Americans and the Holocaust A Reader

This expertly curated array of primary sources -- newspaper clippings, State Department memos, photographs, and more -- explores the persistent question: What did Americans know about the Holocaust? The answer -- an astonishing amount! -- deepens our understanding of the past and challenges what we think we know about our own times.- Doris Bergen, author of War and Genocide: A Concise History of the Holocaust
Kudos to Daniel Greene and Edward Phillips for producing this searing collection of contemporary news stories, government reports, and other documents contradicting the common belief that the American government and people had little access to information about the Holocaust as it unfolded. With its haunting parallels to the deep strains in our society today, this is an essential read.- Lynne Olson, author of Those Angry Days: Roosevelt, Lindbergh and America's Fight Over World War II, 1939-1941
This wide-ranging, representative, and deeply absorbing selection of American commentary on the plight of Europe's Jews during the 1930s and 1940s both informs about the past and prompts reflection on the present. Readers will come face to face with the best and the worst of our country's reflexes, both then and now.- Peter Hayes, author of Why?: Explaining the Holocaust
This book is an important and exceptionally useful resource for the classroom. Any teacher or student who wants to get a feel for the prevailing sentiments in America during the prelude to World War II and during the war itself will be immensely aided by this important collection of voices. If you want to know what did people know and when did they know it, this collection will help provide the answer.- Deborah E. Lipstadt, Ph.D., author of Antisemitism Here and Now
This remarkable book shatters the myth that Americans lacked information about the dangers of Nazism. These diverse, historical sources from multiple voices across the United States leave us with troubling questions about the national will to respond to discrimination, war, and genocide.- Ken Burns, Lynn Novick and Sarah Botstein, Florentine Films