Your report to the American Jewish Committee was received by us with much disappointment. While your work undoubtedly was done with good intentions, it is being exploited by those who have little if any interest in exploring the unknowns surrounding the history of the Holocaust. We remain committed to telling the truth about the Holocaust and ask that you accept our arguments below in a spirit of constructive dialogue.
To begin, let us explore the Battalion's "morning reports", said by Dr. Robert Kesting to be the "best way to confirm or deny' the filmmakers' claims" [that the unit was often split-up]. You do not reveal until five pages into your report (in footnote 10) that neither you nor Dr. Kesting has actually seen these records. You note that the records "would be housed in a St. Louis archive assuming they were not destroyed in a fire" (our emphasis). First of all, the battalion's morning reports (even if they exist in toto) would not necessarily furnish definitive proof of the units' whereabouts. Speaking from their personal experience with morning reports, Paul Parks, military historian Dr. Leroy Ramsey, as well as former enlisted men in the 761st (including supply personnel) have all expressed strong doubts about their categorical reliability. But more to the point, if Dr. Kesting thinks these reports are the crucial ones, why not locate them?
Furthermore, since neither of you has seen them, from what records have you based the conclusions arrived at in your report to the AJC? Battalion records? Division records? You fail to say. Presumably, neither you nor Dr. Kesting is acquainted with a volume entitled The Invisible Soldier, The Experience of the Black Soldier, World War II, a collection of oral histories compiled and edited by Mary Penick Motley (Wayne State University Press, 1975). In it, Horace Jones, who served in Company B. of the 761st (commanded by Lt. John Long) says
"By the way, overseas we were known as a bastard outfit. It meant we didn't belong to any group permanently; we fought with any outfit that needed us. Sometimes we didn't see each other for a week or more. One company might be sent to the 87th, three or four tanks to some other outfit, and so on, so we'd be all over the place. It was definitely a ploy to keep from committing us together as a battalion as much as possible; whole units get credit while a few isolated tanks, no matter whether they saved the day or not, are overlooked.Horace Jones' statement obviously could not have been coerced by the filmakers since it was recorded almost twenty years before their documentary was made. Compare this to Dr. Kesting's "there were no breaks, no platoons lent out, no nothing." A Mexican stand-off? Hardly. Which man was in a better position to know?
And speaking of Dr. Kesting, you mention (page one) that you conferred with experts while preparing your report but you only mention him. Who were the others? You write (page one) that you spent three weeks talking to the film's eyewitnesses. You might have mentioned that with the exception of E.G. MCConnell, the talking was done on the telephone. It's not quite the same as a face-to-face interview, nor as convincing. Nor is it the method of taking testimony favored by those who specialize in survivor accounts (for example, Dr. Eva Fogelman, a project adviser), to say nothing of the kind of forensic cross- examining that you subject the survivors and veterans to.
In the report, on page two, you write: "A minor problem with the film is that it never defines what a liberator is. There are three ways to define the term." You cite the military's definition of the word--arrival within the first 48 hours--and mention a "second, less technical but equally humane meaning of the term," but never tell us what this is, nor what the "third" definition might be. For what it's worth, Mr. Stern, the filmmakers at least suggest what they mean by the term "liberator" by means of their title: 'Fighting on Two Fronts In WW II'. That is WW II-era African-Americans were fighting for their own rights at home, and (along with the rest of the American army) to liberate Fortress Europa (including its genocidally diminished Jewish population) from Nazi occupation and terror.
On the same page you say: "It must be recalled that no one--especially the inmates--was running a stopwatch, and those who challenge [on the basis of chronology] whether the 183rd was a liberating unit miss the point." Of course we agree. But this merely indicates the importance of collecting accounts so that a more complete record can be created. We continue to receive survivor accounts from the US and abroad in the hope of telling a fuller story of camp liberations.
On page 3 you write: "It is indisputable that blacks saw Jews, and Jews blacks, in both Buchenwald and Dachau. Survivors accurately testify that they say blacks within the first few days [Ben Bender-whom you ignore--insists it was during the first hours] and blacks accurately testify that they saw the 'walking skeletons' of Jews. There is no question that Leon Bass was at Buchenwald while dead bodies were still in piles: there is a picture..." In a footnote (page 3, footnote 3) you add, : "interestingly, the book and the film show only this one picture, taken by William Scott, depicting black soldiers in a camp while there were still bodies of dead inmates stacked like cordwood."
Actually, the film shows not one but three photographs of black soldiers at Buchenwald. The one photograph you cite is, we believe, strong evidence of the 183rd's presence at Buchenwald early in the liberation. In Scott's diary the photo is dated April 11, 1945---the first day of liberation. You may also wish to note that there are four black soldiers in the picture in addition to Bass. To this day, Mr. Bass insists that he and the others entered Buchenwald within the first days of liberation. And survivors continue to testify to the presence of black soldiers within the first two days---some on foot, some in tanks. You maintain that they did not belong to the 761st. If you are right, then the black tankers seen by a number of Buchenwald survivors must have come from another unit. But what other all-black armored unit was in the area? (Answer: none.)
It is your contention that the survivors who claim to have seen tanks actually saw bulldozers being operated by black troops (evidently combat engineers). Presumably, years of hardship and imprisonment had rendered the inmates incapable of distinguishing between the two kinds of vehicles, despite the fact that only a tank has a turret with a 76mm. cannon and other clearly distinguishing characteristics. To this day, Alex Gross adheres to his recollection that he saw a black soldier emerge from "the first American tank that approached my part of the camp." (See the attached letter of Alex Gross to THE NEW REPUBLIC, to date unpublished.)
On page three you say that it was the rumbling artillery of the advancing allied armies and the guards' knowledge of their imminent arrival that freed many of the camps, adding: "The guards, for the most part, had fled". This may have been true of the liberation of Dachau, where American soldiers had to overpower some 300 determined S.S. troops before liberating the camp. According to Robert Abzug, these same S.S. troops, after surrendering to the Americans, were promptly executed by them once the GI's had gotten their first look inside the camp. (See R. Abzug, INSIDE THE VICIOUS HEART, photograph p. 94).
You declare (page four) that there is "some motivation for fabrication on each side," an allegation which we find unfair with regard to the black GIs, but potentially relevant regarding some of their commanders. You add, "On the one side, trying to make themselves heroes, or make money from a "good story"; on the other, downplaying enlisted men's accomplishments, rumors of alternative stories to be sold, or simply commanders who, nearly half a century later, believe they know where all their men were at any given moment." We wish to point out that none of those included in LIBERATORS received any financial incentives to appear in the film. And if you had encountered face-to-face, as we have, all the black GI's included in the film, evaluated them, their lifestyles and life accomplishments, demeanor and honesty, you would (with one notable exception) have eliminated false claims of heroism as motivation.
As for so-called "downplaying" by commanders, here there may or may not be grounds for closer scrutiny. But you might have been wary of the research provided you by Dr. Kesting, who, when queried (on page six) on this very point -- about the downplaying of achievements of black soldiers -- was "adamant" that there was none. If you had questions about "downplaying" of enlisted men's accomplishments, why rely so heavily on an expert who didn't?
Dr. Kesting, often casting his comments in the conditional tense, talks about what "would" be, as if his answers are to hypothetical questions. Your utilization of Dr. Kesting in this fashion is in keeping with an official history--- one of neat and complete record keeping, and an historical accounting devoid of racism. At times Kesting refers to the "Organization of Battle," (page four) to assert that no platoons within the 761st were "lent out." (Black GI's--including Horace Jones--insist that "bastardized" units were commonplace.) On the next page (page 5) Kesting refers to the "morning reports" as "the best thing to do to confirm what they're saying about being detached." Why look to morning reports if the Organization of Battle tells the whole story? With all due respect, your singular reliance on Dr. Robert Kesting seems to us misplaced.
For the record, experts on black military history flatly disagree that black accomplishments are fairly reflected in official records.** There are significant gaps in the historical records of the 761st, 183rd Combat. Engineers, the 614th Tank Destroyer Battalion and many other black combat units. You can begin to see the importance of oral history in helping fill some of these gaps.
A statement about the film, issued by the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum in November, 1992, reads:
"The absence of written documentary evidence, however, is often not conclusive. The military circumstances in the Spring of 1945 were so chaotic that evidence of concentration camp liberations is usually scant in official unit records. Individual military units were moving very quickly and their whereabouts on any particular day is often very difficult to reconstruct solely on the basis of written documentation. Almost fifty years after the fact, the process of identifying liberator units is still on-going."You describe the Museum's statement (page 4, footnote 7) as "a carefully worded press-release, saying it could neither confirm nor deny the presence of the 761st at Buchenwald or Dachau."
This strikes us an unfair rendering of what the Museum's statement actually said. We see LIBERATORS as part of the on-going process called for by the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum.
Kesting's charge on page six that "no one check anything" is simply wrong. Among the major archives visited by the filmmakers were:
Dr. Kesting's notions of intelligence reporting and the rules of governing radio-transmissions are challenged by a number of veterans of the 761st, as well as by Dr. Ramsey. They insist that intelligence was never broadcast over tank radios lest it be picked up by the enemy. Likewise maps, notebooks and similar intelligence were prohibited for the same reason. Only map overlays were allowed, and radio transmissions limited to coded phrases.
You refer on pages seven and eight to the accounts of Leonard Smith and William McBurney at Dachau as not matching the true description of the camp's "main gate." However, Mr. Stern, nobody in the film either described the gate or indicated it to be the "main" one. Your inquiry into their credibility appears to be somewhat limited and not open-minded.
You devote almost two pages to 761st veteran Preston McNeil's memories of Dachau, concluding that these recollections are "complex" and "perplexing." As you point out, McNeil says he saw a gas-chamber ("showers") and that only Dachau--of all the camps on German soil--had one. Not satisfied with his account, you go on to question whether a soldier could have toured the camp extensively in the first "minutes, hours or days" after liberation "and [come] to know the significance of what he saw." Even assuming that McNeil spent a limited amount of time in the camp, how hard would it have been to understand the "significance" of, for example, a dissection room filled with human cadavers?
Finally,, you simply ignore the testimony of Buchenwald survivor Benjamin Bender (featured prominently in the film) who continues to insist that he saw black soldiers in the camp on the first day of liberation (April 11, 1945). In a recent letter (protesting the attacks on the film) Bender wrote: "Every detail of April 11, 1945 is deeply implanted in my memory to this very day. I was punished with a good memory...You can rest assured that at the age of 17 my mind was vibrant and alert and still is. No mistake: black soldiers, tall and beautiful, resembling giants from another planet were pouring through the iron gate of hell." Granted that Bender had no way of knowing the soldiers' unit designation, and assuming 'arguendo' that you are correct about these soldiers not being part of the 761st or the 183rd, the question arises: who were they, and how did they get there?
We appreciate your acknowledgement that "It took two filmmakers,
despite the problems with their project, to create a message that silenced
the racists, the anti-semites, the inward-looking of both communities,
and spoke to the heart." But we take strong exception to your assertion
(footnote page 14) that our "credibility is now beyond redemption". May
we politely suggest that your own credibility, in many matters, cannot
always be taken for granted. However, we do applaud your call to "search
out other films to be made", and other projects to "embrace". In the meantime,
we trust that people of good will may yet find in LIBERATORS, as you put
it, a "vehicle to educate each other and touch the heart".
"LIBERATORS
UNDER FIRE"