NOT IDLY BY—PETER BERGSON
AMERICA AND THE HOLOCAUST

Best Documentary, Toronto Jewish Film Festival

A forceful contribution to our understanding of
the American reaction to the Holocaust—and of the American Jewish response.

Not Idly By provides an additional perspective for viewers of the PBS series by Ken Burns, Lynn Novick, and Sarah Botstein, The U.S. and the Holocaust.

About Not Idly By
and The U.S. and the Holocaust

Excerpts from The U.S. and the Holocaust Reveals the Dark Limits of Democracy
by Dara Horn (The Atlantic, Sept. 16, 2022)

Not Idly By, an hour-long work by the filmmaker Pierre Sauvage, addresses a similar subject as The U.S. and the Holocaust, but with a very different style. It’s about, and almost entirely narrated by, Peter Bergson, a Jewish activist from British-occupied Palestine who came to the U.S. during World War II to shout himself hoarse about the Holocaust. The U.S. and the Holocaust includes Bergson’s story too—his dozens of full-page ads in major newspapers highlighting massacres that those papers buried in inside pages; his star-studded, stadium-filling pageants; his 400-rabbi march on Washington. But

The U.S. and the Holocaust is sad, whereas Not Idly By is angry. Bergson, interviewed in 1978, rages with a Hebrew prophet’s fury.

Nobody rages in The U.S. and the Holocaust, because nobody rages on PBS. A subtle condescension is built into melancholic discussions of what might have been done to save more Jews, because in the final analysis, America saving more Jews was an optional, high-minded choice that would have been made only out of charity.

The Allies’ defeat of Hitler supposedly lets us off the moral hook for all this. One of the reasons that World War II films have such broad appeal is because many follow a Hollywood trajectory: Good triumphs over evil. Unfortunately, this version of events is false. As one of the historians in Burns’s series puts it, “We do rally as a nation to defeat fascism. We just don’t rally as a nation to rescue the victims of fascism.” The Nazis lost their war against the Allies, but they won their war against the Jews.

See additional comments, reviews, and panel discussions below.
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Not Idly By—Peter Bergson, America and the Holocaust (above—password needed)

In "Not Idly By," veteran documentary filmmaker Pierre Sauvage, himself a (sheltered) child survivor of the Holocaust, continues his exploration of the reaction to the mass murder of the Jews of Europe, which will also be the subject of his upcoming documentary "A Year That Mattered: Varian Fry and the Refugee Crisis, Marseille 1940-41."

Sauvage is himself a child survivor of the Holocaust, who was born and sheltered in the Christian mountain oasis of Le Chambon-sur-Lignon, France, as recounted in his much acclaimed documentary "Weapons of the Spirit," soon to be re-released in a remastered 2023 edition.

Although the PBS series The U.S. and the Holocaust may have changed things, until recently most Americans—even many American Jews—believed that we didn't know about the mass murders of the Jews of Europe till after the slaughter was over.  Many assume that we couldn't have done anything to help even if we had known.  Meet Peter Bergson!

A Palestinian Jew who had come to the U.S. in 1940, this firebrand led what came to be known as the Bergson Group, whose strenuous efforts from 1942 to 1945 underscore just how much was known—and how much was attempted during those difficult years.

This is a one-sided view of those times: Peter Bergson’s. Sometimes vilified at the time, Bergson (1915-2001) remains a controversial yet relatively obscure figure in the history of America and the Holocaust.

Drawing on two 1978 separate filmed interviews of Bergson by Laurence Jarvik and Claude Lanzmann (in the latter case, footage Lanzmann chose not to use in Shoah), Not Idly By provides the challenging first-hand testimony of the charismatic and eloquent Bergson, who comments on the response to the crisis by American Jews and describes his group's determined efforts to fight the Holocaust.

Prominently featured are extended excerpts from the legendary and outstanding 1943 production by Ben Hecht and Kurt Weill, We Will Never Die, presented here at length for the first time since 1943.

"We lost the war in Europe," Bergson insists, referring to the war against the Jews. "You couldn't have stopped the massacre—you could have slowed the massacre, you could have made it an inefficient massacre."

Is it about time that we began to face our share of responsibility for what happened to the Jews of Europe?

PIerre Sauvage's other films include Weapons of the Spirit, Yiddish: the Mother Tongue, and We Were There: Christians and the Holocaust.  Upcoming is A Year That Mattered: Varian Fry and the Refugee Crisis, 1940-1941.

Three Lies (about Not Idly By)
Interview of Astra Temko, daughter of Hillel Kook/Peter Bergson, and Pierre Sauvage
by David Samuels, tabletmag.com

COMMENTS

“It’s odd to recommend a film that’s unbearable to watch. But Not Idly By fits into that category.  The film left me wrestling with a series of questions I can’t quite shake.”
Jonathan Freedland, Widening the lens of blame, The [London] Jewish Chronicle

"The material is very powerful and vitally important.  Presenting Bergson's story in his words, with his evidence, through his frustrated anguish, is a continuation of his effort."
Dr. Ruth R. Wisse

A provocative film about a provocative man who is finally given his full say for history on one of the enduring questions of the Shoah: What could have been done by the U.S. and its allies and by American Jews to save the Jews of Europe—and why wasn’t it done.  Bergson presents his views boldly and Pierre Sauvage has empowered him for posterity.
Dr. Michael Berenbaum, Holocaust scholar, served as project director in the creation of the U. S. Holocaust Memorial Museum

This provocative film will open festering wounds that need to be pierced to form a scab of healing.  No one who witnesses this cautionary tale will leave unmoved.
Rabbi Harold M. Schulweis

The film—of the utmost importance—shines a bright light on a shamefully neglected aspect of the tormented and at the same time uplifting story of the Jewish people.
Sir Martin Gilbert, Winston Churchill's official biographer, and one of Britain's leading historians

Bergson’s voice resounds, his passion challenges anew, as he warns that massive abuses of human life will rage with impunity as long as people of all kinds are silent, fearful, and busy with other news.  By remembering the past, Bergson and Sauvage rightly hold all of us accountable in the present and for the future.
Dr. John K. Roth, Edward J. Sexton Professor Emeritus of Philosophy; Founding Director, The Center for the Study of the Holocaust, Genocide, and Human Rights, Claremont McKenna College

This brilliant, galvanizing, and profoundly moving documentary celebrates Peter Bergson's vigorous efforts to end the silence and the slaughter that defined the Holocaust.
Dr. Blanche Wiesen Cook, historian

Pierre Sauvage's new documentary means much to all those who work for remembering the Tragedy.  [Peter Bergson was the best friend and ally abandoned European Jews had in wartime America.]
Elie Wiesel

During World War II, Peter Bergson led the single most effective public campaign to press the U. S. government to try to rescue Jews from the Holocaust.  This excellent film, meticulously assembled by Pierre Sauvage, presents Bergson’s own powerful testimony about the obstruction that he and his group met—and about the very limited commitment to rescue that was finally extracted from the Roosevelt Administration.
Dr. David S. Wyman, historian, author, The Abandonment of the Jews and co-author, with Rafael Medoff, of A Race Against Death: Peter Bergson, America, and the Holocaust
See also Farewell to David Wyman, the Great Historian of American Silence in the Face of the Holocaust by Pierre Sauvage, Tablet

A fascinating and powerful film about a man whose words and actions were, tragically, ignored.
Bernard Weinraub, author, The Accomplices, a play about Peter Bergson and those times in America

Very powerful and compelling, especially coming directly from Peter Bergson's mouth.
Zev Yaroslavsky, former Los Angeles County Supervisor

Packs quite a punch.  Hillel Kook, otherwise known as Peter Bergson, was a driven person who was committed to saving Jews in peril during the Holocaust.  Pierre Sauvage’s indignant film, derives its title from a comment uttered by Bergson. “We stood idly by,” he declared, charging that mainstream Jewish organizations did precious little to try to rescue their brethren in Europe.
Sheldon Kirshner, Canadian Jewish News

The fascinating story of Peter Bergson has never been told in such depth.  "I know why I found him a riveting figure.  I was raised with taboos," says Sauvage.  "There will be some concern along the lines of, Is this good for the Jews.  What's good for the Jews is self-knowledge.  If you live with lies you won't be able to make informed choices."
Hannah Brown, The Jerusalem Post

Tightly edited.  Fascinating materials that have been largely forgotten for 40 years.  Bergson's statements are still highly provocative, which makes Sauvage's film sometimes tough to endure; it's frequently an onslaught of barbed words buffered by choral extracts from the symphonic "We Will Never Die" lament, but that's likely the point: stir up thought and action, and make those words timeless and thereby cautionary when another genocide is in play, and avoid repeating mistakes that led to millions of deaths.
Mark R. Hasan, KQEK.com DVD review 

Riveting.
Susan Freudenheim, Jewish Journal

Documents the agonizing efforts by Bergson, a militant Palestinian Jew, to arouse America in the early 1940s to the Nazi extermination of Europe’s Jews.  Sauvage, noting current threats facing the Jewish people, observed “How can we meet the challenges of the future, if we don’t examine the failures of the past?”
Tom Tugend, Jewish Journal

First panel discussion of Not Idly By with Dr. Rebecca Kook (daughter of Peter Bergson), scholar Laurel Leff, author and journalist David Samuels, and documentary filmmaker Pierre Sauvage. Initially offered by the Boulder Jewish Film Festival, March 4, 2021.