Blacks in Nazi Germany

From an email I was sent:

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 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 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, 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 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 Sol ution".

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 , 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.

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Preparing Our Sons for the Game of Life

FYI.  Applies to sons and daughters.
 
Preparing our sons for the game of life.(Executive Memo)(Essay)
Black Enterprise – June 1, 2009
Earl G., Jr. Graves

I have often been amazed by the amount of time and energy many parents invest in their sons’ athletic careers. They attend all the games, travel hundreds of miles to take them to tournaments, and scold them if they slack off during practice drills. However, those same parental cheerleaders are often missing in action when it comes to educational oversight. They may spend hundreds of hours in the bleachers, but they don’t take 60 minutes to review their children’s academic standing.

Too many have become consumed by what I call the "ESPN culture," focusing on athletic highlights 24/7. Our young black men have been filled with hoop dreams of NBA glory and, worse, their parents are caught up in the same grand delusion. This viewpoint comes at a time when an entire generation of African American males is at risk. A 2008 report from the Schott Foundation for Public Education concludes that "black males have consistently low educational attainment levels, are more chronically unemployed and underemployed, are less healthy and have access to fewer healthcare resources, die much younger, and are many times more likely to be sent to jail for periods significantly longer than males of other racial/ethnic groups." The same study reported that more than 50% of black males do not graduate with their high school class and the 10 states with the lowest graduation rates–including New York, Georgia, Illinois, and Michigan–enroll more than 1.6 million black male public school students, roughly 40% of that population. Other reports have revealed that 75% of college-age African American men are not registered at any institution of higher education, and that one in nine black males ages 20-34 is incarcerated.

We can ill afford to throw up our hands and justify such poor performance as a consequence of economic, cultural, and societal factors: a declining public education system, a widening technology chasm, an ever-expanding income gap as more and more U.S. industries relocate overseas, and an increasingly vulgar popular culture that devalues scholarship and glorifies gangersterism. Despite the fact that the nation has entered the age of Obama, more and more black men are being shut out of the promise of opportunity and pushed into society’s margins. Simply put, we are in a state of emergency.

I am not talking about having black males completely abandon the basketball court or football field. In fact, I was a student athlete who played basketball during my high school and collegiate years. My involvement with sports was helpful in my personal and professional development. I learned the importance of discipline, teamwork, competition, and leadership. But my academic career never took a backseat to dunking a basketball. That’s why today I place athletics in its proper context and use it as a means to build self-esteem, instill values, and spur academic achievement among young people. Beyond being engaged in my own sons’ extracurricular activities, I spend a considerable amount of time coaching a group of predominantly African American males as part of an AAU basketball team. Of course, I want them to be dexterous, competitive players, but it is far more important to me that they grow into educated, productive, and successful citizens in the game of life. In fact, my No. I rule is that all of them must achieve academically before gaining consideration for team membership, and throughout the season, they must maintain or improve above-average GPAs.

Solving the problems facing young black men requires us to be vigilant and committed at all levels. I urge you–whether you’re a parent or not–to apply your own expertise to the cultivation of excellence among our young people. Look for opportunities to inspire and encourage young minds and stoke their ambitions. Promote education, entrepreneurial skills, and smart money management as vital tools they need to achieve life goals. Help lay the foundation for stable communities that allow them to flourish.

When they’ve been able to apply their talent and reach their full potential in the classroom and workplace then we’ll all have something to cheer about.

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