- Hollywood, the land of red carpets, dazzling movie stars
and scandals fit for the big screen,
but without one film producer, it's possible
that Tinseltown would've been based in New Jersey,
and yet establishing Hollywood
wasn't even Carl Laemmle's most important legacy.
That would be all the Jews that he saved from the Nazis.
And though he was targeted by Nazis
and bound up by American anti-immigration policies,
Laemmle still managed to save over 1,000 Jews.
But how did he do it and why did he step up
when others refused?
(pensive music)
Carl Laemmle may have been born in Germany,
but he didn't stay there long.
Even though he couldn't speak a lick of English,
he understood from American advertisements
that the US was the land of opportunity.
So just after his 17th birthday,
Laemmle crossed the Atlantic
with just $50 in his pocket.
But Laemmle made it work, bouncing from job to job
until he opened one of the first movie theaters in Chicago.
With his passion for the silver screen,
he went on to create Universal Pictures.
Soon he was a fixture of early cinema.
Today, movies get made based on star power.
A film is far more likely to get produced
and advertised once there's a big name attached.
We could thank Laemmle for that.
He created the concept of the movie star, using the power
of celebrity to get people in the seats.
But his most iconic achievement was creating Hollywood
because before he set up Universal Studios in LA,
the film industry was based in Fort Lee, New Jersey.
That's right.
If it wasn't for Carl Laemmle,
Spielberg could be living in the suburbs of northern Jersey
and it's possible no one would care if DiCaprio
was starring in a film or not.
Despite his success, Laemmle never forgot his roots.
Like other German immigrants, he held a deep love
for his childhood home, which he called the Fatherland.
He went back often to visit family
and friends until the chaos of World War I forced him
to stay away.
When he did finally return, everything had changed.
Germany's infrastructure had crumbled.
All around him, people struggled
to buy basic necessities and children starved.
Horrified, Laemmle begged his fellow Americans to help.
(typewriter dinging)
He wrote to newspapers asking people to send money, food,
clothes, whatever they could spare.
He even got his employees to contribute,
paying for the shipping of donations himself.
But things didn't improve for Germany.
In fact, they got much, much worse.
And Laemmle's childhood home became not just unrecognizable,
but intolerable for Jews.
(crowd cheering)
His wake-up call came in 1930.
That year, Laemmle released his most ambitious project yet,
"All Quiet on the Western Front."
Critics celebrate it as one
of the most powerful anti-war films ever made,
promoting peace by showcasing the horror of war.
It's a critique of the glorification of war.
There's no romance, no heroes, no villains,
just pointless bloodshed.
Most importantly, it was told from a German perspective,
presenting the Germans not as enemies,
but as ordinary people, just like their audience.
The film's themes resonated throughout the world,
and it was the first movie to win the Academy Award
for both Best Director and Outstanding Production,
which today we call Best Picture.
But one group was really not on board with that message.
The Nazi Party did not appreciate the suggestion
that German soldiers died for nothing.
They especially did not like that the film
was funded by Jews.
sensing an opportunity,
chief party propagandist Joseph Goebbels used the film
to orchestrate a riot.
On the second night of the film's premiere in Berlin,
a group of Nazis interrupted the screening,
shouting about the evil Jewish film
and unleashing stink bombs, sneezing powder, and mice.
Patrons screamed and gagged.
The panic brought the show to a halt,
but that wasn't the end of Goebbels' display.
For the next six days,
he led torch-lit marches in the street,
demanding the film be banned.
To drive his point home, he let the German people know
that if the Weimar government wasn't capable
of banning this evil Jewish propaganda, Hitler would be.
The government took the warning seriously,
banning the movie from Germany.
It was a win for the future Minister of Propaganda.
He wanted to drum up public support for the Nazis,
and he got it through antisemitism.
Laemmle was horrified.
He had hoped the film would usher in a new era of peace
between his native and adopted countries.
Instead, his childhood home banned his greatest work.
Laemmle could read the writing on the wall.
Immediately, he got his family out of Germany,
but he didn't stop there.
His family may have been safe, but so many weren't.
A full year before Hitler became chancellor of Germany,
Laemmle took to the press, warning the world
about the destruction Hitler could bring, not only to Jews
but the world as a whole.
It was as if Laemmle could see into the future,
or maybe he was just one
of the few willing to see the truth.
After Hitler took power,
Laemmle's predictions came true.
Immediately, the Nazis purged Jews
from the German film industry.
Foreign companies were no exception.
Hollywood studios were instructed
to dismiss Jewish employees from their German offices.
And the Nazis had a personal message for Carl Laemmle.
His studio, Universal Pictures, had an office in Germany,
and the studio's European representative
was a guy named Max Friedland,
who just happened to be Laemmle's nephew.
The Gestapo snatched Friedland from his bed,
interrogating him for hours.
He didn't have any information to give up,
but that wasn't the point.
The Nazis used Friedland to intimidate Laemmle
and their tactics worked.
Heartbroken, Laemmle pulled Universal Studios out
of Germany, but he wasn't giving up.
After his retirement, he threw himself
into saving German Jews.
With two full-time assistants at his side,
Laemmle did everything he could for the cause,
from raising funds for refugees
to promoting awareness of the Nazi threat through rallies,
petitions, and film.
But he did more than speak out.
He put his words into action
by bringing over 1,000 Jewish refugees into the US.
It wasn't easy.
America's strict immigration quotas capped the number
of immigrants by country based
on how racially desirable its population was.
So while German Jews may have been seen
as more racially desirable than Jews fleeing Eastern Europe,
the US government didn't make it easy to get a visa.
The American economy was devastated by the Great Depression,
and the government feared that immigrants
would make things worse.
So they instituted a sponsorship system, supposedly ensuring
that immigrants wouldn't be a drain on society.
But it wasn't easy for immigrants to find a sponsor.
And thousands of allotments for visas went unused each year,
even as Jews clamored for them.
So Laemmle stepped in, signing affidavits promising
that any refugees would be financially stable.
He put up cash bonds
and even deposited $1 million in a Swiss bank account
to convince the US government that he was serious.
He started with sponsoring family and friends,
then friends of friends, then anyone who needed a visa.
When all was said and done, he signed over 300 affidavits.
Each one got an entire family into the US.
That's easily over 1,000 people saved by the stroke
of Carl Laemmle's pen.
But simply signing documents wasn't always enough.
The Great Depression made immigrants unwelcome.
Antisemitism made the problem worse.
- And I think the fact that a committee of a...
The legislature of the state of New York is composed
of entirely of Jews
bespeaks something which I think is wrong with our country.
- Nazism was surprisingly popular in the US
before World War II but you didn't have to be a Nazi
to oppose Jewish immigration.
Just over 70% of Americans believed
that the US shouldn't accept Jewish refugees
even after Kristallnacht.
Among them were members
of the US Consulate in Stuttgart, Germany
and the State Department in D.C.
So regardless of how President Roosevelt personally felt
about Jews, he had no political interest in rocking the boat
and going against the will
of his government officials and general public.
So the US consulate in Stuttgart began rejecting
Laemmle's affidavits on the grounds
that he had signed too many.
They questioned whether he could
actually support these people.
Even going as far to say he was too old
to guarantee anything.
Laemmle protested fervently, taking the matter all the way
to the Secretary of State.
In his correspondence, he made it clear that he had plenty
of money for the refugees and even promised jobs
and housing to any refugee in need.
He even got his kids
to guarantee his promise if he passed away.
But this still wasn't enough for the American government.
So Laemmle tried a new approach.
Maybe he was signing too many affidavits,
but he had a wide social network to help.
His family and friends signed affidavits
while he secretly paid the costs.
Together, they managed to bring roughly 100 more families
into the United States.
And he didn't stop supporting the refugees
once they arrived.
"If your relative doesn't give you sufficient money
to get along on, I will give you what you are short of,"
he wrote a woman who had just landed in New York.
"I know you will not ask for anything
unless you actually need it,
but you can absolutely depend on me to stand by you
until you get on your feet."
Two weeks after sending that letter,
Carl Laemmle died of a heart attack.
Thousands of people showed up to pay their respects
to Hollywood's beloved Uncle Carl.
During the service, representatives from every studio
in Hollywood stood silent for five minutes.
Today, almost no one knows Carl Laemmle's name,
and if they do, they remember him
as a legendary film producer.
But that's beginning to change.
The descendants of the families he saved
are bringing his story to light.
Carl Laemmle did everything he could to save lives.
When doors closed in his face,
he found ways to push them back open.
The world would be a better place
if all of us took his example.
And some are.
The United States adopted the same sponsorship system
in 2021 for Afghan refugees.
And you know who ended up sponsoring these families?
That would be the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society who turned
to synagogues across the USA to help.
I think Laemmle would've approved.