Dara Horn: Why Democracies Are So Slow to Respond to Evil
In his new series The U.S. and the Holocaust, the documentarian Ken Burns explores exactly how little America did to help Jews flee Hitler’s Europe before and during World War II. Dara Horn writes in her review:
The question of Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s role in all of this has been fertile ground for historians for decades. Burns has a soft spot for Franklin and Eleanor, the subjects of one of his prior films, and here he treats them with kid gloves, blaming most of the missteps on State Department antagonists. The series makes a point of . . . showing Nazi rallies in New York, clips of the popular anti-Semitic broadcaster Father Charles Coughlin, and colorized footage of a Nazi-themed summer camp in New Jersey. But the film goes out of its way to outline the pros and cons of Roosevelt’s decisions, leaving his reputation intact.
To be clear, Roosevelt is an American icon and deserves to remain one. The problem with this approach is less about Roosevelt (there are plenty of convincing arguments in his favor, not least that he won the war) than about how it contradicts the rest of the film’s premise. The goal of the series is seemingly to reset America’s moral compass, using hindsight to expose the costs of being a bystander. But every bystander, including Roosevelt, can explain his choices. The film’s refusal to judge the commander in chief plays into a larger political pattern: offering generosity only toward those we admire.
The Nazis lost their war against the Allies, but they won their war against the Jews. Judaism survived Nazism, just as it outlived its many other oppressors. But Jewish life in Europe never recovered and almost certainly never will. That is the meaning of genocide.
Standing Tall as IDF Fighters Where Our Families Were Murdered
Shaul and Mina Sterngast, who lived Krakow, had eight children. One of them, Romek, was my grandfather. He caught the Zionist bug, as did some of his siblings, and together they made aliyah to Mandatory Palestine before World War II. The rest of the family stayed in Poland. They were rounded up in the ghetto and then, like the entire community, were murdered in Auschwitz. Their execution at the gas chambers was also the death of humanity, justice, and morality.
I visited the home of my family this week. It still stands. For a moment, I could imagine the kids hurriedly descending the wooden stairs as they headed down to play in the yard or the special aura one would sense when the household's Shabbat preparations got underway.
But it was also easy to imagine how the family members were brutally hit as they were forced down those very stairs. When I entered the main hall in the Auschwitz crematorium, with 16 battalion commanders from the IDF standing next to me, I was overcome with emotion. I know them personally; they represent what's best about Israelis. They decided to dedicate their lives to the most important thing there is. Many had family members who were murdered in the Holocaust, and now – having flown directly from Tel Aviv and their shoes still bearing some dust from the Land of Israel – they stand at the shallowest and darkest place in human history as the spearhead of Israel's defense force.
At the very place where our families became ashes, we now stand tall as armed soldiers; in the very place where our clothes had a yellow Star of David, we now have insignia to mark the operations and wars in which we defeated our enemies - in the distant past or in the present. Each one of the battalion commanders and officers represents unique military power; each one has fought and defended Israel and each one continues to engage in combat and fight the threats facing our country, all the while working to bolster the armed forces.
As we stand in the cabins of death, we feel an increased sense of duty. From here one cannot escape the thought that we have a treasure in Israel – its institutions, its military, and its culture, as well as all of its accomplishments – and that its safeguarding must be of paramount concern.
The real meaning of Never Again. pic.twitter.com/5FcsWom784
— Israel Defense Forces (@IDF) September 20, 2022