To complement this week’s PBS-TV showing of director Ken Burns’s three-part documentary The U.S. and the Holocaust (check local listings for times), Bard College will host an abridged screening of the film on September 21.
The short (30-minute) screening will be followed by a panel discussion with codirector and producer of The U.S. and the Holocaust Sarah Botstein; Dean of Graduate Studies and Associate Professor of History Christian Ayne Crouch; Professor of Comparative Literature and Director of the Human Rights Program Thomas Keenan; Associate Professor and Patricia Ross Weis ’52 Chair in Jewish History and Culture Cecile E. Kuznitz; and Charles Ranlett Flint Professor of Humanities Daniel Mendelsohn, author of The Lost: A Search for Six of Six Million, who shares his family’s story in the film. The event will be introduced by Bard College President Leon Botstein and will be followed by an audience Q&A session.
The documentary examines America’s response to one of the greatest humanitarian crises of the 20th century. Americans consider their country to be 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 riveting firsthand testimony of witnesses and survivors who as children 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 abridged screening of The U.S. and the Holocaust and panel discussion will be held on September 21 at 7:30pm in the Sosnoff Theater at the Fisher Center for the Performing Arts at Bard College in Annandale-on-Hudson. The event is free and open to the public.
This article appears in September 2022.
