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Ken Burns' Holocaust documentary: What the 1940s teach us about the 2020s

America, where were you? More than a million Jews were slaughtered before we even entered World War II in December 1941.

America knew what was going on in Europe — not just the territorial loss but the desperation and death. Refugees sailed to our shores by the hundreds of thousands and yet, we turned them away, shipping many back to certain death. There were German spies mixed with them in the boats, some insisted, and the United States already had enough foreigners in its midst, let alone Jews; that's what the xenophobes said in dissuading the public from opening arms to those with no place to turn.

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Huddled masses still yearn. But has America learned the lessons of World War II and the Holocaust?
Huddled masses still yearn. But has America learned the lessons of World War II and the Holocaust?

The message we can learn from Ken Burns' 'The U.S. and the Holocaust' documentary

If there was a message in the black and white footage of Ken Burns' The U.S. and the Holocaust, which aired last week on public television, it was in what it left unsaid: That the full-color, real-life horror of mass exodus never stopped playing out when that war ended. It confronts us now, begs for us to act. At European and American borders, refugee suffering mounts, ignored by some, misconstrued by others and derided with the same foul sentiments we should have surmounted long ago.

The documentary is must-watch, for adults who think they know all they need to about what transpired and yet fail to apply its lessons to the current day, and for students limited to STEM curricula that give them no time or tools, nor sufficient concern, to address the hatred that continues to grow among us.

Our political leaders should watch, too, to be reminded of the inevitable result of the cynical games they play to this day.

In a piece on the opposing page in our print edition today, New York Times columnist Charles Blow recounts a conversation with Texas gubernatorial candidate Beto O'Rourke. O'Rourke describes how his opponent, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott, ships immigrants out of state — an act Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis imitated recently —  as “an effort to incite fear and hatred and connect with people at a very base, emotional level,” an “effort to dehumanize people.”

Abbott's and DeSantis' rewards, better poll numbers, come at the expense of stripping immigrants' individual lives, stories and feelings from the public narrative.

The 48 Venezuelan asylum candidates that Ron DeSantis' operatives plucked from Texas and tricked into traveling north weren't told where they were going; nor were the people of Martha's Vineyard alerted to their arrival. DeSantis got the microphone time he craved but at what cost to our humanity as a people descended from immigrants, DeSantis included.

"Obviously there are issues with the border and immigration," Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg recently told an interviewer. "But these are the kinds of stunts you see from people who don't have a solution. Gov. DeSantis was in Congress.... What have any of these people done to be part of the solution?"

Lost in these stunts, and in the incomplete footage often broadcast of waders in the Rio Grande and broken rafts on South Florida shores: acknowledgement of the roots of the suffering.

A Mexican rescue boat chugs along the Rio Grande, bottom right, as migrants, many from Haiti, wade across the river into Del Rio, Texas in 2021.
A Mexican rescue boat chugs along the Rio Grande, bottom right, as migrants, many from Haiti, wade across the river into Del Rio, Texas in 2021.

Americans too easily forget that most of these travelers would have been happy never to leave their homelands, whether Haiti, Venezuela or Central America. They're fleeing violence, hunger and the absence of any opportunity to survive and create better lives for their families.

The solution is not to add Coast Guard interceptors, roll out more miles of razor wire or erect taller border walls. That hasn't worked and there's no reason to believe it will. The solution is to invest in a massive international effort to rebuild the homelands these refugees felt forced to leave.

That's not easy, either, but the structures are there to be scaled up, whether through the United Nations, individual nations, corporations or nongovernmental organizations and volunteers. What's missing is the will, a will that weakens every time a politician whips the public into a frenzy but refuses to sit with members of an opposing party to shape a compassionate response.

So, as we document World War II and the damage done by our inaction, it's instructive to ask where America was while millions died in the streets and death camps. But we will have learned nothing from that question if we do not then ask ourselves: Where are we now, when refugees again beg for our help?

This article originally appeared on Palm Beach Post: Ken Burns' The U.S. and the Holocaust: What to learn from documentary