The revered documentary-maker brings us a fascinating and unflattering portrait of a nation built on a myth of immigration. This is six hours of television well worth your time
You know what you are getting with a Ken Burns documentary, and The US and the Holocaust (BBC Four) is cut from the film-maker’s familiar cloth. (I say “Ken Burns” as a sort of cultural shorthand – this is co-directed by Burns and his longtime collaborators Lynn Novick and Sarah Botstein.) These films are long, detailed patchworks of archive photographs and historical footage, cut with interviews with historians and people who were there, all held together by the authoritative voice of Burns’ regular narrator Peter Coyote.
The three-part series explores the US response to the Nazi persecution of Jews, but, at six hours long, has enough room to extend its remit to other countries’ attitudes towards immigration and refugees (the UK is not spared). The first episode, The Golden Door, is bookended by both the Statue of Liberty and Anne Frank’s family. In 1934, the Franks fled Germany and moved to Amsterdam, along with hundreds of other Jewish families. Their intention was to reach the US. Coyote recounts solemnly that they found that “most Americans did not want to let them in”.
