I met Mel while researching PBS: Behind the Screen. He had been among the first to warn PBS that the documentary Liberators was not true, calling and writing to complain even before the broadcast While the film had credited an all-black group of soldiers with the liberation of Buchenwald and Dachau, it was not the case. Rappaport felt that contemporary racial politics were causing history to be rewritten, denying credit to those who were actually there at the time. The fact that he had been present at the liberation of the concentration camp and the soldiers in the film had not was simply ignored by executives. Liberators aired as scheduled over PBS stations.
After the broadcast, complaints from veterans and Jewish groups increased. PBS station WNET issued a report which found that the film had given a false history of the liberation of Buchenwald. The senior surviving officer of the 6th Armored Division, Col. James Moncrief (Ret.) testified before Congress to ask that federal funding for PBS be eliminated or reduced. "If they lie about history during my lifetime," he concluded, "what will they do after I am gone?" Although nominated for an Oscar, Liberators did not win, in part due to the charges against it. When I included a chapter on the Liberators controversy in my book, I assumed that the record had been set straight, given the weight of documentary evidence available.
To my surprise, a few months ago I heard again from Rappaport. He sent me an article by Mark Schulte which had appeared in the New York Post about Stephen Spielberg’s documentary The Last Days. Schulte, the son of a WWII veteran who liberated the camps, demanded the film be recalled because it was false history.
Like Liberators, The Last Days did not credit the actual soldiers who liberated Dachau -- the 45th Infantry Division. Instead it featured an interview with a black soldier to create the impression that an all-black unit had opened up the camp. Rappaport told me that the interview subject had been in Le Havre, France at the time, and he had documentation to prove it. Again, Rappaport feared that truth was being distorted to promote a political agenda. As with Liberators, Rappaport and his friends mobilized, writing letters and calling to complain to the producers.
Like Liberators, this film about the Hungarian Jewish community had been embraced by the Establishment, promoted by Jewish groups, screened for members of Congress and nominated for an Academy Award.
Unlike Liberators, it won.
But the problem was the same. The film was not true.
Leo Laufer, an inmate of Buchenwald and a friend of Rappaport, wrote to the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences to warn them that the film had misrepresented the history of the liberation. He cautioned them that it would harm the reputation of the Academy to honor it.
But the protests were dismissed.
Bruce Davis, executive director of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, replied with a bravado ignoring the elementary distinction between fact and fiction:
"…After all the controversy over 'The Liberators,' it’s hard to believe that a team of sophisticated documentary-makers would get the facts wrong again about just which troops liberated which camps. If your observations are accurate, then the filmmaking in question is seriously flawed. That would not, however, lead us to disqualify it from the Academy Awards. It isn’t our function to pass judgment on the factual accuracy of our documentaries, any more than we vouch for the facts of a history-based film such as 'Saving Private Ryan. I’d recommend that you take your complaints directly to the producers of the film…"
That Oscar-winning documentaries need not be true should be news to those who watch them expecting them to be honest. That Stephen Spielberg produced a documentary which insulted and lied about the actual men who landed in Normandy and on Anzio and fought their way across Europe to beat Adolph Hitler should be news to his fans. And that the Academy dismissed complaints from WWII veterans and survivors of concentration camps should raise questions about the actual "compassion" of the motion picture industry.
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16 April 1999. Mel Rappaport has contacted me again, to complain that CNN broadcast a documentary on "This Day In History" which gave credit for the liberation of the Buchenwal and Dachau camps to the wrong unit, specifically the all-black 761st instead of the 6th Armored Division (Buchenwald) and the 45th Infantry Division (Dachau). He has asked that veterans and concerned citizens complain to CNN through its website about the broadcast of erroneous history.
Alistair Cooke's Letter From America (BBC)