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
21