He did not claim that his uncle liberated Auschwitz. He said his uncle was among the first US troops to visit there.
Wasn't there some claims back a few years that it was a black company that liberated the death camps, back when the Army was segregated, that were shown to be totally false?
US troops didn't have any presence in Poland during or after the war.
He is saying that his uncle returned from war so scarred by Auschwitz that he was mentally disabled.
There is no way that his uncle was in Auschwitz in the time period he is claiming.
Former Capt. David Williams of the 761st Tank Battalion, one of the few black combat units to fight in World War II, was talking about distances, Sherman tanks and truth.
"On April 29, 1945," he said, referring to the day the Dachau concentration camp was liberated, "the 761st was near Straubing, which is about 70 miles from Dachau as the crow flies. Bridges were down, the tanks were all beat up. There wasn't enough gas. Nobody could have just taken a Sherman tank on a 140-mile round trip and not have been noticed missing. He would have been court-martialed."
Mr. Williams, who lives in retirement in Miami, was offering his comment on a controversy that has suddenly emerged to chill what was a brief moment of racial harmony. It began with a documentary film that was broadcast nationwide on PBS last November but has now been pulled from circulation pending an investigation by WNET, Channel 13, the public television station for New York City, which helped produce it.
The film, "The Liberators," viewed by an audience of 3.7 million, portrayed the neglected history of the 761st Battalion, putting considerable stress on the involvement of some of its members at the liberations of two of the most notorious camps in Germany, Dachau and Buchenwald.
'PBS-Gate Follies,' Veteran Says
Last month, the film was nominated for an Academy Award for best documentary. Before that, black and Jewish leaders gathered at a special showing at the Apollo Theater in Harlem and spoke of the two people's common history of oppression. The Rev. Jesse Jackson urged that it be distributed in all high schools.
The problem is that Mr. Williams -- and journalists, researchers and many other war veterans -- contend that a central element of the film, the role of black soldiers from the 761st in the liberation of those particular camps, is simply not true.
"It's the PBS-gate follies," said Mel Rappaport, a veteran of the Sixth Armored Division, which, he said, did liberate Buchenwald.
Channel 13 has asked PBS affiliates not to broadcast the film while it looks into the questions that have been raised about what it calls "details of the liberation of specific camps." The station expressed confidence that the "overall point" of the film remains valid: that blacks fought racism and discrimination at home to be allowed to serve their country in the war and then witnessed the ultimate in racism and discrimination in the Holocaust.
Military historians agree that the undisputed record of the 761st is outstanding. During 183 days of combat in 1944 and 1945, the 761st, wearing the Black Panther patch, captured or liberated more than 30 major towns and four airfields. It suffered a 50 percent casualty rate and lost 71 tanks. It pierced the Siegfried Line into Germany and fought in the Battle of the Bulge. And it did liberate at least one concentration camp, the Gunskirchen camp in Austria.
Many critics, however, argue that the film went seriously awry in its depiction of the liberations of Buchenwald and Dachau. They complain that the moral edifice embodied in remembrance can crumble if history is handled casually, or distorted to fit current needs -- and nothing having to do with the places whose names resonate with the century's worst crimes can be dismissed as a "detail."
Inmates Recall Black Soldiers
And so, despite evident good intentions all around, the focus of attention has shifted from the intermingled histories of blacks and Jews and to another question: Does "The Liberators" tell the truth?
How could this have happened?
In 1982, William Miles, a prize-winning documentary film maker, began hearing tales of the 761st and other black battalions during his work on another documentary, "The Different Drummer: Blacks in the Military," broadcast in 1983. In 1985 he saw a letter in The New York Times written by Benjamin Bender, a survivor of Buchenwald, who recalled seeing black soldiers at the liberation of the camp. In 1989 the presence of black soldiers was mentioned by Elie Wiesel, who was also an inmate there.
Mr. Miles joined Nina Rosenblum, whose credits include "Through the Wire," an award-winning documentary about female prisoners in the United States. With backing from Channel 13, they produced "The Liberators," subtitled, "Fighting on Two Fronts in World War II." It is essentially a chronological account of the tank battalion and other black units, like the 183d Engineering Battalion, that fought in Europe in World War II.
A major point is the role supposedly played by members of the 761st in the liberation of Buchenwald and Dachau. The film shows several survivors of the camps, including Mr. Bender and Israel Lau, now the chief rabbi of Tel Aviv, testifying to the presence of black troops. Several former enlisted men of the 761st Battalion and the 183d Engineers also describe their roles in liberating the two camps. William McBurney and Leonard Smith recount driving their tanks through the gates of Dachau and detail the horrors they saw there.
Critics Say TV Was Warned
Still, questions about the film's accuracy were raised even before it was nationally shown on Nov. 11. Mr. Williams recalled a phone conversation he said he had about six months ago with Mr. Miles in which he told Mr. Miles that "the stuff about Buchenwald and Dachau is a lie." Mr. Miles, he said, did not reply.
Mr. Rappaport, the Sixth Division veteran, said: "I got in touch with Bill Miles, who was very polite. I told him our division was the Sixth Armored and that we liberated Buchenwald. I was there. I saw no black troops. 'Well, Mr. Rappaport,' he said, 'we have witnesses.' "
Other questions followed. The first public criticism seems to have been made on the radio station WBAI in New York by Jim Dingman, a program host who specializes in military history. Articles questioning the veracity of the film were also published in The New York Guardian, The Forward and The New Republic.
Neither Mr. Miles nor Ms. Rosenblum agreed to be interviewed for this article, both arguing that they wanted to wait for Channel 13's review before making any further comment. In a written response to questions, they said they were "confident the vetting process currently under way will exonerate our film."
Channel 13 Backs Off Support
In early February, Channel 13 released a five-page response, saying that it had "absolute confidence in the veracity of this outstanding film." The very next day, however, members of the station met with Kenneth S. Stern, a researcher for the American Jewish Committee, and a few days after that meeting the station decided to withdraw "The Liberators" and begin its review.
Mr. Stern's 15-page "background report" for the Jewish Committee affirmed the conclusion that "black soldiers were among the liberators of concentration camps." His report, like many other records, finds that the 761st Tank Battalion was the first unit at the Gunskirchen camp in Austria, a sub-unit of the Mauthausen camp, where 15,000 Hungarian Jews were being held.
But Mr. Stern accuses the film makers of carelessness regarding the two notorious camps in Germany. He concludes that the scant evidence placing men from the 761st at Buchenwald or Dachau is far outweighed by evidence placing them elsewhere. Some blacks did take part in the rescue of Jews from those camps, he said, but were from other Army units.
No Mention in Daily Reports
Mr. Stern also says in his report that he interviewed the veterans of the 761st who say that they were in Buchenwald or Dachau. He found that they were far less certain than they appear to be in the film about the identities of the camps they saw.
One veteran, Mr. McBurney, said in a telephone interview last week that he had been asked by Channel 13 not to comment until its review of the film is complete. The wife of another veteran, Preston McNeil, said the same thing for her husband.
Three former officers in the battalion say that the reports written every day by each military unit -- called morning reports and after-action reports -- make no mention of Buchenwald or Dachau in connection with the 761st Battalion. The battalion's own history has no reference to the camps; neither does the Presidential citation the unit received in 1978 from President Jimmy Carter.
Which uncle? Obama's mother had no siblings. His father was not American.