Americans and the Holocaust

The second presentation in the Amarillo Public Library’s lecture series Modern Perspectives on the Holocaust, this presentation was performed live on October 1, 2022 by Rebecca Erbelding, the US Holocaust Memorial Museum’s lead historian behind the content included in the Americans and the Holocaust exhibition, the author of the award-winning book Rescue Board: The Untold Story of America’s Efforts to Save the Jews of Europe, and a prominently featured historical consultant for a new PBS documentary by Ken Burns, Lynn Novick and Sarah Botstein: The US and the Holocaust. Erbelding’s presentation talks about the mindset of the American people in the years leading up to the Holocaust, as well as the broader themes addressed in the Americans and the Holocaust exhibition - what Americans knew about the Nazi persecution of the Jews and the escalation that culminated in the Nazi’s “Final Solution” (the deliberate mass murder of the Jews of Europe), the various roadblocks preventing refugees being allowed into the US in greater numbers, the creation of the War Refugee Board, and thoughts on what we as a nation could have done differently to save more lives. The presentation was given as one of the programs related to the Amarillo Public Library’s hosting (September 16 through October 23, 2022) of the Americans and the Holocaust traveling exhibition, which was created through a partnership between the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum and the American Library Association. APL was the only library in Texas to host the exhibition.