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 innocuous or even benevolent.
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 conniving at disinformation such as that offered
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 innocent accused
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."
In other words, the Liberators film leaves the impression of Jews attempting to
get black fighting units to falsely take credit for non-accomplishments.
Unreliability of eye-witness testimony. We have already had occasion to notice on
the Ukrainian Archive the unreliability of eye-witness testimony, as in the
cases of falsely accused Frank Walus and John Demjanjuk. The Liberators film
reminds us once again how easy it is to get some old men to say whatever you
want them to. Thus, we find that "two of the company's soldiers assert in the
film that they liberated Dachau," when we know that this could not have been
the case, and we find that "several Holocaust survivors are quoted in the film
and in the companion book published by Harcourt Brace Jovanovich as saying they
were liberated by blacks of these units," again when this is an impossibility.
Of course upon less biased questioning, some of these old men will recant: "But
Christopher Ruddy, a New York writer who has conducted extensive research on
the film, says two of the survivors featured in the Liberators told him they
