maybe more people escaping
could have come in.

Are we talking of rescues
of hundreds of thousands?

No. But if it's your family,

it doesn't matter if it's one.

A'

Narrator: Just before the United
States entered the Second World War,

Germany had barred
the emigration of Jews

from any country
it had captured.

For them, occupied Europe
had now become a prison

to which Adolf Hitler
held the key.

A'

Americans were still in
no mood to welcome immigrants.

The anxiety about
alien subversion

that preceded Pearl Harbor

only intensified afterward.

FDR declared the West Coast
a "military zone"

and forced 120,000 persons
of Japanese descent

who lived there
into internment camps.

Most of them were citizens.

A'

The Justice Department
also interned thousands of

so-called "enemy aliens"...
German and Italian immigrants

suspected of fascist sentiments.

A'

"This war can end in two ways,"

Hitler insisted in early 1942.

"Either the extermination
of the Aryan peoples

or the disappearance of Jewry
from Europe."

A'

Within a few months, the first
reports reached the American public

that the Nazis had begun
systematically murdering

every Jewish man, woman,
and child on the continent.

A'

Jewish-Americans and their
supporters pleaded that

somehow, something be done
to stop the killing.

But President Roosevelt and his
commanders were convinced

that only by crushing the Nazis

and winning the war
as soon as possible

could the Allies put
an end to it.

A'

Lipstadt: The mantra was,

we'll rescue these people
by winning the war.

A'

The problem was,
and many people knew this,

and certainly within
government circles,

by the time the war
would be won,

very few of these people
would be alive.

[Sizzling]

But the dominant idea
in the American government

is any act of rescue will be

a diversion from the war effort.

A'

Both could've been done
at the same time.

But clearly nobody
wanted these people.

A'

It's not one of the things
that will go down

in the long annals
of good things America did.

It goes in a different book.

A'

A'

A'

Girl: Writing in a diary
is a really strange experience

for someone like me.

Not only because I've never
written anything before,

but also because
it seems to me that

later on neither I
nor anyone else

will be interested
in the musings of

a 13-year-old schoolgirl.

A'

Oh, well, it doesn't matter.

I feel like writing,
and I have an even greater need

to get all kinds of things
off my chest.

A'

Narrator:
In Nazi-occupied Amsterdam,

Otto and Edith Frank
struggled to provide

as normal a life as possible
for their family.

June 12, 1942 was their younger
daughter Anne's 13th birthday.

Among her gifts was a diary

that she was soon filling
with profiles of

her classmates at
the Jewish Lyceum

the Germans now required her
to attend...

The girls she liked
and those she didn't,

and the boys she liked

and those who seemed
to like her.

A'

For the Franks and other
Jewish families...

Including their neighbors,
the Geiringers,

refugees from Austria...

Life under the Nazis
was now anything but normal.

A'

Woman: The first few weeks,
nothing had much changed.

And, so, we thought, "Oh, well,

perhaps they don't want to do
anything in Holland."

The Dutch people were
very typical, you know,

they said, "You are,
you belong to us.

"We are going to protect you.

You don't have to
worry about anything."

But they didn't really
count on the measures

which the Germans were
going to take gradually.

And the first year,
it became a nuisance.

It interfered
with our way of life,

but it was not dangerous.

We were not allowed on public
transport, for instance.

But we all had bicycles.

But then you had to
hand in your bicycle.

And then we had to wear
the yellow star,

which means that people
walk in the street

and are recognizable as Jews.

And that started
to become really dangerous

because people just disappeared.

I didn't want to wear it.

I was stubborn.
I said,

"Well, I know I'm a Jew,

why do I have to wear a star?"

But everybody had ID cards.

And on Jewish people ID card,

it did say you were a Jew,

or sometimes there was
even a "J" stamped on it.

So, if you would have been
stopped without wearing a star,

and they asked for your papers,

you would have been
deported immediately.

A'

Girl as Anne Frank:
July 5, 1942.

A'

A few days ago, as we were

taking a stroll around
our neighborhood square,

Father began to talk about
going into hiding.

A'

He sounded so serious

that I felt scared.

"Don't you worry.
We'll take care of everything.

Just enjoy your carefree life
while you can."

A'

That was it.
Oh, may these somber words

not come true for
as long as possible.

A'

Narrator: The Frank family
was in constant danger,

and so, they had been slowly
moving their belongings

to an annex in the warehouse
at 263 Prinsengracht

in which Otto Frank's business
was located.

A few trusted Gentile employees
had agreed to help the Franks

survive in hiding
when the time came.

"We'll leave of our own accord

and not wait to be
hauled away," Frank said.

A'

But then a registered
letter arrived.

Anne's older sister
Margot... just 16...

Was to be included
in the first group of

Jewish refugees in Holland
to be sent

to work in a German labor camp.

The Franks went into hiding
the next morning.

Since Jews were now forbidden to

ride on streetcars
or own bicycles,

they were forced to carry their
remaining household items

through the streets.

[Rain falling, thunder]

Girl as Anne Frank:
So, there we were,

walking in the pouring rain,

each of us with
a satchel and a shopping bag

filled to the brim with the most
varied assortments of items.

The people on their way
to work at that early hour

gave us sympathetic looks;

you could tell by their faces
they were sorry

they couldn't offer us
some kind of transport;

the conspicuous yellow star
spoke for itself.

[Thunder]

Narrator: The two floors
that Anne would call

their "Secret Annex"
were accessible only by

a single door
blocked by a bookcase

and cramped even before
they were joined by

4 more Jews in need
of a hiding place.

A'

The same week
the Franks disappeared,

their friends
the Geiringers did, too...

And for the same reason.

Eva Geiringer's
older brother Heinz,

like Margot Frank,
had been called up

for what the Nazis called
"labor service."

A'

Geiringer: Heinz was 16,

and my father called us
together one evening,

and he said,

"We are not going to send Heinz.

It's too dangerous."

A'

Narrator: Members of the Dutch
Resistance had provided them

with false papers
and places to hide.

But the constant dread
of raids by the Gestapo

forced the Geiringers
to temporarily split up.

Eva was to hide with her mother,

Heinz with their father.

A'

Geiringer: I started to cry.
I didn't want to be separated

'cause I was very much attached
to my brother and father.

And my father explained, "If
we're in two different places,

"the chance that two of us
will survive is bigger.

So, survive."
So, that was really,

you know, the first time
that I really realized

it's a matter of life and death.

A'

And that's quite scary

when you are 13 years old.

I said, "What do you mean?
Will we be killed?"

[Soldiers marching]

About once a week, in the night,
there was a knock on the door

and people had to open up
and let them search their homes.

A story had been
going around that

in another house,
the beds were still warm.

They felt the beds.

So, they demolished
the whole apartment

till they found the people.

And, of course, hosts were
taken away as well.

So, of course, when you
hear stories like that,

people said, "You know, we can't
take this tension any longer.

You have to move."
So, we moved about 7 times,

my mother and me,
to different places.

My mother, she used to be
in Austria as a lamb,

but suddenly, she became like a
tiger, protecting her children.

My father, when we went
into hiding, he said,

"Don't worry.
It won't be long.

By Christmas,
the war will be finished,"

end of '42.
But, of course, it wasn't.

Girl as Anne Frank: It's the
silence that makes me so nervous

during the evenings and nights,

and I'd give anything to have

one of our helpers sleep here.

I'm terrified our
hiding place will be discovered

and that we'll be shot.

That, of course, is
a fairly dismal prospect.

A'

Lipstadt: The "Chicago Tribune"
in late June of '42

reports the mass killing
of Jews.

A'

Like many other newspapers,
the "Tribune"

puts it on page 6 or 7
in a tiny, little article.

You either missed it,
or if you saw it,

you would say the editors
don't think this is true.

If they thought this was true,

this would be
on the front pages.

Narrator: Some papers did put
the story on the front page,

including the
"Pittsburgh Courier,"

an African American
newspaper, which said,

"the Nazis could teach even
southern whites a few lessons."

A'

3 years after their

aborted voyage to Cuba

aboard the "St. Louis,"

Sol Messinger and his parents

finally made it
to America in June of 1942,

aboard the "Serpa Pinto,"
the same ship

that had brought Susie and Joe
Hilsenrath 10 months earlier.

A'

Messinger: Our sponsor was
a man in Buffalo

who had a furniture store.

And he was
a relative of a relative

whom we knew in Berlin.

He was the one who sponsored us.

It was great to be
in the United States,

not to be afraid of,
you know, policemen.

To be with relatives
whom I never knew,

but who obviously loved us.

And you could feel or see
how people

were more or less relaxed,
you know,

they weren't worried about being

picked up by the police
and so on.

It just was amazing.

Narrator: As he settled into
life in Buffalo,

Sol worried about Leon Silber,

a friend he had made
aboard the "St. Louis"

whose family had fled
to the same village

he had escaped to
in the south of France.

Messinger: 6 weeks
after we had left,

his parents must have heard that

something was about to happen.

They went to the teacher
and they asked her

to hide Leon and she did.

And the next day,
the police came

and they took the parents away.

Then the second day that
he was hidden in the school,

he decided he wanted
to join his parents.

He left the school
and went to the police

and said who he was,

and he wanted to join
his parents.

And he did.
He was killed in Auschwitz.

[Sigh]

He was one of
one and a half million kids

who were killed by the Germans.

Including all my cousins.

Narrator: On July 29, 1942...

A little over 3 weeks after

the Frank and Geiringer families
went into hiding in Amsterdam...

A well-connected German
businessman named Eduard Schulte

boarded a train for Zurich
in neutral Switzerland.

He had told his staff
he would be away on business.

But he had another,
secret goal in mind.

From the first,
Schulte had seen the Nazis

as "a band of criminals;"

their war would end
only in disaster for Germany,

and he had already made this
dangerous trip several times

to speak with Polish
and Swiss agents

about likely
German troop movements.

Now he had learned from
an employee with Nazi contacts

that 12 days earlier,
Heinrich Himmler had made

a formal visit
to the concentration camp

in occupied Poland
now called Auschwitz-Birkenau.

Himmler had spent
two days there,

had watched the first trainload

of 2,000 Jews
from Holland arrive,

observed the selection of
those deemed fit for labor,

and looked on impassively
as 447 people

deemed unfit were
immediately put to death,

using a new method of which
Rudolf Hoess, the commandant,

was especially proud.

Instead of relying on
carbon monoxide produced by

internal combustion engines
that frequently broke down,

the SS at Auschwitz
had begun using

commercially available
pellets of Zyklon,

a powerful vaporizing
cyanide-based pesticide

that reduced the cost of killing

to roughly one U.S. penny
per victim.

The same method would be
adopted at Majdanek,

one of the 6 killing centers
in occupied Poland.

Lipstadt: Gas chambers serve one
purpose and one purpose only:

to murder as many people
as you can

as efficiently as you can.

A'

Narrator: Himmler was
so impressed

he promoted Hoess
to Lieutenant Colonel

and urged him to enlarge
the camp as fast as he could.

The "program of extermination
will continue," he said,

"and will be accelerated
every month."

[Train's horn blows]

Schulte was determined to
get the explosive information

to Jewish leaders in Britain
and the United States,

hoping that they could
persuade their governments

to do something before
it was too late.

In Zurich,
Schulte told what he knew

to a Jewish banker friend
who eventually

passed his story on to
a 30-year-old representative

of the World Jewish Congress,

a refugee named Gerhart Riegner.

Woman: Riegner hears
third-hand that the Nazis

have a plan to gather
the Jews together

in the East and murder them
before the end of the year.

He obsesses over this.
This keeps him up at night.

And, finally,
on August 8th, 1942,

he decides that he is going
to spread this to the world.

He is going to get the Allies
to do something about this.

So, he goes to
the U.S. Consulate in Geneva

and explains what he's learned
to the Vice Consul there.

Narrator: Riegner was "a serious
and balanced individual,"

the vice consul wrote
in his memorandum.

But his boss was dismissive
and added a covering note

before sending it on
to Washington,

warning that Riegner's story had

all the "earmarks of
a war rumor."

That the Nazis persecuted
the Jews was undeniable,

but the notion
that the Nazis were now

preparing to kill them all
was simply impossible for

many in the State Department
to believe.

A'

Erbelding: State Department
officials decide that

this is not good information,

and this is crucial, they say,

"Even if this were true, there's

nothing that we could
do about it."

They believe that they are doing

all they canto assist the Jews

and that any sort of
rally or petition or protest

asking them to do more would be

diverting resources from
the war effort.

Many of these people were also

racist and antisemitic
and nativist.

And, so, you have to wonder
whether some of their concern,

some of their annoyances
have to do with the fact

that they're being asked
to help Jews.

Narrator: But Riegner
had also told his story

to a British consular official,

who passed it on to a Jewish
member of Parliament,

who passed it
on to Stephen Wise,

the best-known rabbi
in the United States.

A'

Wise took it to
Under Secretary of State

Sumner Welles,

who asked him to say nothing

until he could find out

how much truth there was in it.

Wise was nearing 70,

exhausted from overwork
and in declining health.

He told a friend that these were

the unhappiest days of his life.

They have "left me
without sleep," he wrote,

and "I am almost demented
over my people's grief."

Over the next two months,
reports from the Vatican,

the Red Cross, and from other
witnesses supplied by Riegner

suggested that the horror
he described was real.

Welles summoned Wise
back to Washington again

and gravely told him
that the evidence

justified his "worst fears."

A'

Wise called
the Associated Press.

There could be no doubt now.

Two million Jews
were already dead,

he told reporters, which
would eventually turn out

to have been
a gross underestimate...

4 million had already
been killed...

And the Nazis intended
to go on killing Jews

as long as there were
Jews to kill.

A'

The story finally made
the front page

of the "New York
Herald-Tribune,"

where it appeared
with another story,

credited to the Polish
government-in-exile in London,

which described Jews
from the Warsaw Ghetto

being loaded into freight cars
and transported

to Treblinka, Belzec,
and Sobibor,

where, it said, they were
being "mass-murdered."

A'

Erbelding: Riegner's message,
when it finally reaches

the American people
in November, 1942,

is the first information
that the American people

really have verified that
the Nazis have a plan

to murder all of
the Jews of Europe.

A'

Narrator: The news was widely
circulated by the Associated Press,

though its impact
was lessened by reports

about the fighting
in North Africa,

where American troops
had just landed,

and from Stalingrad,
where the Soviets

had finally broken
the German siege.

A'

CBS Radio correspondent
Edward R. Murrow,

perhaps the country's
most respected reporter,

was unsparing in his broadcast.

"What is happening is this,"
he said.

"Millions of human beings,
most of them Jews,

"are being gathered up
with ruthless efficiency

and murdered."

A'

Jewish organizations worldwide
declared December 2, 1942

a "Day of Mourning."

On December 8th, Stephen Wise
and 3 other Jewish leaders

met with the president.

"Unless action
is taken immediately,

the Jews of Europe are doomed,"
they told him.

Roosevelt said he was aware
of the Nazi "horrors"

but had no remedy at hand.

"We are dealing with
an insane man," he said.

"Hitler and the group that
surrounds him are psychopathic.

That is why we cannot act
toward them by normal means."

Roosevelt: The first
is freedom of speech...

Narrator: Even before the
United States entered the war,

Roosevelt had made one of
his over-arching goals

the "freedom of every person

"to worship God in his own way,

everywhere in the world."

Roosevelt: in the world.

Narrator: And he had repeatedly

denounced Nazi crimes

and promised that those
who committed them

would be punished
once victory was won.

But he had always been
careful to maintain

that Hitler's victims
included all sorts of people,

not specifically Jews.

Erbelding: The War Department
does not want American soldiers

to even know very much
about the persecution of Jews

because they feel like
the soldiers won't fight hard

if they think that
they are secretly being sent

to save the Jews.

And Jewish organizations are
obviously very sensitive to this.

They don't want to have
Americans perceive this

as a war for the Jews.

[Explosion]

Narrator: Still, 9 days after
Roosevelt met with Rabbi Wise,

the United States joined in
an Allied declaration

issued simultaneously in
Washington, London, and Moscow.

The statement condemned "in
the strongest possible terms

this bestial policy of
cold-blooded extermination,"

and reaffirmed the Allies'
"solemn resolution to ensure

"that those responsible
for these crimes

"shall not escape retribution,

and to press on with necessary
practical measures to this end."

But no specific practical
measures were recommended

other than victory
on the battlefield.

Man on newsreel: Through town
after Tunisian town,

the 8th army triumphantly marches,
pushing the retreating...

Man: What does
that declaration say?

It says, "We're going to
punish the perpetrators.

Full punishment
of the perpetrators."

We do rally, as a nation,
to defeat fascism.

We just don't rally,
as a nation,

to rescue the victims
of fascism.

Man on newsreel:
And now Allied commanders look

eagerly across the Mediterranean

to the shores of
Hitler's fortress Europe.

A'

Man: Three-quarters of the victims
of the Holocaust are dead

before any American soldier
is in continental Europe.

90% of the victims
of the Holocaust

die in the northeast quadrant
of the European continent:

Poland, Lithuania, and today,
Belarus, Ukraine,

but then the Soviet Union.

They are all out of reach of

American aircraft
in Great Britain.

There is no way
American aircraft

could have flown to
any of those death camps

and impeded the killing process

while it was at its most intense

in 1942 and in January of 1943.

A'

I think the only thing
they could have done

was to publicize
what was happening more

and to organize
behind the scenes resistance.

But they were always inhibited
about this because remember,

Nazi propaganda was that
Roosevelt and Churchill

were the tools of the Jews.

They were fighting the war
for the Jews.

And the Nazis used this
propaganda to great effect.

And anything the Allies did
that seemed to be

explicitly defending Jews
ran the risk of

playing into the hands
of that propaganda.

A'

Narrator: Despite
the front-page coverage,

despite the Allies' declaration,

a Gallup poll taken
early in January, 1943

showed that fewer than
half of its respondents

could bring themselves
to believe that the Nazis

could possibly have killed
as many as

two million Jews,
let alone 4 million.

A'

Woman: Druja, Poland,
Tuesday, 4 A.M., June 16, 1942.

A'

My dear ones! I am writing
this letter before my death,

but I don't know the exact day
that I and all my relatives

will be killed,
just because we are Jews.

A'

We are all hiding in one dugout.

My hand trembles
and it's hard for me

to finish writing.

A'

Farewell. In the name
of everybody:

Father, Mother, Sima, Sonia,

Zusia, Rasia, Yehezkel.

And in the name of Zeldaleh
the toddler,

who doesn't understand
anything yet.

Fanya Barbakow.

Man on newsreel: The Volga,
where the great counteroffensive

by the Soviet army is
commanded by General Zhukov.

He directs the strategy of
Russian victories.

On the Stalingrad front, we see
the kind of fighting tactics

that first stopped the Germans

and now is hurling them back,

trapping huge numbers of them.

Narrator: In early 1943,
the tide of battle

turned against the Nazis.

At Stalingrad, the Soviets,

armed and supplied
with American trucks

and tanks and aircraft,

had destroyed the entire
German 6th Army.

In North Africa,
British forces had captured

250,000 German
and Italian prisoners...

And saved the lives of
hundreds of thousands of Jews

who had lived or
sought sanctuary there.

A'

Meanwhile, the pace of the Nazi
slaughter of Jews slowed,

largely because so few
survived to be killed.

Those who did survive
were needed for slave labor

or lived mostly in
Romania and Hungary,

countries that were allied with

but not controlled by the Nazis.

A'

In America, agitation for action
against the killing accelerated.

Rabbi Wise and the heads
of several other

well-known
Jewish organizations continued

to offer advice to
the Roosevelt administration,

but that advice
had been discussed

and either rejected
or ignored before.

And they were soon faced
with a rival group

more militant than theirs.

Its name kept changing but its
philosophy remained the same.

Its founder was Peter Bergson,

a recent arrival from Palestine

and a member of the “gun,

a Zionist paramilitary group,

who would dismiss Rabbi Wise
and most of his Jewish allies

as timorous "Americans
of Hebrew descent,"

not authentic members
of "the Hebrew Nation."

A'

Rescue now became
Bergson's cause.

With help from
the screenwriter Ben Hecht,

he produced an avalanche of
newspaper advertisements

charging the administration
with ignoring

the plight of Europe's Jews.

[Men chanting Mourner's Kaddish]

Narrator: On March 9, 1943, he
filled Madison Square Garden twice

with an elaborate pageant
called "We Will Never Die!"

Told largely from
the viewpoint of the dead,

it featured 200 rabbis and
cantors and an all-star cast

that included
Edward G. Robinson,

John Garfield, and Paul Muni.

And this is
not a Jewish problem.

It is a problem
that belongs to humanity,

and it is a challenge
to the soul of man.

Narrator: The show would go on
to Boston, Philadelphia,

Washington, Chicago,
and the Hollywood Bowl.

Its composer, Kurt Weill,

himself a refugee
from the Nazis,

was pleased by
the big crowds it drew

but felt the pageant
didn't achieve much.

"All we have done
is make a lot of Jews cry,"

he said, "which is not
a unique accomplishment."

But it did impress
the First Lady

and scores of congressmen.

[Applause]

While the show
was still touring,

word came that
some of the 70,000 Jews

still alive in the Warsaw Ghetto

had risen up against the Nazis

rather than be deported
to Treblinka.

A'

They had already buried
artwork, diaries, poetry,

and final notes in
steel milk cans in the ground.

A'

One teenager wrote
that he hoped to

"alert the world to what
happened in the 20th century.

May history attest for us."

A'

The uprising was the largest
Jewish rebellion of the war.

It would take the Germans
more than a month to crush it,

level the ghetto, and send
the survivors to their deaths.

A'

Woman: Freda Kirchwey,
"The Nation" Magazine.

In this country, you and I
and the President

and the Congress
and the State Department

are accessories to the crime
and share Hitler's guilt.

A'

If we had behaved like
humane and generous people

instead of complacent,
cowardly, guilty ones,

the Jews lying today
in the earth of Poland

and Hitler's other
crowded graveyards

would be alive and safe.

And other millions yet to die
would have found sanctuary.

We had it in our power
to rescue this doomed people

and we did not lift a hand
to do it...

A'

Or perhaps it would be fairer
to say that

we lifted just one
cautious hand,

encased in a tight-fitting
glove of quotas and visas

and affidavits and a thick
layer of prejudice.

A'

[Telegraph key tapping]

Narrator: Gerhart Riegner...
Whose report from Switzerland

had alerted America
to the ongoing

Nazi policy of extermination...

Sent Washington
another desperate message.

Tens of thousands of Jews
deported by the Nazis

were now trapped
in northern Romania

without warm clothing.

They had just endured
another harsh winter.

With help from
the International Red Cross,

Riegner thought he could
keep them alive.

He also believed he
could help Jewish children

still hiding in France
escape across

the Swiss and Spanish borders.

Erbelding: Riegner had
many connections with

underground organizations
and partisan organizations

in these different countries.

And so, his idea was
if he could get the money,

he could funnel
that money into France,

into Romania, to people who
could buy clothing and food,

or who could buy fake documents,

or pay off
border guards to allow

children to escape
over the border.

Narrator: Riegnefls organization,
the World Jewish Congress,

could supply the money,

but Riegner would need
a special license

from the Treasury Department,
which routinely prohibited

all "financial or
commercial arrangements

within enemy territory."

On June 23, 1943,
Wagner's request

reached the desk
of 34-year-old John Pehle,

who ran the Foreign Funds
Control department at Treasury.

Pehle: The State Department
was quite negative.

It worried about
the possibility of funds

falling in the hands
of the Germans.

However, we went back
and decided that

we could put safeguards
in the procedures,

so that no foreign exchange
would come to the Germans.

Narrator: Pehle granted
the license and sent it along

to the State Department for
transmission to Switzerland,

assuming it would reach
Riegner quickly.

But the staff of
Assistant Secretary of State

Breckinridge Long, who had
been adamantly opposed

to helping Jewish refugees
from the beginning,

quietly shelved it.

A'

By the beginning
of September 1943,

when American and British troops
landed in Italy

and finally gained their
first foothold in Europe,

John Pehle insisted that
the United States government

should take an active role
in trying to rescue

Europe's surviving Jews...

And he would do
everything he could to help.

A'

Erbelding: John Pehle was the
child of a German immigrant;

his father had come when
he was a teenager from Germany,

and his mother was the child
of Swedish immigrants.

He grew up in Omaha.

He went to college there

and then ended up at Yale.

But came from a family that did
not always have a lot of money

and was an immigrant family.

A'

And, so, I think that made him

a little more sympathetic

to the plight of people who

did not come
from wealth or privilege.

A'

Pehle also thinks that
the United States

is a force of good
for the world.

And a force of good for mankind.

A'

And that comes through

a lot of his decisions.

A'

The United States
cannot be isolationist,

that we are part of
a global community

and that we need
to treat everyone

as a fellow citizen
of the world.

Narrator: On July 28, 1943,

the ambassador of the Polish
government-in-exile

had brought a man
named Jan Karski

to the White House for a meeting
with President Roosevelt.

Karski was a Catholic courier
for the Polish underground

who had survived
Gestapo torture,

managed to smuggle himself
in and out of

the Warsaw Ghetto
and a transit camp

that exported Jews to
the killing center at Belzec.

Roosevelt questioned him
closely about

the situation
in Nazi-occupied Poland.

Narrator: Before he left,
Karski asked FDR

what message he had
for the Polish people.

"You will tell them that we will
win this war," Roosevelt said.

"You will tell them that
the guilty will be punished.

"Justice and freedom
will prevail.

"You will tell your
nation that they have

a friend in this house."

A'

FDR also tells Karski

to meet with Felix Frankfurter,

who's on the Supreme Court
at the time.

Frankfurter is Jewish.
Karski tells Frankfurter

what he's seen in Warsaw and
other parts of Occupied Poland.

A'

Lipstadt: The Soviets bring a
group of reporters to Babi Yar,

where there's been one of the
early mass killings of Jews.

And they're walked through
by two people

who the Soviets say are
survivors of this massacre.

And they walk them
through the fields

where these killings
have taken place,

and there are bits of bones
and broken eyeglasses and teeth

and all sorts of things that...
That indicate what has happened.

A'

There were American reporters
who were present

in this tour of Babi Yar,

and one of them wrote a report

that was so
riddled with doubts...

A'

So riddled with questions.

A'

If I were a person reading that

and I harbored the least bit
of skepticism

about the veracity
of what was going on,

I could dismiss this as war
propaganda, as atrocity stories.

And atrocity stories are
a shorthand for fake news.

I'm sitting at home in Chicago,
Des Moines, St. Louis, New York,

wherever it might be, and I'm
reading those kind of reports,

I'm saying, "This can't be true.

This can't be true."

A'

Narrator:
In early October 1943,

Heinrich Himmler addressed
a meeting of his SS commanders.

By then, more than 4,500,000
Jews had been murdered.

[Himmler speaking German]

Narrator: Himmler was doing
all he could

to keep that chapter
from being written.

He ordered his men
to dismantle and disguise

the sites of the
killing centers at Sobibor,

Belzec, and Treblinka,

where more than one and a half
million human beings

had been killed,
and he insisted that

prisoners be forced
to dig up the dead,

burn their corpses, and grind
their bones to powder.

Then he had the prisoners who'd
done the ghastly work shot

so that no one would ever tell
what they had seen or done.

Meanwhile, on the Eastern Front,

special "Exhumation Squads"
were now retreating

ahead of the advancing Red Army,

seeing to it
that the mass graves

of the people
whom the Einsatzgruppen

and their accomplices
had murdered

back in 1941 and 1942

were emptied as well.

But in Nazi-occupied Poland,
two killing centers

continued their
daily, deadly work...

Majdanek
and Auschwitz-Birkenau...

While one that had been closed,

Chelmno, took it up again.

Mendelsohn: Interviewing
survivors who could give

firsthand accounts, you know,

people who were young adults
when this happened.

You know, you hear things that,

you... you think
you've heard it all,

and you haven't heard it all.

Trust me.
There are... there's no bottom,

as one of my survivors said,

to the things that people
will do to one another.

The structures of what we
think of as our civilized lives,

they fall apart very easily.

Surprisingly easily.

A'

Woman: I left behind me a few
photos of my nearest ones

in the hope that somebody
would find them

while digging and searching
in the earth,

and that this person would be
so kind as to transmit them

to one of my relatives or
friends in America or Palestine,

if there will still be
any of them left.

A'

My name is Frieda Niselevitch,
born in Vaiguva.

A'

A'

Narrator: Two days after
Himmler's secret speech

and 3 days before '(om Nppur,

the Jewish Day of Atonement,

Peter Bergson arranged for
400 mostly orthodox rabbis

to march to the Capitol.

For fear of
encouraging antisemitism,

FDR's chief speech writer
Sam Rosenman

and most of the handful of
Jewish members of Congress

had opposed their coming.

The rabbis sang
the "Star-Spangled Banner,"

recited the Kaddish,
the Jewish prayer for the dead,

and met with Vice
President Henry A. Wallace.

A'

Man: We pray an appeal
to the Lord, blessed be he,

that our most gracious President
Franklin Delano Roosevelt

consider and recognize this
momentous hour of history

and the responsibility
which the Divine Presence

has laid upon him,
that he may save

the remnant of the people
of the Book,

the people of Israel.

And we pray that
the Lord may aid us

to gain complete
and speedy victory

on all fronts
against our enemies

and that we may be blessed
with everlasting peace.

A'

Narrator: The president
did not see the rabbis.

But they had
an impact nonetheless.

Several senators and congressmen
introduced a resolution

calling for a new commission
tasked with somehow

saving "the surviving
Jewish people of Europe."

Assistant Secretary of State
Breckinridge Long

testified against it for
4 hours behind closed doors.

There was no need for
such a commission, he said,

since the State Department
had welcomed

580,000 "refugees" to America
since 1933.

It was not true.
The real refugee number

was one-third of that.

Lipstadt: Breckinridge Long,
in his testimony,

clearly misrepresents,
some would say lies,

but the best you can say is it's

a total misrepresentation
of America's record.

He was crazed about preventing

any refugees from coming here.

Narrator: The resolution
stalled in the House.

And when Long's testimony
became public

a couple of weeks later,

Brooklyn Congressman
Emanuel Celler

called for his
immediate resignation.

A'

Man as Celler: The tempest-tossed
get little comfort

from men like Breckinridge Long.

If men of
his temperament and philosophy

continue in control of
immigration administration,

we may as well
take down that plaque

from the Statue of
Liberty and black out

the "lamp beside
the golden door."

A'

Narrator: At the end of 1943,

Gerhart Riegner
was still waiting for

the all-important
license he needed

to help Jews
in Romania and France,

which John Pehle had approved
5 months earlier.

Breckinridge Long and his
staff continued to stall,

raising every possible
potential barrier,

even though
the president himself

was on record favoring it.

Pehle: The people who were
handling visa matters,

and the policy of
the State Department,

seemed to be such
that instead of

facilitating the entry
of refugees,

obstructions were thrown
in the way.

It's as simple as that.

Narrator: Treasury Secretary
Henry Morgenthau, Jr.

Was the president's close
friend and upstate neighbor,

as well as the only
Jewish member of his cabinet.

All through the Hitler years,
he had been careful

never to seem to be seeking

special treatment for
his fellow Jews.

But this was too much.

He confronted Long and the
Secretary of State Cordell Hull.

The license was finally issued,

but in the course
of investigating

the reason
for the lengthy delay,

Morgenthau's staff discovered
that the State Department

had deliberately
suppressed Riegner's

reports from Switzerland about
the extermination of the Jews.

A'

Pehle: People in the State
Department were saying,

"Don't send any more
messages over

about what's happening
to the Jews."

Erbelding: The State Department
has been

deliberately obstructionist,

they have been
delaying relief money

that could go to
Jews in occupied Europe,

and lying about it, so that
people would stop rallying,

they'd stop protesting,
and they'd stop

asking the government
to do more.

A'

Narrator: Morgenthau's outraged
aides wrote an internal report

setting forth the evidence of
the State Department's deceit.

A'

Man: It appears that
certain responsible officials

of this government
were so fearful that

this government might act
to save the Jews of Europe

if the gruesome facts
relating to Hitler's plans

to exterminate them
became known,

that they attempted
to suppress the facts.

A'

We leave it for your
judgment whether this action

made such officials the accomplices
of Hitler in this program

and whether or not
these officials are not

war criminals in every
sense of the term.

A'

Narrator: Treasury staff
titled the document

"Report to the Secretary
on the Acquiescence

of this Government in
the Murder of the Jews"...

A'

But Morgenthau, who understood

his boss better than most,

toned down
the accusatory rhetoric

and renamed it simply

"Personal Report
to the President."

A'

M0rgenthau's own father,
who had been the ambassador

to what was then
the Ottoman Empire

between 1915 and 1916,

had tried unsuccessfully
to persuade

President Woodrow Wilson

to intervene on behalf
of hundreds of thousands of

Armenian civilians
who were being

systematically massacred
by Ottoman troops.

A'

He had called it "race murder."

A'

Erbelding: Henry, Jr.,
went to Turkey,

went to Constantinople,
now Istanbul,

to see his father as all of
these events were unfolding.

He points to that
directly to Roosevelt.

He says, "You remember
what my father saw.

"You remember what
I saw in Armenia.

We can't let this
happen again."

To be
the Secretary of the Treasury

and to be in a position
to actually point his friend

to the past and to say,

"We have the chance to
do it better this time."

A'

Narrator: After a meeting with

Morgenthau and Pehle,

Roosevelt issued an executive
order on January 22nd, 1944,

establishing the War
Refugee Board...

The only government agency
created by any of the Allies

specifically to do what it could

for the Jews still under
Nazi threat.

A'

Treasury was in charge

and John Pehle
was made director,

determined to perform
what he called

"a simple life-saving job."

A'

Pehle: The most important thing

about the War Refugee Board

was that it dramatically changed

the policy of
the United States, overnight.

A'

Erbelding: 5 million Jews have
already been killed in Europe.

But there are millions
who are still there,

who are in hiding,
who are in concentration camps,

who are still, they think,
in relative safety,

who could get out, could be
rescued, could cross borders,

could be kept alive
long enough to be liberated.

A'

Narrator: The work undertaken
by the Board's

representatives in Europe

was improvisational
and clandestine.

Official U.S. policy
forbade paying bribes.

Pehle's men
paid little attention.

A'

Erbelding: The first thing
that the War Refugee Board

does once it's created is to

streamline the license process,

meaning humanitarian
aid organizations

can send money into Europe
much easier.

By the end of the war,
the War Refugee Board

has approved about $11 million
in humanitarian aid

to go into Nazi Europe.

That money was used to buy guns
for the underground;

it was used to pay off
border guards.

A'

The plight of Jews varied,

depending on where you were
in Europe.

If you were in France,
you might be able to escape

to the border in Spain
or Switzerland.

And, so, the United States
puts pressure on

border guards in Spain
and Switzerland.

A'

If you were
in Romania or Bulgaria,

you might be able
to board a ship

and make it to Turkey, and then
by train to Palestine.

So, the War Refugee Board
works with governments

to make that process easier.

A'

And if you're in Poland,
you may need

food packages or documents

that would allow you to hide,

so, the War Refugee Board
tries to help with that.

And, so, they had a whole
host of different plans

that had real impact
on the lives of the people

who managed to survive.

A'

Narrator: Much of the Board's
most effective work

was focused on Hungary,
which in early 1944

was still home
to some 800,000 Jews,

the largest remaining
population in Europe.

Its Regent,
Admiral Miklos Horthy,

had been a Nazi ally since 1941,

when his troops joined
the German invasion

of the Soviet Union.

[Gunfire, explosions]

But most of the Hungarian army

had been destroyed
at Stalingrad.

Because Nazi defeat
now seemed inevitable,

Horthy began
secretly exploring whether

a separate peace with
the Allies might be possible.

When Hitler got word of it,

he sent in troops
to occupy the country

and insisted that
Horthy cooperate in

ridding Hungary of
its Jewish population.

A'

Between May and July 1944,
some 440,000 Hungarian Jews

would be rounded up
and deported.

A'

338,000 of them were killed
immediately at Auschwitz...

So many that the 4 crematoria
were not enough

and fire pits had to be dug
and constantly tended

to dispose of all the corpses.

A'

Members of the Polish
underground managed to smuggle

a camera into Auschwitz
so that 5 courageous inmates

could document
what was happening to

the Hungarians
and other prisoners.

[Camera's shutter clicks]
While 4 men kept watch,

a fifth snapped 4 pictures
from the hip,

not daring to take the time to focus.
[Camera's shutter clicks]

The film was smuggled
out of the camp

inside a tube of toothpaste.
[Camera's shutter clicks]

They remain the only photographs

of the killing process
at Auschwitz.

[Camera's shutter clicks] ♪

Meanwhile, in Hungary,
the War Refugee Board

helped orchestrate a massive
international series of

threats and condemnations
aimed at persuading Horthy

to stop cooperating
in the killing.

Then, on July 2nd, U.S. bombers

hit oil refineries on
the outskirts of Budapest

and dropped leaflets on the city

promising punishment
for perpetrators.

5 days later, Horthy called
a halt to the deportations.

Hungary's provinces had been
emptied of Jews,

but some 230,000 still
survived in Budapest itself,

subject to persecution,
fearful that

the transports
might resume at any time.

To protect them... and to
glean firsthand accounts

of what was happening
in Hungary...

The War Refugee Board
called upon neutral nations,

including Switzerland,
Portugal, and Sweden,

to expand their diplomatic
presence in the country.

Their diplomats in Budapest
began issuing so-called

"protective documents"
to desperate Jews...

Sheets of paper
emblazoned with coats of arms

and peppered with
official-looking stamps,

intended to persuade Hungarian
police and German officials

that the bearer was under
international protection.

Man: It's no coincidence
that the War Refugee Board

ends up making
a difference in Hungary

because that's a,
that's a country

which is a sovereign state,
which still has diplomats,

where a diplomat can be sent in,

with briefcases full of money,

and issue documents
and make a difference.

A'

Narrator: On July 9th, a
31-year-old Swedish businessman

named Raoul Wallenberg
arrived in Budapest

to accelerate that process.

Appointed a Swedish attache

but recruited
and partially financed

by the War Refugee Board,

he saw his mission
as carrying out

an "American program."

He established hospitals,
nurseries, and a soup kitchen,

issued thousands of
protective papers,

and rented 32 "safe-houses"

for those who carried them.

A'

Diplomats from other
neutral countries

also participated in
rescue operations,

most notably the Swiss
vice-consul Carl Lutz.

A'

Soon, some 37,000 Jews
were living under

Swedish and Swiss protection

in what was called
the "international ghetto."

A'

When Hitler replaced
the Horthy government

with more ardent fascists,

who resumed
the deportation of Jews,

Wallenberg intervened
as often as he could

to win the release of those with

protective or forged papers.

A'

Of the nearly 150,000
Jews in Budapest

who would survive the war,

some 120,000 are thought to have

owed their lives
to Raoul Wallenberg

and his fellow diplomats
from neutral nations.

A'

It is impossible to tally

how many tens of thousands
of lives

the War Refugee Board saved,

directly or indirectly.

A'

Erbelding: These were Americans

who were
really trying to do good.

A'

And we have
forgotten them, in part,

because we have this longer
narrative and trajectory

in our memory of the United
States not doing enough,

being indifferent,
being deceitful,

not trying to save people.

There is a group of people
in the U.S. government

who were trying and who saved
tens of thousands of lives

by the end of World War ll.

A'

That is not insignificant.

A'

[Static]

Man on radio: This is
the BBC Home service.

Communique number one, issued by

supreme headquarters
allied expeditionary force.

[Static]

Dwight D. Eisenhower:
People of western Europe,

a landing was made this morning

on the coast of France
by troops of

the allied expeditionary force.

This landing is part of the
concerted United Nations plan

for the liberation of Europe...

made in conjunction with
our great Russian allies.

I have this message
for all of you.

[Gunfire]

Although the initial assault
may not have been

made in your own country,

the hour of your liberation
is approaching.

Man: This concludes
the broadcast from

supreme headquarters allied...

Girl as Anne Frank:
Tuesday, 6 June, 1944.

"This is D-Day,"
the BBC announced at 12.

"This is the day."
The invasion has begun!

A'

The best part about
the invasion is that

I have the feeling that
friends are on their way.

Those awful Germans have
oppressed and threatened us

for so long that the thought
of friends and salvation

means everything to us!

Narrator: Within 24 hours,
the Allies had torn

a 45-mile gap in Hitler's
Atlantic Wall in Normandy.

A'

More than 150,000 men were
already ashore in France,

and more men and more equipment
and supplies

were coming ashore every day.

Stern: And then I was
suddenly on French soil.

And a voice from a few hundred
yards away,

one of my buddies, was shouting,

"Stern, get the hell over here.

"We've got too many prisoners

and we've got to have you."

Narrator: Guy Stern, now
a staff sergeant,

came ashore on
D-Day plus three.

He was part of a special Army
intelligence unit

that included many Jewish
refugees trained

to interrogate enemy soldiers as
they surrendered.

Stern: My own
personal incentive was

if I help shorten the war,

let's say by an hour,
I have a chance.

If my family somehow escaped

the same perils as the others,

I would be there still
in the nick of time

to be their savior.

[Rumbling]

Narrator: Over the next
3 months,

nearly 50,000 Americans

would die in the struggle
to liberate

western Europe from the Nazis.

[Explosion]

As the Allies fought
their way inland,

Guy Stern and his comrades

would cross-examine hundreds
of prisoners,

gleaning vital information
about troop movements

and the location of
industrial targets.

And they interrogated
a Nazi doctor

who proudly boasted that he had
overseen the killing

of thousands of disabled people

Hitler had called
"unworthy of life."

Meanwhile, the Red Army,

which had suffered millions
of casualties,

was moving westward into Poland.

[Film reel clicking]

As it did, it came upon
the death camp at Majdanek,

where 18,000 Jews had been
murdered in a single day in 1943

in an operation the SS called
the "Harvest Festival."

The spectacle of hundreds of
starving prisoners of war

the Germans had abandoned
and the stark evidence

of the industrial scope of
the Nazi slaughter

offered Allied correspondents

their first look
at a German killing center.

Lipstadt: When
Majdanek is liberated,

American reporters are there,

and they send back reports that
are devoid of the doubts

that were shown when Babi Yar

was liberated a few months
earlier.

Americans are beginning to get
the picture.

Man: I am now prepared to
believe any story

of German atrocities,

no matter how savage, cruel,
and depraved.

William H. Lawrence.

A'

Man on newsreel: 20,000
wounded arriving in New York.

And there it is,
the good old USA...

Narrator: On August 3, 1944,
a 29-ship Navy convoy

steamed into New York harbor.

The troop transport
"Henry Gibbins"

carried wounded
soldiers and sailors,

but also aboard were
982 civilian refugees

belonging to 18 countries,

chosen from among
thousands of refugees

who had managed to reach
Allied territory in Italy.

Their destination was
Fort Ontario, New York.

Ray Morgan: Under the supervision
of the War Relocation Authority,

this train is bearing
982 refugees

from Hitler's total war.

Admitted to the United States...

Narrator: The rationale for
their arrival had originated

with John Pehle and the War
Refugee Board,

who proposed a trial program

going outside the quota system

to bring refugees to camps
in the U.S.

until the war was over and they
could return home.

A'

The White House commissioned
a Gallup Poll

that showed 70% of Americans
now supported the idea

of sheltering refugees from
Europe temporarily.

918 of the refugees were Jewish.

The rest belonged to various
Christian denominations,

included so that
the public would not think

this was exclusively
"a Jewish refugee project."

A'

To some refugees, it seemed
all-too-reminiscent

of the concentration camps
they had escaped...

Run-down barracks walled-in by
chain-link fences

topped with barbed wire.

But most felt relief
and gratitude.

"This is paradise," one said.

Another exulted that she now had
"a villa on Lake Ontario."

"This is the first time I have
been happy in 11 years,"

said a third.

A few local citizens resented
the foreigners,

but most townspeople
proved friendly.

Soon, they were passing food
and milk, dolls,

and even bicycles over
the barbed wire.

Refugee children were enrolled
in public school,

the Boy Scouts,
and the Brownies.

Their parents were given
day-passes,

but forbidden to work
outside the compound

so that they would not compete
for American jobs.

The First Lady and Henry Morgenthau's
wife visited the refugees.

Mrs. Roosevelt was moved by
the "character"

which had brought them through
so much, she said,

and privately thought it
"perfectly silly"

that they were required to
return home one day.

And after the war, she would be
instrumental in seeing to it

that all who wished to
remain in the United States

were allowed to do so.

But for the rest of the war,

no more refugees outside
the limited quotas

would be offered even temporary
shelter in the United States.

A'

Girl as Anne Frank: I still
believe, in spite of everything,

that people are truly good
at heart.

It is utterly impossible for me
to build my life

on a foundation of chaos,
suffering, and death.

I see the world being slowly
transformed into a wilderness.

I hear the approaching thunder

that one day will destroy us,
too.

A'

I feel the suffering of
millions.

And yet, when I look up
at the sky,

I somehow feel that everything
will change for the better,

that this cruelty too will end,

that peace and tranquility
will return once more.

In the meantime, I must
hold onto my ideals.

Perhaps the day will come

when I'll be able
to realize them.

A'

Narrator: The Frank family had
managed to evade the Germans

in Amsterdam for two years
and one month.

But on August 4, 1944,
a Nazi officer

and several Dutch
policemen arrested them

and the other residents of
their secret annex.

They were sent to Westerbork,

a holding camp in the
Netherlands for Jews

awaiting deportation
to the East.

There, they were housed in
Barrack 67

in the punishment block,

reserved for those who had been
caught hiding.

Their heads shaved,
with too little to eat,

they were put to work turning
parts of downed Allied aircraft

into useful scrap.

Trains had been leaving the camp

for occupied Poland
every Tuesday.

The Frank family was forced
to board theirs

on September 3, 1944,

along with 1,015 other people.

A'

Theirs would be the last train
from Westerbork.

A'

It would take them
3 days and two nights

to reach their destination...

Auschwitz.

A'

The Geiringer family had been
rounded up

earlier by the Gestapo

and deported to Auschwitz
as well.

Geiringer: The Nazis
never told you anything.

So we had no idea where
we were going,

what was going to happen to us.

And there were some work camps,

but we were lucky
we were sent to Auschwitz

and not to Treblinka,
for instance,

where the whole transport,
no selection,

whole transport went into
the gas chambers.

So then you had no
chance, whatsoever.

At least, we had a chance.

A'

But the first terrible thing was

at arrival, men and women,
to different sides.

That was the first command.

And you can imagine what scene
that was

because people thought,

and it did happen, of course,
many times,

that people never, ever
saw each other.

So my mother and father embraced

and Heinz and my mother
and my father and me.

And my father then did something

which I remember very clearly.

He took me by the hands and he
said, "Evertje"...

That's a Dutch name for Eve,

"Evertje, God will
protect you."

And that was amaz... | was
amazed at that

because he was
not really religious.

But, at that moment,
he realized...

nobody else could do it.

But, if there is a God, he
should... will look after me.

A'

Yeah. And, then,
the men walked away.

My mother gave me this
hat and coat.

And I didn't want to wear it.
It was very hot.

But she said, "Well, perhaps, it
might come in useful later."

And, then, the camp doctor
appeared,

youngish man, very smart

with a little stick
like a conductor.

And he looked you over,
just a fraction of a second,

and he conducted you either
right or left.

And because this rim of
this hat was big,

he didn't see how young I was.

So that was the first miracle.

They told us with laughing

that the family you
have been separated

were taken to a shower,

but it wasn't, of course,
a shower, it was gas.

And within 15 minutes,
they were all killed.

And then, everything
was taken away.

Then we were registered.

We were all tattooed.

We were told, "You
are not a human being.

"You're just like cattle, who
gets... get a number.

"If ever we need you,

you're going to be called out
by your number."

All of our
hair was shaved and naked,

and then they told us,

"Now it's your turn to go
in the shower."

Of course, we didn't want to go,
but we were pushed into it.

But it was an actual shower.

We were herded into
our barracks,

which were low, wooden barracks

with... and a sort of a chimney
in the middle.

And both sides were bunks,
3 high, like cages.

A'

They told us, "That's where you
will spend your night,

as long as you are alive."

A'

Narrator: In late
October, John Pehle

received another horrific
report from Switzerland.

It contained firsthand testimony
from 3 men

who had managed
to escape from Auschwitz

and provided meticulous details
of what they had seen there.

Pehle: The Board
seized upon this.

Now we had
the eyewitness accounts.

A'

Narrator: Pehle said the report
"ought to be required reading

for the people
of the United States."

Erbelding: The release of
the Auschwitz Report

is headline news throughout
the country.

A'

These news reports explaining to
the American people

what Auschwitz was
and what happened there

are followed up by op-eds,
by columns

about Auschwitz
and what America has to do

in the wake of all of
this information.

Lipstadt: And the fact that
it's released

by the War Refugee Board.

It's not being released by
a Jewish organization.

It's not being released,
"Rabbi Stephen Wise says."

It's coming from
a governmental source.

It's much harder to dismiss it.

A'

Greene: There's a poll in
late 1944,

and the question is asked,

"Do you believe the
Germans are murdering Jews

in concentration camps?"

It runs in the
"Washington Post."

76% of Americans by that time
believe that it's happening,

but then they're
asked the numbers,

"How many Jews do you think have
been killed?"

And Americans cannot
grasp the scale

and the scope of the crime.

It's only one in 5 Americans
befieve

that it's more than a million
Jews who have been murdered.

And, by that point, it's more
than 5 million.

A'

Geiringer: Within a day, we were
already covered in lice.

Bedbugs were kind of
like a nail, thumbnail,

little animals with... had legs,

and they'd cling to your skin
and suck your blood.

And it became very infected
and itchy and so on.

Once a week, we had a shower
that was a delousing,

and you never knew was it
gassing or a shower.

Nobody had any periods.

It was a blessing 'cause we
couldn't cope with that.

I mean, the toilets were
just cement sinks

with holes in the middle.

And you had to sit where,
usually,

everything was already
filthy from diarrhea.

And if you didn't sit,

because you
tried to not sit on it,

you were beaten up
to sit in that.

And the other thing was when you
went to work outside, march,

if you wanted to escape,

there was no chance to escape.

The dogs were there,
dogs tore you apart,

killed you, we saw that.

You were caught when you went
out of your line,

and then you were taken back
to the camp

and there... there was a
camp center, a square sort of.

Each bit of the camp had that.

And then they erected gallows,

and we had to watch,
we were all called,

and we had to watch this be...

Person being hanged
there, slowly, you know,

with the tongue coming
out of them.

Of course, you had to watch,

but, of course, we closed
our eyes.

But even they'd check
that you look.

A'

You know, there were people
who just couldn't

tolerate it any longer

and they wanted to die.

And you couldn't even commit
suicide, you know?

You had no string or... or you
had no pills or anything.

You know? So the only thing was
to throw yourself

against electrified
barbed-wire,

and it was strong currents.

And then, we
heard terrible screams,

and you saw people burning
on this wire

because you're stuck on it,
and you went up in flames.

A'

Narrator: Even before the report
about Auschwitz was published,

Jewish organizations,
hoping to save

the thousands of Hungarians
still being sent there,

had called for the Allies to
bomb the railroad tracks

leading to the camp,

and then for the bombing of
Auschwitz itself.

Their appeal eventually reached
the War Refugee Board.

Pehle: As a non-military
people,

we were hesitant to press
the War Department

to send bombers,
which would otherwise be used

to bomb German cities,
for this purpose.

We were concerned about
the reaction

of the American people...

[Gunshot]

If troops died in this sort of
expedition.

We went into this matter further
and with much soul searching,

because we were very concerned

that going in we would kill
a number of Jews.

A'

Narrator: But after
reading The Auschwitz Report,

Pehle changed his mind.

Pehle: The time came
where we felt

that the situation was
so desperate

that we should ask
the War Department to do it.

And we did.

And not only should the rail
lines be bombed,

but the crematoria
should be bombed, too.

We became capable of doing it

because Allied troops had
advanced far enough

up the Italian boot

that we had acquired an old
Italian airbase

at a place called Foggia.

And if you flew northeast
from Foggia,

you could get a plane
to Auschwitz and back

on a single tank of gas.

Narrator: But the Allies
had already learned

that railroad tracks could
easily be repaired overnight,

that rail traffic could only be
halted permanently

by waves of airplanes hitting
them day after day.

In the repeated raids that
would have been required

to ensure the destruction of the
gas chambers and crematoria,

hundreds, if not thousands,

of the people imprisoned
in the camps

would likely have been
killed or wounded.

And Allied aircraft were
otherwise engaged...

first in blasting a way forward
for the Allied troops

through the Normandy hedgerows,

then destroying bridges to trap
the retreating Germans

and taking out the fuel
and armament plants

that powered the Nazi
war machine,

all military objectives aimed
at bringing about

the quickest possible end
to the war.

Man: 3 planes, 9 o'clock,
coming around.

Keep your eye on them, boys.

Narrator: More than 52,000
American airmen were killed

trying to achieve those
Allied objectives.

[Gunfire]

Man 2: We have
an engine on fire.

[Gunfire]

Man: Pull her up!

A'

Hayes: If it had become known in
the American public in 1944

that planes and pilots

and crews had been lost

in bombing what was
a non-military target,

that would have not been
without repercussions.

Narrator: The U.S. Assistant
Secretary of War John McCloy

dismissed the idea of bombing
Auschwitz as "impracticable."

The mission, he wrote, "would
have had a most uncertain,

if not dangerous effect."

A'

Greene: The United States is
bombing German munitions areas

4, 5 miles from Auschwitz.

A'

Would they have hit
their target?

That's... that... that's
another question.

Narrator: So-called
"precision bombing"

during World War ll was
spectacularly imprecise.

One study showed that just
one bomber out of 5

hit within 5 miles of
its intended target.

When Allied bombs intended for
the l.G. Farben fuel

and rubber plant several
miles away

accidentally hit inside
Auschwitz, killing dozens,

one man, a Dutch physician,

testified to the
"fear and agony"

he and his
fellow prisoners had felt.

But others, including the
future writer Elie Wiesel,

later remembered having been
willing to be bombed

if it meant an end
to the killing.

No contemporaneous evidence
exists that FDR himself

was ever consulted about
bombing Auschwitz,

but many years later,
John McCloy claimed

he had spoken with him,

and that the president had
rejected the idea out of hand.

"They'll only move it down
the road a little way,"

he said he remembered
the president saying.

"L won't have
anything to do with it.

"We'll be accused of
participating

in this horrible business."

A'

Lipstadt: I think they
should have,

not because it would have
rescued

a major portion of the
6 million,

but as a statement, as
a message to the Germans,

"We know what you are doing.

"We cannot abide what
you are doing.

This is our response to
what you are doing."

Yes, it could have done that.

Erbelding: I don't think there's
a right answer

in whether we should have
bombed Auschwitz.

I don't think there's
a right answer

because I don't think there's
a way in which we look back

and think that we did
the right thing.

I think it is one
of those tragic questions

in which we are either
the people who knew

that there was a
concentration camp there

and did not try to bomb it,

or we knew there was a
concentration camp there

and we bombed it.

We bombed prisoners,

we bombed people who might have
otherwise survived.

And that is the tragic question
of this is,

no matter what we did,
I think we'd look back

and... and wonder
what happened...

What would have happened had we
done the other thing.

Narrator: In mid-January
1945,

the prisoners at Birkenau
and Auschwitz

had begun to hear distant
Russian artillery coming closer,

and then the sound of
German vehicles

beginning to rumble away.

The last gassing of 1,700 Jews

had taken place at the end
of October 1944.

Afterwards, the SS blew up
and bulldozed all but one

of the gas chambers
and crematoria,

burned records, and began
marching prisoners on foot

through the snow
back toward Germany.

Between 700,000 and 800,000
survivors from Auschwitz

and scores of other
abandoned camps

were now staggering along
the roads

or packed into open coal cars,

retreating ahead of the Soviets.

Around a quarter
of a million would die

between the first of the year
and the war's end,

exhausted or frozen,

shot or burned alive by
their German guards.

Some 7,000 people remained
at Auschwitz,

too frail to leave the camp.

When the marches started,
Eva Geiringer's mother Fritzi

was too weak and ill to move.

Eva crawled into her
mother's bunk,

and they huddled together
against the cold.

Geiringer: Most people couldn't
even leave their bunks anymore.

They said, "Everybody out.
We are going to march.

"If you are staying,
we are going to

lock up the barracks
and burn everything down."

And my mother was so weak,
and it was so cold.

And I said,
"Let's just stay."

We fell asleep.

And they must have
called out again, "Out,"

and we didn't hear that.

A'

When we woke up, there was
no shouting, no dogs.

It was very, very empty.

And then I see out of the gate

a huge creature with icicles
hanging down his face

and his... and all fur,

and from the distance,
we thought it was a bear.

But it wasn't.

It was a Russian scout
to investigate

if the army should fight or if
they can just advance.

And he came in and looked at us,

and he said, well, he has to
go back to report.

A'

And so, I decided I would go to
the men's camp

to try to find
my father and brother.

A'

It was very, very cold.

And the fighting was going on
around us.

And I heard bullets going over.

It took me about 6 hours.

[Gunshots]

And I didn't
really know where to go.

But I found it, eventually.

And I found two people who I had
known in Amsterdam.

And one was... looked
very familiar, and I said,

"I think... I think you... you
look... I know you,"

but he looked
very gaunt and ashen.

And it was Otto Frank.

Narrator: Barely able to
walk after a fearful beating,

Otto Frank, too, had been
left behind.

Nearly 6 feet tall,
he now weighed just 114 pounds.

Geiringer: And the first
question, of course,

"Have you seen my girls
and my wife?"

And I hadn't seen them,

because, you know, they're all
the different camps.

But he had seen my
father and brother.

So, at that time, I thought,

"Oh, good. Well, I'm sure
they'll be alive."

A'

A'

A'

Narrator: Otto Frank would
later write

his mother in Switzerland

to tell her that
he had survived.

A'

Man as Frank: Where Edith and
the children are, I do not know.

We have been apart since
September, 1944.

I merely heard that they had
been transported to Germany.

One has to be hopeful to see
them back well and healthy.

A'

Narrator: Frank would
eventually learn

that he had been misinformed.

His wife had
not been sent to Germany.

Instead, she had died
at Birkenau,

just 3 weeks
before the Soviet Army came.

To the end, Edith had kept bits
of bread beneath her blanket

in case she somehow saw her
husband and daughters again.

The Soviets transported
Otto Frank and Eva Geiringer

and her mother by
truck and train

to Odessa on the Black Sea.

Eva's brother and father were
still missing.

The refugees were lodged
in a crumbling palace

overlooking the beach

and told they would have to stay
there until the war ended.

"Everybody is impatient,

in spite of daily chocolate
and cigarettes,"

Frank wrote in his diary.

They just wanted to go home.

A'

As Allied armies converged on
Germany in the spring of 1945,

one by one, they came upon
the concentration camps

that the Reich had tried
to keep secret.

The Soviets, driving westward,

had already over-run all 6 of
the German killing centers

where more than 3 million human
beings had been murdered...

Auschwitz, Belzec,

Majdanek, Sobibor,

Treblinka, Chelmno.

British and Canadian troops
were about to capture

Neuengamme and Bergen-Belsen in
northern Germany.

A'

And in early April,

soldiers of the U.S. 4th
Armored Division

searching for a supposed
German headquarters,

came upon Ohrdruf,

one of at least
130 satellite camps

surrounding a far larger
one... Buchenwald.

A'

These camps inside Germany itself
were not officially killing centers

like those in occupied Poland,

but they were places to which
people were sent to die

after untold hours
of forced labor, starvation,

exhaustion, disease,
and hopelessness.

A'

Among the first Americans to
enter Buchenwald

was an Army private,
Benjamin Ferencz,

who had been assigned
to a new unit

tasked with investigating
German war crimes.

Ferencz: I jumped into my Jeep.
I raced there.

I found the
American tank officer

who had liberated the camp,
had gotten there first.

I said, "I'm out here on orders

"carrying out a policy of
the United States Government.

"L need 10 men, immediately, to
surround the schreibstube,

the office where
the records are kept."

The crematoria were going;
smoke in the air,

the smell of
burning bodies in the air.

In front of the crematoria,
stacks of bones.

They were human beings.

And they were so thin that they
just looked like bones.

And they were stacked up
in front of the crematoria,

waiting to be burned.

A'

That was my introduction to
Hitler's plan in action.

A'

I thought to myself,
"It can't be real."

And it was unbelievable.

But, it was true, and I knew,
of course, it was true.

A'

Narrator: Supreme Allied Commander
General Dwight Eisenhower

flew in to see for himself.

A'

When a young GI
nervously laughed,

Eisenhower glared at him,

"Still having trouble hating
them?" he asked.

"We are told that
the American soldier

does not know what he is
fighting for," he said.

"Now at least he will know what
he is fighting against."

A'

Lipstadt: When
Eisenhower sees this,

he orders that a congressional
delegation be brought there,

and that American editors be
brought there.

And they are shocked.

And they describe in great
detail what they see.

A'

I think it speaks to
the lingering doubts

that this could be real.

A'

And it also speaks to

an inability to put your head
around this.

And I don't say that critically.

I say that this is something
that beggars the imagination.

This was a murder that was
beyond belief.

And it takes that personal
confrontation with the evidence,

with the remnants,
for them to grasp that.

Narrator: To make sure
Americans understood

the depths of Nazi depravity

and to make sure
future generations

could never deny what
had happened,

Eisenhower insisted that
military personnel in the area

come and see for themselves
what the Nazis had done.

Stern: We were actually
stationed in Weimar,

and we had heard of
the Buchenwald Camp.

I lagged behind Sergeant Hadley,

who was probably one of
the toughest MP soldier

I had ever encountered...

A'

And people told me
their stories.

But it was a skeleton you were
talking to.

I looked at them,
and I started...

I was a hardened soldier
by then,

but I couldn't help myself.

So, I was crying.

I looked around
and Sergeant Hadley,

from a Protestant family
in Ohio,

he was bawling like a kid,
as I was.

You couldn't take it.

A'

But they could.

The perpetrators
who could do such a thing,

and the victims who had to
endure it.

A'

Narrator: American troops
would liberate Nordhausen,

Flossenberg, Mauthausen,
and Dachau,

the very first of Hitler's
concentration camps.

A'

A GI named Joseph A. Wyant

used his off-duty time
to visit there,

and then wrote home to
his father.

A'

Man as Wyant: This particular
crime has been uncovered, Pop,

but a worse crime seems to me

to be the spreading of
the thought

that leads to this type
of thing.

A'

It has happened in mass
proportions here in Germany,

but who knows how far
the ideas have spread

or where else it may break out?

A'

I tell you, Pop, even more
important

than the punishment of
the criminals here

is the stamping
out of their philosophy.

As I wrote you once before,

this is not a war
between nations,

but humanity's struggle
for the right to exist.

A'

If you see fit,

I wish you would show any of
your friends this letter.

Your devoted son, Joe.

[Man chanting "Ki Mitzion"
in Hebrew]

[All singing in Hebrew]

Eichhorn: Today, I come to you
in a dual capacity...

As a soldier in
the American army

and as a representative of the
Jewish community of America.

As an American soldier,

I say to you that we are proud,

very proud to be here,

to know that we have had
a share in the destruction

of the most cruel
tyranny of all time.

As an American soldier,

I say to you that we are
very, very proud

to be with you as comrades
in arms,

to greet you, and to salute you

who have been the
bravest of the brave.

Narrator: On April 12,
the same day

that Eisenhower had
toured Ohrdruf,

President Roosevelt had died at
Warm Springs, Georgia

with victory in the war,

for which he'd tried to prepare
his countrymen,

still weeks away.

On May 8, 1945, the Germans
finally surrendered.

Hitler had killed himself
in his Berlin bunker.

A'

Guy Stern was still in Germany.

Before going back to America,
he returned to his hometown

to try to find out
what happened to his family.

A'

Stern: I went to Hildesheim.

I first was overwhelmed by the
ruins of many of the things

that I had
looked at with my mother.

A'

This history was in rubbles.

A'

Narrator: His mother and
father, his brother and sister

had been deported from
the Warsaw Ghetto,

and Guy never
heard from them again.

A'

Otto Frank and Eva
and Fritzi Geiringer

were still in Odessa

when word came that the war in
Europe was over.

Eva remembered that at the news

"the grounds of the palace
broke out

"in unrestrained jubilation,
dancing, singing,

laughing, and drunken
declarations of love."

A'

A few days later, Eva,
her mother,

and Otto Frank boarded
a transport ship

bound for Marseille.

Eva's mother burst into tears

at the sight of
the white tablecloths

and neatly laid-out silverware
in the dining room.

The captain promised
his passengers

that they needn't hoard food in
their cabins;

they would have plenty to eat.

From Marseille, they traveled
to Amsterdam

where they hoped to take up
the lives they'd led

before the Gestapo came
for them.

A'

That would prove impossible.

Geiringer: My mother got a
letter from the Red Cross,

very cool.

"Your husband Erich Geiringer,
with the birthdate,

"and your son Heinz, as well,
with the date of his birth,

"died in Mauthausen
several days before

the American Army came to
liberate that camp."

A'

That was for us, and for me,
the last straw

because I always say,
I have survived

because I thought life will go
back, eventually,

how it used to be.

But when I realized that can
never, ever happen again,

I became very, very depressed.

That was harder than the camp,

because, in the camp, I had
a purpose, to survive.

But then I thought, I don't
really want to live anymore.

That was really, really hard
for me to accept that.

Even till this day, I haven't
really accepted it,

especially because my father
was such a strong character

altogether, mentally
and physically.

But I think, probably,
Heinz died before him.

And that must have been
for him terrible,

perhaps to see him die.

He thought his wife is dead.

He probably didn't think
I could have survived.

And I don't think he
wanted to live on his own.

I think he just gave up.

A'

Narrator: On July 18, 1945,
Otto Frank finally discovered

what had happened to
his daughters.

Both had still been alive
when he, Eva,

and Fritzi Geiringer
were liberated from Auschwitz.

But typhus had swept
Bergen-Belsen,

the camp in northern Germany
where they'd been sent.

A'

Both Margot and Anne are thought
to have died in February,

two months before
the camp was liberated.

Geiringer: Otto came
to us one day.

He looked like a ghost.

And after he left,
my mother then said,

"Well, we have at least
each other,

but this poor man
has nobody."

He was 56 or 57 at that time.

You know, what has he got to
live for?

A'

Narrator: One of
the Dutch Gentiles

who had hidden the Franks had
kept Anne's diary,

planning to give it back to her
when she returned.

Instead, she gave it to Anne's
grieving father.

He could not bear to read more
than a few pages at a time.

A'

Geiringer: It took him 3 weeks
to read it.

He was so moved by it.

And he always used to say,

"I didn't really know
my own child."

He was amazed about what she
wrote in it.

He was so proud of it.

When he got it, he had no idea
about publishing it,

but a history professor said

that it's such
a valuable document

about this period,
you have to publish it.

Lipstadt: It gets tremendous
attention in this country.

It's presented on Broadway,

and then presented in a major
Hollywood picture

as a triumph.

No one dies in this story.
No one is murdered.

No gas chambers.
No shootings.

No Nazis, till the last scene
when they come in.

It's the story of triumph of
a little girl.

A'

It's a wonderful story.
It's a wonderful diary.

She writes some terrific things
in it.

But it's not the story
of the Holocaust.

It's not the story of the Shoah.

It's not the story
of a genocide.

I still believe,
in spite of everything,

that people are
really good at heart.

Geiringer: When she said that
she still believes

in the goodness of mankind,
I said, "How can she?"

But she wrote it before.

If she would have written
that after,

if she would have survived,

she would not have said that,
I think.

I still think that she wouldn't
have said that.

A'

Narrator: Eva Geiringer's
mother Fritzi

would eventually marry
Otto Frank.

"By the tragedy in both
our lives," she remembered,

"together we found
new happiness."

A'

[indistinct chatter]

Man on newsreel: These newsreel
and Signal Corps pictures

were officially recorded
for posterity.

6 furnaces, each holding
3 bodies,

were used in cremating the dead.

Don't turn away. Look.

Horror unbelievable, yet true.

The vile inhuman
beasts took pride

in their concentration camp
at Nordhausen.

Narrator: By the war's end,

Americans had seen
for themselves

that the Nazi horrors many
had dismissed

as wartime propaganda were
all-too real.

Man on newsreel: No words can
express the world's disgust

at Germany's organized carnage.

Mendelsohn: And I remember
saying to my mother once,

I said, "What was it like
after the war?"

A'

She said...

everyone sat around
waiting for news.

A'

She said it was like a hush
in the air.

A'

Finally, maybe 1946, maybe 1947,

she came home from school
one day,

and her father was
sitting at the kitchen table,

crying with a letter
in his hand.

A'

And I think that is a scene

that probably repeated
itself all over America.

Jaeger Mendelsohn: They had
just gotten the final word

that Uncle Shmiel and his
4 daughters and his wife

had all been murdered.

And my father carried to
the day he died

the letters that his brother
Shmiel had sent...

because he felt so guilty

about not being able
to get out Shmiel.

A'

Lipstadt: In many respects,

Nazi Germany accomplished
its goal.

Didn't accomplish it totally.

But the Jews have never replaced
themselves since then.

Woman: I have the feeling
that we let our consciences

realize too late the need of
standing up against something

that we knew was wrong.

We have therefore
had to avenge it,

but we did nothing
to prevent it.

A'

I hope that in the future,

we are going to remember that
there can be no compromise

at any point with the things
that we know are wrong.

Eleanor Roosevelt.

A'

Narrator: Tens of millions
of human beings

were killed during
the Second World War.

Some 6 million of them
were Jews,

murdered by the Nazis
and their collaborators,

two-thirds of all the Jews who
had lived in Europe.

A'

The war left millions of
displaced persons,

including more than a quarter of
a million Jewish refugees

confined to crowded camps
in Germany,

Austria, and Italy
between 1945 and 1952.

Most were unable or unwilling
to return to homes

that had been destroyed
or occupied

among people who were often
openly hostile toward them.

A'

Lipstadt:
It's easy to imagine

that after the opening
of the camps

and the stories come out of
what happened,

that people realize this is the
legacy of antisemitism,

and they banish it.

That it's gone, it's
over, it's finished.

But that's not what happens.

And nothing makes it clearer

than debates over allowing
refugees in.

Narrator: When asked if their
country should now allow

more refugees than it had
before the war,

only 5% percent of Americans
said yes,

and more than a third said the
number should be fewer.

A'

Between the spring of 1945
and June of 1947,

because the United States

continued to enforce
its quota system,

fewer than 15,000 Jewish
refugees obtained visas.

Other countries were
no more welcoming.

A'

And Britain continued to
limit immigration

to Palestine until 1947

when it turned the region's fate
over to the United Nations.

The UN partitioned it between
Jews and Arabs

and legally and illegally as
many as 200,000 European Jews

made it to the contested land

that in 1948
became the State of Israel.

A'

Congress eventually loosened
its restrictions somewhat,

and by 1953 the United States

would accept some 80,000
Jewish survivors.

At the same time,

among the 170,000
Gentile refugees

also admitted were
some former Nazis

and those who had collaborated
with them,

welcomed during the new Cold War

because they were
anti-Communists.

A'

Man on newsreel: Here,
before a court

representing world civilization,

the Nazi hierarchy charged
with conspiracy

against peace and crimes against
humanity goes on trial.

Narrator: As the Allies
had promised,

Nazi leaders were put on trial
after the war,

the first international trial
for war crimes in history.

Like Hitler, Himmler and
Goebbels had killed themselves,

but some other high-ranking
co-conspirators were charged.

Man on newsreel: In the
courtroom, the dramatic entry

of the 8 judges and alternates

of the International
Military Tribunal.

After 10 months, the longest
criminal trial on record,

they're ready
to deliver the verdict.

Death for 11, prison for 7.

Justice has caught up with
the master criminals.

A'

The charges we have brought...

Narrator: There would be 11 more
trials over the next 3 years.

Of having committed crimes
against humanity.

Narrator: Benjamin Ferencz
led the prosecution

of 22 commanders of
the Einsatzgruppen,

using as evidence
their own reports

of mass killings of Jews in
the occupied Soviet Union.

Ferencz: I had never tried
a case in my life.

I had very seldom been
in a courtroom.

I had the proof in my hands,
a pile of documents.

And some of them were
very specific.

"Babi Yar, we murdered"...
I don't know...

"33,226 people in two days."

And they had it all,
and I began to add them up.

And when I reached a million,

I said, "That's enough.
That's enough."

Narrator: Before the war,
there had been no word

for the crime Nazi Germany

would commit against
the Jewish people.

Greene: So who gives it
a name?

Raphael Lemkin, a Polish-Jewish
refugee to the United States,

who loses 49 members of
his own family.

Narrator: The legal scholar
Raphael Lemkin argued

that a new legal framework,
and a new word,

were needed to hold the Nazis
accountable

for their pre-meditated

"destruction of a nation or of
an ethnic group."

He labored for a long time

trying to find just
the right word.

It combined "genos," the
ancient Greek word

for "race or tribe,"

with the Latin word
"cide," for killing.

Ferencz: Genocide,
the extermination

of whole categories of
human beings,

was a foremost instrument of
the Nazi doctrine.

I knew that genocide was not
listed as a crime in our statutes.

But I felt in
respect to my knowledge

of what Raphael Lemkin had been
trying to do,

I deliberately put that in.

In a manner shocking...

I also in my concluding remarks,

I said, "These defendants

"wrote the blackest page in
human history.

"Life was their toy and death
was their tool.

"If these men be immune,

"then law has lost its meaning

and we must all live in fear."

A'

And I... "the Prosecution
rests its case."

A'

Lipstadt: I think it takes many
years for America really

to step back and
fully understand

that this was
a war unlike any other,

this kind of state-sponsored
genocide

of such mega proportions.

That understanding
really won't happen

until 1961 and the trial of
Adolf Eichmann in Jerusalem.

Narrator: SS Lieutenant
Colonel Adolf Eichmann

had overseen the deportation of
more than a million Jews

to ghettos and killing centers
in occupied Poland.

Israeli agents had captured him

from his hiding place
in Argentina

and brought him to Israel to
stand trial in 1961.

[Speaking forelgn language]

Translator: And they took
both of them

and the two others
and all 4 were shot

in the back of their head.

And the bullets
came out of their forehead.

Woman: I felt him
take the child from my arms.

The child cried out and was
shot immediately.

A'

Narrator: More than 100
survivors spoke.

Their testimony,
candid, harrowing,

and televised around the world,

gave millions of Americans
a deeper understanding

of the horror of what was now
being called the "Holocaust."

And poured kerosene
and petrol under those Jews

and set fire to all the Jews...

A'

While they were in
their prayer shawls...

holding their prayer books,

in supplication to God.

[Ship's horn blows]

Lyndon B. Johnson: This bill
that we will sign today

is not a revolutionary bill.

Yet it is still one of the most
important acts

of this Congress
and of this administration.

For it does repair a very deep
and painful flaw

in the fabric of
American justice.

It corrects a
cruel and enduring wrong

in the conduct of
the American Nation.

Narrator: In October 1965,

after more than 40 years of
dogged effort

by New York Congressman
Emanuel Celler,

Congress passed an immigration
bill that finally abolished

the discriminatory quota system

based on "national" origins

that had denied sanctuary to
so many desperate people

trying to flee Hitler in
the years before the War.

But the bill imposed limits on
people from the Americas,

who had gone back and forth

across the border
for generations,

and it still made no provisions

for most of the world's
refugees.

A'

The President of
the United States

held the signing ceremony
at the Statue of Liberty.

Johnson: This measure that we
will sign today

will really make us truer
to ourselves

both as a country
and as a people.

It will strengthen us in
a hundred unseen ways.

And today we can all believe
that the lamp

of this grand old lady is
brighter today

and the golden door that she
guards gleams more brilliantly

in the light
of an increased liberty

for the people from all
countries of the globe.

[Applause]

A'

Irvin Painter: Americans are now
coming to terms with our past.

A'

What we have over and over
and over again

in American history is on
the one hand,

this stream of white supremacy
and antisemitism.

It's a big stream, and it's
always there.

And sometimes it
bubbles up and it shocks us,

and it gets slapped down,
but the stream is always there,

and we should not be shocked,

we should not think,
this is not America.

It is.

Snyder: This thing that
people call white supremacy,

that's not some marginal thing.

You have to look back and say,

"How can we change so that
we really can be a republic,

or really can be a democracy?"

If we're going to be a country
in the future,

then we have to have a view of
our own history,

which allows us to see what
we were.

And we can become
something different.

And then we have to become
something different

if we're going to make it.

A'

Jeff Pegues:
2,400-word manifesto

is filled with hatred for
Blacks, Hispanics, Jews...

Woman: He wanted to start
a race war as you say...

Donald Trump: My first hour in
office, those people are gone.

These cultures are changing
us, we are not changing them.

Crowd chanting: You will not
replace us!

Stephanie Ramos: Hundreds of
white nationalists

storming the
University of Virginia.

Ellison Barber: We now know
one person has died

in addition to those 5 in
critical condition.

Lulu Garcia-Navarro: 11 Jewish
worshippers have been killed

at a synagogue in Pittsburgh.

A man has been charged
with hate crimes

and could face
the death penalty.

He was reportedly motivated by
conspiracy theories

about Jewish leaders
and immigration.

[Gunshots]

Chuck Todd: And we're trying to
figure out

what's happening on
the Senate floor.

Josh Letterman, tell us what's
going on outside.

Letterman: We are watching
a situation that has gotten

much and much more tense.

A'

Let's go!

[indistinct shouting]

[Crowd cheering]

Crowd: Treason! Treason!

Treason! Treason! Treason!
Treason!

The institutions of
our civilization

are under tremendous stress.

I'm not necessarily saying
they're gonna go

in the same direction,

but they could go
in the same direction,

because institutions
are just conventions,

and as soon as somebody says...
Flips a switch and says,

"Oh, it's OK
to shoot grandmothers

"in a cemetery on Sun...
You know, on a Saturday

and then go to church
on Sunday."

The fragility of
civilized behavior

is the one thing you
really learn.

'Cause these people who we now
see in these photographs,

these sepia photographs, and
they're receding into time,

they're no different,
no different from us.

You look at your neighbors,
the people at the dry cleaners,

the waiters in the restaurant.

That's who these people were.
Don't kid yourself.

A'

Stern: We have seen
the nadir of human behavior,

and we have no guarantee that
it won't recur.

If we can make that
clear and graphic

and understandable, not
as something to imitate,

but as a warning of what can
happen to human beings,

then, perhaps, we have one
shield against its recurrence.

[Bird squawks]

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Announcer: Funding for
"The U.S. And the Holocaust"

was provided
by David M. Rubenstein,

invesfingin
people and institutions

that help us understand the past

and look to the future;

by the Park Foundation;

the Judy and Peter
Blum Kovler Foundation,

supporting those who remind us

about American history
and the Holocaust;

by Gilbert S. Omenn
and Martha A. Darling;

by the Arthur Vining Davis
Foundations,

investing in our common future;

and by these members of
the Better Angels Society:

Jeannie and Jonathan Lavine;

Jan and Rick Cohen;

Allan and Shelley Holt;

the Koret Foundation;

David and Susan Kreisman;

Jo Carole and Ronald S. Lauder;

the Fullerton Family
Charitable Fund;

the Blavatnik Family Foundation;

the Crown Family Philanthropies,

honoring members of
the Crown and Goodman families;

and by these additional members.

By the Corporation
for Public Broadcasting

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Corporate funding for
"The U.S. and the Holocaust"

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