Liberation of the Camps
Upon seeing with their own eyes the carnage that Nazi anti-Semitism and racism had brought about, African-American GIs were stunned beyond belief. They, just like white GIs, had to come to terms with the sheer scope of Nazi racial persecution and the complacency of the German people. The horrifying sights of dead and tortured bodies and the encounters with the emaciated and broken survivors of the Nazi death camps touched African Americans on a particularly personal level.
The Double-V Campaign, demanding democratic victory at home and abroad, had often drawn upon the parallels between racial persecution in Nazi Germany and the Jim Crow South to expose the discrepancy between the struggle for democracy abroad and the continuing discrimination of African Americans at home.
Indeed, African-American activists had often drawn parallels between the racial persecution of the Jews and that of Blacks under Jim Crow. Faced with the realities of the Holocaust, African-American GIs such as William A. Scott, a member of the 183rd Engineer Combat Battalion, thus evaluated their experiences in Germany in light of their own struggles in the U.S. Scott, depicted in several images displayed below, stated that, “even though my ancestors had arrived [in America] as slaves in chains from Africa, and [were] subjected to torture and death during the long centuries of slavery, it all seemed to pale in comparison to the glaring impact of what I had witnessed in Buchenwald.” (William A. Scott, Booklet, USHMM)
African-American soldiers next to an oven in the crematorium of the Ebensee concentration camp. Ebensee, Austria, May 6 – May 30, 1945 (USHMM).
An African American soldier on an inspection tour of Buchenwald next to a wagon laden with corpses. Troops of the 183rd Engineer Combat Battalion, 8th Corps, U.S. 3rd Army arrived at Buchenwald on April 17, 1945. Buchenwald Concentration Camp, April 17, 1945 (USHMM).
An African-American soldier observes the procession of German civilians who are forced to see the bodies of prisoners exhumed from a mass grave near Nammering. Nammering, Germany, May 6, 1945 (USHMM).
An African-American soldier observes the procession of German civilians who are forced to see the bodies of prisoners exhumed from a mass grave near Nammering. Nammering, Germany, May 6, 1945 (USHMM).
American troops, including African-American soldiers from the 183rd Engineer Combat Battalion, 8th Corps, U.S. 3rd Army, view corpses stacked behind the crematorium during an inspection tour of the Buchenwald concentration camp. Buchenwald Concentration Camp, April 1944 (USHMM).
A seventeen-year-old Hungarian Jewish boy identifies the body of his father, who was among the concentration camp prisoners from Flossenbuerg shot in the woods while on a death march. Neunburg, Germany, April 29, 1945 (USHMM).
Two African American soldiers from the Quartermaster Laundry Company, Third U.S. Army, inspect tools used by forced laborers in a lime quarry near Hemmersdorf. Hemmersdorf, Germany, April-May 1945 (USHMM / United States Army Military History Institute).
Two African American soldiers collect goods and material looted by the Nazis during the Third Reich to be identified and restored to their rightful owners. Offenbach Archival Depot, Offenbach, Germany, 1946 (USHMM / Yad Vashem).
American generals tour the newly liberated Ohrdruf concentration camp. Pictured from right to left are Generals Manton Eddy, Omar Bradley and George Patton. Ohrdurf, Germany, April 12, 1945 (USHMM).
Entertainer Paul Robeson performs for American soldiers in Dachau. Dachau, Germany, 1945 (USHMM).
William A. Scott, III, shortly after his induction at Fort Benning, Georgia. Pvt. Scott was at Buchenwald concentration camp when it was liberated by U.S. forces (USHMM).
Defendant Paul Blobel is sentenced to death by hanging at the Einsatzgruppen Trial. Nuremberg, Germany, April 10, 1948 (USHMM).
Further Reading
For a list of publications on African Americans and the Holocaust please see here.
“Gert Schramm: Der Schwarze, der Buchenwald überlebte” (Süddeutsche Zeitung, June 5, 2009).
For testimonies by African American liberators of concentration camps available at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum (USHMM) in Washington, DC please click here.