8.0131 minSeason 1 • Episode 3
LatestA group of dedicated government officials fights red tape to support rescue operations. As the Allies liberate German camps, the public sees for the first time the sheer scale of the Holocaust and begins to reckon with its reverberations.
Inspired in part by the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum’s “Americans and the Holocaust” exhibition and supported by its historical resources, this documentary series examines the rise of Hitler and Nazism in Germany in the context of global antisemitism and racism, the eugenics movement in the United States, and race laws in the American south.
Direction
Burns' signature pan-and-zoom haunts harder here.
Writing
Lipstadt and Mendelsohn deliver devastating clarity.
Production
Archival footage you've never seen, deliberately chosen.
Creators
Ken Burns, Lynn Novick, Sarah Botstein
Trivia, insights & behind the scenes
Meryl Streep voices Eleanor Roosevelt using only her letters and diary entries, never appearing on camera.
The series directly confronts the 'Voyage of the Damned' narrative that America simply didn't know—archival evidence proves they knew everything.
US
