Who Shall Live and Who Shall Die?

Laurence Jarvik's 1982 documentary poses a harrowing thesis: did Franklin D. Roosevelt's White House intentionally refuse to provide assistance to Jewish refugees from Hitler's Europe? Unfortunately, there is no clear-cut answer here, as Jarvik harvests a surplus of contradictory opinions and statements from Jewish leaders, former State Department officials, Congressional figures, and Holocaust survivors. The result is a near-Rashomon-like film, in which some claim that Roosevelt did nothing, others argue that Roosevelt was stymied by an isolationist Congress, and still others insist that American Jewish leaders intentionally blocked federal input on the issue. The United States was not the only country to deny access to Jewish emigrants from pre-war Europe; in fact, open door policies were relatively limited in that era (the film cites Great Britain's provision of asylum to Jewish children, but not their parents), yet refuge was found in unlikely destinations such as China and the Dominican Republic (strangely, no mention is made of the well-documented Dutch or Danish efforts to accept Jews escaping from Nazi Germany). Jarvik unearths remarkable rare newsreel footage of that tragic period, including the first film of the devastated Warsaw Ghetto (which was smuggled out of Poland in the middle of the war), but he ultimately cannot maintain control of the subject and the film ends up talking itself into circles. DVD extras include the 1946 War Department Information film “Death Mills,” produced under the supervision of Billy Wilder, and intended to inform the German public about the concentration camps. Optional. Aud: C, P. (P. Hall)