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Black Germans?!?!

May 18, 2012 by

Sooooo my girl Jill sent me this interesting article on Blacks in Germany during the Holocaust. I found it to be interesting reading. Just a little something for your afternoon read.

I for one never really thought about it or read about it until now.

 
 
The Black Germans
Black Survivors of the Nazi Holocaust,”
Black Historical Information …..
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 imension.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 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, and soon thereafter, 92% of them voted the Nazi party into power.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 directives 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 and Black second, opted to remain in Germany. Some fought with the Nazis (a few even became Luftwaffe 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 car doors 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, although German-born, have received no war reparations because their German citizenship was revoked. 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, to the gas oven s 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.

After I read this I thought… “Hmmmm how might it have went down if I was living in Germany at the time. Would have went something like this:
 
- Lo Kei in Germany in the ’20s…walking down the street.
 
Lo – Man… this is a NICE country… look at the trees… and the FOOD! Wow…

 
Nazi Soldier – HOOGIN NIEN…. BISH!! HOOGIN NEIN!

 
Lo – o.o  WTF you said?
 
NS – NEIT!!!! NEIT SLAVE HITLER NEIT HOOGIN!
 
Lo – o.o  Looka here chief.. whatever you got going on.. My name Bennett …I aint in it aiight!?! GTFOH!
 
NS – NEIT NYET HOOGIN!!!!! HITLER HEIN! HOLOCAUST!!!!!
 
Lo – Holo what? Look ..just bring me a Wiener Schnitzel and shut the fuk up….
 
Fast foward 60 yrs later…Lo talking to great grandchildren on the porch, explaining whhhhhhhhy random azz random numbers are tattoo’d on his wrist…
 
Lo – I mean.. Grand Lo.. I didn’t see it coming.. it was horrible. …they did horrible things to me…
 
 
 
Lo-Kei

Lo-Kei

Stay's in the corner, only come out for 1 hour a day.

Comments

comments

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Filed Under: AIntshytness with Lo-Kei, Damn That's Sad, Racism

Comments

  1. ChiDiva says:
    May 18, 2012 at 12:23 pm

    ^_-

  2. caratime2 says:
    May 18, 2012 at 12:41 pm

    [youtube Ok6Wxf7fu1s http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ok6Wxf7fu1s youtube]

    • queensgirl1960 says:
      May 18, 2012 at 12:56 pm

      Thanks Trina..very cool..your turn in words get to playin..

      • caratime2 says:
        May 18, 2012 at 1:05 pm

        Thanks for the kudos, but I wasn't the one who put together that particular presentation. I did, however, document an interview I did with the Afro-German child star "Leila Negra", who lived through WWII as an extra in Nazi propaganda films :
        http://uncagedbirds.wordpress.com/2010/08/16/sist…

        • Chitown Sista says:
          May 18, 2012 at 1:41 pm

          Man that was deep. I had tears. It's really an eye opener because I didnt know this. It makes me hella sad to see and hear but I will pass on this information for sure.

    • Lo - Kei says:
      May 18, 2012 at 2:04 pm

      Nice! Thanks :)

    • FubsyNumbles says:
      May 19, 2012 at 1:25 am

      Thank you, caratime. I'd heard before about black people also being victimised, but hadn't heard or seen any detail. Valuable stuff, and it's good that at least something is out there as a record.

  3. That Dude Bennegtt says:
    May 18, 2012 at 1:02 pm

    Lo…*sigh* nevermind

  4. Jonesey says:
    May 18, 2012 at 2:31 pm

    *whispers* Make that the '30s… IJS.

    • caratime2 says:
      May 18, 2012 at 2:36 pm

      30's/40's….yea, that's about right!

    • Lo - Kei says:
      May 18, 2012 at 3:17 pm

      o.O Joensey… I love your azz… and the rest of you too..buuut…

      "Did you know that in the 1920′s, there were 24,000 Blacks living in Germany?"

      About 9 sentences from the top. ;)

      • Jonesey says:
        May 18, 2012 at 4:56 pm

        I'm quite capable of reading, thank you Sir… you still would've had a tough time finding a Nazi Soldier in the 20s ;)

  5. Virtual Virgo says:
    May 18, 2012 at 4:27 pm

    I am teaching the Holocaust portion of WWII next week. While I knew there were blacks in the camps, I never had this much information before. I would tell my students that blacks were there, but couldn't offer much more than that. I am SO happy to have this information now, the video, and the book that I will be getting, ASAP.

  6. Arnaut_O says:
    May 18, 2012 at 11:53 pm

    Taking myself out of Lurker mode to reply to this Thread. Virtual Virgo if you're interested in another resource for your class. Check out a Book called "Destined to Witness: Growing up Black in Nazi Germany" by Hans Massaquoi

    Real interesting and personal read of what life was like for black folks in Germany at the time.

  7. FubsyNumbles says:
    May 19, 2012 at 1:26 am

    Thank you, bruvLo. Nice post. Always good to have some history thrust into the foreground.

  8. pavlovscat says:
    May 20, 2012 at 2:46 pm

    I'm really interested in WWII and Germany so this was really fascinating, the comments too! thanks Lo :)

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