Film: Honorable Mr. Morgenthau

HONORABLE MR. MORGENTHAU is a new feature-length documentary about American immigration policy during the Holocaust, as told through the lens of one American’s extraordinary experience. Throughout most of the 1930s and World War II, the United States government actively worked to ensure that the influx of European Jews to America stayed well below America’s official immigration quota from that part of the world. This acknowledged policy– rooted in a variety of political concerns, as well as frequently transparent anti-Semitism– left millions of individuals with no haven from the Nazi terror, and emboldened Hitler to transition from a policy of Jewish emigration to extermination.

Few people had a closer view of these troubling events than the Secretary of the Treasury, Henry Morgenthau, Jr. A devoted friend to President Franklin Delano Roosevelt, and the only Jewish member of the Cabinet, Morgenthau helped craft the New Deal economic policies that saved millions of Americans from the Great Depression. A non-observant and proudly assimilated American Jew, he was careful to stay neutral about Jewish issues– knowing that FDR did not take kindly to advisors who “pull(ed) any sob stuff” regarding refugees.

Morgenthau gradually became more troubled about what he was seeing around him. Finally, his conscience– as well as the unexpected influence of an extraordinary woman– forced him to act, with consequences no one could foresee. The confrontation that followed led to the establishing of the War Refugee Board, credited with saving as many as 200,000 Jews in the final years of World War II.

After leaving government, Morgenthau (who had been raised in an anti-Zionist home) became head of the United Jewish Appeal and turned his attention to raising funds for the new State of Israel– convinced that had Israel existed during the preceding decade, millions of Jews would have had a destination and would not have been slaughtered in the face of the world’s apathy.

Please note, due to a prior commitment, Andrew Botsford will not be hosting the talkback this evening.

English, 95 minutes

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