Stories by author "W.A. Scott III": 27
Stories
United States Holocaust Memorial Council
Editor's Note: During the final twenty years of his life, Scott began to write, speak, and record testimony about his experience as a witness to the Holocaust. His first experience came in 1979 when he met Alex Gross, a survivor of Buchenwald, at an…
Chess Champion
Editor's Note: W.A. Scott's obituary in the Atlanta Daily World describes his chess legacy as follows:"Well known in the area for his expertise in chess and rated an expert by the United Chess Federation, Scott was president of the Atlanta Chess…
Integrating the West Side
Editor's Note: In his 2005 book, White Flight: Atlanta and the Making of Modern Conservatism, Kevin Kruse relates an important episode in Atlanta history in which W.A. Scott played a significant role. In 1948, W.A. Scott III built his family home at…
Postwar Career
Editor's Note: Scott's obituary in the Atlanta Daily World describes his postwar career as follows:"After the war, he returned to Atlanta and completed his education at Morehouse. He began his married life with Marian, and in 1948 became circulation…
Waiting for the End of the War
"After the second atomic bomb was dropped, we were almost sure we were going back to the United States, and we didn't. And we ended up anchored at Enewetak group on Yap Island group on a little island called Maug Maug, which was a…
The First Atomic Bomb
"We just bust this outfit up, and I ended up with a unit -- a different unit called a 1333rd Engineer Regimen going to the Panama Canal on the way to the Pacific. About half the men in my unit ended up coming back to the states. Well, I got on a…
Leaving Europe
"We were taken back up or given orders to go to the Dusseldorf area in an apparent occupational capacity. But after two weeks there our battalion commander said we were moving out. And we find ourself in a convoy to Merced. And the war was…
Seeing and Not Seeing
"[A friend of mine] could recall that the American track team, which blitzed with Jesse Owens for the '36 Olympics, had two Jewish dash men that they would not allow to participate because the Germans didn't want them and they…
Liberation of Buchenwald
"As we rode into Buchenwald, I can remember thinking: 'There is no place as horrible as we have been told — no atrocities — we should turn around, stop wasting time, go back to Eisenach and establish our Battalion Headquarters.' But we continued and…
Approaching Buchenwald
"When one explores the hall of memories, some moments cannot be forgotten or dimmed by the passage of time. I remember the day — clear and sunny — riding in a convoy into Eisenach, Germany, on April 11, 1945, as World War II was ending; and a…