Leon Bass was born without a silver spoon in his mouth. His parents, born in South Carolina in the late 1890s, lived through the pain of the US Supreme Court decision which created ?separate but equal? black and white communities, yet his father answered his country?s call and served in the US Army during the First World War. On his return, he and his wife moved to Philadelphia, where they had five sons. The family lived through trying times during the Depression, with the elder Mr. Bass working at many jobs, including being a barber and a cobbler.

As the middle son, Leon attended an all-black elementary school, where he thrived in an environment where discipline was tight and the teachers were dedicated to ensuring that their students succeeded. From time to time they brought in guest speakers, one of whom, black educator and civil rights activist Mary McLoud Bethune, left an indelible impression on the young Bass.

?When she began reciting James Weldon Johnson?s poem, ?The Prodigal Son?, she raised her voice, pointed her cane directly at me, and said, ?Young man, your arms are too short to box with God?,? Dr. Bass recalls. ?I didn?t know who she was at the time, but she had done so much for the uplifting and education of black people. Years later, when I heard that poem again it brought back that image of the woman who had frightened me so. It was one of those things that struck me and gave me a point of view, and how things should be in my life.?

Dr. Bass? high school days were not stellar, and in 1943 at age 18 he volunteered for the US Army, where he came face to face with institutionalised racism for the first time. Arriving at the induction centre with some white friends, he was sent in one direction and his friends in another.

?My country was telling me in a loud, clear voice that I was not good enough to be in the mainstream of things with everyone else, so they separated me,? he says.

One of 600 African Americans despatched to the Deep South for training ? to places like Georgia, Mississippi, Texas and Louisiana ? Dr. Bass experienced racism at every turn.

?In every one of those places the people whom I was going to protect and defend with my life let me know in so many different ways that they did not think I was good enough. In Georgia I was not good enough to have a drink of water at a public fountain; in Texas I was not good enough to get a meal in a restaurant; and in Mississippi I wasn?t good enough to have a seat on the bus. Even though I was dressed in my uniform, I had to stand up for more than 100 miles looking at empty seats.?

Nonetheless, Private Bass went to war with his unit, the 183rd Engineers Combat Battalion ? first to England, and then to France, where they were attached to the Third Unit under General Patton. The soldiers successfully fought the Germans all the way to Martelange in Belgium, where their mission was to rebuild a damaged bridge that would to play a vital role in freeing other American soldiers encircled by the enemy in the town of Bastone. The battalion worked night and day under heavy fire to complete their task in freezing weather, and the overall mission was a success.

?It was a glorious day in my life, but in war you pay a heavy price for glory,? Dr. Bass says. ?One day, standing in the snow at the roadside, I saw all these trucks go by and learned that they were grave trucks carrying the bodies of American soldiers.?

For the first time, the young soldier questioned his presence in Europe, his role in the war, and the laying of his life on the line for fellow Americans who, based on race, saw him as a second class citizen not worthy of drinking from a public fountain, sitting in a bus, or eating in a restaurant.

?I asked myself, ?Leon, what are you fighting for? What are you doing here?? ? Dr. Bass remembers. ?I was very angry at my country because I felt it was abusing me. It was putting me out there to fight, and maybe to die, to preserve all the rights and privileges that every American enjoyed, and at the same time they were saying to me, ?You are not good enough to enjoy the things you are fighting for?.?

As the war continued to rage, the US Army fought its way through Belgium and Luxembourg and into Germany where, city by city, the enemy was pushed back. Then came the assignment that changed forever Leon Bass? view of the world. He was among the first to enter the infamous concentration camp of Buchenwald. Nothing he had ever experienced, and certainly no training, prepared him for the unspeakable horrors that greeted him. Indeed, he didn?t even know what a concentration camp was.

?I saw what I now refer to as the walking dead ? human beings who had been beaten, tortured, starved and denied everything that made life worthwhile. They were standing in front of me, weak, with skeletal faces and deepset eyes. They had sores all over their bodies from malnutrition. One man showed me his hand: his fingers were webbed together with sores. I thought, ?Who are these people? What have they done that was so terrible that other human beings could treat them like this?? ?

The answers came from a young Polish prisoner of war who happened to speak English. He told the shocked American soldier that they were Jews, gypsies, Jehovah?s Witnesses, homosexuals, Catholics, Protestants, communists and more, all imprisoned by the Nazis because they were deemed to be not good enough to be part of Hitler?s Aryan ?master race? and therefore disposable by death.

Instead of turning away, the sickened Dr. Bass wanted to know more. Moving on to other barracks in the sprawling camp, he saw a man in rags, so starved and emaciated that he was unable to speak or move on his filthy bed of straw; and where the pervasive stench of death was so bad that Dr. Bass couldn?t breathe. In another building where German doctors had conducted their dastardly experiments on the human guinea pigs, he saw jars of human body parts preserved in formaldehyde, and a lampshade made from human skin. The building where prisoners were interrogated bore graphic evidence of their torture: the slabs and restraint implements on which they had been laid, a concrete floor black with dried blood.

Where, he asked the young Pole, were the children? A pile of small clothing, shoes, baby booties, caps, sweaters and more provided the grim answer. Moving on to the crematorium, Dr. Bass saw four-foot high piles of bodies, stacked like cordwood, against its walls. Inside, he saw the infamous ovens, still with skulls, bones, rib cages and piles of ashes inside them. He learned that trucks came daily to take away the piles of ashes to fertilise the fields where crops were grown to feed the German army, and was repulsed.

?I went back to the main gate, and as I stood there waiting for my friends I realised that I wasn?t the same any more. Something had happened to me. I realised that pain had not been relegated just to me but could touch every one of us. I also realised that I had seen the face of evil: racism, bigotry, prejudice and anti-Semitism. The hatred in that concentration camp was the same hatred that I had experienced in the US, but the Nazis had carried it to the ultimate.?

Once his army duty was over in Europe and the Philippines, Dr. Bass returned home. He was just 21 years old and determined to make up for lost time. Taking advantage of the GI Bill of Rights he entered Westchester State Teachers? College because he wanted to be make a difference in young lives.

His happiness at being the first in his family to go to college, however, was short-lived as once again he saw the face of evil: as a black man he was not good enough to live in a dormitory or have a roommate like the white students, but was forced to find a room in town.

?I was furious to say the least, but my dad talked to me and said, ?Son, don?t waste time running your mouth thinking you alone can save the world. Your purpose is to get your education because once you have that no-one can take it away from you?.?

So Leon Bass swallowed his pride, buried his pain inside himself, and pushed on. The next time he encountered the face of evil, however, he did do something about it. Ignoring an usher?s instructions, he took his seat in the white section of the local cinema and nobody said a word or moved to evict him.

?It was the most difficult thing I had done in my life, but what a wonderful feeling when you have done the right thing,? he says. ?I had come face to face with evil, but I didn?t become evil myself.?

Dr. Bass? first teaching position was in an all-black elementary school where he admits ?there wasn?t much hope for the students in the 1950s?. Yet he saw in their eyes a need for hope in the future.

When Rosa Parks took her seat in the bus in Montgomery, Alabama and refused to leave, and the black community successfully mounted a campaign that ultimately led to the US Supreme Court ruling that segregated buses were unconstitutional, it marked the beginning of social change that soon spread north to Philadelphia. When Martin Luther King came there to speak, Leon Bass and his students heard a powerful message that spoke of love, caring, compassion and understanding, respect for all people, and the value of education.

?I was mesmerised. Nobody had touched me with words that way before, and I came back to the school determined to do more to change things, and I did,? the former teacher says.

Dr. Bass joined Dr. King?s famous march on Washington, was galvanised by the famous ?I have a dream? speech, and returned to his school with renewed zeal as a teacher. Soon he was promoted to principal. His happiness, however, was shattered with the assassination of Dr. King, and it was some months before me regained his emotional stability. Then came an offer to become the principal of a black, all-male high school known as the toughest school in Philadelphia, if not the US.

?In the 1960s some were trying to make a difference, and I thought I could too, so I accepted,? Dr. Bass says.

Indeed, on day one, angry students warned him that if he didn?t make a difference right away they would burn the school down, and the days that followed were not easy ? that is, until Nina Kaliska, a Jewish Holocaust survivor of Auschwitz, who had lost so many close relatives, came to the school to speak. Passing the classroom where she was struggling to address the students, Dr. Bass saw them with their feet on the desks, smoking, talking and being disrespectful, and he was incensed. He marched in and told them to listen because he too had seen the horrors of a concentration camp. Instantly, there was silence. The students listened, examined the tattooed number on the speaker?s forearm, and asked her many questions. At the end, they shook her hand, and for the first time ever left the classroom without a word.

With tears in her eyes, Ms Kaliska thanked the principal for getting involved, and told him he should be telling people about what he saw in Germany.

?That was in 1970, and I have been speaking ever since,? Dr. Bass says. ?I was a principal for 14 years, but I have also travelled all over the US, and to Canada. I have been into maximum security prisons, schools, high schools and universities, and now Bermuda to tell people that the face of evil ? bigotry, prejudice, anti-Semitism, racism and more ? is still with us, and wants to take over our minds, and the way we think and feel,? he says. ?So the question we must ask ourselves is this: ?How in the world can I make a difference?? It can be very difficult or painful if you dare to be a Daniel. Your friends may turn on you and tell you you are not good enough because you associate with certain people, or not invite you to the bridge club or parties, but then the question is: ?Is the price too high to stand up for what you believe is right?? I don?t believe it is, but I cannot speak for others.?

Stressing the importance of education and loving one another in today?s world, Dr. Bass quotes black American author James Baldwin: ?Either we love one another, either we help one another, or the sea will engulf us and the lights will go out,? and he adds: ?We, you and I, have an awesome responsibility to keep the light shining.?