THE US AND THE HOLOCAUST
BBC Four, 10pm
No American documentary-makers make more thoroughly researched films than the team led by veteran directors Ken Burns and Lynn Novick. So, their assessment of America’s response to the Holocaust in this three-night, six hourplus series (box-setted on iplayer) was always going to be granular in its detail. What is less expected is how devastating a picture they paint of the lie at the heart of many Americans’ cherished myth of their country as a sainted place of refuge for the world’s poor and dispossessed. This opening instalment has a lot of background to set out regarding the rise of Hitler and the Nazis in Germany, historical attitudes to immigration in settled communities in the USA, and the bleak socio-economic circumstances that saw the US government respond less than generously towards many Jews seeking to escape persecution by the Third Reich. Particularly sharp is the portrait of Franklin D Roosevelt, whose instinct to condemn Hitler and oppose deep- rooted anti-semitism in the US is shown to have been severely hampered by domestic political considerations and a need to turn the economic tide during the devastating Great Depression.