Blacks in Nazi Germany
by A. Tolbert, III
http://www.amonhotep.com/2004/0901.html
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 US 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 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 Europea n nations, Germany established colonies in Africa
in the late 1800s 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 of 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. Soon thereafter 92% of them
voted in the Nazi party.
Hundreds of these 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 children. Underscoring his obsession with racial purity, by 1937,
every identified mixed race child in the Rhineland had been forcibly
sterilized to prevent further " race polluting " as he termed it.
Hans Hauck, a Black Holocaust survivor and a victim of Hitler's
mandatory sterilization program, explained in the film that when he was forced
to undergo sterilization 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 ha ve 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 ran into problems elsewhere.
Nation s shut its 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 charged with people (equipped
with no bathroom facilities or food) that after the four day journey,
box car doors opened to piles of the dead and dying.
Once in the concentration camps Blacks were given the w orst jobs
conceivable. Some Black American soldiers who were captured and held as
prisoners of war recounted that while they were starved an 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 carried out. 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 enslaved, enshackled
or beaten, we are, we find a way to survive and rescue others. Case in
point, is Johnny Voste, a Belgian Resistance fighter who was arrested
in 1942 for sabotage and 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 because they 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 Del roy Constantine-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 Hitler came to 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 (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 recognitio n
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 things never happen again.
Uncovering the Black German Holocaust
Review by Delroy Constantine-Simms
Get this book:
Destined to Witness : Growing Up Black in Nazi Germany, by Hans
Massaquoi
Non-Jewish Holocaust Victims - the 5,000,000 Others
www.geocities.com/raglanr/black.html
------------------------------------------------------------
"I would rather be a member of this [Afrikan] race than a Greek in the
time of Alexander, a Roman in the Augustan period, or Anglo-Saxon in
the nineteenth century." - Edward Wilmot Blyden
"However much we may detest admitting it, the fact remains that there
would be no exploitation if people refused to obey the exploiter. But
self comes in and we hug the chains that bind us. This must cease." -
Mohandas Gandhi
UHURU!
The Drum Collective - http://www.thedrum.org
Assata Shakur Forum - http://www.assatashakur.org/forum
AAPRP - http://members.aol.com/aaprp
InPDUM - http://www.inpdum.com
The Talking Drum - http://www.thetalkingdrum.com
by A. Tolbert, III
http://www.amonhotep.com/2004/0901.html
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 US 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 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 Europea n nations, Germany established colonies in Africa
in the late 1800s 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 of 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. Soon thereafter 92% of them
voted in the Nazi party.
Hundreds of these 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 children. Underscoring his obsession with racial purity, by 1937,
every identified mixed race child in the Rhineland had been forcibly
sterilized to prevent further " race polluting " as he termed it.
Hans Hauck, a Black Holocaust survivor and a victim of Hitler's
mandatory sterilization program, explained in the film that when he was forced
to undergo sterilization 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 ha ve 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 ran into problems elsewhere.
Nation s shut its 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 charged with people (equipped
with no bathroom facilities or food) that after the four day journey,
box car doors opened to piles of the dead and dying.
Once in the concentration camps Blacks were given the w orst jobs
conceivable. Some Black American soldiers who were captured and held as
prisoners of war recounted that while they were starved an 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 carried out. 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 enslaved, enshackled
or beaten, we are, we find a way to survive and rescue others. Case in
point, is Johnny Voste, a Belgian Resistance fighter who was arrested
in 1942 for sabotage and 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 because they 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 Del roy Constantine-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 Hitler came to 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 (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 recognitio n
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 things never happen again.
Uncovering the Black German Holocaust
Review by Delroy Constantine-Simms
Get this book:
Destined to Witness : Growing Up Black in Nazi Germany, by Hans
Massaquoi
Non-Jewish Holocaust Victims - the 5,000,000 Others
www.geocities.com/raglanr/black.html
------------------------------------------------------------
"I would rather be a member of this [Afrikan] race than a Greek in the
time of Alexander, a Roman in the Augustan period, or Anglo-Saxon in
the nineteenth century." - Edward Wilmot Blyden
"However much we may detest admitting it, the fact remains that there
would be no exploitation if people refused to obey the exploiter. But
self comes in and we hug the chains that bind us. This must cease." -
Mohandas Gandhi
UHURU!
The Drum Collective - http://www.thedrum.org
Assata Shakur Forum - http://www.assatashakur.org/forum
AAPRP - http://members.aol.com/aaprp
InPDUM - http://www.inpdum.com
The Talking Drum - http://www.thetalkingdrum.com
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