Mr. McConnell, along with a Buchenwald survivor and a second member of the
761st, was flown to the camp in 1991 to film what turned out to be one of the
most moving - and most fraudulent - scenes of the documentary. As the
three men tour the site, the narrator speaks of their "return" to the camp. Mr.
McConnell now says: "I first went to Buchenwald in 1991 with PBS, not the
761st."
The Globe and Mail, Saturday, February 6, 1993, D2.
FILM FRAUD
The liberation
that wasn't
A PBS DOCUMENTARY CLAIMS A BLACK U.S. ARMY UNIT
FREED JEWISH INMATES FROM GERMAN CONCENTRATION
CAMPS. NICE STORY, BUT NOT TRUE, SAY THE SOLDIERS
BY JEFFREY GOLDBERG
THE NEW REPUBLIC
NEW YORK
It was a rare moment: Rev. Jesse Jackson, surrounded by white-haired Holocaust
survivors, embracing Leib Glanz, a bearded Hasidic rabbi, on the stage of the
Apollo Theater in Harlem. The occasion was a black-Jewish celebration of the
Liberators, the PBS documentary about all-black U.S. Army units that, according
to the film, helped capture Buchenwald and Dachau. The sponsors of the
screening, Time Warner and a host of rich and influential New Yorkers, billed
the film as an important tool in the rebuilding of a black-Jewish alliance.
But the display of brotherhood turned out to be illusory. The next night
Rabbi Glanz was nearly chased out of synagogue by angry Hasidim for the
transgression of consorting with Mr. Jackson. More significantly, the film's
backers and the press failed to point out that the unit featured most
prominently in the Liberators had no hand in the capture of either Dachau or
Buchenwald in Germany. "It's a lie. We were nowhere near these camps when
they were liberated," says E. G. McConnell, an original member of the 761st
Tank Battalion. He says he co-operated with the filmmakers until he came to
believe they were faking material.
Mr. McConnell, along with a Buchenwald survivor and a second member of the
761st, was flown to the camp in 1991 to film what turned out to be one of the
most moving - and most fraudulent - scenes of the documentary. As the three
men tour the site, the narrator speaks of their "return" to the camp. Mr.
McConnell now says: "I first went to Buchenwald in 1991 with PBS, not the
761st."
'It's totally inaccurate.
The men couldn't have been
where they say they were
because the camp was 60
miles away from where we
were on the day of liberation'
Nina Rosenblum, who co-produced the film with Bill Miles in association
with WNET, New York's public television station, admits that the narration of
the scene "may be misleading." But she says Mr. McConnell can't be trusted.
"You can't speak to him because he's snapped. He was hit on the head with
shrapnel and was severely brain-damaged." Mr. McConnell, a retired mechanic