Black
German Holocaust Victims
So much of our history is lost to us
because we often don't write the history
books, don't film the documentaries, or don't
pass the accounts down from generation
to generation. One documentary now touring
the film festival circuit, telling us
to "Always Remember" is " Black Survivors
ofthe Holocaust" (1997). Outside the U.S., the film
isentitled "Hitler's Forgotten Victims" (Afro-Wisdom
Productions). It codifies another dimension to the "Never
Forget" Holocaust story - our dimension.
Did you know that in the 1920s, there were 24,000 Blacks
living in Germany? Neither did I. Here's
how it happened, and how many of them were
eventually caught unawares by the events of the Holocaust.
Like most West European nations, Germany established
colonies in Africa in the late 1800s in what later
became Togo, Cameroon, SPAN Namibia, and
Tanzania. German genetic experiments began there, most
notably involving prisoners taken from
the 1904 Heroro Massacre that left 60,000
Africans dead, following a 4-year revolt
against German colonisation. After the
shellacking Germany received in World War I, it was stripped
of its African colonies in 1918.
As a spoil
of war, the French were allowed to occupy Germany in the
Rhineland - a bitter piece of real
estate that has gone back and forth
between the two nations for centuries. The French willfully
deployed their own colonised African
soldiers as the occupying force. Germans
viewed
this as the final insult of World War I, and,
soon thereafter, 92% of them voted in the Nazi party.
Hundreds of the African Rhineland-based
soldiers intermarried with German
women and raised their children as Black Germans.
In Mein Kampf, Hitler wrote about his
plans for these "Rhineland Bastards".
When he came to power, one of his first
directives was aimed at these mixed-race children.
Underscoring Hitler's obsession with racial
purity, by 1937, every identified mixed-race
child in the Rhineland had been forcibly sterilized,
in order to prevent further "race polluting",
as Hitler termed it.
Hans Hauck, a Black Holocaust survivor
and a victim of Hitler's
mandatory sterilisation program, explained in the film "Hitler's
Forgotten Victims" that, when he was forced to undergo
sterilisation as a teenager, he was given no anaesthetic.
Once he
received his sterilisation certificate, he was "free to go",
so long as he agreed to have no sexual relations whatsoever with Germans.
Although most Black Germans attempted
to escape their fatherland,
heading for France where people like Josephine Baker were
steadily aiding and supporting the
French Underground, many still encountered
problems elsewhere. Nations shut their doors to Germans, including the Black ones.
Some Black Germans were able to eke out
a living during Hitler's reign of terror
by performing in Vaudeville shows,
but many Blacks, steadfast in their
belief that they were German first,
Black second, opted to remain in
Germany. Some fought with the Nazis (a few even became
Lutwaffe pilots)!
Unfortunately, many Black Germans were arrested,
charged with treason, and shipped in cattle
cars to concentration camps. Often
these trains were so packed with people
and (equipped with no bathroom facilities
or food), that, after the four-day
journey, box car doors were opened
to piles of the dead and dying. Once
inside the concentration camps,
Blacks were given the worst jobs conceivable.
Some Black American soldiers, who
were captured and held as prisoners of
war, recounted that, while they were
being starved and forced into dangerous
labour (violating the Geneva Convention),
they were still better off than Black
German concentration camp detainees,
who were forced to do the unthinkable-man the crematoriums
and work in labs where genetic experiments were being conducted.
As a final sacrifice, these
Blacks were killed every three months so that they
would never be able to reveal the inner workings of the "Final Solution".
In every story of Black oppression,
no matter how we were enslaved, shackled,
or beaten, we always found a way to survive
and to rescue others. As a case in
point, consider Johnny Voste, a Belgian
resistance fighter who was arrested
in 1942 for alleged sabotage and then
shipped to Dachau. One of his jobs
was stacking vitamin crates. Risking
his own life, he distributed hundreds
of vitamins to camp detainees, which saved
the lives of many who were starving, weak, and ill-conditions exacerbated
by extreme vitamin deficiencies. His
motto was "No, you can't have
my life; I will fight for it."
According to Essex University's
Delroy Constantine-Simms*, there were
Black Germans who resisted Nazi Germany, such as Lari
Gilges, who founded the Northwest
Rann - an organisation of entertainers
that fought the Nazis in his home
town of Dusseldorf - and who was murdered
by the SS in 1933, the year that Hitler came into power.
Little information remains about the
numbers of Black Germans held in
the camps or killed under the Nazi regime. Some victims
of the Nazi sterilisation project and
Black survivors of the Holocaust are still
alive
and telling their story in films such as "Black Survivors
of the Nazi Holocaust", but they must also speak out for justice, not just history.
Unlike Jews (in Israel and in Germany),
Black Germans receive no war reparations
because their German citizenship was revoked
(even though they were German-born).
The only pension they get is from
those of us who are willing to tell
the world their stories and continue
their battle for recognition and compensation.
After the war, scores of Blacks who had somehow
managed to survive the Nazi regime, were rounded
up and tried as war criminals. Talk
about the final insult! There are
thousands of Black Holocaust stories,
from the triangle trade, to slavery
in America, to the gas ovens in Germany.
We often shy away from hearing about
our historical past because so much
of it is painful; however, we are
in this struggle together for rights, dignity, and, yes,
reparations
for wrongs done to us through the
centuries. We need to always remember so that we can take steps to ensure that these atrocities
never happen again.
For further information, read: Destined
to Witness: Growing Up Black in Nazi Germany, by Hans J. Massaquoi.
[Book available in our bookshop in Blacks
& Nazi Germany]
NEVER FORGET!
Written by A. Tolbert, III
Note: *Delroy Constantine-Simms,
Occupational Psychologist,
TD Business Psychology Assessments 07946 836 305. Services
offered: 1)Diversity and Equality Training
2)Cultural and Organizational Climate Auditing/Surveys
3)Diversity Management Surveys
4)Work Place Investigations (Harassment and Bullying)
5)Psychometric Testing
6)Personality Profiling
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