GERMANY’S BLACK VICTIMS

By: Paliani Chinguwo[1]

Besides being adequately researched and documented, the story about Jews, Sinti, Roma, Slavs, Jehovah Witness Christians, gay men who were victims of the Nazi Germany occupies its rightful place within the school curricular. However, scholars and researchers familiar with the Nazi era and the holocaust in particular have paid little or no attention to the fate of people of African descent under Adolf Hitler’s regime and under Germany in South West Africa (Namibia) a few decades prior to the World War II. It remains ironic indeed that the plight of Afro-Germans and other blacks in Germany and all German-occupied territories from 1933-1945 is relegated from the discourse of the holocaust and the Nazi era altogether.

A documentary film Black Survivors of the Holocaust notes that a survey conducted in Germany in the mid 1920s found out that there were 24,000 people of African descent living in Germany at the time and that there were about 20,000 during Adolf Hitler’s first year of office.

Clarence Lusane (2003) in her book Hitler’s Black Victims points out that the black population in Germany prior to World War II was categorised into Afro-Germans (those who were born in Germany and had citizenship), African population (students, teachers, workers, business people, diplomats) and those from the diaspora (Afro-Europeans, primarily from England and France and African Americans) who were mainly entertainers, journalists, educators, and students.

When Hitler established the concentration camp system and put into effect the extermination of Jews and other ethnic groups in Germany and all German occupied territories in Europe, blacks were not spared. The fate of black people from 1933-1945 in Nazi Germany and in all German occupied Europe ranged from isolation to persecution, sterilization, medical experiments, harsh brutality, forced labor, arbitrary arrests and executions, malnutrition and cold among other forms.

In his book Germany’s Black Holocaust Firpo W. Carr (2003) argues, “If a black person was born and raised in Germany, had acquired education in German schools, had a number of Afro-German relatives in the country, spoke fluent German and was around during World War II, stood a very good chance of being executed.”

Further to this, blacks serving in the US, French and British armies who were caught in German occupied Europe during World War II exceedingly suffered under the Nazi regime which grossly violated the Geneva Convention (international agreement on the conduct of war and treatment of wounded and captured soldiers). Among such prisoners of wars was an African American pilot called Lieutenant Darwin Nichols who was incarcerated in a Gestapo prison in Butzbach.

One black victim of Nazi holocaust was Bayume Muhammed Husen who was originally from Tanzania. He migrated to Germany in 1929 at the age of 25. Whilst in Germany he worked as a waiter, barman and a lecturer before picking up a job in the Nazi film industry. In August 1941, he was arrested and prosecuted on ‘racial pollution’ charge. He was sent to Sachsenhausen concentration camp where he died on 24th November 1944.

Another black victim of the Nazi who survived was a black Jew called Joseph Nassy a talented artist. He was born in USA and later migrated to Europe. On 14th April 1942 while in Belgium, Nassy was arrested by the Nazi who had then seized Belgium in 1940. He was sent to Biverloo prison in Belgium before being finally transferred to Laufen and Tittmoning camps in Germany. By the time he was freed in 1945, Nassy had completed 277 sketches, drawings and paintings. Since then his artwork has been on display in Europe and USA at various occasions.

Jean Johnny Voste[2] an African from Congo was caught and arrested in May 1942 for acts of sabotage having been active in a resistance movement in Belgium. The Nazi sent him to Dachau concentration camp. Amazingly he was one of the survivors when the 7th US army liberated Dachau on 29th April 1945 under the command of an African American soldier by the name of Lieutenant Colonel Simmons.

Other notable blacks among many who were captured, tortured in the Nazi concentration camps and eventually released or freed were Johnny Williams whose mother was from Ivory Coast and his father from Alsace, France where he went to live in 1922, Valaida Snow a famous female jazz trumpeter, Leopold Sedar Senghor who in 1961 became the first president of Senegal.

In the final analysis, the pages of history also bear witness that Germany’s acts of genocide, concentration camp system, and medical experiments on camp prisoners were first carried out in South West Africa (Namibia)[3] almost three decades before Adolf Hitler assumed power in Germany. Historians testify that the concentration camps that were set up in Namibia in 1904 were part of Germany’s genocidal program for blacks who dared to revolt against forced labour, expropriation of their cattle and land by the German settlers. According to the world encyclopedia, Herero people of Namibia started the war against Germany in January 1904. By the time the Germans successfully put down the revolt in 1907, about 80 percent of the Herero people and half of the Nama population had been wiped out.

While the Afro-Germans and other blacks who suffered under Nazi Germany are to this day still being denied the benefits of the compensation agreements on victims of Nazism that have been drawn over the past decades, the law suits against Germany by the Namibia’s Hereros continue to hit a snag.

Photos

Chained Herero prisoners in what is today called Namibia
(ARCHIVE: GESELLSCHAFT FÜR BEDROHTE VÖLKER 1905)

Jean Johnny Voste (right) and Manoli Spiru (left) at the time of liberation of the Dachau concentration camp-Photo by Frank Manucci.

American troops, including African American soldiers from the Headquarters and Service Company of 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. Among those pictured is Leon Bass (the soldier third from left). Buchenwald, Germany, April 17, 1945.

Courtesy of United States Holocaust Memorial Museum (USHMM)

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[1] For comments e-mail:

[2] See picture of a Congolese Jean Johnny Voste at Dachau below.

[3] See photo of chained prisoners at one of the concentration camps in Namibia.