- A new Ken Burns documentary explores how the Nazis drew inspiration from US policies.
- The PBS doc, "The U.S. and the Holocaust," was directed by Burns, Lynn Novick, and Sarah Botstein.
- One historian noted that when criticized for their policies, the Nazis "pointed to Mississippi."
The antisemitic Nazi policies that preceded the Holocaust were inspired, in large part, by segregationist laws and ideals from the US.
That's one of the most prominent arguments in "The U.S. and the Holocaust," a new documentary directed by Ken Burns, Lynn Novick, and Sarah Botstein. It premiered Sunday on PBS. The three-part, six-hour series includes testimony from Holocaust survivors and, with the help of historians, examines the initial public apathy in the US toward the World War II-era humanitarian crisis in Europe and the government's reluctance to open its doors to those seeking refuge.
It also probes how the German Nazi Party looked to race laws in the US when crafting its own measures.
While imprisoned in 1924 for attempting a coup, Adolf Hitler learned of new US immigration laws that created quotas to limit the number of immigrants. The documentary highlighted that while the Immigration Act of 1924 didn't specifically mention Jewish people, it was fueled by antisemitic sentiment in the US as leaders feared they would outnumber white Anglo-Saxon Americans.
