ГУЛаг Палестины

incomprehensible. To think that black people are less, which is what most

Jewish people think, I can't understand it."

She adds that racism of the type exhibited by the film's critics is what

kept all-black combat units from receiving proper recognition in the first

place. "The 761st fought for 33 years to get the Presidential Unit Citation.

People don't want the truth of our history to come out," she says. WNET says

it stands by the film's veracity.

The Liberators' focus on events that appear never to have occurred seems

all the more perplexing considering the true achievements of the 761st. Among

other accomplishments, it played an important role in the liberation of

Gunskirchen, a satellite of the Mauthausen concentration camp in Austria, and

its performance at the Battle of the Bulge was exemplary.

The documentary approaches accuracy, the veterans say, when it focuses on

the unit's heroic battles both against Germans and discrimination in its own

Army. But the unit citation eventually awarded to the veterans by president

Jimmy Carter does not list the liberation of either Buchenwald or Dachau as an

achievement of the unit.

"It's no great accomplishment to liberate a concentration camp, not

compared to fighting the German army," says Philip Latimer, president of the

761st veterans' organization. "What we're concerned about is our combat

performance. The unit has a lot to be proud of ... and I don't want to see it

blamed for this documentary. I don't want the unit to be hurt."

Questions have also been raised about the 183rd Combat Engineer Battalion,

which the filmmakers say played a role in the liberation of Buchenwald. The

unit's commander at the time, Lawrence Fuller, a former deputy director of the

Defense Intelligence Agency, says the 183rd only visited Buchenwald after its

liberation, when General George Patton ordered units in the sector to see proof

of German atrocities. Mr. Fuller says the documentary's producers never

contacted him to discuss the unit's history.

Leon Bass, a retired school principal who served in the 183rd, calls

himself a liberator in the film and in the frequent lectures he gives on the

Holocaust. But Mr. Bass says he does not remember exactly when he entered the

camp. "I don't know whether we were first or second ... We didn't go in with

guns blazing," he recalls. "There was just a handful of us. I was only there

for two or three hours. The rest of the company came later."

The Liberators, fuelled by the public-relations success at the Apollo, is

gaining momentum. The Rainbow Coalition is sponsoring a similar gala in Los

Angeles in March. Ms. Rosenblum tells of a packed calendar of showings with

co-sponsors ranging from the Simon Wiesenthal Center to the American Jewish

Committee.

Copies of the documentary will be distributed to all New York City junior

and senior high schools, according to board spokeswoman Linda Scott. The cost

of the schools project, Mr. Rosenblum says, is being picked up by Elizabeth

Rohatyn, the wife of investment banker Felix Rohatyn, who co-sponsored the

Apollo showing, although Ms. Scott says that several philanthropists are vying

for the honour of buying the tapes for the schools.

According to a memorandum on the documentary circulating at school-board

headquarters, the film will be used to "examine the effects of racism on

African-American soldiers and on Jews who were in concentration camps ... to

explain the role of African-American soldiers in liberating Jews from Nazi

concentration camps and to reveal the involvement of Jews as 'soldiers' in the

civil-rights movement."

The documentary continues to be supported by a number of influential Jews.

PR guru Howard Rubenstein, who is a vice-president of New York's Jewish

Community Relations Council (and who also flacks for radio station WLIB, known

for the anti-Semitic invective it regularly airs), worked pro bono on the

Apollo event and continues to plug the documentary, despite having heard that

it is misleading.

"I have no reason to distrust Nina [Rosenblum]," he says. "She seemed very

able and honest. I hope and pray it's accurate."

Peggy Tishman, a former president of the JCRC and a co-host of the evening

at the Apollo, is sticking by the documentary too. Ms. Tishman says the

documentary is "good for the Holocaust."

"Why would anybody want to exploit the idea that this is a fraud?" she

says. "What we're trying to do is make New York a better place for you and me

to live."

She claims that the accuracy of the film is not the issue. What is

important is the way it can bring Jews and blacks into "dialogue." There are a

lot of truths that are very necessary," she says. "This is not a truth that's

necessary."

Jeffrey Goldberg is New York bureau chief for The Forward.

The above Jeffrey Goldberg article was accompanied by two photographs, the

captions of which were:

U.S. soldiers, both high-ranking officers and

enlisted men, view a scene of horror at a death

camp. Concentration-camp prisoners were murdered

as a last act by departing German guards.

A black U.S. soldier guards German prisoners in

France during the last weeks of the war.

Comments on the above

Jeffrey Goldberg article

Where's the harm? The Liberators incident is relevant to several of the

topics discussed in the Ukrainian Archive. The Liberators has been somewhat

arbitrarily placed with 60 Minutes documents because it demonstrates the power

of the media to fabricate history. In the case of the 23 Oct 1994 60 Minutes

broadcast The Ugly Face of Freedom, the disinformation served to calumniate

Ukrainians; in the case of the PBS documentary, the Liberators, the

disinformation appears to be oriented toward improving relations between Jews

and blacks. Thus, whereas the 60 Minutes disinformation will readily be viewed

as destructive by all who learn of it, the Liberators disinformation may be

viewed by some as i

However, there are reasons for not viewing the Liberators disinformation

leniently or indulgently:

(1) Black grievances against Jews may be founded on genuine exploitation of

Blacks by Jews, and the Liberators may be an attempt to quiet opposition to

that exploitation and so allow it to continue.

(2) Setting the precedent of co

in the Liberators offers disseminators of disinformation the prospect of

impunity for manipulating public opinion to their own ends, and these ends vary

on the benevolence-malevolence continuum. Whereas inducing people who had

never been at Buchenwald to simulate returning to Buchenwald for PBS cameras

may seem harmless, the buildup of tolerance for such chicanery makes it easier

to similarly induce people to falsely testify in war crimes proceedings

concerning Holocaust events, with the result that the lives of i

are disrupted, shattered, and even lost.

"Capturing" and "liberating"? Referring to Allied forces "capturing" or

"liberating" the camps is inflating what really happened - which is that Allied

soldiers peacefully walked into camps that German forces had abandoned days

previously. In the words of Philip Latimer, president of the 761st veterans'

organization, "It's no great accomplishment to liberate a concentration camp."