What: "Witness to the Holocaust" exhibit
When: Thursday through May 29
Where: Dade County Public Library
The Georgia Commission on the Holocaust and the Georgia Public Library Service are bringing the exhibit "Witness to the Holocaust: WWII Veteran William Alexander Scott III at Buchenwald" to libraries statewide this year.
The exhibit will be on display at the Dade County Public Library from Thursday through May 29.
Viki E. Staley, executive director of the Georgia Commission on the Holocaust, and Dr. Jerry Legge, of the University of Georgia, will present the exhibition at 7 p.m. Thursday. The event is free and open to the public.
This year is the 50th anniversary of key events in the civil rights movement.
Scott, known as "W.A.," was a photographer in a segregated battalion of the U.S. Army during World War II. His witnessing of the liberation of the Buchenwald concentration camp is told in the exhibit, which draws parallels between Jim Crow laws in the United States and the Nuremberg race laws of 1935-45 implemented in Germany and Nazi-controlled areas of Europe.
Scott was the son of W.A. Scott II, founder of the Atlanta Daily World, the first black-owned daily newspaper in the United States.
The younger Scott was a business and math major at Morehouse College in 1943 when he was unexpectedly drafted into the Army. He served as a reconnaissance sergeant, photographer, camoufleur and part-time historian in the intelligence section of the 183rd Engineer Combat Battalion.
On April 11, 1945, he rode into Eisenach, Germany, on an Army convoy with the 8th Corps of Gen. George S. Patton's 3rd Army.
After the war, Scott became circulation manager of the Atlanta Daily World.
He was appointed by Georgia Govs. Joe Frank Harris and Zell Miller to be a member of the Georgia Commission on the Holocaust and was appointed by President George H.W. Bush to the United States Holocaust Memorial Council.