The Liberators
ELIZABETH APPLEBAUM ASSISTANT EDITOR
I
A new book
profiles the black
battalion that
helped liberate
Dachau.
en years ago author
Samuel Pisar re-
ceived a letter from
a woman named Va-
lerie Crowley —
someone he did not know
but whose letter he would
never forget.
The letter was in response
to an interview featuring
Mr. Pisar, where he spoke of
the anonymous hero who
brought him out of Dachau.
Mrs. Crowley told Mr. Pis-
ar of her brother, Bill Elling-
ton, a soldier in the 761st
Tank Battalion, an all-black
unit that served during
World War II. Mr. Ellington
had since died,..but he often
spoke about a starving boy
he had liberated during the
war. The boy's name was
Samuel Pisar.
Mr. Pisar remembered
the incident this way: "(U.S.
forces approached Dachau)
and like a madman, I ran
out toward the tank ... Sud-
denly its cannon let out a
belch. And all the firing
ceased. And as I ap-
proached, the hatch opened
and a tall, helmeted black
man climbed out. I had nev-
er seen a black man before.
I thought, 'Maybe he has
soot on his face.' "
The 17-year-old boy, his
head shaven and his body
emaciated, moved toward
the American, Bill Elling-
ton.
Desperate to show he was
not the enemy, Samuel fell
to his knees, "put my arms
around his legs and began
to yell, in the few words of
English my mother had
sighed when she prayed for
our deliverance, 'God bless
America!'
"And that he understood,"
Mr. Pisar writes. "He picked
me up in his arms; he led me
to the tank and took me
with him through the hatch
and into the womb of free-
dom."
Themselves victims of
racism and hatred in the
United States, black sol-
diers, nonetheless, were ea-
ger to support their country
during World War II. Their
place in the Army, and their
William Miles, Nina Rosenblum and Lou Potter.
role in helping liberate Nazi
death camps, is described in
the new book Liberators:
Fighting on Two Fronts in
World War II by Lou Potter,
William Miles and Nina
Rosenblum.
Mr. Potter will be the
guest speaker 8 p.m. Satur-
day for the opening of the
41st annual Jewish Book
Fair at the Maple-Drake
Jewish Community Center
(see end of story for a com-
plete list of speakers). He
will discuss Liberators as
well as the current state of
black-Jewish relations.
Liberators actually began
as a film, produced by Mr.
Miles and Ms. Rosenblum
for PBS. Mr. Miles is a pro-
ducer and director who has
specialized in black military
history. Ms. Rosenblum has
directed and produced a
number of documentaries.
Mr. Potter, who was just
completing The Exiles, the
story of intellectuals forced
to flee Nazi Germany,
signed- on as screenwriter.
Upon completion of the film,
Harcourt, Brace and Jo-
vanovich asked that Liber-
ators be made into a book.
Many of the men inter-
viewed for Liberators, like
Bill Ellington, were in the
761st Tank Battalion, a se-
lect group of blacks who
were sent to fight abroad.
The men were eager to serve
their country, despite the
hostility and virulent racism
they encountered while
serving in U.S. forces.
Mr. Potter recounts an
incident in which a general
visited men wounded in bat-
tle. He stopped before each
Samuel fell to his
knees, put his arms
around the soldier's
legs and said, "God
bless America!"
white man, asking how he
felt and the nature of his in-
jury. Then he came to the
one black soldier, his head
still wrapped in bandages,
and asked, "Why are you
here? Get the clap?"
"Yet they (the soldiers)
were able to put their anger
in some other compartment
in their head and go on to
fight, and to fight well," Mr.
Potter said.
In his book, Mr. Potter re-
counts the agony black sol-
diers felt upon seeing the
survivors as they helped lib-
erate Dachau. Such visions,
he said, "you can never for-
get. They are impossible to
expunge from your memo-
ry."
In fact, as a result of be-
ing reunited for the making
of the film Liberators, men
from the 761st, together
with Jewish survivors, are
set to begin traveling
throughout the United
States, to discuss racism
and anti-Semitism.
After the war and despite
their suffering, Jews found
anything but a sympathetic
America in the late 1940s
and '50s, when anti-Semi-
tism was as common as bob-
by socks and oxfords.
Similarly, black soldiers
returned home to find them-
selves still sitting at the
back of the bus, forced to
drink from separate foun-
tains, and lynched to the de-
light of small-town sheriffs.
As a result, many of the for-
mer soldiers became leaders
in the civil rights movement,
Mr. Potter said. Among
C \
0)