He Documented Atrocities

Sgt. William A Scott, III -- was a military photographer with the 183rd Engineer Combat Battalion.

African Americans were among the liberators of the Buchenwald Concentration Camp. Sgt. Scott's photographs recorded African-American soldiers at the liberation of the Buchenwald concentration camp. Scott's pictures are now part of a video record of the liberation of Buchenwald on display at the U.S. Holocaust Museum in Washington, D.C. The following accounts are corroborated by records on file at the U.S. National Archives.

On April 12th, 1945 at 10:30am, Sgt. Scott and Sgt. Bass, along with the convoy of the 1126th Eng. C Gp. quartering party and several 183rd three-quater-ton trucks, arrived at Eisenach, Germany approximately 62 miles from the Buchenwald concentration camp. The former Sgt. Bass is now Leon Bass, Ph.D., a retired Philadelphia public school principal who has been lecturing on the Holocaust since 1968. Dr. Bass told how they arrived at Eisenach and were setting up their tents in the bivouac area when they were approached by a lieutenant who said, "Come with me." Bass recalls, "We were ordered to proceed to Weimar. I asked the lieutenant, `Sir, where are we going?' And he said, `We're going to a concentration camp.' I didn't know what he was talking about. I had no idea what a concentration camp was all about. But on that day I was to get the shock of my life, you see. Because I was going to walk through the gate of a concentration camp called Buchenwald."

In his pamphlet "World War II Veteran Remembers the Horror of the Holocaust," William A. Scott, III describes what happened when they arrived at Buchenwald. "We got out of our vehicles and some began to beckon to us to follow and see what had been done in that place - they were walking skeletons. The sights were beyond description. ... I had thought no place could be this bad. I took out my camera and began to take some photos - but that only lasted for a few pictures. As the scenes became more gruesome, I put my camera in its case and walked in a daze with the survivors, as we viewed all forms of dismemberment of the human body."

Scott describes an incident that occurred after they entered Buchenwald which indicates how early they must have arrived at the concentration camp after its initial discovery. "An SS trooper had remained until the day of our arrival and survivors had captured him as he tried to flee over a fence. He was taken into a building where two men from my unit followed. They said he was trampled to death by the survivors." Scott expressed a sentiment that is shared by many veterans who were witness to these camps. "I began to realize why few, if any, persons would believe the atrocities I had seen. HOLOCAUST was the word used to describe it - but one has to witness it to even begin to believe it."

Now that the American Army had discovered Buchenwald, certain tasks had to be performed as part of the mission of an engineer combat battalion. Daily summaries prepared by G-5 (military government) for mid-April described these functions. G-5 Daily Summary No. 87, from 120800 April 1945 to 140800 April 45, contains the following entry: "DP [displaced person] Team No 10 is operating in Buchenwald Concentration Camp.... Health conditions very bad. Arrangements completed to evacuate approximately 300 of the most serious cases to [the hospital] nearby.... Water sufficient for one-third of camp's needs is available and being furnished from Weimar. The water pumping stations are presently being repaired and full water service should be restored in 48 hours.... "

How these arrangements affected the 183rd was captured in one of Scott's photos that appears in the pamphlet with the caption, "Some children and sick leaving Buchenwald - loading in some of the vehicles of 183rd Engineer Combat Battalion." In his narrative Scott writes, " We eventually left after helping to remove some of the survivors for medical assistance."

A number of Holocaust survivors from Buchenwald have testified to their encounters with African-American soldiers on that day. Survivor David Yager has stated that the first American soldier he saw was Sgt. Leon Bass. "Everybody was screaming.... The soldiers came closer and closer and stopped in the middle of where we used to go out for counting." It wasn't until years later, in the United States, that Yager would learn Bass's name. Survivor Dr. Henry Oster has remarked on the high sensitivity displayed by the African- American soldiers in their encounters with survivors. The African-American soldiers could hardly overlook the irony of their own status in an Army that considered them inferiors, even as they fought to defeat the Nazi army carrying the banner of racial supremacy. Black Soldiers must have felt a unique spiritual kinship with the holocaust victims that they encountered in those camps.

Dr. Henry Oster recalled, "I was seventeen, and I was kind of weak. I came out of the barracks and we were confronted by the absence of Germans. And then we saw people we had not seen before. The oddest thing was that they were Black. Convoys of Black and white soldiers came through. They brought food and, strangely enough, the Black soldiers were inherently much more generous with food and clothes than the white soldiers were. This was on April 11th, or the day after. It was the day Roosevelt died".

Survivor Ivar Segalowitz also recalls Roosevelt's death (April 12th, 1945) as a critical point in time. He has stated that he was virtually dead, but conscious enough to be aware of both his liberation and of Roosevelt's death. He said, "I knew I had been liberated, but I couldn't move. I was stuck in my bunk. My friends told me. I was carried out on a stretcher by a Black soldier."

The Testimony of survivors Dr. Henry Oster and Ivar Segalowitz is consistent with records that place the arrival of the 183rd Eng. C Bn. on April 12, 1945, the second day of the liberation of Buchenwald.

Survivor Alex Gross of Atlanta, Ga. became a personal friend of Scott in later years. He remarked on the agony that Scott had expressed over the controversy of the 183rd's arrival at the Buchenwald camp. Alex recalled that Scott had said he made no personal record of the date at the time. So when Scott put together his pamphlet, he adopted the official date of the liberation, April 11th, 1945. He knew they were there very early, because of the emergency functions his unit had engaged in. The fond memories the Buchenwald survivors have for their African American liberators was heightened by the fact that the 183rd was clearly engaged in life-sustaining functions at Buchenwald. The Engineers' role in emergency evacuation of the critical ill and their service to meet the water needs of the camp was critical to the survival of many inmates after the discovery of the camp. Alex Gross has expressed the concern, "Please do not permit a mockery to be made of the fact that black troops were involved in the liberation of the camps."

The official definition of "liberators", as set forth by the U.S. Army Center of Military History and the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Council in 1992, is as follows: "LIBERATOR" DEFINITION: The Center and the Council agreed that eligibility for liberation credit would not be limited only to the first division to reach a camp but would include follow-on divisions that arrived at the same camp or camp complex within forty-eight hours of the initial division."

The 183rd Engineer Combat Battalion was not a part of any division, but was a unit of the 8th Corps of General George S. Patton's 3rd Army. Therefore, technically, the official definition of "liberator" discriminates and institutionally excludes the inclusion of this Black unit of WWII from liberator eligibility, regardless of when it arrived at any concentration camp, a fitting epilogue to its service as a segregated unit of the United States Armed forces of World War II.

Dr. Leon Bass has stated in his lectures on the Holocaust: "I came into that camp an angry black soldier. Angry at my country and justifiably so. Angry because they were treating me as though I was not good enough. But [that day] I came to the realization that human suffering could touch us all. ... [What I saw] in Buchenwald was the face of evil... It was racism. "

Asa R. Gordon, Executive Director
Douglass Institute of Government