American Experience America and the Holocaust

This episode of PBS' AMERICAN EXPERIENCE series reveals a shocking, tragic, and little-known episode in 20th-century American history: the efforts of the U.S. State Department to prevent the immigration of Jewish refugees seeking sanctuary from Nazi persecution and extermination during World War II. Though the State Department had been informed as early as 1942 of Nazi plans to commit genocide against European Jews, U.S. officials not only failed to act on the information but actively sought to suppress its public knowledge and denied visas to thousands of prospective asylum seekers. It wasn't until 1944 that Jewish-American activists and Secretary of Treasury Henry Morgenthau put enough pressure on President Roosevelt to create the War Refugee Board and save the lives of 200,000 Jewish émigrés. AMERICA AND THE HOLOCAUST seeks to illuminate this widespread tragedy through the personal story of one individual, Kurt Klein, who escaped from Nazi Germany with his sister and brother but fought for years to bring his parents to safety.