re: Ken Burns’ The US and the Holocaust

quote:

---

The episode spent a lot of time on the one Jewish family trying to get their siblings over to the US, which they finally did.

---

I’m excited to see this bit of history get a ken burns episode. The story of Jewish immigration to the US to escape fascism and subsequently communism is a really fascinating one with just infinite twists and turns as it played out again and again in different families. There is a literal patron saint of part of my family - a kind hearted tailor in New Orleans and there are about 150 people alive today in south Louisiana because of him (lazy ne’er-do-wells the whole lot). The owners of the Krauss department store on canal street used to set up Jewish immigrants with a year of inventory and send them to small southern towns to establish a general store. The letters from European Jews to American relatives and officials are just an incredible piece of history. Literacy was a skill that very recently meant a great deal towards life or death for these people.