Elliot Perlman: Race and the Liberation of Dachau

Elliot Perlman is the author of, most recently, the novel The Street Sweeper.

Some six or seven years ago I happened to see an Academy Award-winning documentary, "The Last Days," directed by James Moll and with Steven Spielberg as executive producer. It was of interest to me because, like the novel I was then writing, it dealt with the Holocaust and tangentially with the role of African American troops in World War II.

In the film, Paul Parks, an African American WW II veteran and civil rights activist, recounts being one of a number of black troops of the then-segregated U.S. Armypresent at the liberation of Dachau, the first concentration camp the Nazis built and one of the last to be liberated. Although it was not one of the six death camps created specifically for mass murder, many thousands of people died there during the Third Reich. The historical and moral significance of African American troops taking part in the liberation of Dachau was of interest to me.

Subsequently I learned that "The Last Days" and "Liberators: Fighting on Two Fronts in World War II" — a 1992 PBS documentary that also drew attention to the presence of black troops at Dachau — were roundly attacked either for their unquestioning acceptance of claims by allegedly dishonest black veterans or for allegedly fabricating the story.

I was curious about the motives of each side in this dispute. Why would black veterans say there were black troops present if there were not?..