A Black Troop's Experience with the Horror of a Concentration Camp

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Find that right plan for you. Visit UHCMedicareHealthPlans.com and we return to our American stories. Up next, a story from author and historian Ronna Simmons. Ronna is the author of the other veterans of World War II stories from behind the front lines, which features stories of men and women who served in less visible roles to help America and her allies win the war. Today she shares with us the story of William A. Scott III or Bill Scott.

Take it away Ronna. Bill was born in Tennessee and when his parents divorced, he actually moved with his father to Atlanta and grew up there. For the time it was actually I'd say relatively a different experience. He was a young black boy and his father was a black businessman in Atlanta back in the 30s. His father was the head of the Atlanta Daily World, a newspaper and a successful black-owned enterprise, one of the only successful black-owned newspapers in the country. So one might say he had a life of privilege.

Of course I think he would absolutely deny that. He was able to spend time with his father and get to know the newspaper business, but his father insisted that he not start anywhere, of course even as a child, that he wouldn't be working, but when he grew up that he would not just assume a role of president or vice president of this or executive that, he said no you're going to sweep the floors and you're going to start at the bottom and you're going to learn the business, you're going to learn about business as well as learn the business of the newspaper. So he did and every once in a while he and his younger brother of course like any child wanted a few nickels or dimes to buy something that had caught their eye and so his father said well if you want nickels and dimes, guess what?

Here are a few papers, you get to go sell them. So he learned about selling newspapers. So it wasn't the you know the life of anyone of privilege, he learned the business. But his father was shot and killed in an accident in Atlanta one evening and the family fortunes took a downturn. He adored his father and so it was not the happy childhood that he had expected and he didn't have a guiding light, he didn't have his father to tell him what to do or how to go further in life, but he I think he had that early early training that stuck with him.

At least he had that much of his father to carry with him and to remember. He then went on to Morehouse College in Atlanta and started volunteering for the newspaper in Morehouse College and beyond just writing stories he became the photographer for the maroon tigers and he really hadn't thought about the war. War was not at the top of mind at that point in time and was had more intent on finishing college and marrying his sweetheart than having anything to do with the war, but we were preparing for the war. So in 1940 we passed the first peacetime draft in history and everyone was required to go down to their local draft board and register black white. Unfortunately while the blacks were registered because of the prejudices that existed at that time and perhaps the feeling or not probably more than perhaps but the feeling that blacks would not be able to perform as well as whites in the war they were often registered but looked over. So if a request for a troops came to their area they would pick the white soldiers and send them off first and it was actually worse than that as the war went on not only were they passed over for prejudices because of the segregation of blacks and whites even in their communities that was also found to be true in the army where there were no separate facilities available they would not send black soldiers so unless there were barracks that had been constructed, sanitary facilities, eating facilities, water supplies, everything replicated for the blacks separate from the whites the boards would not refer the black soldiers to foreign units and while that did allow blacks to then be deployed they had further stumbling blocks. At one point in time the officers or the commanders in the field were not accepting of receiving black units so if you were an officer in Europe whether it was England in the early days or even in the Pacific you had the right to approve the soldiers that were being sent to you and so they would often not accept black troops believing they would not perform as well so it was fruitless for them to submit these black troops to them they overlooked them but the draft found Bill he really wasn't interested in going he hadn't thought about it but when the army calls the answer is yes and so he was drafted and went into the army in 1943 he was to some degree lucky by 43 it was a little more tolerant however he was still assigned to an all-black unit that was the norm and that would persist throughout the end of the war all-black units would be generally non-combat units and would almost all be supervised by white officers and that was his case he was assigned to the 183rd engineer combat battalion which is a group of men who were responsible for following behind the army or behind the advancing army the combat units and maintaining roads laying the groundwork for airfields widening roads you name it that was their job and he did that but he did have the experience of having been the photographer for his college newspaper and some sense of not only photography but what to take when to take because of his journalism experience and i think those two things when that was seen on his record the army within that one combat battalion decided to make him their photographer as well so he was known as a reconnaissance sergeant so we'd go out and take photographs to the extent they needed to and could get an advanced look at the terrain that they were having across or any enemy activity and he was an archivist so he also was recording what his unit did from day to day not that that is that allowed him to escape from building a bridge or a road but it meant he did that in addition which was very fortunate for us that they picked Bill because of his training his combat battalion was assigned to the third army which is Patton's army so he was seeing the major battles through Europe as we push the Germans back so you know he was in some of the thick of it the Ardennes the battle of the bulge now he again was not in the combat he didn't see the battles but he saw the aftermath he saw the bombed out or shelled villages he saw the devastation both human and to buildings and he was not so much writing about those times but he was observing as any good journalist would what he saw and at some point Bill got orders with his group of black soldiers to go to Buchenwald and you've been listening to Ronna Simmons tell the story of Bill Scott and what a story it is my goodness what happened to him as a young boy his father shot and killed by the way before that his father teaching him how to put in a day's work not just giving him money even though his father ran a very successful newspaper and then what we learn about well as we always do when we go back in history how blacks were treated in this country even in our military at the time during World War II when we come back more of the story of Bill Scott here on our American story when the world gets in the way of your music try the new Bose quiet comfort earbuds too next-gen earbuds uniquely tuned to the shape of your ears they use exclusive Bose technology that personalizes the audio performance to fit you delivering the world's best noise cancellation and powerfully immersive sound so you can hear and feel every detail of the music you love Bose quiet comfort earbuds too sound shape to you to learn more visit bows.com this is one way to pass the ball and this is another the Frito-Lay pass the ball challenge Frito-Lay the official USA snack of the FIFA World Cup 2022 is giving you the chance to win two tickets to the FIFA World Cup 2022 final and make history by joining their pass the ball challenge to enter just scan the QR code on specially marked bags of lays cheetos and doritos and look for the golden world soccer ball explore the ever-growing community then pass the ball to other soccer fans and play daily games to score additional entries in a chance to win custom swag and awesome prizes so grab a specially marked bag of lays cheetos or doritos or visit frito-lay score.com and pass the ball now for your chance to win two tickets to the FIFA World Cup 2022 final in Qatar no purchase necessary open to legal resonance of the USDC 18 plus grand prize entry deadline 11 10 22 entries received after 11 10 22 are only eligible for secondary prizes see rules at frito-lay score.com hey you guys this is Tori and Jenny with the 9 0 2 1 omg podcast we have such a special episode brought to you by NertecODT we recorded it at iHeart Radio's 10th poll event Wango Tango did you know that NertecODT remedopant 75 milligrams can help migraine sufferers still attend such an exciting event like Wango Tango it's true i had one that night and i took my NertecODT and i was present and had an amazing time here's a little glimpse of our conversation with some of our closest friends this episode was brought to you by NertecODT remedopant 75 milligrams life with migraine attacks can mean missing out on big moments with friends and family but thankfully NertecODT remedopant 75 milligrams is the only medication that is proven to treat a migraine attack and prevent episodic migraines in adults so lively events like Wango Tango don't have to be missed and we're back with our American stories and Ronna Simmons author of the other veterans of World War II stories from behind the front lines when we last left off Ronna was telling us the story of Bill Scott an African-American army engineer and photographer from Atlanta Georgia when we last left off Bill had just received orders to go to the Buchenwald concentration camp let's continue with the story for the most part the holocaust which of course was not called the holocaust at the time was not well no we didn't know a lot about it there were rumors there were newspapers to be read accounts that were coming out from Germany from Austria, Poland where the camps were but people didn't take it seriously they could hardly believe that something like that was going on they might know that of course there were prisoners of war that were probably not treated as well as we would like to think we do but what was happening was largely ignored or just not believable and at some point the U.S. the American war intelligence office decided that they needed to start preparing the troops for what they were going to see and what they might encounter as they moved into these war-torn areas and so they produced a number of films from captured newsreels in some cases from firsthand accounts in other cases and produced these black and white films that they decided they should show the troops who were advancing so that if they saw this they would know what was what to expect know know the extent of the devastation they might see so Bill was one of the ones his unit saw the films and he remembered saying in the discussions that occurred later that this is all propaganda this is there's no one that can be as cruel and inhumane as what these films are telling us so they sort of watched but didn't take it to heart and didn't believe that they would see anything quite like what was portrayed on the film but at some point after seeing these films Bill got orders with his group of black soldiers to go to Buchenwald it is said and I don't think anyone can exactly substantiate this that our officers knew that going into a camp that the prisoners might not believe after all these years they'd spent there that these in fact they they were in fact now free because the prisoners had been tricked in earlier circumstances the Germans might throw open the gates and tell the prisoners you're free only to execute them as they tried to flee the camp so just having the doors open they weren't going to leave very hard to believe Eisenhower himself realized this and so when they were coming close to liberating the camps his orders came to send the black troops they knew that the prisoners in the concentration camps when they saw the black soldiers come in that there was no way that those were German soldiers so that this had to be true they were in fact liberated black troops would be obviously American troops and obviously they are to liberate the people in fact they became known as the black angels to the prisoners in the camps and that's why it was specifically Bill's unit that went to Buchenwald now Buchenwald might as well have been Berlin Munich or any other German city at that point Buchenwald meant nothing to Bill or to his fellow troops and he thought well what do you want me to do there and he asked one person or another and the other men in his his group did the same and they didn't get any explanation and of course the army doesn't owe them an explanation but they they still wanted to know what he was expected to do in Buchenwald and finally one of the officers said just go and see and that's sort of chilling to us now because of course we know what he's going to see but there was no other instructions so he hopped in his jeep went with the other troops found his way down to Buchenwald and when he got there there was a camp there was barbed wire or fencing and the Germans had sled and so they said well this is one of those camps but it's there's nothing here there there there's some people there's a fence but nothing's going but nothing's going on and he said as he got closer and closer he started seeing the people who had been imprisoned and they were of course emaciated certainly many of them might have shown wounds or sores that might not have healed many of them couldn't walk couldn't stand all of the horrible things we see and that's when he got out of his jeep and he realized what he was there to see to bear witness in a way or to have leave a testament into what had gone on so he again as a journalist grabbed his camera and began shooting some pictures prisoners would beckon them come look at this come see this and so he and his fellow soldiers aghast followed the prisoners to see and as he went further into the camp and was so struck by what he was seeing and the realization that those films were real he said i stopped filming i put my camera down i could not go on and even here knowing that he was there to see and there to bear witness he couldn't do it he said man that the extent of man's depravity was so overwhelming he couldn't go on it was so foreign to bill he it was just against everything he had been brought up to know and to think about other people in fact he said later as he contemplated this that he knew or thought of the german people as being an educated people and he through his father's influence had been educated and could not imagine how an educated group of people who had to know what they were doing who had to know right from wrong who had to know what the value of other human beings is and so it just was incomprehensible to him he thought surely education would have prevented this from happening and it clearly had not and so that was one aspect of the war that he brought home with him and it was really fundamental to him having regarded education so highly i don't think he ever could come to grips with how that had happened and why it had happened but thankfully he did take some pictures even as horrified as he was because he could have easily said i can't do this i won't do this this is so awful no one should see this and yet the journalist in him came to the fore and he said we've got to have this as a record he then went on through europe finished his tour of duty but they now had a second fight unlike their white counterparts when the blacks returned they were still in a sense at war they were at war to establish their own place in our society what he learned about after he returned from the war was something that i think a lot of people don't know about which was the double v campaign to recognize the war that blacks had to fight it was considered double v if they were able to accomplish what they wanted in terms of getting blacks integrated into our society bill began working to that extent he he went back to the paper but he also spent much of his time working for the endle belay cp for other foundations like the educational foundation of metro atlanta the greater atlanta council of human relations he was very active in the community and thankfully had a voice and a platform through his paper to help move that along and he became recognized for it by not only participating in the associations i mentioned but also he got several awards he was recognized for and of course for the holocaust contribution the photography that he did by having his photographs placed in the u.s holocaust memorial museum in washington d.c but a year before he died governor joe frank harris awarded him a charter membership in the georgia commission on the holocaust and in that same year president george hw bush appointed him to the u.s holocaust memorial council two things that really told him that he had actually been able to realize that double v campaign he had helped the u.s win the war in europe and he had come home and done his part to help win recognition for the black soldiers and the blacks in our society and a terrific job on the production by monty montgomery and a special thanks to rana simmons for sharing the story of bill scott and what a story indeed i mean to see what he saw in bukenwald what a thing to witness and bear witness to and to photograph and then to come back and fight that second war for integration and for equal treatment and then ultimately to be on these dual holocaust commissions to have finally made it as an equal member of society a tragic and 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prize entry deadline 11 10 22 entries received after 11 10 22 are only eligible for secondary prizes see rules at frito lei score.com when the world gets in the way of your music try the new bose quiet comfort earbuds 2 next-gen earbuds uniquely tuned to the shape of your ears they use exclusive bose technology that personalizes the audio performance to fit you delivering the world's best noise cancellation and powerfully immersive sound so you can hear and feel every detail of the music you love bose quiet comfort earbuds 2 sound shape to you to learn more visit bose.com