A new documentary on PBS casts a critical eye on the United States' role in the Holocaust.

Local perspective and discussion on a rise in anti-Semitism are this week on Nevada Week.

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-Welcome to Nevada Week.

I'm Amber Renee Dixon.

The U.S. and the Holocaust , a new documentary by Ken Burns, Lynn Novick, and Sarah Botstein premieres in September here on Vegas PBS.

It focuses on the U.S. a, quote, nation of immigrants, end quote, not living up to that title during the Holocaust.

(Narrator #1) This is a story in which everyone is challenged.

(Narrator #2) We all think of the United States as this country with the Statue of Liberty poem, "Give me your tired, your poor..." (Narrator #3) But in moments of crisis, it becomes very hard for us to live up to it.

(Narrator #1) It is a story that Americans have to reckon with.

-Later in the show, we'll get local Holocaust Survivor Ben Lesser's thoughts on the documentary's premise, but first, let's meet our panel.

Esther Finder is President and Founder of Generations of the Shoah; Susan Dubin is Library Director and Education Specialist at the Sperling Kronberg Mack Holocaust Resource Center; Rabbi Sanford Akselrad is the Spiritual Leader of Congregation Ner Tamid; and Jolie Brislin is Regional Director for the Anti-Defamation League in Nevada.

Thank you all for sharing your time with us.

I want to start out with a quote from the documentary: Susan, is that a fair assessment?

(Susan Dubin) I would say it is fair.

Even though 225,000 is a large number, it doesn't come anywhere close to the number of people that needed to come here and needed to leave.

Unfortunately, there was a quota system in effect at that time.

And the United States didn't fill their quotas, even though people applied to come here.

-And what was the reason that those quotas were not filled?

Rabbi Akselrad?

(Rabbi Akselrad) Well, you got to look back in terms of the history of the time when America was isolationist.

They really did not get involved in the war; they didn't want a part of the war.

There were people who actually were prominent who were somewhat sympathetic to the Nazis.

There was a point of view also about the United States didn't want a lot of people who were "other" coming into the country.

And so even though 200,000 plus people seems like a lot, there was over a million who wanted to come.

-Esther, with Generations of the Shoah in Nevada, you have interviewed numerous Holocaust survivors over the years.

Have you heard a similar story from anyone about trying to get into the U.S.?

(Esther Finder) Yes.

I'd like to, in fact, share a story that I heard about 25 years ago when I lived in Washington, D.C.

This woman told us that her father had gone every day to the American Consulate in Hamburg, in Germany, and every day he was denied.

And one day he said to his wife, We're going to the consulate together.

And he took his children.

And the four of them went in, banged on the door until they were allowed in, met with somebody on the sixth floor of the building or the fifth floor of the building, and basically said, If we don't get a visa today, we're going out the window because what's waiting for us is worse than going out the window.

And they got their visa two days before Kristallnacht.

-Will you explain that last term you said.

-Kristallnacht was the November pogrom, where the Nazis destroyed hundreds of synagogues throughout Germany and Austria and broke a lot of businesses.

They smashed windows and arrested 30,000 Jewish men and teenage boys and put them in concentration camps.

So this family got out two days before.

-And I think people are going to say, Well, what about the rest of the world?

Why didn't people try to go to other countries, which obviously they did.

But what role do other countries play in this, Susan, compared to what the U.S. did?

-Basically, their doors were closed.

-Everywhere.

-Pretty much everywhere.

There was a meeting among all the countries that met with Germany at the time, and Hitler said, We want our Jews out of Germany; who will take them?

And only one country, the Dominican Republic, at that meeting said they would take 100,000 Jews.

-Rabbi Akselrad, I would like you to explain your additional qualifications for talking on this matter.

But in addition, I wonder how well understood do you think this aspect of U.S. history is by members of your own congregation.

-Well, part of my background was many years ago, when I was in seminary, my rabbinic thesis was on Holocaust education and how it was taught or not taught in public and private schools.

And so this goes back to the 1980s.

And so when you ask a question like that, how well is it understood, I've been asking that for decades.

We have to keep teaching about the Holocaust.

We have to keep educating each generation so that they will understand what happened.

And that's why a film on PBS such as this is so vitally important.

-Jolie, how well do you think it's understood?

-Well, I know it's something that we're always trying to educate children within the Jewish community as well as the secular community.

But I think that's-- You know, there's a lot of room that we-- There's a lot of growth that we need to continue.

There needs to be more education.

And so for any change to happen, we need to understand what the history is so that we never repeat it.

-Susan?

-I teach classes for the teachers of the Clark County School District on how to teach about the Holocaust.

And one of the areas that they know the least about is America's involvement: What happened here?

Why didn't people come here?

What happened during that time period?

What was the politics?

What was the feeling in the country?

And they're always shocked when we talk about what happened.

-What would you say to someone who says, Well, what about the important role that the U.S. played with the allied powers in defeating Hitler?

Why aren't we talking more about that in this documentary?

Rabbi?

-Well, that's not the focus of this particular documentary, for number one.

So sure, we celebrate America's role in defeating Nazism; but at the same time, we have to have the courage to look at what didn't happen.

And I think that's what's the focus of this special so that we don't just whitewash what happened and say, America did all these wonderful things.

We did, but at the same time, there were things that were not right.

We were reluctant to get into the war in the first place.

There were forces within our country that were very strident in terms of xenophobia and racism and prejudice.

And sometimes the echo of the past is heard more loudly in the present when we're educated as to what happened and the circumstances by which they occurred and, therefore, when we say, Never again, never again, it's easy to make that a platitude.

But it will only become true when people are educated and recognize the signs of how a society can change so rapidly, as it did in Germany.

-Esther, according to the Holocaust survivors you've spoken with, what did they face when they actually did get to the U.S.?

Did they still face this anti-Semitism?

How were they welcomed?

-Some of the survivors have told me over the years that they were welcomed with the question, How did you survive?

And when the survivors started to speak about it, the Americans that they were talking to shut them down pretty quickly because the stories were painful and brutal and graphic, and the Americans didn't want to hear it.

Most of the survivors were greeted fairly warmly.

They did have some issues trying to get adjusted to the new society and the new culture, but they were welcomed, and they were helped to get back on their feet.

But not all of them.

Not all of them.

-Any stories you can share with us about those who were not welcomed?

-Some of the survivors were met with either anti-Semitic expressions or anti-foreign expressions.

So there was that.

And they were the "other."

And some people, you know, in the Jewish community even were a little awkward speaking with the survivors, because they knew but for the grace of God, they were in this country and not in Europe.

So it was uncomfortable for some of them.

-To hear that firsthand.

Let's move to the state of anti-Semitism right now.

And, Jolie, this is where you come in.

In April, the Anti-Defamation League released its annual audit and found that in 2021, there were a record high number of reported anti-Semitic incidents in the United States.

2,717 incidents of assault, harassment, and vandalism reported to ADL last year.

What are we seeing in Nevada?

(Jolie Brislin) And I think the important word, in that is what was "reported," right?

So often incidents take place daily, and people are either accepting it or sweeping it under the rug moving forward and not reporting them.

And so, you know, I would say that, that is actually much greater than those numbers.

And here locally, I mean, Nevada is not immune to what we're seeing around the country.

We had a 64% increase of anti-Semitic incidents last year over the previous year.

That includes harassment, vandalism, and assaults.

And so we see this rise of anti-Semitism nationally, we see the trivialization and the Holocaust denial taking place on social media.

All of these go into place of incidents of anti-Semitic incidents.

-What do you believe to be behind the rise?

-Well, I think that there's a couple of different factors that are behind the rise.

But I think we have to look at the words that we use, we have to be looking at education, and we have to be looking at our society and our elected officials, right?

We know that anti-Semitism is not just a Jewish problem, it's an American problem.

It's the canary in the coal mine.

And as anti-Semitism rises, we see racism, Islamophobia, anti-immigrant rhetoric all continuing to rise as well.

And so that sewer, that lid of the sewer of hate can't be put back on once it's been lifted.

And so it's continuing to like spew out.

And so it's our job as a community, as a society to push together to get that lid back on so that we have this under control a little bit more.

-What does everyone else hear, hearing within the community in relation to this rise, Rabbi?

-Well, I think social media has also played a big role, I think, in the rise of hate and racism, because people can look for these sites or the sites can sometimes find them and reinforce bigotries and prejudices that they might have, and normalize them.

As time goes on and they're reading about this stuff and they're reading about things that are lies about the Jewish community or other communities, they internalize it and they begin to believe it.

And so it's very hard to combat that.

Education is key, but what do you do if someone's main form of education is on that computer looking at certain social media sites?

So that's not the only culprit, but it's one of the ones that is very different than in generations past.

-Jolie?

-We often see when there's, you know, issues happening in the world that the first people to be blamed are the Jews.

And we-- And another example of that is what-- -Why is that?

- --we saw during COVID.

During COVID, we saw the Asian American community or Asian community be blamed for COVID and the rhetoric and how that, how that narrative really swirled and how it became to some people reality.

And most of that was done through social media and conspiracy theories, which is much of how anti-Semitism spreads as well.

-Susan, what are you hearing as far as age groups that this is impacting?

-Well, the teachers report that there are many incidents of hate crimes within their schools.

Nothing that's necessarily horrific or reported, but it can be as little as somebody calling someone a name.

And that's often, they say, in the classroom and especially now.

They seem, as Rabbi Akselrad said, seem to feel entitled to express these hate feelings out loud; whereas before, they didn't.

They may have felt them, but they didn't necessarily feel that they could say things like that out loud.

And I think that's a huge problem.

One of the things that we do teach, we talk about the pyramid of hate from the ADL, which talks about how genocide really starts at the bottom with name calling and jokes.

And if you don't stop those kinds of activities when they begin, they can escalate.

-Jolie, did you want to add something?

-Well, just when we're talking about schools throughout the state.

I mean, we've seen students put swastikas on their arms and go up to Jewish students and do the heil Hitler sign.

We've seen chants of, Burn them all; cook the Jews.

I mean, these are statements that are taking place in our school districts around the state.

-And what happens once that is reported, you find out about it?

-So we work with the school districts.

We work with teachers.

We work with administration.

We work with different education platforms and Susan to try to go in and have education around what is the Holocaust and also to teach around what is anti-Semitism, which is an area that we really need to be focusing on as well, because so often students don't even understand what anti-Semitism is or how it's real.

And so trying to teach about that is critical.

-Esther, you were recently quoted in an LA Times article speaking about the words we use and the names that we call other people, about analogies being used by certain people in power to the Holocaust.

What is going on there, and why is that so dangerous?

-There are a lot of people who are throwing around false equivalencies, like the FBI is like the Gestapo.

-Will you expain the Gestapo.

-The Gestapo was the secret police.

And there is nothing to compare in this statement.

If the Gestapo wanted to come in and raid, they would just come in and shoot; they wouldn't come in with a legal document.

It's nonsensical.

Some of the analogies of, you know, COVID is-- The COVID restrictions are like the Holocaust.

These things make no sense.

The point is when people are looking to find the epitome of evil, they go to Nazi Germany.

They go to Hitler and Nazi Germany.

And it's a cheap shot that they do for the thrill that they get.

And it cheapens the Holocaust.

And it diminishes the suffering of so many people and so many people who are still with us.

And it's painful for the survivor community to hear these people in the media, some of the politicians making these false equivalencies, these analogies that are nonsensical.

-Julia?

-But then from there, that's how we start to see this increase of like the mentality and the acceptance of these conspiracy theories become real life and ultimately lead to anti-Semitic rhetoric, assault, vandalism, where people are now acting as if acting out, that this is the truth.

And they're believing it.

-I think one of the things that would be hugely helpful is if more students and more teachers were able to hear from survivors and what it's like for them to be American, because those of us who were born and raised in this country take our rights and our freedoms for granted.

We don't think twice about this stuff.

But the survivors and other people who have lost everything, the survivors didn't even have the right to their own lives.

When they come to this country, they appreciate what the United States is in ways that we don't.

And we need to hear from the survivors, what it's like for them to be American.

And they will tell you; they can open their mouths and talk.

They're free to believe whatever religion they wish.

They're free to move.

These were people who were in ghettos and concentration camps.

This is stuff that we don't think about as American citizens.

And it's important that we do because what happened in Germany, Nazi Germany should be a cautionary tale.

We need to protect our rights as Americans.

We need to be vigilant.

-You think about the freedom of speech, though.

And then you have the other side saying, Well, we want the freedom to discuss what we want and believe what we want.

And that leads into what you're battling.

Rabbi?

-Correct.

You know, well, it's always-- It's always so challenging when freedom of speech and people take advantage of that to distort history, to spew lies.

And basically the theory is: How do you attack that?

You add on more truth, and you just keep the message on target about what the Holocaust was, what it isn't?

And hopefully when, you know, it's gonna be a battle of ideas.

And that's always been the case in America.

But that's why, as Esther was saying, when people draw these false equivalencies, it not only cheapens the Holocaust, it begins to slowly erode what it is and what the historical importance is and what it's not.

So sure, it's used as this is the epitome of evil; and the person I'm attacking is so evil, they're like the villains of the Holocaust.

But it's so much greater than that, and that's why we have to understand what really happened.

And we have to have the courage to understand what the United States' role was and what it wasn't in terms of the history of the Holocaust.

-And I have a last question for you, Rabbi.

What action have you taken within your own congregation to address the rise in anti-Semitism?

-So there's a few things.

We have a very close relationship, of course, with the ADL.

And so when they produce different material and products, I talk about it from the pulpit.

And oftentimes we integrate it into our own community.

Secondly, I talk about it all the time-- not all the time, not every single sermon, but with great frequency so that the congregation understands the nuances to the rise of anti-Semitism.

And then I don't want to just preach to the choir, so it's important for me to talk to people who are not Jewish so that they'll understand the sensitivities to our community in a way that maybe they just never would have thought about it.

I was having a casual conversation with someone just working out.

He was in his 20s, and we got to talking about the CNN special, Anti-Semitism .

And he looked at me and he said, "Well, what's anti-Semitism?"

-Wow!

-This is someone who's college educated in his 20s.

So perhaps it's a good thing that he's innocent and doesn't know that there's such a thing as hating on Jews.

When I explain, they say, Well, why would people want to do that?

And I love that innocence.

But at the same time, you have to get to the facts that are happening in society so that when his eyes are open and he's more aware, he can make a difference and speak up as well.

-Thank you all for sharing your time on this important topic.

Now to the local perspective of Holocaust survivor Ben Lesser.

Born in Krakow, Poland, Lesser lived under Nazi rule from the time he was 10 years old to 16 years old.

Surviving several ghettos and concentration camps, he was liberated in 1945 and, two years later, moved to the U.S. where with hard work he became a successful Realtor.

In 1996, he retired and moved here to Las Vegas and ever since has dedicated himself to sharing his experience, which he did with Nevada Week in relation to the documentary, The U.S. and The Holocaust .

Of Ben Lesser's immediate family of seven, he says only he and his older sister Lola survived the Holocaust.

(Ben Lesser) My sister Lola painted these from memory after the war, five years after.

-His family's escape to Hungary in a hidden compartment under a truck carrying coal is depicted in this picture she painted.

-As you and your family moved from place to place to try to escape the wrath of the Nazis, was there ever discussion about moving to the United States?

Was that even an option?

-As a child, I don't remember that being an option.

My father had a going established business in Krakow, Poland.

He had a wiener syrup manufacturing, and he also had a chocolate factory.

There was no talk about moving out of the country, no.

-The documentary The U.S. and the Holocaust highlights anti-Semitism in the United States during the Holocaust.

Were you surprised that there was the presence of anti-Semitism here at that time?

-No.

I know it exists throughout the world, except for one country: That's Israel.

It exists.

But this is still the best country in the world, with the problems it might have.

There is no other country that anyone could succeed in life.

-According to a historian in the documentary, the Nuremberg Laws that Hitler enacted against the Jews were influenced by the Jim Crow laws here in the United States.

How do you rationalize that when you think about going on to live here and going on to live what you call the American dream?

-Well, I'll tell you.

Those were terrible laws.

When I came here in 1947, it was still under Jim Crow law.

He used it and stopped in 1965, but he didn't experience anything like that.

Anything you found it, it was free country, freedom to do with as you pleased--your business, freedom to worship.

And this was a dream to us after the Holocaust.

It was a dream.

-It's a dream the 93-year-old continues cherishing while working as both an author and speaker to share the horrific reality he once endured in order to prevent the world from what he calls "contracting amnesia."

And thank you for joining us for Nevada Week.

For any of the resources discussed on this show, including information about how to view the documentary, The U.S. and the Holocaust , go to our website, vegaspbs.org/nevadaweek.

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