The U.S. and the Holocaust



Synopsis

ACT Human Rights Film Festival will screen an exclusive one-hour reel from this award-winning series.

The U.S. and the Holocaust examines America’s response to one of the greatest humanitarian crises of the twentieth century. Americans consider themselves a “nation of immigrants,” but as the catastrophe of the Holocaust unfolded in Europe, the United States proved unwilling to open its doors to more than a fraction of the hundreds of thousands of desperate people seeking refuge. Through firsthand testimony of survivors who endured persecution, violence and flight as their families tried to escape Hitler, this series delves deeply into the tragic human consequences of public indifference, bureaucratic red tape and restrictive quota laws in America.

 

The U.S. and the Holocaust is a three-part, six-hour series that tells the story of how the American people grappled with one of the greatest humanitarian crises of the twentieth century, and how this struggle tested the ideals of our democracy.

ACT Human Rights Film Festival will screen a one-hour reel of the series and host co-directors Ken Burns and Lynn Novick over in a thirty-minute virtual Q&A moderated by Laura Frank.

The U.S. and the Holocaust is directed by Ken Burns, Lynn Novick & Sarah Botstein, telescript by Geoffrey C. Ward and produced by Burns, Novick, Botstein & Mike Welt.

Ken Burns and Lynn Novick will join ACT on Zoom for a thirty-minute Q&A moderated by Laura Frank.

Ken Burns has been making documentary films for almost fifty years. Since the Academy Award -nominated Brooklyn Bridge in 1981, Ken has gone on to direct and produce some of the most acclaimed historical documentaries ever made, including The Civil War; Baseball; Jazz; The War; The National Parks: America’s Best Idea; Prohibition; The Roosevelts: An Intimate History; The Vietnam War; Country Music; and, most recently, The American Buffalo.

Future film projects include Leonardo da Vinci, The American Revolution, Emancipation to Exodus, and LBJ & the Great Society, among others.

Ken’s films have been honored with dozens of major awards, including seventeen Emmy Awards, two Grammy Awards and two Oscar nominations. In September of 2008, at the News & Documentary Emmy Awards, Ken was honored by the Academy of Television Arts & Sciences with a Lifetime Achievement Award. In November of 2022, Ken was inducted into the Television Academy Hall of Fame.

Lynn Novick, co-director and producer of The U.S. and the Holocaust, has been making landmark documentary films about American life and culture, history, politics, sports, art, architecture, literature, and music for more than 30 years. She has created nearly 100 hours of acclaimed programming for PBS in collaboration with Ken Burns, including Ernest Hemingway, The Vietnam War, Baseball, Jazz, Frank Lloyd Wright, The War, and Prohibition — these landmark series have garnered 19 Emmy nominations. One of the most respected documentary filmmakers and storytellers in America, Novick herself has received Emmy, Peabody and Alfred I. duPont Columbia Awards.

College Behind Bars, Novick’s debut as solo director, premiered at the New York Film Festival and aired on PBS in 2019. Produced by Sarah Botstein, the series immerses viewers in the transformational journey of a small group of incarcerated men and women enrolled in one of the most rigorous prison education programs in America – the Bard Prison Initiative (BPI).

Novick’s next project as solo director and writer is a multi-part PBS series on the history of crime and punishment in America, slated for release in 2026. Following The U.S. and the Holocaust, she is collaborating with Burns, Botstein and writer Geoffrey C. Ward on a six-hour series on the presidency of Lyndon B. Johnson.

Filmmakers

Ken Burns, Lynn Novick, & Sarah Botstein
United States
2022
61 minutes

English