Ken Burns is a Fool to Compare the Shipment of Illegals to Martha's Vineyard to the Holocaust

But his new documentary The United States and the Holocaust is an astonishingly fascinating examination of how pre-war immigration restrictions impaired the escape of Jews from Germany while it was still legal. Also they show the Deep State at the Dept. of State, a guy named Long, repeatedly interfered with Jewish refugees coming to America and during the war actively blocked efforts by our government to save those not yet murdered.

I have one or two complaints.  He oversimplied 19th century immigration restrictions.   The Oriental Exclusion Acts are oversimplified; the bond requirements for impoverished immigrants in antebellum America.  I also am a bit disappointed by the I think false portrayal of America having a realistic chance of doing something to stop the Holocaust.   

On the plus side, many individual Americans and officials did great things to save lives.  The War Refugee Board played an important part in the work done by Wallenberg and other diplomats in Hungary in saving hundreds of thousands of lives.

There is an obvious message here: we waited too long to engage in stopping the brutality of the aggressor that started the war.

I can see why working on this documentary might have impaired his ability to see the differences between our current situation and 1940.

To his credit, he also shows that the idea of the U.S. stopping the Holocaust by bombing was impractical. 

Of course, he has to close with a progression from National Socialists to white supremacists to the Charlottesville riot and then the Jan.6 riot with the obvious implications.   Even though the Holocaust was not a small number of rioters fighting a government but a government using its nearly unlimited resources. 

Good article from American Spectator about the flaws of the final episode.  I would add one more: the Holocaust was not about unhinged thugs murdering innocent people by themselves but the resources of a national government focused on order, much like the concern about Jan. 6.