They Were Not Silent is a documentary about the Jewish Labor Committee's anti-Nazi movement in America before, during and after World War II. The film features rare archival footage and photographs along with interviews with labor veterans, Holocaust survivors and scholars. It explores how international Jewry worked to help Jews and non-Jews in Germany, Poland, and elsewhere in Europe.
The JLC's role has changed over the years. A trade unionist w...
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They Were Not Silent is a documentary about the Jewish Labor Committee's anti-Nazi movement in America before, during and after World War II. The film features rare archival footage and photographs along with interviews with labor veterans, Holocaust survivors and scholars. It explores how international Jewry worked to help Jews and non-Jews in Germany, Poland, and elsewhere in Europe.
The JLC's role has changed over the years. A trade unionist who has focused on JLC history, Kenneth Burt, says he hopes that the documentary will encourage new interest in the organization.
As Hitler was coming to power in Germany in the 1930s, most Americans, struggling with the Great Depression, were preoccupied with their own concerns. Many had an isolationist attitude towards foreign affairs. But many Jewish trade-unionists took notice of the troubling goings-on in Germany, and established the Jewish Labor Committee in New York City in early 1934 to respond to the rise of Nazism. Many of its members...
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