The U.S. and the Holocaust (2022): Season 1, Episode 3 - Episode #1.3 - full transcript

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Daniel Mendelsohn: There are
already people who think that

every Jew who died in the
Holocaust died at Auschwitz,

died in a concentration camp,
died in a gas chamber.

No. There's whole chapters
of this story.

Narrator: As hard as
Shmiel Jaeger had tried,

he had been
unable to get himself,

his wife Ester,
and his 4 daughters

out of occupied Poland
to America.

German troops had reached
his hometown of Bolechow

in the summer of 1941.

Within weeks, his daughter
Ruchele was murdered.

That was only the beginning.

Mendelsohn: There was
another roundup, which was

the biggest roundup
in my family's town,

2,500 people,
and my great-aunt Ester

and the youngest girl,
Bronia, who was 13 at the time.

They kept them,
this huge group of people,

in the square
outside of the city hall,

and there were a lot of
atrocities that took place,

mostly against children.

There were some Soviet
documents that had come to light,

including a report,
and they listed

all the children who had
been shot, and actually,

Bronia was
the first child on the list.

This was in September of 1942.

You know, they were
throwing children

off the balconies
of the city hall,

really terrible stuff.

Whoever survived the couple of
days of the roundup

were shipped to Belzec,
and that's where

my great-aunt Ester
died in the gas chambers.

I was able to find out
that Shmiel was hiding

with his
second daughter, Frydka,

and that was because there was

a Catholic Polish boy,
who was in love with her.

And he was helping
to hide her in the home

of this local school teacher.

And that for
some unknown amount of time,

they were being
successfully hidden,

the father and the daughter,

in an underground dugout

until someone betrayed them.

And they found them,
and they took them,

and they shot them both,

and then they killed
the school teacher, too.

The oldest daughter Lorka
joined a partisan group

that operated
with some Polish partisans

in a nearby forest.

She was killed when the whole
partisan group was wiped out.

Except for
my poor great-aunt Ester,

nobody was killed in a camp.

They were killed in
all different ways,

in all different manners,
and I think that already

is being erased,

the particularity
of what happened.

Woman: Here's the tragedy.

Millions of people
could not be rescued.

They're in the hands
of the Germans.

They're deep into
Eastern Europe.

They're in Germany
and Austria and France,

Belgium, Netherlands.

But there were people
who had gotten to Portugal,

who had gotten to Spain.

There are people who
eventually get to North Africa.

If you had taken
more people from those places,

maybe more refugees could have
come in,

maybe more people escaping
could have come in.

Are we talking of rescues
of hundreds of thousands?

No. But if it's your family,

it doesn't matter if it's one.

♫ ♫

Narrator: Just before the United
States entered the Second World War,

Germany had barred
the emigration of Jews

from any country
it had captured.

For them, occupied Europe
had now become a prison

to which Adolf Hitler
held the key.

Americans were still in
no mood to welcome immigrants.

The anxiety about
alien subversion

that preceded Pearl Harbor

only intensified afterward.

FDR declared the West Coast
a "military zone"

and forced 120,000 persons
of Japanese descent

who lived there
into internment camps.

Most of them were citizens.

The Justice Department
also interned thousands of

so-called "enemy aliens"...
German and Italian immigrants

suspected of fascist sentiments.

"This war can end in two ways,"

Hitler insisted in early 1942.

"Either the extermination
of the Aryan peoples

or the disappearance of Jewry
from Europe."

Within a few months, the first
reports reached the American public

that the Nazis had begun
systematically murdering

every Jewish man, woman,
and child on the continent.

Jewish-Americans and their
supporters pleaded that

somehow, something be done
to stop the killing.

But President Roosevelt and his
commanders were convinced

that only by crushing the Nazis

and winning the war
as soon as possible

could the Allies put
an end to it.

Lipstadt: The mantra was,

we'll rescue these people
by winning the war.

The problem was,
and many people knew this,

and certainly within
government circles,

by the time the war
would be won,

very few of these people
would be alive.

(sizzling)

But the dominant idea
in the American government

is any act of rescue will be

a diversion from the war effort.

Both could've been done
at the same time.

But clearly nobody
wanted these people.

It's not one of the things
that will go down

in the long annals
of good things America did.

It goes in a different book.

♫ ♫

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Girl: Writing in a diary
is a really strange experience

for someone like me.

Not only because I've never
written anything before,

but also because
it seems to me that

later on neither I
nor anyone else

will be interested
in the musings of

a 13-year-old schoolgirl.

Oh, well, it doesn't matter.

I feel like writing,
and I have an even greater need

to get all kinds of things
off my chest.

Narrator: In Nazi-occupied Amsterdam,

Otto and Edith Frank
struggled to provide

as normal a life as possible
for their family.

June 12, 1942 was their younger
daughter Anne's 13th birthday.

Among her gifts was a diary

that she was soon filling
with profiles of

her classmates at
the Jewish Lyceum

the Germans now required her
to attend...

The girls she liked
and those she didn't,

and the boys she liked

and those who seemed
to like her.

For the Franks and other
Jewish families...

including their neighbors,
the Geiringers,

refugees from Austria...

Life under the Nazis
was now anything but normal.

Woman: The first few weeks,
nothing had much changed.

And, so, we thought, "Oh, well,

perhaps they don't want to do
anything in Holland."

The Dutch people were
very typical, you know,

they said, "You are... you
belong to us.

"We are going to protect you.

You don't have to
worry about anything."

But they didn't really
count on the measures

which the Germans were
going to take gradually.

And the first year,
it became a nuisance.

It interfered
with our way of life,

but it was not dangerous.

We were not allowed on public
transport, for instance.

But we all had bicycles.

But then you had to
hand in your bicycle.

And then we had to wear
the yellow star,

which means that people
walk in the street

and are recognizable as Jews.

And that started
to become really dangerous

because people just disappeared.

I didn't want to wear it.

I was stubborn.
I said,

"Well, I know I'm a Jew,

why do I have to wear a star?"

But everybody had ID cards.

And on Jewish people ID card,

it did say you were a Jew,

or sometimes there was
even a "J" stamped on it.

So, if you would have been
stopped without wearing a star,

and they asked for your papers,

you would have been
deported immediately.

Girl as Anne Frank: July 5, 1942.

A few days ago, as we were

taking a stroll around
our neighborhood square,

Father began to talk about
going into hiding.

He sounded so serious

that I felt scared.

"Don't you worry.
We'll take care of everything.

Just enjoy your carefree life
while you can."

That was it.
Oh, may these somber words

not come true for
as long as possible.

♫ ♫

Narrator: The Frank family
was in constant danger,

and so, they had been slowly
moving their belongings

to an annex in the warehouse
at 263 Prinsengracht

in which Otto Frank's business
was located.

A few trusted Gentile employees
had agreed to help the Franks

survive in hiding
when the time came.

"We'll leave of our own accord

and not wait to be
hauled away," Frank said.

But then a registered
letter arrived.

Anne's older sister
Margot... just 16...

Was to be included
in the first group of

Jewish refugees in Holland
to be sent

to work in a German labor camp.

The Franks went into hiding
the next morning.

Since Jews were now forbidden to

ride on streetcars
or own bicycles,

they were forced to carry their
remaining household items

through the streets.

(rain falling, thunder)

Girl as Anne Frank: So,
there we were,

walking in the pouring rain,

each of us with
a satchel and a shopping bag

filled to the brim with the most
varied assortments of items.

The people on their way
to work at that early hour

gave us sympathetic looks;

you could tell by their faces
they were sorry

they couldn't offer us
some kind of transport;

the conspicuous yellow star
spoke for itself.

(thunder)

Narrator: The two floors
that Anne would call

their "Secret Annex"
were accessible only by

a single door
blocked by a bookcase

and cramped even before
they were joined by

4 more Jews in need
of a hiding place.

The same week
the Franks disappeared,

their friends
the Geiringers did, too...

and for the same reason.

Eva Geiringer's
older brother Heinz,

like Margot Frank,
had been called up

for what the Nazis called
"labor service."

Geiringer: Heinz was 16,

and my father called us
together one evening,

and he said,

"We are not going to send Heinz.

It's too dangerous."

Narrator: Members of the Dutch
Resistance had provided them

with false papers
and places to hide.

But the constant dread
of raids by the Gestapo

forced the Geiringers
to temporarily split up.

Eva was to hide with her mother,

Heinz with their father.

Geiringer: I started to cry.
I didn't want to be separated

'cause I was very much attached
to my brother and father.

And my father explained, "If
we're in two different places,

"the chance that two of us
will survive is bigger.

So, survive."
So, that was really,

you know, the first time
that I really realized

it's a matter of life and death.

And that's quite scary

when you are 13 years old.

I said, "What do you mean?
Will we be killed?"

(soldiers marching)

About once a week, in the night,
there was a knock on the door

and people had to open up
and let them search their homes.

A story had been
going around that

in another house,
the beds were still warm.

They felt the beds.

So, they demolished
the whole apartment

till they found the people.

And, of course, hosts were
taken away as well.

So, of course, when you
hear stories like that,

people said, "You know, we can't
take this tension any longer.

You have to move."
So, we moved about 7 times,

my mother and me,
to different places.

My mother, she used to be
in Austria as a lamb,

but suddenly, she became like a
tiger, protecting her children.

My father, when we went
into hiding, he said,

"Don't worry.
It won't be long.

By Christmas,
the war will be finished,"

end of '42.
But, of course, it wasn't.

Girl as Anne Frank: It's the
silence that makes me so nervous

during the evenings and nights,

and I'd give anything to have

one of our helpers sleep here.

I'm terrified our
hiding place will be discovered

and that we'll be shot.

That, of course, is
a fairly dismal prospect.

Lipstadt: The "Chicago Tribune"
in late June of '42

reports the mass killing
of Jews.

Like many other newspapers,
the "Tribune"

puts it on page 6 or 7
in a tiny, little article.

You either missed it,
or if you saw it,

you would say the editors
don't think this is true.

If they thought this was true,

this would be
on the front pages.

Narrator: Some papers did put
the story on the front page,

including the
"Pittsburgh Courier,"

an African American
newspaper, which said,

"the Nazis could teach even
southern whites a few lessons."

3 years after their

aborted voyage to Cuba

aboard the "St. Louis,"

Sol Messinger and his parents

finally made it
to America in June of 1942,

aboard the "Serpa Pinto,"
the same ship

that had brought Susie and Joe
Hilsenrath 10 months earlier.

Messinger: Our sponsor was
a man in Buffalo

who had a furniture store.

And he was
a relative of a relative

whom we knew in Berlin.

He was the one who sponsored us.

It was great to be
in the United States,

not to be afraid of,
you know, policemen.

To be with relatives
whom I never knew,

but who obviously loved us.

And you could feel or see
how people

were more or less relaxed,
you know,

they weren't worried about being

picked up by the police
and so on.

It just was amazing.

Narrator: As he settled into
life in Buffalo,

Sol worried about Leon Silber,

a friend he had made
aboard the "St. Louis"

whose family had fled
to the same village

he had escaped to
in the south of France.

Messinger: 6 weeks
after we had left,

his parents must have heard that

something was about to happen.

They went to the teacher
and they asked her

to hide Leon and she did.

And the next day,
the police came

and they took the parents away.

Then the second day that
he was hidden in the school,

he decided he wanted
to join his parents.

He left the school
and went to the police

and said who he was,

and he wanted to join
his parents.

And he did.
He was killed in Auschwitz.

(sigh)

He was one of
one and a half million kids

who were killed by the Germans.

Including all my cousins.

Narrator: On July 29, 1942...

a little over 3 weeks after

the Frank and Geiringer families
went into hiding in Amsterdam...

a well-connected German
businessman named Eduard Schulte

boarded a train for Zurich
in neutral Switzerland.

He had told his staff
he would be away on business.

But he had another,
secret goal in mind.

From the first,
Schulte had seen the Nazis

as "a band of criminals;"

their war would end
only in disaster for Germany,

and he had already made this
dangerous trip several times

to speak with Polish
and Swiss agents

about likely
German troop movements.

Now he had learned from
an employee with Nazi contacts

that 12 days earlier,
Heinrich Himmler had made

a formal visit
to the concentration camp

in occupied Poland
now called Auschwitz-Birkenau.

Himmler had spent
two days there,

had watched the first trainload

of 2,000 Jews
from Holland arrive,

observed the selection of
those deemed fit for labor,

and looked on impassively
as 447 people

deemed unfit were
immediately put to death,

using a new method of which
Rudolf Hoess, the commandant,

was especially proud.

Instead of relying on
carbon monoxide produced by

internal combustion engines
that frequently broke down,

the SS at Auschwitz
had begun using

commercially available
pellets of Zyklon,

a powerful vaporizing
cyanide-based pesticide

that reduced the cost of killing

to roughly one U.S. penny
per victim.

The same method would be
adopted at Majdanek,

one of the 6 killing centers
in occupied Poland.

Lipstadt: Gas chambers serve one
purpose and one purpose only;

to murder as many people
as you can

as efficiently as you can.

Narrator: Himmler was
so impressed

he promoted Hoess
to Lieutenant Colonel

and urged him to enlarge
the camp as fast as he could.

The "program of extermination
will continue," he said,

"and will be accelerated
every month."

(train's horn blows)

Schulte was determined to
get the explosive information

to Jewish leaders in Britain
and the United States,

hoping that they could
persuade their governments

to do something before
it was too late.

In Zurich,
Schulte told what he knew

to a Jewish banker friend
who eventually

passed his story on to
a 30-year-old representative

of the World Jewish Congress,

a refugee named Gerhart Riegner.

Woman: Riegner hears
third-hand that the Nazis

have a plan to gather
the Jews together

in the East and murder them
before the end of the year.

He obsesses over this.
This keeps him up at night.

And, finally,
on August 8th, 1942,

he decides that he is going
to spread this to the world.

He is going to get the Allies
to do something about this.

So, he goes to
the U.S. Consulate in Geneva

and explains what he's learned
to the Vice Consul there.

Narrator: Riegner was "a serious
and balanced individual,"

the Vice Consul wrote
in his memorandum.

But his boss was dismissive
and added a covering note

before sending it on
to Washington,

warning that Riegner's story had

all the "earmarks of
a war rumor."

That the Nazis persecuted
the Jews was undeniable,

but the notion
that the Nazis were now

preparing to kill them all
was simply impossible

for many in the State Department
to believe.

Erbelding: State Department
officials decide that

this is not good information,

and this is crucial, they say,

"Even if this were true, there's

nothing that we could
do about it."

They believe that they are doing

all they can to assist the Jews

and that any sort of
rally or petition or protest

asking them to do more would be

diverting resources from
the war effort.

Many of these people were also

racist and antisemitic
and nativist.

And, so, you have to wonder
whether some of their concern,

some of their annoyances
have to do with the fact

that they're being asked
to help Jews.

Narrator: But Riegner
had also told his story

to a British consular official,

who passed it on to a Jewish
member of Parliament,

who passed it
on to Stephen Wise,

the best-known rabbi
in the United States.

Wise took it to
Under Secretary of State

Sumner Welles,

who asked him to say nothing

until he could find out

how much truth there was in it.

Wise was nearing 70,

exhausted from overwork
and in declining health.

He told a friend that these were

the unhappiest days of his life.

They have "left me
without sleep," he wrote,

and "I am almost demented
over my people's grief."

Over the next two months,
reports from the Vatican,

the Red Cross, and from other
witnesses supplied by Riegner

suggested that the horror
he described was real.

Welles summoned Wise
back to Washington again

and gravely told him
that the evidence

justified his "worst fears."

Wise called
the Associated Press.

There could be no doubt now.

Two million Jews
were already dead,

he told reporters, which
would eventually turn out

to have been
a gross underestimate...

4 million had already
been killed...

and the Nazis intended
to go on killing Jews

as long as there were
Jews to kill.

♫ ♫

The story finally made
the front page

of the "New York
Herald-Tribune,"

where it appeared
with another story,

credited to the Polish
government-in-exile in London,

which described Jews
from the Warsaw Ghetto

being loaded into freight cars
and transported

to Treblinka, Belzec,
and Sobibor,

where, it said, they were
being "mass-murdered."

Erbelding: Riegner's message,
when it finally reaches

the American people
in November, 1942,

is the first information
that the American people

really have verified that
the Nazis have a plan

to murder all of
the Jews of Europe.

Narrator: The news was widely
circulated by the Associated Press,

though its impact
was lessened by reports

about the fighting
in North Africa,

where American troops
had just landed,

and from Stalingrad,
where the Soviets

had finally broken
the German siege.

CBS Radio correspondent
Edward R. Murrow,

perhaps the country's
most respected reporter,

was unsparing in his broadcast.

"What is happening is this,"
he said,

"millions of human beings,
most of them Jews,

"are being gathered up
with ruthless efficiency

and murdered."

Jewish organizations worldwide
declared December 2, 1942

a "Day of Mourning."

On December 8th, Stephen Wise
and 3 other Jewish leaders

met with the president.

"Unless action
is taken immediately,

the Jews of Europe are doomed,"
they told him.

Roosevelt said he was aware
of the Nazi "horrors"

but had no remedy at hand.

"We are dealing with
an insane man," he said.

"Hitler and the group that
surrounds him are psychopathic.

That is why we cannot act
toward them by normal means."

Roosevelt: The first
is freedom of speech...

Narrator: Even before the
United States entered the war,

Roosevelt had made one of
his over-arching goals

the "freedom of every person

"to worship God in his own way,

everywhere in the world."

Roosevelt: in the world.

Narrator: And he had repeatedly

denounced Nazi crimes

and promised that those
who committed them

would be punished
once victory was won.

But he had always been
careful to maintain

that Hitler's victims
included all sorts of people,

not specifically Jews.

Erbelding: The War Department
does not want American soldiers

to even know very much
about the persecution of Jews

because they feel like
the soldiers won't fight hard

if they think that
they are secretly being sent

to save the Jews.

And Jewish organizations are
obviously very sensitive to this.

They don't want to have
Americans perceive this

as a war for the Jews.

(explosion)

Narrator: Still, 9 days after
Roosevelt met with Rabbi Wise,

the United States joined in
an Allied declaration

issued simultaneously in
Washington, London, and Moscow.

The statement condemned
"in the strongest possible terms

this bestial policy of
cold-blooded extermination,"

and reaffirmed the Allies'
"solemn resolution to ensure

"that those responsible
for these crimes

"shall not escape retribution,

and to press on with necessary
practical measures to this end."

But no specific practical
measures were recommended

other than victory
on the battlefield.

Man on newsreel: Through town
after Tunisian town,

the 8th army triumphantly
marches, pushing the retreating...

Man: What does
that declaration say?

It says, "We're going to
punish the perpetrators.

Full punishment
of the perpetrators."

We do rally, as a nation,
to defeat fascism.

We just don't rally,
as a nation,

to rescue the victims
of fascism.

Man on newsreel: And now
Allied commanders look

eagerly across the Mediterranean

to the shores of
Hitler's fortress Europe.

Man: Three-quarters of the
victims of the Holocaust are dead

before any American soldier
is in continental Europe.

90% of the victims
of the Holocaust

die in the northeast quadrant
of the European continent;

Poland, Lithuania, and today,
Belarus, Ukraine,

but then the Soviet Union.

They are all out of reach of

American aircraft
in Great Britain.

There is no way
American aircraft

could have flown to
any of those death camps

and impeded the killing process

while it was at its most intense

in 1942 and in January of 1943.

I think the only thing
they could have done

was to publicize
what was happening more

and to organize
behind the scenes resistance.

But they were always inhibited
about this because remember,

Nazi propaganda was that
Roosevelt and Churchill

were the tools of the Jews.

They were fighting the war
for the Jews.

And the Nazis used this
propaganda to great effect.

And anything the Allies did
that seemed to be

explicitly defending Jews
ran the risk of

playing into the hands
of that propaganda.

Narrator: Despite
the front-page coverage,

despite the Allies' declaration,

a Gallup poll taken
early in January, 1943

showed that fewer than
half of its respondents

could bring themselves
to believe that the Nazis

could possibly have killed
as many as

two million Jews,
let alone 4 million.

Woman: Druja, Poland,
Tuesday, 4 A.M., June 16, 1942.

My dear ones! I am writing
this letter before my death,

but I don't know the exact day
that I and all my relatives

will be killed,
just because we are Jews.

We are all hiding in one dugout.

My hand trembles
and it's hard for me

to finish writing.

Farewell. In the name
of everybody;

Father, Mother, Sima, Sonia,

Zusia, Rasia, Yehezkel.

And in the name of Zeldaleh
the toddler,

who doesn't understand
anything yet.

Fanya Barbakow.

Man on newsreel: The Volga,
where the great counteroffensive

by the Soviet army is
commanded by General Zhukov.

He directs the strategy of
Russian victories.

On the Stalingrad front, we see
the kind of fighting tactics

that first stopped the Germans

and now is hurling them back,

trapping huge numbers of them.

Narrator: In early 1943,
the tide of battle

turned against the Nazis.

At Stalingrad, the Soviets,

armed and supplied
with American trucks

and tanks and aircraft,

had destroyed the entire
German 6th Army.

In North Africa,
British forces had captured

250,000 German
and Italian prisoners...

and saved the lives of
hundreds of thousands of Jews

who had lived or
sought sanctuary there.

Meanwhile, the pace of the Nazi
slaughter of Jews slowed,

largely because so few
survived to be killed.

Those who did survive
were needed for slave labor

or lived mostly in
Romania and Hungary,

countries that were allied with

but not controlled by the Nazis.

In America, agitation for action
against the killing accelerated.

Rabbi Wise and the heads
of several other

well-known
Jewish organizations continued

to offer advice to
the Roosevelt administration,

but that advice
had been discussed

and either rejected
or ignored before.

And they were soon faced
with a rival group

more militant than theirs.

Its name kept changing but its
philosophy remained the same.

Its founder was Peter Bergson,

a recent arrival from Palestine

and a member of the Irgun,

a Zionist paramilitary group,

who would dismiss Rabbi Wise
and most of his Jewish allies

as timorous "Americans
of Hebrew descent,"

not authentic members
of "the Hebrew Nation."

Rescue now became
Bergson's cause.

With help from
the screenwriter Ben Hecht,

he produced an avalanche of
newspaper advertisements

charging the administration
with ignoring

the plight of Europe's Jews.

(men chanting Mourner's Kaddish)

Narrator: On March 9, 1943, he filled
Madison Square Garden twice

with an elaborate pageant
called "We Will Never Die!"

Told largely from
the viewpoint of the dead,

it featured 200 rabbis and
cantors and an all-star cast

that included
Edward G. Robinson,

John Garfield, and Paul Muni.

And this is
not a Jewish problem.

It is a problem
that belongs to humanity,

and it is a challenge
to the soul of man.

Narrator: The show would go on
to Boston, Philadelphia,

Washington, Chicago,
and the Hollywood Bowl.

Its composer, Kurt Weill,

himself a refugee
from the Nazis,

was pleased by
the big crowds it drew

but felt the pageant
didn't achieve much.

"All we have done
is make a lot of Jews cry,"

he said, "which is not
a unique accomplishment."

But it did impress
the First Lady

and scores of congressmen.

(applause)

While the show
was still touring,

word came that
some of the 70,000 Jews

still alive in the Warsaw Ghetto

had risen up against the Nazis

rather than be deported
to Treblinka.

They had already buried
artwork, diaries, poetry,

and final notes in
steel milk cans in the ground.

One teenager wrote
that he hoped to

"alert the world to what
happened in the 20th century.

May history attest for us."

The uprising was the largest
Jewish rebellion of the war.

It would take the Germans
more than a month to crush it,

level the ghetto, and send
the survivors to their deaths.

Woman: Freda Kirchwey,
"The Nation" Magazine.

In this country, you and I
and the President

and the Congress
and the State Department

are accessories to the crime
and share Hitler's guilt.

If we had behaved like
humane and generous people

instead of complacent,
cowardly ones,

the Jews lying today
in the earth of Poland

and Hitler's other
crowded graveyards

would be alive and safe.

And other millions yet to die
would have found sanctuary.

We had it in our power
to rescue this doomed people

and we did not lift a hand
to do it...

or perhaps it would be fairer
to say that

we lifted just one
cautious hand,

encased in a tight-fitting
glove of quotas and visas

and affidavits and a thick
layer of prejudice.

(telegraph key tapping)

Narrator: Gerhart Riegner...
Whose report from Switzerland

had alerted America
to the ongoing

Nazi policy of extermination...

Sent Washington
another desperate message.

Tens of thousands of Jews
deported by the Nazis

were now trapped
in northern Romania

without warm clothing.

They had just endured
another harsh winter.

With help from
the International Red Cross,

Riegner thought he could
keep them alive.

He also believed he
could help Jewish children

still hiding in France
escape across

the Swiss and Spanish borders.

Erbelding: Riegner had
many connections with

underground organizations
and partisan organizations

in these different countries.

And so, his idea was
if he could get the money,

he could funnel
that money into France,

into Romania, to people who
could buy clothing and food,

or who could buy fake documents,

or pay off
border guards to allow

children to escape
over the border.

Narrator: Riegner's organization,
the World Jewish Congress,

could supply the money,

but Riegner would need
a special license

from the Treasury Department,
which routinely prohibited

all "financial or
commercial arrangements

within enemy territory."

On June 23, 1943,
Riegner's request

reached the desk
of 34-year-old John Pehle,

who ran the Foreign Funds
Control department at Treasury.

Pehle: The State Department
was quite negative.

It worried about
the possibility of funds

falling in the hands
of the Germans.

However, we went back
and decided that

we could put safeguards
in the procedures,

so that no foreign exchange
would come to the Germans.

Narrator: Pehle granted
the license and sent it along

to the State Department for
transmission to Switzerland,

assuming it would reach
Riegner quickly.

But the staff of
Assistant Secretary of State

Breckinridge Long, who had
been adamantly opposed

to helping Jewish refugees
from the beginning,

quietly shelved it.

By the beginning
of September 1943,

when American and British troops
landed in Italy

and finally gained their
first foothold in Europe,

John Pehle insisted that
the United States government

should take an active role
in trying to rescue

Europe's surviving Jews...

And he would do
everything he could to help.

Erbelding: John Pehle was the
child of a German immigrant;

his father had come when
he was a teenager from Germany,

and his mother was the child
of Swedish immigrants.

He grew up in Omaha.

He went to college there

and then ended up at Yale.

But came from a family that did
not always have a lot of money

and was an immigrant family.

And, so, I think that made him

a little more sympathetic

to the plight of people who

did not come
from wealth or privilege.

Pehle also thinks that
the United States

is a force of good
for the world.

And a force of good for mankind.

And that comes through

a lot of his decisions.

The United States
cannot be isolationist,

that we are part of
a global community

and that we need
to treat everyone

as a fellow citizen
of the world.

Narrator: On July 28, 1943,

the ambassador of the Polish
government-in-exile

had brought a man
named Jan Karski

to the White House for a meeting
with President Roosevelt.

Karski was a Catholic courier
for the Polish underground

who had survived
Gestapo torture,

managed to smuggle himself
in and out of

the Warsaw Ghetto
and a transit camp

that exported Jews to
the killing center at Belzec.

Roosevelt questioned him
closely about

the situation
in Nazi-occupied Poland.

Narrator: Before he left,
Karski asked FDR

what message he had
for the Polish people.

"You will tell them that we will
win this war," Roosevelt said.

"You will tell them that
the guilty will be punished.

"Justice and freedom
will prevail.

"You will tell your
nation that they have

a friend in this house."

FDR also tells Karski

to meet with Felix Frankfurter,

who's on the Supreme Court
at the time.

Frankfurter is Jewish.
Karski tells Frankfurter

what he's seen in Warsaw and
other parts of Occupied Poland.

Lipstadt: The Soviets bring a
group of reporters to Babi Yar,

where there's been one of the
early mass killings of Jews.

And they're walked through
by two people

who the Soviets say are
survivors of this massacre.

And they walk them
through the fields

where these killings
have taken place,

and there are bits of bones
and broken eyeglasses and teeth

and all sorts of things that...
That indicate what has happened.

There were American reporters
who were present

in this tour of Babi Yar,

and one of them wrote a report

that was so
riddled with doubts...

so riddled with questions.

If I were a person reading that

and I harbored the least bit
of skepticism

about the veracity
of what was going on,

I could dismiss this as war
propaganda, as atrocity stories.

And atrocity stories are
a shorthand for fake news.

I'm sitting at home in Chicago,
Des Moines, St. Louis, New York,

wherever it might be, and I'm
reading those kind of reports,

I'm saying, "This can't be true.

This can't be true."

Narrator: In early October 1943,

Heinrich Himmler addressed
a