Vocabulary words:  anti-Semitism, ethnic cleansing, holocaust,  refugee, immigrant quotas,  red tape, melting pot

Discussion Questions

1. What image do you most remember from the film? Why? What makes that image an important visual symbol for the story the film tells?

2. How was the film different from what you expected? How did it change or expand your understanding of the terms you discussed before the film? How did it change or expand your understanding of the Holocaust, and of the role of the United States in World War II?

3. The U.S. government knew about the persecution of European Jews long before the genocide began. What sources of information did the U.S. government have about this persecution and subsequent mass murders? How was this information treated and why? When do you think the government should have become involved in helping the Jews, and what should it have done? Why do you think the government finally decided to set up the War Refugee Board?

4. During the Casablanca Conference in January 1943, Roosevelt spoke with the French resident general at Rabat, Morocco, about postwar independence and the Jewish immigrants in North America. Roosevelt argued that: “…the number of Jews engaged in the practice of the professions (law, medicine, etc.) should be definitely limited to the percentage that the Jewish population in North Africa bears to the whole of the North African population… [T]his plan would further eliminate the specific and understandable complaints which the Germans bore towards the Jews in Germany, namely, that while they represented a small part of the population, over 50 percent of the lawyers, doctors, schoolteachers, college professors, etc., in Germany were Jews.” What do you think about Roosevelt’s suggestion? How do his comments reflect the anti-Semitism of the times? How do they help explain his inaction?

5. In the preface to the book The Abandonment of the Jews (Pantheon Books, 1984), David Wyman recounts the inaction of the U.S. government and much of the public to the news of Hitler’s Final Solution and asks, “Would the reaction be different today? Would Americans be more sensitive, less self-centered, more willing to make sacrifices, less afraid of differences now than they were then?” What do you think? Consider our current attitudes towards minorities and immigrants in light of the crises in Bosnia and Rwanda.

6. Think about how the sources used to inform and/or influence public opinion were different during World War II and the Gulf War. How has the role of the media changed? How has this been a change for the better? For the worse?

Reference:

Ostrow, M. (2005). America and the holocaust: Deceit and indifference.   U.S.A: WGBH Educational Foundation.