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 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 WarI, 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 directive 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 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 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 Lut Waffe 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 cardoors 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 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 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, and 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.