The US and the Holocaust is a three-part documentary, directed by Ken Burns, Lynn Novick, and Sarah Botstein, about the United States’ involvement in and response to the Holocaust. In this review, I will focus on the first episode of the trilogy, “The golden door.” Overall this is an excellent episode that is filled with detailed first-person accounts and interesting anecdotes. The show has many details about certain people and what their stories were and many specific times for specific people during the Holocaust. The people that are interviewed are all sorts of people. Some are protestors of the Holocaust, Rabbis, Survivors, political leaders, and observers. This show was effective because of how deep it dove into these peoples stories. The episode’s central argument is that the U.S. didn’t handle the Holocaust very well and didn’t extend as much help as it should have. While history often paints the U.S. as a hero in the Holocaust narrative, American politicians stopped many Jews from entering the country and turned a blind eye to the eugenics and sterilization programs that were directed at poor women, disabled women, and women of color. These were somewhat similar lines the Nazis followed during the Holocaust. 

The problem with this show is it is very slow. The show has three, two-hour episodes that are full of interesting content but drag on at times. The stories are a nice twist from the traditional documentary, but many of the stories are told somewhat gradually and dont get to the point very well and the show jumps around between them very quickly but takes lots of time to tell the stories. The beginning of the show is somewhat slow and the show takes a while to explain a certain point I feel this two-hour episode could be condensed into 45-60 minutes. The show is very detailed but the amount of detail in some parts breaks up the flow of the episode. This doesn’t move swiftly and smoothly and breaks the flow. At one point early in the episode, the show has a personal story and them jumps to an historical even briefly about Neville Chamberlins meeting with Hitler and right back to the US and into another personal story. The show as a whole is very well researched and thoughtfully produced and written. There are many insightful parts throughout the first episode but overall, given the pace and length of each episode, it is very challenging and a little tedious to sit down and watch the full two-hour episode in one sitting.