"Holocaust" is usually associated with the six million Jews slaughtered by the Nazis in Hitler's Germany. But while the Nazis were anti-Semitic, their myth of Aryan superiority extended to all racial groups outside the Teutonic. This included peoples of African origin, and the idea of the "final solution" began in Africa's German colonies in Tanganyka, Namibia, and Cameroon where multitudes were massacred because they were considered sub-human. The medical experiments attempted on live inmates in Nazi concentration camps were initiated in Africa.
Black Victims of the Nazis by Z Nia Reynolds attempts to highlight the horror of blacks caught up in the horrors of Hitler's Reich. Nazi intentions for Africa can be gleaned from the German diplomat in Italian-occupied Ethiopia who said that in a few years Addis Ababa would be like Chicago where the indigenous population had been exterminated by Europeans. In Germany itself, there were children of French occupation forces, many of them African and children of Germans who lived in the colonies.
That not all were exterminated was due to the fact that they were not as numerous as the Jews. The Nazis also feared that a "final solution" for blacks would sabotage their attempts to recover their colonies in Africa. And Germans were confused by the physical prowess of black athletes like Joe Louis and Jesse Owens. Some forget that the Nazis condemned the Jews for their alleged overdeveloped intellects and physical disabilities. Nazi propaganda showed Jews as cunning schemers, undermining true Germans who were physically superior.
The model of the Aryan was the tall, blond, blue-eyed German, the embodiment of Nietzsche's "magnificent blond brute". Unfortunately their leaders, including Hitler and Goebbels, were short, black-haired, brown-eyed and physically repulsive. The Berlin Olympics of 1936 was supposed to showcase the physical perfection of German athletes, who would demonstrate the physical inferiority of Jews and other "lesser" races. This myth was shattered by the spectacular achievements of Jesse Owens who won four gold medals in the most physically challenging contests. The same blow was struck at German prestige by Joe Louis who knocked out Max Schmelling in the first round of their second fight, which Nazis had promoted as a showpiece of Aryan power.
A nation which had built its myth of racial superiority on its physical attributes was humiliated by blacks who had been regarded as the missing link between human beings and animals. Unlike their leaders, however, German athletes admired Louis and Owens, and Schmelling became a friend and benefactor of the boxer who had crushed him after his first-time defeat of the "Brown Bomber". There were blacks in the concentration camps and many were killed. But there were Germans associated with the African colonies who tried to show how the Reich could "civilise" these people rather than killing them.
The book cites letters and other documents of the struggle between Nazis of these two orientations who struggled to gain control of policy towards blacks. This was not unlike the United States and other slave societies where "well-behaved" blacks, the "Uncle Toms" or "House Niggers", were relatively safe to "liberals" while "rebels" felt the whip, bullet and lynch rope. While policy was ambiguous, however, racism among the German population ensured that blacks suffered in their lack of opportunities for schools, employment, health, housing and other benefits in the society.
The French, English and Americans armed millions of peoples of African origin to fight Nazism, and German propaganda made much of the fact that these people fought for the freedom of societies which lynched and humiliated them at home. But while this was true to a large extent, black experience of this fight for freedom would influence the struggles for independence and civil rights after the war. Nazism demonstrated the bankruptcy of racism which deprived the nation of the energy and intelligence of millions of its people who could have helped it triumph, if it had fought a just war.
Black Victims of the Nazis fills in the blank spaces of a history which portrays the World Wars as fights between people of European descent. Millions of Africans, Asians, and other people who fought, suffered and died are left out of the picture, though thousands of Africans among French occupation forces in the Rhineland angered the Nazis, and Hitler condemned this as a "Jewish plot" to humiliate Germans! By trying to expropriate the holocaust to exclusively Jewish suffering, right-wing Jews dishonour the suffering of their ancestors. Blacks were also victims, as this book shows. If we can accept victims of evil as heroes, the world would be a better place for all of us.
Patrick Wilmot is visiting professor at three Nigerian universities. He writes out of London.
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 of the Holocaust" (1997). Outside the U.S., the film is entitled "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 1920's, 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 1800's in what later became Togo, Cameroon, 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 colonization. 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 colonized 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 sterilization program, explained in the film "Hitler's Forgotten Victims" that, when he was forced to undergo s terilization as a teenager, he was given no anesthetic. Once he received his sterilization 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)! Un fortunately, 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 labor (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 Constan tine- Simms, there were Black Germans who resisted Nazi Germany, such as Lari Gilges, who founded the Northwest Rann--an organization 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 sterilization 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.
when Bob do deh tune yah inna 1979, almost 30 years ago, him did know weh him a write seh !
Survival Bob Marley lyrics Artist: Bob Marley Album: Survival Year: 1979 Title: Survival
(Ow, ow-ow-ow-ow! Ow, ow-ow-ow-ow!) Yeah, yeah, yeah! How can you be sitting there Telling me that you care - That you care? When every time I look around, The people suffer in the suffering In everyway, in everywhere.
Say: na-na-na-na-na (na-na, na-na!): We're the survivors, yes: the Black survivors! I tell you what: some people got everything; Some people got nothing; Some people got hopes and dreams; Some people got ways and means.
Na-na-na-na-na (na-na, na-na!): We're the survivors, yes: the Black survivors! Yes, we're the survivors, like Daniel out of the lions' den (Black survivors) Survivors, survivors! So I Idren, I sistren, A-which way will we choose? We better hurry; oh, hurry; oh, hurry; wo, now! 'Cause we got no time to lose. Some people got facts and claims; Some people got pride and shame; Some people got the plots and schemes; Some people got no aim it seems!
Na-na-na-na-na, na-na, na! We're the survivors, yes: the Black survivors! Tell you what: we're the survivors, yeah! - the Black survivors, yeah! We're the survivors, like Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego (Black survivors), Thrown in the fire, but-a never get burn. So I Idren, I-sistren, The preaching and talkin' is done; We've gotta live up, wo now, wo now! - 'Cause the Father's time has come. Some people put the best outside; Some people keep the best inside; Some people can't stand up strong; Some people won't wait for long.
(Na-na-na-na-na!) Na-na-na, na-na-na na! We're the survivors In this age of technological inhumanity (Black survival), Scientific atrocity (survivors), Atomic misphilosophy (Black survival), Nuclear misenergy (survivors): It's a world that forces lifelong insecurity (Black survival).
Together now: (Na-na-na-na-na!) Na na-na na na! (Na na-na na na!) We're the survivors, yeah! We're the survivors! Yes, the Black survivors! We're the survivors: A good man is never honoured (survivors) in his own yountry (Black survival). Nothing change, nothing strange (survivors). Nothing change, nothing strange (Black survivors). We got to survive, y'all! (survivors)
