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Black Victims
Question:
I am a black-british postgradute student living in London. I know from research into the black European experience, that there were many black people here just before WW2. I am wondering what happened to them under the Third Reich. Could you possibly enlighten me? I would particularly appreciate any book or internet site references which you think may be of use. I am really pleased that you are so determined to educate future generations about the Holocaust, it is a lesson that we all, from whichever race we originate, must never forget or allow to be denied or trvialised by those who have much to learn about the sanctity of life
Harry W. Mazal OBE answers:
I am one of the volunteers in the Holocaust History who responds to questions from our readers. It is possible that you will receive other answers from my colleagues.
There are a number of references to the treatment of blacks by the Nazis both in their own publications as well as those written by observers. The most recent book to come into my hands is:
The African-German Experience: Critical Essays
Carol Aisha Blackshire-Belay
c. 1996, Praeger Publishers (Westport CT)
ISBN 0-275-95079-4
Chapter 5 is an essay by Susan Semples, "African Germans in the Third Reich." You can obtain considerable information about the subject not only from her text, but from a vast bibliography that she cites at the end of the chapter. The first paragraph reads:
While the racial policies of the Third Reich toward the Jews is well-documented, the fate of the African or biracial Germans living in Germany during the Third Reich has not generated much attention. The one notable exception is Reiner Pommerin's seminal study, Sterilisierung der Rheinlandbastarde. Das Schicksal einer farbigen deutschen Minderheit 1918-1937 (1979) which examines the public and political reaction to these children and documents their forced sterilization during the Third Reich. More recently in The Racial State: Germany 1933-1945, Michael Burleigh and Wolfgang Wipperman (1991)also briefly discuss the persecution of the Rhineland African-Germans during this period.
She goes on to say (excerpted):
The biracial Rhineland Germans fathered by black (or mixed black) French Colonial occupation troops after World War I constituted the largest group of African Germans. It is commonly accepted that the Rhineland African-Germans roughly numbered between five hundred and eight hundred. No exact figures exist for other African Germans who were scattered throughout the Reich. A conservative estimate would be that the combined total for all African Germans was about a thousand.
A very brief description of the plight of black people in Germany can be found in:
The Other Victims: First Person Stories of Non-Jews Persecuted by the Nazis
Ina R. Friedman
c. 1990, Houghton Mifflin (Boston)
ISBN 0-395-50212-8
The brief chapter on blacks (pp. 91-93) is chilling. It starts with an odious comment by Adolf Hitler:
The mulatto children came about through rape or the white mother was a whore.In both cases, there is not the slightest moral duty regarding these offspring of a foreign race.
Three brief paragraphs from this chapter:
Though black entertainers were popular in Germany before Hitler came to power, they were boycotted when the Nazis took over. A book entitled Degenerate Music: An Accounting was published in 1938. The cover shows a black musician with a Jewish star on his lapel. Hitler's hatred of blacks extended to black athletes. When Jesse Owens, the American track star, won three gold medals at the 1936 Olympics in Berlin, Hitler refused to be present when the medals were awarded.
Though there were relatively few blacks in Germany, Hitler discriminated between black and white prisoners of war. Black soldiers captured during World War II were separated from their units and shot.
Historians are just beginning to examine the Nazi files on blacks. Much of the information has yet to be obtained and made available to the public. To date, the few existent publications are available only in German.
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