The main and conspicuous theme of the production is George Soros’ goal of defiling national borders for the sake of unrestricted international migration so that relatively capitalist-industrialist nations might be transformed into third-world cultures, and takes aim at US nationalism and US border integrity in particular. Its object is to induce guilt for not opening US borders to accept Jewish refugees en-masse in the late 1930s, without any vetting for anti-American, anti-capitalist intellectual history, for quality of health, criminal history, or for likely ability to self-sustain without drawing on public resources or charity.

A major point the production conceals is the shameful history of the Judenrat, the Jewish “Council” leaders trusted by Nazis and more or less tolerated by Jewish ghetto populations for the sake of keeping order and supervising activities of Jews in the Nazi-controlled ghettos. The entire incident and history of Rudolf Vrba’s remarkable survival in/escape from Auschwitz is reduced to a statement something like, “Three people escaped from Auschwitz and revealed the operational system and scope of mass murder in Auschwitz and other German concentration camps.” Vrba’s name is never mentioned—which in itself is a travesty.

The concealment/obfuscation only begins with failure to mention the truly heroic Rudolf Vrba’s name. The most glaring failure is what was done with Vrba’s revelations after the Budapest ghetto Judenrat had received Vrba’s concise and detailed report from the Slovakian Jewish authorities that Vrba reported to, informing them that a transport of nearly 500,000 Hungarian Jews to Auschwitz was planned and about to commence. Several hundred Budapest Judenrat authorities selected a few representatives to go before Nazi SS officials who, of course, also knew of the pending Auschwitz transport.

The goal of these several hundred Judenrat Jews, acting through their representatives, was to literally save their own skins—not to stop the Nazi plan. They essentially argued to the SS that they knew all about how Auschwitz worked and what would happen to the Hungarian Jews once they were on the transport trains. They would remain silent and allow the transport to proceed on condition that these same Judenrat Jews would be spared, allowed to emigrate out of Nazi controlled territory, taking a reasonable amount of property with them.

They argued that if the SS didn’t agree to their demands, they would alert the population to incite an uprising. Not surprisingly, the SS concurred, the Judenrat conspiracy of silence was honored, and several hundred Judenrat officials escaped the transport with their families (while several hundred thousand Hungarian Jews went to their deaths in a state of fearful ignorance on the transports to Auschwitz) as these select Judenrat Jews were issued bona fide Nazi-authorized visas and allowed to emigrate out of Nazi territory in safety.

This is surely part of the Holocaust story, but Ken Burns preferred to keep this out of his production because it doesn’t contribute to his (and George Soros’) narrative.

https://www.google.com/books/edition/...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rudolf_...