feature story
Historians React to Ken Burns
HOLOCAUST DOCUMENTARY
JARRAD SAFFREN | STAFF WRITER
Lance Sussman
Sussman is the scholar-in-residence at
the Holocaust Awareness Museum and
Education Center in Elkins Park. He’s also
the rabbi emeritus at Reform Congregation
Keneseth Israel in the same town. As a
Jewish historian, he has taught classes at
Princeton University, Temple University
and SUNY-Binghamton, among other
schools. When he spoke to the Jewish
Exponent, Sussman had completed the
fi rst episode of Burns’ nearly seven-hour
docuseries. And he “basically thought it was
excellent.” Sussman appreciated that Burns detailed
the early history of immigration in America.

Basically, for almost the fi rst century and a
half of its existence, the country allowed it.

Leaders wanted to grow the population and
build a great nation.

But between 1870 and 1920, southern and
20 SEPTEMBER 29, 2022 | JEWISHEXPONENT.COM
Ken Burns
eastern Europeans, including many Jews, joined western Europeans in their
pursuit of opportunity. Th is led to a backlash and to the attempt to limit those
immigrants that Th e Immigration Act of 1924 represented.

For a viewer, it’s important to understand this background to “prepare the
scene,” as Sussman put it, for what was to come.

Sussman also liked that Burns explained the antisemitism in both the
American population and the State Department in the years leading to World
War II. Th is showed the “political dynamic” that FDR had to deal with, and why
it was so diffi cult to take action to stop the Holocaust.

Finally, the historian was delighted to see Burns highlight Emanuel Celler, the
Jewish congressman who represented his Brooklyn and Queens district for 50
years starting in 1923. If Lindbergh is consistently shown speaking out on the
wrong side of history, Celler is consistently shown doing the opposite.

He made a speech against Th e Immigration Act and lobbied the Roosevelt
administration to let in Jewish refugees from Europe during the Nazi
years. He was oft en a man fi ghting alone in the halls of power and in the
national conversation.

“He’s truly one of the unsung heroes of a very dark story,” Sussman
said. “So I’m glad that he got a lot of attention.”
Zev Eleff
Eleff , as his website profi le describes him, “is the twelft h president of
Gratz College” in Cheltenham Township. He’s also a historian of Jewish
history in America with nine books and more than 50 scholarly
articles to his name.

Th e scholar did not pull his punches when asked about
Burns’ latest project.

“Th e most egregious thing is letting FDR off the
hook,” Eleff said. “Th at has set back the discourse over
the relationship between the Roosevelt administra-
tion and the Holocaust.”
Th e president added that recent books and
articles in the scholarly community have moved
toward the “consensus that FDR should have
done more.” By not focusing on how much
FDR knew and on how much he consid-
ered actions like bombing the rail lines
to the Auschwitz concentration camp,
the documentary ends up missing an
opportunity, according to Eleff .

“Many viewers came away looking at
FDR with an unimpeachable record in
the war eff ort,” he said. “And the schol-
arly record isn’t as impeccable.”
Eleff acknowledged that it’s
complicated. On the one
hand, he mentioned, FDR’s
rise to power represented
the “near-complete move-
Courtesy of Alvin Kean Wong
I f there’s one thing that Ken Burns’ new docuseries “Th e U.S. and Th e
Holocaust” makes clear, it’s that Franklin Delano Roosevelt was only a big part
of a much larger picture.

Th e question of why the U.S. didn’t do more to prevent the Holocaust is a
question about the 32nd president, yes. But it’s also a question about the myopic
worldview of the American population in those years.

As Burns details in his three-part series, which aired from Sept. 18-21 on PBS
and is now available on PBS.org, Th e Immigration Act of 1924 severely curtailed
immigration from Jewish regions. Years later, Th e Great Depression left one in
four Americans without a job and fearful that newcomers would compete with
them for the jobs that were available. And as war approached and ultimately
broke out in Europe in 1939, aviator Charles Lindbergh’s America First anti-war
movement built a following across the nation.

FDR was competing with all of this as he pondered how to deal
with the humanitarian crisis in Europe. As a political animal
who understood the deeply democratic spirit of his country,
the president also knew that he had to follow the herd as much
as lead it. His approach ultimately did lead to U.S. entry into
World War II, victory over the Nazis and the liberation and
preservation of the Jews. But at the same time, it’s hard to deny
that FDR’s prioritization of politics over morality came with a
price: countless Jewish lives.

It’s history; it is human aff airs; and so it’s complicated. Th at’s
why we talked to three prominent Jewish American
historians to see what they thought of Burns’ much-
hyped doc.




Courtesy of the National Archives and Records Administration
Courtesy of the Library of Congress
What more could America have done to help
the Jews during the Holocaust? Ken Burns’
new docuseries explores this question.

Franklin D. Roosevelt
ment of American Jews to the Democratic Party.” But
on the other, in the wake of the Holocaust and the
realization that FDR wanted to do more but didn’t,
“there was a disillusionment and a disenchantment”
among American Jews.

Eleff believes that the 32nd president was “inhib-
ited in what he could do,” but also that he could
have still tried to do more. Th e doc also could have
explored that more deeply.

“Overall an incredibly powerful and important
PBS documentary,” the Gratz leader said. “But what it
does do is roll back the very complicated discussions
that were activated by FDR.”
America and Israel,” he said.

“And it’s just not true,” he added.

Th ere is also a higher-level part of the story that
Sarna wishes Burns would have focused on more:
fi rst lady Eleanor Roosevelt’s desire to take in more
refugees. Eleanor Roosevelt, famously, was the ideal-
ist who balanced her husband’s political calculations,
and she was horrifi ed by the events in Europe. Sarna
believes that “playing them off against one another
would have been helpful.”
Th e professor, though, understands that, as he put
it, fi lms “are not encyclopedias.” Filmmakers, much
like newspaper editors, have to make choices about
what to include and what not to include, all to appeal
to a general audience.

And as a history lesson that can off er a baseline
knowledge of that time, and of America’s role in
shaping it, “Th e U.S. and Th e Holocaust” succeeds,
according to Sarna.

“Th is is a way of learning about something that
they otherwise wouldn’t know about,” Sarna said. “So
I’m very glad it’s there. But it’s not above criticism.” JE
jsaff ren@midatlanticmedia.com
Courtesy of the National Archives and Records Administration
Jonathan Sarna
Sarna is the chief historian at the Weitzman National
Museum of American Jewish History in Philadelphia.

He’s also a longtime American Jewish history professor
at Brandeis University in Massachusetts and is consid-
ered perhaps the foremost Jewish historian in the U.S.

It’s perhaps not surprising, then, that Sarna knows
the details about what a lot of American Jews were
doing to try and help their European brothers and
sisters during this time. And he would have liked to
have seen Burns focus more on those activities.

Jews, according to Sarna, had an intelligence net-
work that infi ltrated the Nazi-supporting German
American Bund in New York City, Los Angeles and
other cities.

“Why not talk about that?” he asked.

Th e Jewish Telegraphic Agency also set up a secret
news-gathering operation called the Overseas News
Agency, without the word Jewish in it.

“I wish he would have paid more attention to what
was done,” Sarna said of Burns. “In that era, there
were a lot of secret, clandestine Jewish activities that
have never really been properly brought together,
celebrated, understood.”
Th ere is a sense in Israel, Sarna explained, that
American Jews sat back and did nothing during the
Holocaust. A whole generation has been raised on
this belief, “perhaps to suggest a diff erence between
Jewish prisoners in the Buchenwald
concentration camp during the
Holocaust JEWISHEXPONENT.COM
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