Screening of the film “The Liberators” for audiences of blacks and Jews around the country was intended to help build bridges between the two communities.
But that plan has been stymied, at least temporarily, by the producers’ withdrawal of the film from circulation because of serious questions about its veracity.
Critics say that while the premise of “The Liberators: Fighting on Two Fronts in WWII” is true — that black soldiers were among the first to reach several of the Nazi death camps, and that their work has long been ignored both by the army and by historians — the specifics of this important chapter of history were distorted in the film.
Most importantly, according to Kenneth Stern, author of a 14-page report on the film, “the film claims, despite convincing evidence to the contrary, that the all-black 761st Tank Battalion liberated concentration camps at Buchenwald and Dachau.”
Other black soldiers did indeed reach those camps soon after the Nazis were defeated, but the 761st had no role in their liberation.
They did, however, participate in liberating Gunskirchen, a subunit of the Mauthausen camp.
“The producers have twisted what both survivors and liberators have said,” according to Stern’s report. “None of the survivors are certain they remember the 761st at Buchenwald — they all remember blacks, and indeed there were blacks there,” he wrote.
E.G. McConnell, a member of the battalion, worked with the producers of the film until he began believing that they were faking material, according to an article in the Feb. 8 issue of The New Republic.
“It’s a lie,” he said. “We were nowhere near these camps when they were liberated.”
In an interview, Stern, program specialist on extremism and anti-Semitism at the American Jewish Committee, said, “This vehicle, which could have had the right role (in correcting history), is hopelessly tarnished.”
WELL BEYOND ‘ARTISTIC LICENSE’
In his report, he wrote that “the tragedy of ‘The Liberators’ is that the film has serious factual flaws, well beyond what can be written off as ‘artistic license.'”
He cited what he called the film’s “most glaring historical errors,” which involved the liberation of Buchenwald.
In the film, a narrator describes a scene in which “two veterans of the 761st Tank Battalion returned to Buchenwald with Ben Bender, who had been imprisoned there as a boy.”
“In fact,” wrote Stern, “as the producers acknowledged to me, neither (of the veterans) were ever in Buchenwald before the filming of the scene.”
The film had a highly publicized screening in late December, when about 1,200 blacks and Jews watched it at New York’s historic Harlem theater, the Apollo.
Afterwards, there was an emotional embrace between survivors, including some of those liberated from death’s grasp by the black American soldiers they called “black angels,” and black and Jewish leaders, including the Rev. Jesse Jackson.
At the event, Jackson announced plans to show the film to black and Jewish audiences in 25 cities around the country.
The producers have said the documentary will not be shown on television or at public gatherings while under review, and that video copies will not be sold.
Jackson was not available for comment after the film was withdrawn, but he told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency last week that the inaccuracies had not changed his plans to show the film in Los Angeles in March, and in other cities.
“I do not think the debate weakens the message,” he said. “If the message is that some blacks got to some camps while the stench of burning bodies was still in the air, that’s a fact. Fortunately we have witnesses to testify to that.
“The film is not the central issue,” he said. “The message is of our relationship in World War II and since, and our challenge to go beyond that.”
According to Eva Fogelman, a founder of the Jewish Foundation for Christian Rescuers and a contributing producer of the film, criticizing the details of the documentary does irreparable damage to its overall message.
“The effect that all this has is that all the work that has been done in getting survivor testimony and other eyewitness accounts over the last 10 years is really going to be undermined,” she said.
“Historians should review all of the material and come out with new research on the role of blacks in the military and in the liberation,” she added. “This is not a job for community workers or for journalists.”
Nina Rosenblum and Bill Miles, who with WNET, the public television station in New York, produced “The Liberators,” announced the temporary withdrawal of the film on Feb. 11.
“We believe a full review of all the issues raised would be appropriate so that any ambiguities can be clarified,” they said.
The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
