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Brooklynbeef
Member since May 30th 2002
4649 posts
Tue Feb-22-05 09:58 AM

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"Hitler's forgotten Black Victims"
Tue Feb-22-05 10:04 AM

  

          

Hitler's Forgotten Black Victims, September 26, 1997

The Nazi's final solution had a dress rehearsal in Namibia, writes Delroy
Constantine-Simms.

At a time when the fight for justice for Jewish Holocaust victims makes
front-page news, few people know that a significant number of black people
suffered, too, under Nazi rule. Revelations about their experiences are
made in a documentary, to be screened in Britain next month, entitled
Hitler's Forgotten Victims.

It reveals that sterilisation programmes of blacks were instituted by
Germany's most senior Nazi geneticist, Doctor Eugen Fischer, who developed
his racial theories in German South West Africa (now Namibia) long before
World War I. In Namibia, Fischer claimed there were genetic dangers
arising from race mixing between German colonists and African women.

The documentary also provides disturbing photographic evidence of German
genocidal tendencies in Africa. In 1904 the Herero tribe revolted against
their German colonial masters in a quest to keep their land. It was a
rebellion that lasted four years and led to the death of 60 000 Herero
people ó 80% of their population. The survivors were imprisoned in
concentration camps or used as guinea pigs for medical experiments, a
foretaste of things to come.

Hitler's Forgotten Victims shows that Germany's 24 000-strong black
community were the number-one target for Hitlerís sterilisation programme.
The film makes it clear that Hitler's view on racial superiority did not
develop in a vacuum. He was influenced by the work of the 19th- century
German zoologist Ernst Haeckel, whose views were based on distorted
versions of Darwinism. He wrote of woolly- haired Negroes incapable of
higher mental development.

The film shows that the Nazis' obsession with racial purity and eugenics
was provoked and intensified in 1918, following Germany's defeat in World
War I. Under the terms of the peace treaty signed at Versailles, Germany
was stripped of its African colonies and forced to submit to the
occupation of the Rhineland. The deployment of African troops from the
French colonies to police the territory incensed many Germans.

To many it was the final humiliation that began with their 1918 defeat in
the World War I. The film shows Germans complaining bitterly in newspapers
and propaganda films about African soldiers from the French colonial army
having relations with their women.

As soon as Hitler reoccupied the Rhineland in 1936, he retaliated by
targeting black people living there. At least 400 mixed- race children
were forcibly sterilised in the area by the end of 1937, while 400 others
disappeared into camps.

Hans Hauck, a victim of Hitlerís sterilisation programme, says: 'We were
lucky that we werenít victims of euthanasia; we were only sterilised. We
had no anaesthetic. Once I got my vasectomy certificate, I had to sign an
agreement that we were not allowed to have sexual relations whatsoever
with Germans'.

In 1932 in Bresau, Hitler gave a speech in which he ordered Africans, Jews
and anyone not Aryan to leave Germany or go into the camps. But most
blacks in Germany could not heed Hitler's warning as they were German
citizens with German passports and had nowhere else to go. While a fair
number escaped to France, others tried to return to the former German
colonies, taken over by the League of Nations in 1920. The British
colonial authorities in the newly named South West Africa would not allow
black Germans refugee status on the grounds that they had fought for the
Germans in World War I.

Hitler's Forgotten Victims does not give enough insight into the lives of
black Germans who resisted the Nazis, such as black activist Lari Gilges,
who founded an organisation of entertainers that fought the Nazis in his
home town of Dusseldorf. He was murdered by the SS in 1933, the year
Hitler came to power. More insight is given into black and mixed-race
Germans who toured in the Hillerkus Afrikaschau circuses, films and shows
to escape persecution.

Says interviewee Elizabeth Morton: 'My father was one of the founders of
the Afrikaschau. There was everything: dances, songs and acrobatics, music
breaking, tap dancing. It was like a variety show. The Afrikaschau
actually became the place to go for all black people; it was something
new'.

These shows were eventually taken over in 1940 by the SS, who considered
them racially unacceptable and used them for racist propaganda. But
eventually Hitler's propaganda chief, Josef Goebbels, realised that in
order to spread the Nazi gospel of Aryan supremacy, he needed to exploit
the most popular medium of the time - German feature films. Propaganda
films such as Kongo Express, Quax in Africa, and Auntie Wanda from Uganda
presented Germany as a benevolent colonial power.

Says black actor Werner Egiomue: We had an agent then who had all the
addresses of black people in Berlin. The Reichís chamber of commerce was
in touch with him when they were casting a film. It was fun inside the
studio. Outside the door you could be arrested. But inside you were as
safe as in a bank.

Another experience is given by the Michaels family, who were orphaned and
separated at an early age. Theodore Michael, one of Germanyís greatest
character actors of the time, gives a gripping account of how he survived.

He says: 'Black people in Germany were aware that if the Nazis wanted to
get rid of us, they could catch us in one swoop. I was eventually sent to
a munitions factory, where I was liberated by Russian soldiers. They were
surprised to see a black man still alive'.

Not only black Germans suffered at the hands of the Nazis black soldiers
were also targets. Between 1939 and 1945, an estimated 200 000 black
troops from African colonies were serving in Europe. The Nazis segregated
black inmates for extra special treatment of the fatal kind. In breach of
the Geneva Convention, black prisoners were denied food, and given
dangerous jobs. In film never seen before, black soldiers and civilians
are seen scavenging for scraps of food in garbage heaps at the Hemer POW
camp near Dortmund in north-west Germany. No one knows how many black
soldiers or civilians died in the camps at the hands of the SS guards,
producer Moise Shewa says, because where Jews were noted as Jews, blacks
were noted by nationality.

One description of concentration camp life is given by Johnny William,
born to an African mother and white Frenchman, who was transported by the
Gestapo to the Neugengamme concentration camp near Hamburg. 'There were
five or six of us. As soon as we arrived, we were immediately separated
from the white deportees by the SS. They considered us to be subhuman
beings like animals, chimpanzees.

Hitler's Forgotten Victims makes it clear that the treatment of blacks in
the Holocaust should be acknowledged. Most black Germans were stripped of
their nationality, so it has been difficult for them to claim reparations.
Hopefully, this film will go some way to force the German government to
acknowledge their experience at the hands of the Nazis and recompense
black Germans in the same manner as the Jewish community, who suffered the
same fate.

"Forget Black History Month, how about live an African History Life"-Ansley Burrows

  

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Topic Outline
Subject Author Message Date ID
very informative... thanks for posting the article
Feb 22nd 2005
1
RE: very informative... thanks for posting the article
Feb 22nd 2005
2
      RE: very informative... thanks for posting the article
Feb 22nd 2005
6
great article...
Feb 22nd 2005
3
Here are two books on the subject
Feb 22nd 2005
4
Survivors still Alive
Feb 22nd 2005
5
Interview With Author
Feb 22nd 2005
7
Here's another book
Feb 25th 2005
8
I'm not sure I like the connection being made
Feb 25th 2005
9
RE: I'm not sure I like the connection being made
Feb 25th 2005
10
      RE: I'm not sure I like the connection being made
Feb 25th 2005
15
It's always been interesting to me that the word 'holocaust'
Feb 25th 2005
11
RE: It's always been interesting to me that the word 'holocaust'
Feb 25th 2005
12
      lol @ you summarizing the article for my benefit.
Feb 25th 2005
13
Great post
Feb 25th 2005
14
RE: Hitler's forgotten Black Victims
Feb 25th 2005
16

zewari
Charter member
7113 posts
Tue Feb-22-05 10:12 AM

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1. "very informative... thanks for posting the article"
In response to Reply # 0


  

          

_¸»¬æ¤º²°¯¯°²º¤æ¬«SiG»¬æ¤º²°¯¯°²º¤æ¬«¸_



“Stand out firmly for Justice as witness before God, even against yourselves, against your kin and against your parents, against people who are rich or poor. Do not follow your inclinations or desires lest you deviate from Justice. Remember, God is the best of Protectors and well acquainted with all that you do.”
-Qur’an 4:135

"Don't be deceived when they tell you things are better now. Even if there's no poverty to be seen because the poverty's been hidden. Even if you ever got more wages and could afford to buy more of these new and useless goods which industries foist on you and even if it seems to you that you never had so much, that is only the slogan of those who still have much more than you. Don't be taken in when they paternally pat you on the shoulder and say that there's no inequality worth speaking of and no more reason to fight because if you believe them they will be completely in charge in their marble homes and granite banks from which they rob the people of the world under the pretence of bringing them culture. Watch out, for as soon as it pleases them they'll send you out to protect their gold in wars whose weapons, rapidly developed by servile scientists, will become more and more deadly until they can with a flick of the finger tear a million of you to pieces."
--Jean Paul Marat, 18th Century French Visionary (and revolutionary), murdered in his bathtub by Royalist Charlotte Corday


__________________________

www.supportblackowned.org

  

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AquamansRevenge
Member since Oct 27th 2004
656 posts
Tue Feb-22-05 10:19 AM

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2. "RE: very informative... thanks for posting the article"
In response to Reply # 1


          

great article. great post!

  

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ZachG
Member since May 15th 2003
304 posts
Tue Feb-22-05 01:38 PM

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6. "RE: very informative... thanks for posting the article"
In response to Reply # 2


  

          

Co-sign

"The West won the world not by the superiority of its ideas or values or religion but rather by its superiority in applying organized violence. Westerners often forget this fact, non-Westerners never do."

-- Samuel P. Huntington

  

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SONJEVITY
Member since Nov 07th 2003
4478 posts
Tue Feb-22-05 11:00 AM

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3. "great article..."
In response to Reply # 0


  

          

thanks

---------------------------------------
"We're not weeell...and we cain't teeell" (c) Badu

http://www.myspace.com/sonjevitysgroove

  

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Brooklynbeef
Member since May 30th 2002
4649 posts
Tue Feb-22-05 12:17 PM

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4. "Here are two books on the subject"
In response to Reply # 0


  

          

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0415932955/ref=pd_bxgy_img_2/002-5233071-9837661?v=glance&s=books


Germany's Black Holocaust 1890-1945, Firpo W. Carr

Hitler's Black Victims: The Historical Experience of Afro-Germans, European Blacks, Africans and African-Americans in the Nazi Era. Clarence Lusane

"Forget Black History Month, how about live an African History Life"-Ansley Burrows

  

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Brooklynbeef
Member since May 30th 2002
4649 posts
Tue Feb-22-05 12:20 PM

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5. "Survivors still Alive"
In response to Reply # 0


  

          

Carr said there are Black survivors still alive today.

"Forget Black History Month, how about live an African History Life"-Ansley Burrows

  

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Brooklynbeef
Member since May 30th 2002
4649 posts
Tue Feb-22-05 02:16 PM

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7. "Interview With Author"
In response to Reply # 0


  

          

Germany's Black Holocaust "The Untold Truth"

For the first time ever in a book, three different
Blacks tell stories of their intimate involvement with
the Holocaust, all from a different perspective. One
is an actual Black holocaust survivor from Dachau. One
was a commander with the U.S. Army unit that liberated
Dachau. And one was with the medical corps that went
to clean up the dead bodies at Dachau.


Interview With Dr. Firpo W. Carr


Interviewer: What prompted you to write such a book?

Dr. Carr: The fact that we as Black people were never
told of such atrocities. It's part of, not just "Black
History," but, "History."

Interviewer: When did you first suspect that Black
people were victims of the Holocaust?

Dr. Carr: About 30 years ago in 1973.

Interviewer: Can you elaborate?

Dr. Carr: Sure. In the latter part of 1973 I read the
1974 Yearbook of Jehovah's Witnesses. As one of
Jehovah's Witnesses I was interested in reading
everything published by the Watch Tower Society, the
publishing arm of the Witnesses.

The entire subject matter of the Yearbook dealt with
atrocities committed against the Witnesses by Hitler
and the Nazi regime. The book went into gruesome
details as to the unspeakable horrors committed
against the German Witnesses.

Aside from being frightened and horrified by the
gruesome details, I was also intrigued that, this
same bastion of white supremacy, the ideology of
National Socialism (as Nazism is more formally known)
did nothing or had nothing to say about Black people.

While the Yearbook and other sources, both Witness and
non-Witness, listed other victims like the Gypsies,
handicapped, homosexuals, and others, Blacks were very
rarely, if ever, mentioned. They certainly weren't
mentioned in any Witness literature as victims of
Hitler's Holocaust.

The question as to why the silence nagged me for
decades. As I searched and traveled and read and
interviewed Holocaust survivors over the many years, I
asked about Black people. Finally, it all pretty much
came together, hence, my book, Germany 's Black
Holocaust: 1890-1945.

Interviewer: Are you saying that the Black Holocaust
started as far back as 1890?

Dr. Carr: Correct.

Interviewer: How is that?

Dr. Carr: You'll have to read the book.

Interviewer: So it ended in 1945 I'm assuming by the
title.

Dr. Carr: No. World War II ended in 1945 and thus the
Holocaust. But for Black people who lived during that
time, the "Black" Holocaust continued because some of
them had fled to the countryside and had no news of
Allied victory.

You see, they didn't have radios, per se, in those
days. Communication was certainly not what it is
today. So, although the War ended in defeat for the
Nazi army, Blacks who had fled to the countryside were
still under the impression that the War was still
waging.

Interviewer: For how long were they under this
misimpression?

Dr. Carr: Perhaps a few years in some extreme cases.
And of course, symbolically, I demonstrate that the
influence of the Holocaust, as expressed through the
tentacles of present-day white supremacy, has spread
from Nazi Germany, to America , to all corners of our
earthly globe. All you have to do is read about the
Paperclip Project.

Interviewer: The Paperclip Project? What's that?

Dr. Carr: The CIA program that brought prominent Nazi
scientists, educators, and others over to the U.S. and
gave them various jobs throughout the country. Along
with their expertise they brought their racist ideas
with them. It gets real deep. But, you'll have to read
the book to learn more about it.

Interviewer: What do you hope to accomplish by
bringing this hidden history to the attention of the
public?

Dr. Carr: I can give the standard, "greater
awareness" answer, but it's more than that. I
sincerely hope that my book and similar materials will
be used as staples in history courses that'll cover
the subject of Blacks and the Holocaust.

This course should be taught, at the very least, in
high schools, and most definitely in colleges and
universities—especially HBCs (Historical Black
Colleges).

Interviewer: Where can people get the book?

Dr. Carr: There are several ways: (1) they can
purchase the book through this Web site
(www.gblackh.org), or, (2) they can purchase it
through their local Black bookstore, or, (3) they can
purchase it through www.amazon.com, or, (4) they can
purchase it through the larger chain bookstores like
Barnes & Noble.

Interviewer: How much is it?

Dr. Carr: $19.95.

Interviewer: Good price.

Dr. Carr: We wanted to make it affordable.

Interviewer: But what about those who think even this
price is too expensive?

Dr. Carr: Well, I'll tell them about four simple words
divided into two simple sentences—one a question and
one a statement—that I read in the admissions office
at Compton College (in Compton, California) that I
read years ago when I took a class there.

They read: "Education expensive? Try ignorance."

Interviewer: Thank you Dr. Carr.

Dr. Carr: My pleasure.

"Forget Black History Month, how about live an African History Life"-Ansley Burrows

  

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Brooklynbeef
Member since May 30th 2002
4649 posts
Fri Feb-25-05 10:13 AM

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8. "Here's another book"
In response to Reply # 0


  

          

'Blacks in Nazi Camps' by Serge Bilé( a martiniquan) It's in French.

"Forget Black History Month, how about live an African History Life"-Ansley Burrows

  

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Chike
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32916 posts
Fri Feb-25-05 10:38 AM

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9. "I'm not sure I like the connection being made"
In response to Reply # 0


  

          

between the holocaust in Namibia and the Nazis. Foretaste? Only in the sense of seeing the brutality of Europe as a whole throughout the colonial period as symbolized in the turning-to-do-it-at-home of the Jewish holocaust.

I'm uncomfortable because people are very happy to see the Nazis as an unprecedented anomaly in terms of levels of evil, and regardless of whether or not that's justified, to speak as if one can connect Germany's evil in Namibia to what is perceived as an anomaly distorts one's appreciation for the evil of Europe as a whole in Africa.

  

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Brooklynbeef
Member since May 30th 2002
4649 posts
Fri Feb-25-05 01:14 PM

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10. "RE: I'm not sure I like the connection being made"
In response to Reply # 9


  

          

Hmmmmmm, I did n't think the article was emphasizing German evils to the exclusion of other European nations in Africa. The point is that the Jewish Holocaust which also murdered, gays, Serbs, Communists, dissidents, Gypsies, the mentally ill had it's roots in the genocide of the Herero nation in Naimbia. Most individuals don't make the African connection with the Jewish Holocaust.

"Forget Black History Month, how about live an African History Life"-Ansley Burrows

  

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Chike
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32916 posts
Fri Feb-25-05 08:54 PM

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15. "RE: I'm not sure I like the connection being made"
In response to Reply # 10


  

          

>Hmmmmmm, I did n't think the article was emphasizing German
>evils to the exclusion of other European nations in Africa.

Not excluding what other nations did, but (unwittingly?) detaching what they did from what happened in Namibia.

>The point is that the Jewish Holocaust which also murdered,
>gays, Serbs, Communists, dissidents, Gypsies, the mentally
>ill had it's roots in the genocide of the Herero nation in
>Naimbia. Most individuals don't make the African connection
>with the Jewish Holocaust.

This is what I disagree with. Connecting what the Nazi regime did to Jews, gays, blacks, etc., to what happened in Namibia can give the impression that what happened in Namibia was somehow Nazi-related.

  

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Mica
Member since Nov 28th 2002
12907 posts
Fri Feb-25-05 01:39 PM

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11. "It's always been interesting to me that the word 'holocaust'"
In response to Reply # 0
Fri Feb-25-05 01:52 PM

          

has always been so synonymous with Jewish suffering.

Of course I understand that they suffered the most as far as loss in population is concerned, but I'm sure far less people know about the homosexuals and Blacks that were killed during the same time period.

Thanks for posting the article. It was very interesting.

*gone*

  

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Brooklynbeef
Member since May 30th 2002
4649 posts
Fri Feb-25-05 01:57 PM

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12. "RE: It's always been interesting to me that the word 'holocaust'"
In response to Reply # 11


  

          

No problem. Not only were Blacks murdered and also sterilized but the template for the genocide in Europe came from the German experimentation and ethnic cleansing tactics used against Africans in German colonies.

"Forget Black History Month, how about live an African History Life"-Ansley Burrows

  

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Mica
Member since Nov 28th 2002
12907 posts
Fri Feb-25-05 02:09 PM

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13. "lol @ you summarizing the article for my benefit."
In response to Reply # 12
Fri Feb-25-05 02:14 PM

          

No really, I appreciate it. (no sarcasto)

As I reread my 1st post, it does look like I completely skipped over the point of article (their dress rehearsal with Africans as the actors) and just posted about American Blacks.

I did read the artcle, though, just thought I'd comment on the American Black component.

*gone*

  

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Whateva
Member since Jul 07th 2003
4637 posts
Fri Feb-25-05 04:26 PM

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14. "Great post"
In response to Reply # 0


  

          

I'm really interested in these sterilization programs.

***************************************
"Science" and Religion are the two most dangerous weapons of ideology. See holocaust.

Why do "scientists" constantly produce statistics based on "race", a social construct?

  

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lidawg
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1539 posts
Fri Feb-25-05 09:34 PM

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16. "RE: Hitler's forgotten Black Victims"
In response to Reply # 0


  

          

excellent post...

peace!
li

"Afraid is a country with no exit visa."--Audre Lorde

  

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