Leon Bass was born in Philadelphia, PA in 1925. He joined the US Army in 1943 and served as a member of the all-Black 183rd Engineer Combat Battalion attached to General Patton's Third Army. Leon's unit was involved in the Battle of the Bulge as well as the liberation of Buchenwald. After the war, Leon went on to receive his doctorate, teach, and speak about the Holocaust and racism.
In this interview, Leon describes what he knew about Nazi concentration camps and the Holocaust during and after World War II.
[Interviewer]: There'd been no talk in the ranks, no word had filtered out?
[Leon]: Not to me. Now, maybe there were others who did get information, but I can only deal with myself. And some of the friends I knew.
[Interviewer]: And terms like, terms like 'Auschwitz' and 'Bergen-Belsen' and 'Majdanek' and places like that were not, were not known to you?
[Leon]: Even when I went into Buchenwald, I had no idea that those places existed. Those names only came to me after I got out of the service. Later, much later, I began to hear of names of places, and realize that there was more than just a 'Buchenwald.' That there were many, many, many 'Buchenwalds' of different names all over Europe.
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