Filmmaker Ken Burns Talks about His Latest Series ‘The U.S. and the Holocaust’ | DW News

Washington early summer 1939. In the Caribbean Sea, somewhere between Cuba and Florida, the MS St. Louis is waiting for the green light from Washington to enter Miami.

There are almost 1,000 war refugees on board the ship from Hamburg. Almost all are German Jews who want to get to safety in the USA.

But US President Franklin D. Roosevelt refused entry.

This is a key scene in the three-part TV documentary 'The U.S. and the Holocaust' which argues that although the United States absorbed around 220,000 Jews during World War II, far more could have been saved.