WWII veteran William Alexander Scott III at Buchenwald

The Holocaust
The official definition of the Holocaust according the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum:
"...the systematic, bureaucratic, state-sponsored persecution and murder of approximately six million Jews by the Nazi regime and its collaborators."
"Holocaust" is a word of Greek origin meaning "sacrifice by fire." The Nazis, who came to power in Germany in January 1933, believed that Germans were "racially superior" and that the Jews, deemed "inferior," were an
alien threat to the so-called German racial community.

"The ultimate tragedy is not the oppression and cruelty by the bad people but the silence over that by
the good people."
-Martin Luther King, Jr.

Did you know?
The state of Georgia has a state agency, the Georgia Commission on the Holocaust, charged with educating citizens of and visitors to Georgia about the consequences of hate, prejudice, and discrimination through the lessons of the Holocaust. The Commission was established by Executive Order in 1986. The Commission also sponsors the exhibit Anne Frank in the World: 1929-1945 in Sandy Springs, Georgia. For more information please visit www.holocaust.georgia.gov.

Www.holocaust.georgia.gov
This exhibit was curated by the Georgia Commission on the Holocaust in 1997 and revised in 2012 for a traveling version. Graphic design by Emma Ellingson. All combat communications reproduced from W.A. Scott Papers Atlanta, Fulton County Public Library System Research Library. Special thanks: Asa Gordon, Executive Director, Douglass Institute of Government, The Family of William A. Scott III, and Dr. Leon Bass. Photos by: William A. Scott III, Lisa Luciano, Sylvia Wygoda, Yad Vashem, The Unit-
ed States Holocaust Memorial Museum.

Georgia Commission on the Holocaust
Witness
To the holocaust
WWII Veteran William Alexander Scott III at Buchenwald

William Alexander Scott III
During World War II the United States Army was, like much of the nation itself, segregated. As a soldier of an all -black battalion, William Alexander Scott III ("W.A." as he was known) and his comrades were fighting for rights they themselves could not enjoy. This fact was magnified as the Allies began to witness first-hand the treatment of the Jewish people and other targeted groups in camps such as Buchenwald.
"Because my father witnessed the horrors of the Holocaust and was experiencing the injustice of
racial discrimination back at home, he was determined to do what he could to change things. One of the things he knew, based on his experiences as a soldier in World War II, is that there was a concerted effort to eliminate the Jews a genocide and that this was the extreme execution of hatred. He realized, in coming back to combat it here, that you cannot fight hate with
hate. Hate only begets more hate."
- Alexis Scott, publisher of The Atlanta Daily World newspaper and the daughter of "W.A."

Buchenwald
Buchenwald was one of the largest camps established within the old German borders, about 185 miles southwest of Berlin. It was opened by the SS in July of 1937.
The first prisoners were political opponents of the Nazi party. However, after Kristallnacht (the "Night of Broken Glass", a pogrom targeting Jewish businesses and synagogues in Germany and Austria) nearly 10,000 Jewish males were arrested by the SS and German police then sent to the camp. Jehovah's Witnesses, Gypsies (Roma and Sinti), resistance fighters, former government officials from occupied countries, criminals, "asocials" and German military deserters were incorporated into the internment system of the camp. Women began arriving in late 1943 and early 1944.

Beginning in 1939,
Jews in Nazi Germany and German-occupied countries were forced to wear an identifying badge which often took the form of a yellow Star of David as pictured to the right.

Map: United States Holocaust Memorial Museum
The camp was liberated on April 11, 1945, by US forces. More 21,000 people were in the camp. (Above: American soldiers and liberated prisoners at the main entrance of the Buchenwald concentration camp. Germany, May 1945.)

Image: United States Holocaust Memorial Museum
Medical experiments were performed on prisoners by physicians and scientists beginning in 1941. The majority of these experiments were designated for finding cures to contagious diseases such as typhus, typhoid, cholera, and diphtheria, all of which were common in concentration camps as a result of the terrible conditions.
Typhus in particular, which was spread by lice, claimed many lives including that of Anne Frank who died at Bergen-Belsen concentration camp in March of 1945. (Above: Anti-semitic poster from Poland -- "Jews are lice; they cause typhus.")