This film paints a troubling picture of the United States during a period beset by anti-Semitism and a government that, due to complex social and political factors, not only delayed action but suppressed information and blocked efforts that could have resulted in the rescue of hundreds of thousands of people.

This disturbing account of how the American government turned its back on the plight of European Jews is framed by the moving story of Kurt Klein, who had emigrated to the U. S. from Germany in 1937 to escape the growing Nazi persecutions. Together with his brother and sister, who had emigrated previously, he struggled for four years to bring his parents to the "haven" of America. Like thousands of other Jewish families, the Kleins would be hampered by a State Department that ordered its foreign consulates to stall the process.

In the summer of 1942, the State Department was advised by a Jewish organization in Geneva of Nazi plans to exterminate all the Jews in Europe. Their response was to suppress the information, dismissing it as "a wild rumor inspired by Jewish fears." The American churches were largely silent, and the press buried the story on the inner pages. It was left to Jewish activists to spotlight the situation and to mount political pressures.

Finally, those political pressures along with the efforts of Secretary of Treasury Henry Morgenthau led to the creation of the War Refugee Board and subsequently ended up playing a vital role in saving 200,000 Jews. The great shame is that if Roosevelt had created the Board a year earlier many more thousands of lives might have been saved.