A masterpiece account of the USA’S close brush with Nazism
Recently a book on a Holocaust theme was up for a major award. To the relief of a senior media figure involved in the prize, it didn’t win. Haven’t we had enough stories from that quarter, this person mused. I know they said these words because they were quoted to me by an appalled judge who heard them spoken.
As Holocaust Memorial Day approaches, from that quarter comes The US and the Holocaust (BBC Four) touting more testimony, new archive finds, fresh horror. Its three superbly constructed feature-length episodes interrogate the neglected idea that the land of the free, rife with anti-semites and fearful of mass infiltration by non-aryan stock, may have assisted the Nazis in their project to eliminate European Jewry.
This is another complex doorstopper from Ken Burns, Lynn Novick and Sarah Botstein. Their kitemark of quality (see also The Vietnam War, Hemingway) once again ensures lapidary narration, immersive memory, trenchant historians and remarkable imagery vivified by intricate sound design.
Take, just for example, the resonant footage harvested from Madison Square Gardens. In 1933, the American Jewish Congress convened there to protest the treatment of Jews in Nazi Germany. In 1939, the German
American Bund held a Nazi rally there. Each event drew 20,000 believers whose ardour, righteous or iniquitous, still palpably thrums with energy.
Four years on, as word from the killing fields of Babi Yar filtered out only to be greeted in America as fake news, a mournful Jewish pageant filled the Garden twice. “All we have done is make a lot of Jews cry,” rued Kurt Weill, who composed the music, “which is not a unique accomplishment.”
Just occasionally in this warning from history, Jews cry for joy. Among the precious few survivors still with us to bear witness, Joseph Hilsenrath, born in 1930, leaks tears at the memory of sailing past the Statue of Liberty. “I realised,” he says, “that I didn’t have to worry about getting killed.” His parents were among the unlucky majority to whom America would not provide sanctuary.
“You think you’ve heard it all and you haven’t heard it all,” says one American. “There’s no bottom.” And potentially, no end. After six and a half overwhelming hours of German genocide and American intransigence, this bulwark against amnesia freezeframes in the here and now as a rioter storms Congress in a hoodie stamped with five words: Camp Auschwitz. Work Brings Freedom.
So no, we haven’t had enough stories about the Holocaust. And this one, from television’s greatest historians, is a masterpiece. Jasper Rees
There is an interesting story in Meet the Khans: Big in Bolton (BBC Three), but it’s buried beneath layers of artifice. This is a reality show about likeable former boxer Amir Khan and his influencer wife, Faryal, but it’s “real” in the sense that Made in Chelsea or Keeping Up With the Kardashians are real, which is to say that everything is painfully staged. As it’s on the BBC, the series has to admit this, so a message at the start states: “Some scenes have been recreated for entertainment purposes.”
You may ask: what’s the point of it, then? But the point for the BBC is that the first series was streamed six million times on iplayer, and a certain demographic that the corporation is desperate to reach – young, northern, working class, non-white – thinks that the show is great. For a generation raised on Instagram, a degree of artifice is now an accepted part of how people present themselves. Faryal has one of those Instagram faces which is
50 per cent cosmetics and 50 per cent cosmetic enhancement. In this episode, she visits a clinic to have some more filler injected into her jawline because she can perceive a tiny imperfection in the results of the filler she had injected last time. It’s all quite depressing.
This third series finds Amir retired from boxing. The retirement has caused problems, which is both discussed and glossed over. Amir tells a friend that the couple argue all the time now that they’re both at home, and admits that he’s not sure where his life will go from here. According to Faryal, Amir hasn’t adjusted well to his new circumstances. “It’s really hard because he takes that frustration out on me,” she says. “When we’re both angry for too long, then it gets a bit scary.”
Faryal says she is the only one who sees his “sad side”, because he maintains a happy persona in public. But Amir maintains that persona throughout the show, and what could be an interesting portrait of an exsportsman struggling to find his place in the world is no more than lightweight entertainment.
The US and the Holocaust ★★★★★ Meet the Khans: Big in Bolton ★★