Other Victims of The Holocaust

OTHER VICTIMS OF THE HOLOCAUST
Author(s): Michael C. Mbabuike and Anna Marie Evans

Source: Dialectical Anthropology, Vol. 25, No. 1 (March 2000), pp. 1-25
Published by: Springer
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/29790622 .
Accessed: 21/09/2014 15:03
Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at .
http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp
.
JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of
content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms
of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org.
.
Springer is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Dialectical Anthropology.
http://www.jstor.org
This content downloaded from 200.125.118.195 on Sun, 21 Sep 2014 15:03:08 PM
All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
OTHER VICTIMS OF THE HOLOCAUST
Michael C. Mbabuike and Anna Marie Evans
Michael C. Mbabuike is
Professor
and Chair
of Humanities/Africana
Studies
Department,
Hostos
Community College of
the
City University of
New York.
Anna Marie Evans is Associate
Professor of History, Department of History
, West
Virginia
State
College,
Institute,
West
Virginia.
The
struggle
of
humanity against power
is the
struggle
of
memory against
forgetting.1
Ome na aru
onye
ozo,
odi komelu nosisi.
(When
misfortune befalls someone
else,
it
appears
to have
happened
to a
tree).
Igbo
Proverb
The Holocaust must be defined to include not
just
the Nazi and
German atrocities
against
the Jews
immediately
before and
during
WWII,
but also atrocities
against
other victims of different races and
nationalities and social
groups during
the same
period. Long
before
the atrocities of WW
n,
Africans of the Continent and the
Diaspora
had become
targeted
victims of
many
hate
groups
in
Europe
and the
West. Historians and colonial critics have continued to
interpret
colonialism almost
exclusively through
the
perspective
of economic
analysis
but the root cause of
European exploitation
of Africa and
Africans and of German atrocities in
particular goes
back to the
racism of the
eighteenth century Enlightenment. Inseparable
from the
intellectual,
philosophical,
and moral foundation of
emancipation
and
progress
was the racist and
positivist
discourse that led to colonial
plunders,
colonial
atrocities, and,
ultimately,
to the Nazi
genocide.
It
is
easy
to claim that the reasons for
Germany,
or
any
other colonial
power
in the
West,
to
invade, colonize,
and
exploit
Africa
or
any
other
Dialectical
Anthropology
25:
1-25,
2000.
?2000
All
Rights
Reserveds.
2
parts
of the
world,
were
primarily
economic,
but in the final
analysis
race
played
an
integral part
in the
imperatives
of colonization.
Prior to formal German
acquisition
of colonial territories
on the
continent of
Africa,
a
28-year-old
German of ill
repute,
Herr Carl
Peters,
had
begun looting
and
carving
off lands
along
the eastern coast
of Africa. Peters
was
accurately
described as a
"megalomaniac,
plagued by feelings
of
personal
and national
inferiority,"
and as a man
whose "ultimate interest was not to rule Africa but to carve his name
in German
history."2
Peters had made
numerous
bogus
treaties with
unsuspecting
chiefs and incited
many
wars
among
the Africans. In
East
Africa,
the natives often referred to him as "the man with the
blood-stained hand."3
As cited and commented
upon by
Juhani
Koponen
in his book
Development
For
Exploitation,
Peters,
in a letter
to his mother dated
September
2, 1885,
wrote: "I am
doing
a
great
deal for the fatherland and
inscribing my
name once and for all in
German
history."4
Again,
in a letter to his brother Herman on
August
16, 1885,
Peters wrote: "I
hope
to
experience
what
Napoleon
I did:
an
entry
into Cairo from the
South."5
Holocaust atrocities could be said to have commenced
many years
before WW EL The Germans had both hidden and
openly strong
disdain and hatred
against
all
non-Aryans, especially
Blacks, Jews,
and
Gypsies.
While
Germany
exercised its brutal colonial
power
on
its African
territories,
native Africans
organized
massive
flights
from
German controlled territories into various areas of Africa ruled
by
other
European
colonial
powers.
This does not in
any way
minimize
the unnaturalness and
severity
of
any European
colonialism in Africa
but
pointedly
underscores the
signs
and
progression
of the Holocaust
atrocities
against
Blacks. German colonial administrators abused their
powers. They raped
native African
women,
but then considered the
resultant
offspring
as
threats,
inferior
beings perceived
as
elements
that must be exterminated. As
many
German
military
and colonial
administrators have
admitted,
it
was the German modus
operandi
to
inflict extreme torture and
cruelty
on Africans in the colonies.
Bismarck had
tacitly
and
openly
endorsed all cruelties and atrocities
committed
by
Germans in Africa and in
one of his
speeches
had
insisted,
"Let the
Company
take what it feels confident to take without
3
our
encouragement
and
intervention;
later we shall then see what we
6
can
officially
endorse."
Since German
occupation
of Africa as a
colonial
power
did not last
as
long
as other colonial
powers
in
Africa,
scholars and
professional
historians tend to talk about the atrocities of colonialism
mainly
in the
terms of the
British, French,
Portuguese, Spanish,
and
Belgian
experiences.
Even
though
German
occupation
of African territories
was
short-lived,
its
impact
continues to be felt to the
present.
Colonialism is and was an
inherently
racial/racist
philosophy
and
racism, therefore,
should be included in
any analysis
of colonialism in
Africa,
South
America,
and Asia.
German racist
cruelty against
Africans and
people
of African
origin
was
amply
demonstrated in the
early part
of this
century. Many
historians and
critics,
in their
emphasis
on
the
Holocaust,
have tended
to overlook atrocities
by
the Germans
against people
of African
descent. The Holocaust had neither boundaries nor
lines;
it did not
have
any
restraints. It was a
deadly,
diabolical
project
aimed at all
peoples
who had not
accepted
or
proven
affinities with the
"superior"
Aryan
race. The
targets
and the direct victims of German atrocities
were not
just European
Jews or other
Europeans
who were not
Germanic,
but also Africans of
Africa,
Blacks of the
Diaspora,
Gypsies,
Romanis of
Europe,
and Asians. The German contact with
Africa,
through
the colonies
they briefly occupied,
was also
genocidal
and marked
by
bloodshed, exterminations,
and scientific
experiments
on
human
subjects.
These atrocities were
justified
in the name of
racial
purity/superiority
and in the name
of Christiandom. Since
African colonization
by Europeans
was a subtle but direct
continuation of trans-Atlantic
slavery,
it was
arguably
the most
inhumane of all
types
of forced territorial
occupation
in human
history. During
the German
occupation
of African
territories,
Africans
were not accorded
any
rights. They
were treated with extreme
brutality
because the Germans believed that African races were
inferior and
a subhuman
species.
Before WW
II,
German hatred of
Africa increased because the Africans who were once their servants
were able to
ally
themselves with other
groups
of
Europeans
and
became
part
of the
occupying
forces in
Germany.
This infuriated the
Germans. Just before the rise of Hitler and
during
the Hitlerian
4
regime,
Africans in
Germany
were
oppressed
and were treated as sub
humans.
People
that were
African-German,
were not
regarded
as
citizens. In order to
prevent
their
proliferation
and to advance their
eventual
extinction,
German
scientists,
under the order of Hitler and
other German
leaders,
set out to sterilize all black women
and men.
When Hitler refused to shake hands with Jesse
Owens,
who
soundly
defeated Hitler's
"superman"
in the
Olympic
Games,
it
was
not
just
a
response
to the occasion but the
expression
of a continuum
of German hatred and German
ideology
that had
attempted
to
deprive
the African of all
dignity
and
humanity.
It
was
also
a
refusal to
accept
the subversion of the
superman myth.
In the scheme of Nazi
goals,
Africans of Africa and the
Diaspora
were
among
the
prime targets
for
elimination in order to assure the
purity
of the
Aryan
race. The
Germans had decided that Jews and Blacks of Africa and the
Diaspora,
and
Gypsies,
had no
right
to continue the "contamination"
of the German race.
Along
with
Jews,
Blacks and
Gypsies
were
incinerated,
imprisoned,
cut to
pieces,
humiliated, abused,
and used in
experiments
in the laboratories set
up by
Hitler all
over
Germany
controlled
Europe.
Symptomatic
of all
major tragedies
and
catastrophes
unleashed on
Africa,
the stories of Blacks as direct victims of Nazism have not
fully
been recounted
or
recognized by
African scholars or
European
historians. The
tendency
is to minimize the
significance
and
impact
of
atrocities committed
against
Blacks of Africa and of the
Diaspora.
Western and African
scholarship,
in fact world
scholarship,
has not
yet
shown
any
sustained interest in the nature and extent of German
genocide
of Blacks before and
during
the Nazi
reign
of terror in
Germany.
The
story
of Black victims of the Holocaust continues to be
relegated
to the
background,
sometimes
denied,
and often considered
as
peripheral.
Given the ethnocentric basis of
many
Western
scholars,
this is not
surprising.
Just
as the Nazis
"sought
to
classify
the
Gypsies
by
race,
to see their collective
transgression
as
biologically
determined,
and to
persecute
them
accordingly
as inferior non
Aryans,"7
Blacks
were also victims of such a racist classification.
However,
Black scholars have not
helped
matters much because of
their
preoccupation
with
maintaining
the academic status
quo
and
their
unwavering
focus on the New World Black
Diaspora.
For some
Black
scholars,
the German Holocaust
was an
outside
event,
which
5
did not have direct
bearing
on Black lives and
experiences. Many
of
these Black scholars remain
ignorant
of the
history
of Nazism and of
the Holocaust.
The
neglect,
and even the
denial,
of Blacks as victims of the
Holocaust finds its
justification historically
in three
important
factors:
1)
the nature of
history
itself as an academic
discipline
and
exercise,
2)
the
penchant
to
overemphasize
the
very limiting
and exclusive
diachronic
analysis
and
3)
the issue of who is creator or
interpreter
of
history
as far as
knowledge opportunities
and biases
are
concerned.
History,
defined and
applied
as an academic
discipline,
raises
many
legitimate philosophical
and moral issues. A writer or
compiler
of
history brings along
his/her varied and
multiple prejudices
and
limitations in
describing
or
interpreting
historical data and events.
Generally,
historians do not have a
monopoly
on
objectivity
and fair
play.
In this
light,
one could
seriously question
the
practicality
of the
definition
given
to
history by
Paul Conkin when he declares that
history
is "a true
story
about the human
past."8
Truth in and of
history
is
indisputably subject
to
differing interpretations by
virtue of the fact
that the historian must reconstruct the
past according
to his own
world
view. This individualistic realism of historical
interpretations
does not
or should not in
any way, inevitably,
lead to historical relativism or
unintended
anarchy.
It is obvious that one historical
interpretation
is
not
necessarily
as
good
as another. While we
may agree
on
facts,
the
truth remains
always
elusive and
dividing.
Nevertheless,
it is
mandatory
and
expected
that the historian
approach
his/her work with
humility
and
equanimity.
One can
only agree strongly
with Mark T.
Gilderhus when he
posits
that
. . .
historians must confront their intellectual
shortcomings,
their
incomprehension
of the
workings
of the
world,
and their limited
capacity
to
interpret
their
evidence,
almost
always messy, incomplete,
and
susceptible
to
different forms of
understanding.9
The
burning question
since the end of WW II remains how historians
of different
creeds, nationalities,
and
races have
attempted
to
interpret
the
history
of the Holocaust? What
are their
preferences,
biases,
and
personal experiences?
6
The lamentable and
meager
historical
knowledge
or
dissemination
of
Germany's guilt
in
carrying
out the Black Holocaust can be
found,
obviously,
in the
over use and limited
interpretation
of diachronic
analysis. Nobody
doubts some of the obvious merits of this mode of
analysis, especially
when
applied
to
historicity.
One stands to
gain
an
in-depth knowledge
when
focusing
on
specific
and/or delineated
historical
events;
such
narrowing
of
analysis
is based
primarily
on
the
historian's
subjective selectivity
of data or information.
However,
when such
an
approach
is
over-simplified,
there is a
strong possibility
of
distortion,
half-baked
truths,
and limitations of one-dimensional
history.
Historians
writing
about the Nazi
era,
for
example,
tend to shun
synchronic analysis.
But the
advantage
of a
synchronic
schema in
conjunction
with
macro-history
is that it
provides
a
panoramic
view of
a
specific problematic
in a
broad context. That broad context
requires
an
in-depth
examination of Nazism as an
intersecting system
of state
institutions and events
fundamentally
and
exclusively partial
to those
considered
Aryans.
Because its foundation rests on
pseudo
anthropologic
science,
it is accurate and essential to
argue
that Nazi
programs
were not confined
exclusively
to a
single
racial, ethnic,
or
sociologically
defined
group.
A
synchronic approach
would
help
to
rectify
the lacunae in the
literature,
which has both
neglected
or
peripheralized
the Holocaust of such
groups
as
Blacks,
Gypsies,
Slavs,
etc. "Historians have concentrated
on
the date the decision to
kill the
European
Jews was
made,
but have failed to consider the
sequence
of
killing operations
that culminated in the final
solution."10
Here
Sybil
Milton's view is
obviously
instructive and reformative.
The
"sequence
of
killing operations"
must include other non-Jewish
groups.
A broad
conceptual
framework of Nazi
ideology
would,
of
logical
necessity, present
a
solid
symmetrical analysis
of the
very concept
of
Holocaust. At the core
of the Nazi rationalization of the Holocaust is
an
unmatched,
sadistic
simplicity
about race. Indeed the Black race
was,
a
priori,
the most inferior of the races
according
to the
eighteenth
century European Enlightenment,
which had
long provided
the
intellectual and "scientific" foundation for racism.
Predating
Nazism,
German racism was manifested in the concern about Black
troops
in
the Rhineland. The
presence
of Black
troops occupying
German
7
contested
territory
was most
unnerving
and unwelcome to the
Germans,
who had
always regarded
Blacks
as non-human factors. As
the Black
presence
was
prolonged, many
soldiers had intimate
relations with German
women,
some of which resulted in
offspring.
Such
offspring, along
with the victims of German
rapes
in the African
colonies,
became
personae
non
gratae
in German
society.
Extermination and sterilization of all Black German men and women
was seen as the solution. Nazi
ideology categorized
all
non-Aryans
as
inferior and
unworthy;
failure to
recognize
this is tantamount to
miswriting history.
A limited
historiographical perspective?whether emanating
from
Black scholars
or
European scholars?severely
obscures the
importance
of the
big picture
of Nazi
ideology
and intentions
as an
equal opportunity
racist
phenomenon.
The
problem
is
one
of micro
history,
which
"might
be essential to
explain specific
events,
but
without the
larger
context,
their
practice
see
only
the trees and not the
forest."11 What often follows from a limited historical
approach
is
squabbling
among intellectuals,
ethnic and racial
nationalists,
to
determine,
for
example,
the "real" victims of the Nazi Holocaust.
Those with considerable resources and media
access tend to dominate
the debate. And the debate itself tends to
degenerate
into a historical
analysis
which asserts the
uniqueness
of
a
particular group's
experience, thereby entitling
it to exclusive use of such terms as
"Genocide" and "Holocaust"?while
reserving
such terms as
"tragedy"
and
"atrocity"
for other
groups.
This remains one of the
most divisive and
exclusionary
tactics
being intentionally
or
unwittingly
used
by many
scholars and
political pundits
to
emphasize
the role or the
sufferings
of a
particular group
or race to the denial and
minimization of the evils of the Holocaust for other
groups.
The
moment that
scholars, victims,
and historians realize the common fate
and common
denominator of all victims of
Nazism,
that
is, Jews,
Blacks, Slavs, Romanis,
and
others?they
would also understand that
it was all of
humanity
that
was the true victim of the holocaust
during
Hitler's
reign.
In a
comparative study
of "the Holocaust with other
major
historical
tragedies,"
Steven Katz
acknowledges
the
importance
of
definition and
method,
fact and
interpretation
to
any
such
study.
He
claims that the
purpose
of his work
8
...
is to
distinguish
the
phenomenological
characteristics of these various
cases of
oppression
and mass murder so as to facilitate more
responsible
and
accurate
judgments regarding
them as such as well as vis-a-vis the Holocaust.
Contra all too common
simplistic
conclusions
regarding
the
comparability
and
similarity
of these events to each other and to the destruction of
European
Jews,
fundamental
distinctions,
and elemental
differences,
mark off
the Holocaust
phenomenologically
from these
other,
similarly
immoral and
abhorrent cases.12
Among
the cases Katz uses in his
comparative analysis
are North
American
Indians,
Black
Slavery,
and
Gypsies
under the Nazis. Katz
acknowledges
the
devastating impact
of Indian
population
erosion
during
colonization and concludes that "their collective
tragedy
parallels,
even
exceeds,
that of
European Jewry."13
For
Katz,
demographic
statistics do not constitute
uniqueness.
The fundamental
phenomenological
distinction, (and
therefore
uniqueness)
between the
Jewish
experience
under Nazism and the North American Indian
experience
under
European
colonization was "intention."
According
to
Katz,
"Did the
European
intend,
that is to
ask,
this
demographic
catastrophe?
Even more
specifically,
more
tellingly,
did he intend that
this
violent,
problematic
collision of worlds result in
genocide?"14
Katz concludes that the North American
genocide
was
unintentional,
whereas the Nazi Jewish
genocide
was intentional. For
him,
the
decisive evidence was
epidemic
decease. After
all,
the
Europeans
themselves
were
ravaged by
disease.
In the case of Black
slavery,
Katz claims that it is
primarily
the
character of the
institution,
rather than its
quantity,
that
fundamentally
distinguishes
it from the Jewish Holocaust.
Slavery,
he
argues,
was
based on financial
considerations;
it was
primarily
an
economic
institution and not based on
systematic
racial
genocide.
As he
puts
it,
despite
its "inherent
immorality
and
barbarity,"
it
"represented
a
different form of
evil,
a
wholly
other
phenomenological reality,
than
that incarnated in
Auschwitz."15 It was not
economically
sound to kill
slaves. Even when the death statistics from the Middle
Passage
are
examined,
most of the slaves died from diseases.
The
absurdity
of this unsound
argument
is that it
neglects
to realize
that the
very
nature of
slavery
across the Atlantic was
primarily
racist,
evil,
and underwritten
by
the Christian churches of the Western world.
9
The financial and material considerations of
slavery
do not in
any
manner
negate
or
diminish its racist and
genocidal
atrocities
against
Blacks
as a
distinctive
group. Extremely subjective
and over
simplistic,
Katz's conclusions do not
agree
with the
general
literature
and
history
of
any
of those mentioned
major catastrophes.
Katz
outrightly rejects
the
Nuremberg
Tribunal's
linking
of
Gypsies,
Jews and Poles as
victims of "deliberate and
systematic
genocide."
Unlike their attitude towards
Jews,
Katz asserts that the
"Nazis were confused and uncertain about the status of the
Gypsies."
Despite
the fact that thousands of
Gypsies
were executed
or
gassed?
even in Auschwitz?Katz maintains
that,
"in
comparison
to the
ruthless, monolithic,
metapolitical genocidal design
of Nazism vis-a?
vis
Jews,
nothing
similar,
for all the
enacted, obliterative,
malevolence,
existed in the case of the
Gypsies."16
In all three cases described
above,
Katz fails to
fully grasp
Nazi
ideological,
definitional,
and fanatical
rigidity concerning Aryans
and
non-Aryans.
The Nazi
ideological problematic regarding
race
and
various social
groups
is viewed in an
extremely simplistic
fashion.
From the middle
passage
to
eighteenth century
racist science, to the
colonial
invasions,
the Black race was in
fact,
a
priori,
the most
inferior,
according
to
European
and Nazi racial
hierarchy.
But it
would be the hallmark of
simplicity
for Black scholars to fixate
on
this
reality
at the exclusion of other
groups. Moreover,
how
convincing
would it
be?given
German atrocities
during
its colonial
era in
Africa,
and its murder and sterilization of Blacks in
Germany?
if Blacks were to claim that
they
are
first and foremost entitled to the
label,
"Holocaust Victims?" The
problem
with such
a
claim is that it
is based less on
rigorous analysis
and
understanding
of Nazi
ideology
and more on a
micro-emotional
interpretation
of historical events. The
holocaust atrocities
against
the
Jews, Blacks,
Gypsies,
Slavs,
and
others were so
inhuman,
so
atrocious and diabolic that
any attempts
to
minimize the evils of holocaust on
any group
would be tantamount to
betrayal
and dehistoricization of events of the last
century.
Our entire
humanity
is the victim of the Holocaust
A micro-emotional
interpretation
of
history
tends to
play
the
numbers
game
in terms of which
group
suffered the most and the
extent to which their
suffering
was
systematically
conducted. Part of
the criteria of this mode of historical
analysis
becomes an exercise in
10
determining "intentionality."
Thus it is
recognized
that North
American Indian
massacres,
Black
slavery,
and
Gypsy
pogroms
were
all immoral and
horrifying;
but the intention was not
systematic
genocide,
as it was in the Jewish
experience.
Part of the result of this
kind of
analysis
is that the
very concept
of Holocaust becomes
devalued and trivialized. Another
possible
consequence
of a micro
emotional
interpretation
of historical events is the
development
of a
spiral response, whereby
other
downplayed
victims
(that is,
Black and
Gypsy
victims of the Nazi
Holocaust) attempt
to redress the balance
in the historical literature in their own
subjective
ways.
The result is
that historical
analysis
is almost reduced to
interest-group politics.
It
is a divide and
conquer syndrome
where the balkanization of the
Holocaust atrocities and intentions tends to
diminish, minimize,
and
trivialize the
intensity
and
depravity
of Hitler and the Nazi
phenomenon.
The third consideration
regarding
the
neglect
of Black and
Gypsy
holocaust
historiography
concerns the
question
of who writes
history.
E. H. Can*
warns that
...
the facts of
history
never come to us
"pure,"
since
they
do not and can
not exist in a
pure
form.
They
are
always
refracted
through
the mind of the
recorder. It follows that when we take
up
a work of
history,
our
first concern
should be not with the
facts,
which it
contains,
but with the historian who
wrote
it."17
The historian's
background, opinions,
and biases
definitely play
an
important
role in
deciding, creating,
and
interpreting history.
Whether
or not historical
analysis
is reduced to
sophisticated
interest-group politics?or
whether it is written
disinterestedly,?there
is
always
a
subjective
factor. This
subjective
element makes the
historian's
respect
for facts all the
more
important.
But even more
crucial from
our
point
of view is the absolute need for the historian
"to
bring
into the
picture
all known or knowable facts relevant in one
sense or
another,
to the theme on which he is
engaged
and to the
interpretation proposed."18
To achieve
this,
the historian or scholar
must be
continuously cognizant
of the
importance
of the
big picture
to
his/her
story.
In the
case of the Nazi
Holocaust,
the essential and
ubiquitous, intersecting big picture
in the collective
suffering
of all
11
victim
groups
was an
equal opportunity perverse, racial,
and social
ideology.
A critical lacuna in the flood of
micro-history
literature of
the Nazi Holocaust has been the relative
neglect
of
equally important
groups
such as Blacks and
Gypsies.
Blacks and
Gypsies
?
Redressing
the Balance
How can such
groups
as
Blacks and
Gypsies begin
to redress the
balance of Nazi Holocaust
historiography?
It is
important
that
they
avoid what could be called the
"my
group
suffering
was the
greatest
and
unique" syndrome.
Nazi atrocities must be
placed
in a
conceptual
framework,
which
recognizes
their connection with
European
racism.
While it is
usually
convenient to focus
on
German Nazism as a source
of
racism,
Europeans persecuted
such
groups
as Jews and
Gypsies
for
hundreds of
years;
they
also enslaved Blacks for hundreds of
years,
long
before Hitler and his
party developed
its racist
ideology.
The
Holocaust could be
argued
to be a
consequential
continuation of
European
racist animosities
against
Jews, Blacks,
and other non
Aryans.
The Black Holocaust Revisited
The Holocaust atrocities
against
Blacks in
Germany
and
throughout Europe
were a
further
practical application
of the
European
racist world-view?albeit mediated and orchestrated
through
Nazi
ideology.
Hitler's views on race
and
Aryan superiority
were
in
reality
a
carbon
copy
of
eighteenth century
racist
philosophy.
In
reconsidering
his
chilling
words,
one
grasps
the
depth
and
spread
of such horrific
ideologies:
Historical
experience
offers countless
proofs
of this. It shows with
terrifying
clarity
that in
every mingling
of
Aryan
with that of lower
peoples
the result
was the end of the cultured
people.
The result of all racial
crossing
is
therefore in brief
always
the
following:
A) Lowering
of the level of the
higher
race.
B) Physical
and intellectual
regression
and hence the
beginning
of a
slowly
but
surely progression
sickness."19
12
One can see more
clearly
and
convincingly why
and how Blacks
appeared
on the lower echelon of the race ladder. It also elucidates
the
antipathy
and hatred
resulting
in sterilization and murder
against
all Black Germans before and
during
the Holocaust.
European history
created an added occasion for hatred of Blacks in
Germany
when France used and
deployed
Black
troops
as
part
of its
occupying
forces in the Rhineland
regions during
World War I. We
can see this
was a calculated
attempt
to inflict
psychological
warfare
on the
vanquished
Germans.
Blacks,
as colonized
by
the
Germans,
were considered non-humans and at this time of
defeat,
Germans
agonized
at
seeing
Blacks
as
part
of the
army
of
occupation
over its
territory.
German attitude towards Blacks
was so
hateful
that,
in
1917,
Germans
angrily complained
that African and other non-whites in the
French
Army posed
an immeasurable threat to
European
civilization.
The German
complaint
met with tacit
acquiescence
from Woodrow
Wilson and
Pope
Benedict
XV,
who even
responded
to the German
protest by twisting
the arm of the French
Premier,
Georges
Clemenceau,
to avoid
using
Africans. The number of Africans in the
French
army
was
relatively
small and at its
greatest,
in
1921,
never
exceeded
45,000
riflemen. The African soldiers were
conscripted
from the colonies where the French
were in
power: Morocco, Tunisia,
Algeria,
and
Senegal. Senegal
contributed about
10,000
soldiers. For
what it is
worth,
one must also remark that the French and other allied
forces
regularly
sent Black
troops
to the front
lines,
often to test
German
fire-power.
Other times
they
served as
shields for the
European troops.
This
practice
continued
during
World War II and
explains why
so
many
Black
soldiers,
including
President
Leopold
Sedar
Senghor
of
Senegal,
were
captured
or
massacred
by
the
Germans at the initial
stages
of WW II hostilities.20 At
any
rate,
the
military
decision of the French and the Allies to use
and
exploit
Black
soldiers in World War I fueled German racism which
Hitler,
when he
came to
power,
was
quick
to
exploit.
It is well documented that
between the
years
1919 and 1925 about 285 children of color
were
born in
Germany.21
This
figure
was the alarmist
trigger
that German
leaders needed to
push
for a Black
pogrom.
It
was one Dr.
Rosenberger
who,
on
observing
the
growing
number of children of
color
(Blacks),
wrote the
following opinion
in the German Medical
Review:
13
Shall we stand in silence to allow it to
happen
that in the future the banks of
the Rhine shall echo not with the
songs
of beautiful and
intelligent
white
Germans,
but with the croaks of
stupid, clumsy,
half-animal and
syphilitic
mulattos?"22
What followed
immediately
after this
publication
was the methodical
sterilization of Blacks in all of
Germany. By
the latter
part
of the
1920s,
Blacks
were
illegally
sterilized
by
German medical doctors.
This
episode
of sterilization received
widespread approval
and
applause
from the German
populace.
Governor Mas of the
Palatinate,
on
July
21, 1927,
expressed
his
deep
concern in no
measured
terms,
when he
appealed
to the
government
of Berlin to take immediate
action
against
Black children
reaching puberty
in his state
by
sterilizing
all of
them,
in order to maintain their
purity
of race. It is
worthy
of note here that the
governor,
in
concluding
his
correspondence, acknowledged,
"I know that such an
operation
would
be
illegal."23
Soon after Hitler assumed
power
in
Germany,
the
Minister of
Interior,
Herman
Goring,
issued
an
order to Dr.
Wolfgang
Abel to determine the number of children of color in
Germany.
Consistent with Nazi
philosophical ideology
and
anthropological
thinking,
Dr. Abel set out to
measure,
in
detail,
the
head,
the
eyes,
and
lips
of all the children of mixed blood. He recorded in a
report
to the
Minister that these children of color did not
appear
to have
any
"hereditary
diseases."24 Three months after Dr. Abel's
report
on the
nature and health condition of mixed blood
children,
Hitler's
government passed
a sterilization law to be
performed
not
solely
on
people
of mixed race but also on other
groups
considered inferior and
undesirable. The Holocaust had
begun.
Nazi
equal-opportunity
racism
was
reflected in a
series of race
laws
against
all
peoples
who were
considered
non-Aryans.
All
persons
with Black or Jewish
ancestry,
or
non-Germans,
were forbidden to become
farmers,
since the law
prohibited
them from
owning
or
inheriting
land. The German law
created an
international
controversy,
which
obliged Germany
to tone
down the rhetoric of its race
laws,
especially
the
Nuremberg
Race
Laws of
1935,
in which "Jewish"
replaced "non-Aryans."
This action
was
merely
cosmetic,
in order to
appease
some
countries with non
white
populations.
The
change
was
inconsequential.
It was
utterly
14
inconceivable that
any
members of these
exempted groups
could ever
enjoy
the
rights
and
privileges
of citizens.
One
must,
at this
juncture,
note that the revocation of
Jewish,
Black,
and
Gypsy
human and citizen
rights
occurred
legally
and
illegally. Quite often,
proclamations
de
jure
were mere
formal
confirmations of de
facto
realities of German
society.
The Nazi
Holocaust
style
and
approach
was clouded in strict
secrecy.
The
meeting,
which took
place
in 1935 in
Berlin,
where the fate and the
future of Black children in
Germany
were
decided,
was
kept top
secret.
Among
those
attending
the
meeting
were two sterilization
experts
and advocates: Fritz
Lenz,
a
professor
of racial
hygiene,
and
Ernst
Rudin,
a
psychologist.
The secret
gathering
considered several
options
and
possibilities,
which included the
passage
of sterilization
laws and forced
transportation
of Black children to Black countries. It
was decided that the best solution would be their secret and
illegal
sterilization.
Twenty-four
months
later,
the Germans carried out the
forced sterilization of 385 Black children. For
example
two medical
doctors and
a Nazi official made unanimous decisions on three
sterilization
cases
involving
Blacks. The Nazi
pseudo-anthropological
science
was an
integral
and fundamental
part
of its
genocide policies
towards
non-Aryans:
J. F. of German
nationality,
born
September
20, 1920,
living
in
Mainz,
is a
descendant of the former colored allied
occupation
forces,
in this case from
North
Africa,
and shows
corresponding typical anthropological
characteristics,
for which reason he shall be sterilized.
C. M. B. of German
nationality,
born on
July
5, 1923,
living
in
Koblez,
is
descendant of a member of the former allied
occupation
forces,
in this case
an American
Negro,
and shows
characteristics,
A. A. of German
nationality,
born on March
14, 1920,
living
in
Duisgurg,
is
descendant of a member of the former allied
occupation
forces,
in this case a
Negro
from
Madagascar,
and shows
characteristics,
Black
presence
in
Germany
went as far back
as the German
colonial times in
Africa,
when the
offspring
of German
rapes
would
be afraid of their social situation in Africa and would
prefer
to take
refuge
in
Germany,
to the intense dislike of Germans. The Holocaust
15
program
did not
begin
with the
24,000
Black German citizens in
Germany.
The Black
Holocaust,
in
reality, began
in the German
colony
of South West Africa under the direction and
guidance
of the
much-feared German
geneticist Eugene
Fischer. Fischer's racist view
and hatred of
Blacks,
and his sterilization of
Africans,
predated
the1930s and 1940s Nazism. It was at this time that Germans
murdered about
eighty percent
of the Herero
population
and used their
body parts
in
experiments
as
guinea pigs.
For Africans of the
continent and of the
Diaspora,
the Nazi Holocaust
predated
Hitler and
was intensified to diabolical levels under Hitler and the German Nazi
atrocities.
The mixed blood children born of the
unaccepted marriages
of
Black soldiers with German women were classified as "Rhineland
Bastards" or the "Black
Disgrace."
Such classifications intensified the
racism
against
all
non-Aryans,
but
especially against
Black Germans
in
general,
who,
according
to
him,
were an "insult" to the
pure
German nation. "The mulatto children came about
through rape
or
the
white mother was a
prostitute.
In both
cases,
there is not the
slightest
moral
duty regarding
these
offspring
of
a
foreign
race."26 Hitler and
the
Nazis,
in their blind hate of Black
Germans,
failed to realize that
many
of these mixed blood children were also of German
paternity
as
a result of the
rapes
committed
by
German men
against
native African
Women.
Jews, Blacks,
and
Gypsies
were
placed
in concentration
camps
and
they
all
together
faced
a
similar fate. But
Blacks,
even
there,
were
segregated.
A Black German who was
placed
in the
Neugengamme
Concentration
Camp by
the
Gestapo, graphically
described his
experience
thus: "There were five or six of us. As soon as we
arrived,
we were
immediately separated
from the white
deportees by
the S.S.
They
considered us to be subhuman
beings
like
animals,
97
chimpanzees."
Ultimately,
the Nazi
objective,
or "final
solution,"
was the
indiscriminate extermination of all
non-Aryans
and at the head of the
line were
Jews, Blacks,
Gypsies,
and others whose views
or
sexual
preferences
were
judged
undesirable
by
the Nazis.
Throughout
this
period
of racial
pogrom,
it became
crystal
clear that the rate and
fanatical
intensity
with which this occurred
may
have varied from
group
to
group,
and from time to time.
By
virtue of their
race,
Blacks
16
could be
instantaneously
identified and
easily
eliminated or
exterminated
everywhere.
As a
numerically
inferior
group politically
and
economically subjugated,
the
ideological perception
of Blacks
by
the Nazis as a clear and
present danger
was nevertheless the same
and
equally
as serious as it was for other
non-Aryan
groups.
The extent of
the atrocities of the Holocaust on Blacks has not been
adequately
recorded
by
historians.
As this
history
is further
explored,
many
horrific stories are
being
uncovered and
exposed
to the
light
of common
knowledge.
Such new
discoveries offer the historian and the scholar a more
complete
account of the Holocaust.
However,
a
quick
review of the middle and
high
school social studies' curriculum in America reveals that the
historic information
taught
about the events of World War II
expresses
a
limited
political ideology
and does not include references
to the
persecution
of Blacks.
The
Gypsy
Holocaust Revisited
The Roma
or
"Gypsy" people
were a
traveling people.
Since their
arrival in
Europe, they
have been under constant
persecution.
There
were few concentration
camps
under Nazi control without
Gypsy
prisoners.
What follows is a brief account of
suffering
endured
by
the
Romas,
the
Gypsies
who were
subjugated
to Nazi treatment in the
hidden
camps.
It was
commonplace
for the
Gypsies
to be
deported
from
Germany/Bohemia
in order to
join
other victims at other
concentration
camps,
such
as
Buchenwald, Dachau, Mauthausen,
Ravensbruck,
and Auschwitz. The Mauthausen
Camp reportedly
had
the
largest
death toll. "Most that died
were killed
or worked to death
as
part
of an
Extermination-through-Work"
pogrom.
As Blacks became
targets
of hatred
long
before
Hitler,
so also were
the
Gypsies
loathed
by
the Germans since the end of the nineteenth
century. Although
the Nazi
party
had established
a
program
of
extermination
against
the
Gypsies,
"official discrimination
against
Gypsies
as a
group
can be traced back at least as far
as
1899." The
Bavarian
police
founded
a
uniquely specific Gypsy
Affairs Section.
Consequently, Gypsies,
a
traveling people by
custom,
were not
17
permitted
to move from one
place
to another without
proper
permission
from the authorities.
Many
scholars
were
inquisitive
about the Nazi's interest in the
Gypsies
racial characteristics.
Myriam
Novitch states
that,
in
1936,
Dr. Has
Globke,
one
of the drafters of the
Nuremberg
Laws,
declared
that
"Gypsies
are of alien blood" and Professor Hans F. Guenther
categorized
them as
Rassengemische,
an indeterminate mixture of
races,
even
though they
were of
Aryan origin.
Eva
Justin,
an
anthropology
doctoral student and the assistant to Dr. Robert Ritter of
the Health
Ministry's
Race Research
Division,
submitted a
thesis on
the racial characteristics of
Gypsies.
Her thesis declared that
Gypsy
blood was
"very dangerous
for the
purity
of the German race." Ms.
Jusitin's research
was based on
Gypsy
children who were raised
apart
from their families. At the conclusion of this
study,
the children were
deported
to
Auschwitz,
where most were
killed.30
The
alleged
link between
heredity
and
criminality
made the
Gypsies easy targets. By
December
14, 1937,
the situation of the
Gypsies
became
worse when
they
were avowed to be inveterate
criminals. Later in 1937 and
1938,
there were
pandemic
arrests
and,
in
the Buchenwald
Camp,
a
special
section was
developed
for
Gypsies.
An
overwhelming
number of
Gypsy
names
appear
in the death lists of
many camps, including
Mauthausen, Gusen,
Dautmergen,
Natzweiler
and
Flossenburg.
At
Ravensbruck, many Gypsy
women were the
victims of
experiments by
S.S. doctors. A memorandum was
submitted to Hitler
proposing
forced labor and mass sterilization of
Gypsies
because
they
were
endangering
the blood
purity
of the
O 1
German
peasantry.
This was one
of
many
such edicts to rid the
world of the
Gypsies.
In
1938,
Himmler transferred the
Gypsy
Affairs Center from
Munich to Berlin. Also in that
year,
300
Gypsies,
the owners of
agricultural
farmlands,
where
falsely
arrested in Mannworth. Himmler
imposed
a condition that
Gypsies
be classified
as follows:
pure
Gypsies
(Z),
mixed race
Gypsies
of
predominantly Gypsy
blood
(ZM+),
mixed race
Gypsies
of
predominantly Aryan
blood
(ZM-),
and
mixed-race
Gypsies
with
half-Gypsy, half-Aryan
blood
(ZM).
This
type
of
hasty,
irrational, racist,
unsubstantiated classification of a
group
was also
applied
to
Blacks, Jews, Slavs,
and other
non-Aryan
groups.
Further
inspection
of Nazi classification tactics
clearly points
18
out that the true criterion for this identification was
Aryan
or non
Aryan.
The historian
Joseph Billig,
in his
study "L'Allemagne
et le
genocide"
identified three methods of
committing genocide:
the
suppression
of
fertility, deportation,
and homicide. The
Nazis,
in their
hatred for
non-Aryans,
exercised all three forms of
genocide against
Gypsies
described above
by Billig. Gypsy
women were
routinely
sterilized in the
hospital
at D?sseldorf-Lierenfeld. The maniacal S.S.
doctors sterilized
many pregnant
women
who,
as a
result of the
hurried
operations,
died
during
or soon after the
procedures.
In order
to further cleanse the German
populace,
the Nazis
deported
5,000
Gypsies
from
Germany
into the
ghettos
at Lodz in
Poland,
where the
living
conditions
were so inhumane that no
community
could have
survived.
Despite
these heinous
atrocities,
the Nazis'
preferred
method of
genocide
was mass
killing.
The decision to exterminate the
Gypsies
is believed to have been
taken in the
Spring
of
1941,
when the
Einsatzgruppen,
or execution
squads,
were formed. First of
all,
the
Gypsies
had to be rounded
up.
Since Himmler's decree of December
8, 1938,
the addresses of all
Gypsies
were known
by
the
police.
"A decree of November
17,1939
forbade
Gypsies,
on
pain
of internment in a
concentration
camp,
to
leave their
place
of residence." At least
thirty
thousand
Gypsies
deported
to Poland
perished
in the death
camps
of
Belzec, Treblinka,
Sobibor and
Majdanek.
Thousands of others were
deported
from
Belgium,
The
Netherlands,
and
France,
and died in Auschwitz.
Gypsies
were killed both in death
camps
and in the
open
countryside
in Poland and in the Soviet
Union,
as the war
between
Germany
and the USSR ensued. The
Russian-engaged
armies of Von
Leer,
Von
Bock,
Rundstedt and other
generals
matched the death
squads
of the S.S. The Baltic
States,
the Ukraine and the Crimea
were
dotted with
mass
graves.
At
Simviropol,
800
men, women,
and
children
were
shot
on Christmas Eve. The fact that
Gypsies
were
arrested,
deported,
or murdered whenever and wherever Nazis
spotted
them tells the
story
of executions of
Gypsies
in
Yugoslavia,
which
began
in October
1941,
in the forests. Peasants still remember the
cries of children
being
driven in trucks to the
places
of their
execution.
19
It is difficult to estimate either the number of
Gypsies
who were
living
in
Europe
before the Second World War or the number of those
who survived.
According
to
Novitch,
reports
made
by
the
Einsatzgruppen
indicated Nazis were
responsible
for the
killings
of
300,000
Gypsies
in the Soviet Socialist
Republics
of
Russia,
the
Ukraine and the Crimea.
According
to the
Yugoslav
authorities,
28,000
Gypsies
were
put
to death in Serbia alone. The number of
victims in Poland is hard to establish. Some sources claim that the
Gypsies
lost between
500,000
and
600,000
people.33
In travels to
Eastern
Europe
and interviews with
Roma/Gypsies,
it is difficult to
discern the actual number of
people
that became victims of the Nazis
during
this
period. Despite
their best
estimates,
the death toll is much
larger, perhaps
in the millions.
However,
the actual numbers are hard
to trace.
The
Gypsies
are an
ancient
people, prolific
and full of
vitality.
As
did the Black slaves
during
American
colonialism,
so too did
Gypsies
find solace from shared
martyrdom
in their love of music.
Despite
their
hungry
bellies,
and their weakened
conditions,
Gypsies?young
and old?would assemble outside their
destitute,
make-shift
quarters
at Auschwitz to make music and dance. Some of the
younger
and
head-strong Gypsies attempted
to
escape.
The
diary
of Danuta
Czech,
a fellow
prisoner,
is full of the names and dates of their executions
which
were
carried out at the "Wall of Death." Other accounts of
Gypsy bravery
describe
Gypsy partisans
who
fought
their
heavily
armed adversaries in the Niesweiz
region
of
Poland,
armed
only
with
crude knives.
Even
though Gypsies
were
targeted
for total extermination
by
the
Nazis,
they
were also
being disposed
of
by
their
neighbors
in the
Czech
Republic during
this
period.
Paul
Polansky,
in his book Black
Silence,
describes
an almost intolerable situation
concerning
the
Gypsies
and a
Czech
cover-up.
While
investigating
evidence of
any
survivors of
Lety,
the WWII
Romany (Gypsy)
death
camp
in southern
Bohemia,
the Czech
Ministry
of
Foreign
Affairs and the Office of the
President
impeded Polansky's
research
by issuing
a
cover-up.
Reluctant to
accept
the
Ministry's blatantly
false
declarations,
Polansky
found over a hundred Holocaust survivors
living
in the
Czech
Republic.
20
According
to
Polansky,
in
1848,
the
village
of
Lety
in south
Bohemia,
sent the first Czech
pioneer
to
Cleveland,
Ohio. A chain
migration
of thousands of families followed. He discovered this
information in the State Archive of Trebon in 1992 while
researching
the nineteenth
century
exodus of Bohemian
peasants. Lety
was the
cradle of Czech
emigration
to the American Midwest. The
reading
room director where
Polansky
worked
perceived Lety
in a
different
light.
He was
told there was a
Gypsy
concentration
camp
in
Lety
during
the war where all the inmates died of
typhus. Polansky
interviewed the local
historian,
the
mayor
and several
aged
residents
of
Lety
and no one had mentioned the World War II death
camp.
The
reading-room
director told him that the
library
had more than
40,000
documents,
and that no one is allowed to
study
them for
fifty years.
Polansky
re-interviewed the local historians and
a
retired
schoolteacher,
who had
collectively
written seventeen books on the
Lety region, inquiring why
there
was no mention of a
Gypsy
concentration
camp
in
any
of their texts.
Polansky
was
informed
that,
"Gypsies
weren't worth
writing
about." He was instructed to seek out
Dr.
Kalbache,
an
eighty-year-old
man with a mind as
sharp
as a
twenty-year-old.
To
Polansky's surprise,
Dr. Kalbache could
remember all his Greek and Latin from his
high
school
days,
but
could remember
nothing
of
a
gypsy
death
camp.
Dr. Kalbache
remembered
Lety
was a
recreation
camp
for
unemployed Gypsies.
Polansky
returned to re-interview the
mayor,
who revealed to him that
a
camp
did exist but it was since transformed into
a
factory
farm for
13,000
pigs.
The
mayor
further instructed
Polansky
to
go
to the farm
and continue his
questioning
with older
people
who would have been
alive
during
WW II. To
Polansky's
astonishment,
an old man on a
bicycle
claimed that
everyone
in the town knew about the
Gypsy
death
camp
that was run
by
the Czech
policemen.
The old man even
recalled
riding by
the
camp every day
on his
way
to
work,
but he
would not
give
up any
information
on how the
prisoners
died. It
was
already
taboo that he admitted that Czech authorities were
working
in
the
camp.
Two
years
into his
research,
Polansky got
the assistance of
the director of Trebon
archives,
who
gave
him
special permission
to
study
the
thirty-one
boxes of
Lety
records.
Those
Gypsies
who
miraculously
did survive
Lety
were sent to the
extermination
camps
at Auschwitz and
Treblinka, among
others.
21
More than half of the Roma
population
in the Czech lands were
exterminated at the
Lety camp (and
the one at Hodonm
pod
Kunt?tem
in
Moravia).
The
Gypsy
Holocaust was often
supported by
the Czech
population.
An
open
letter evokes an
agreement
of the Conference for
Security
and Co?
operation
in
Europe
from
1991,
which
Prague signed, binding
the
Czechoslovak
(and
now
Czech) government
to
. . .
attempt
to
protect
and
maintain monuments and
memorials,
including
the most well-known
extermination
camps
and related
archives,
which stand as evidence of the
tragic
events in the common
history (of
the
signatories)."34
Governments
hope
such measures should serve to make sure
that
those events will
never be
forgotten. They
felt these monuments and
memorials would
help
to teach future
generations
about those events
and ensure that the
ugly
head of
genocide
will
never
surface
again.
As
Polansky
and other writers
point
out,
the
factory
farm at
Lety
remains,
public
debate
drags
on and no Czech
government
has thus
far declared that it will be removed from the site. Those who defend
keeping
the
factory
farm in
place emphasize
several
points. They
use
economic
arguments, claiming
that their
society
does not have the
resources for such a
costly
venture.
Thus,
to
repeat, part
of the root cause of the
Gypsy
Holocaust,
like
the Black and Jewish
Holocausts,
must be understood in terms of a
Nazi world-view that
simply
took
Europe's
racist
thinking
to an
extreme. In this
extreme,
the full
weight
of the Nazi
machinery
of
violence
completely
intersected and collaborated with
legal, political,
economic,
and social institutions. Just as
persecution
of the Blacks
and Jews did not
originate
with the
Nazis,
neither did
Gypsy
persecution.
In
1899,
collaborating
with
legal
institutions such as
the
courts,
the Bavarian
police
established a
Gypsy
Affairs Section. Its
expressed
purpose
was to collect
legal proceedings
and decisions
rendered
against Gypsies;
it also monitored their movements.36
Gypsy
harassment
spread
to the national level
and,
by
1929,
the
German
government
had
opened
an official
Gypsy
National Center in
Munich to restrict
Gypsy traveling
and to continue their
oppression.
Gypsy persecution
and Holocaust was
significantly
a
consequence
of German National chauvinism fueled
by
racist beliefs.
Gypsy
lifestyle
and culture
may
have been
different,
but as a
racial
group,
22
they
were
certainly
not distinct from the so-called
Aryans.
As soon as
they
were demonized
as
roaming
criminals,
it was
easy
for the Nazi
pseudo-science
of
eugenics
and extreme
self-righteous xenophobia
to
see them as
really
distinct.
Thus,
Gypsies
were determined to be of
alien blood and
an indeterminate mixture of races. In no
uncertain
terms,
the
Gypsy
ordinance of 1938 described
Gypsies
as a racial
problem:
Experience
in the
fight against
the
Gypsy
menace and the
knowledge
derived
from
race-biological
research have shown that the
proper
method for
attacking
the
Gypsy problems
seem to be to treat it as a matter of race.37
The
Gypsy
Holocaust had all the characteristics of the Black and
Jewish holocausts:
sterilization, harassment,
segregation, deportation,
imprisonment, physical brutality,
medical human
experimentation,
and murder. These characteristics
were
obviously logically
consistent
with Nazi racist attitudes and
policy
towards all those defined as non
Aryans.
The aim of Nazi
policy
was the eventual
physical expulsion
or annihilation of all
groups
and races deemed undesirable
or non
Aryan.
It is absurd to
argue
that Nazi intentions differed
among
various
persecuted
groups,
and therefore the
designation
of Holocaust
should not be reserved for
a
particular group.
The Nazi decision to exterminate
Gypsies
en masse
may
have been
made
by
1941,
with the formation of the
Einsatzgruppen.
The
process,
however,
was well
underway beginning
in Bavaria and
culminating
in
the
Nuremberg
Laws and other laws which describe Romani and Sinti
Gypsies
as
"asocials."38
This
legal categorization
once
again
illustrates the
legalization
of
oppression
and the collaboration of the
machinery
of violence in the form of the
police
and other
agencies.
In
other
words,
the
Gypsy
Holocaust
(as
well as the Black and Jewish
Holocausts)
was not
simply
an exclusive Nazi
conspiracy
or
creation;
it was a manifestation of a
pattern
of German national
chauvinism,
ingrained
in national and local culture and institutions.
In
1933,
when the Nazis assumed
power, many
Gypsies
were
confined in
Zigeunerlager.
Nazi scientists and medical doctors in the
Office for Research
on Race
Hygiene
and
Population Biology
in the
Department
of Health
forcibly
sterilized
Gypsy
women in such
23
camps.
In
Dusseldorf-Lierenfeld,
Gypsy
women with
non-Gypsy
husbands
were
systematically
sterilized.
Apart
from Nazi
gas
chambers in which
many
thousands of
Gypsies perished, deportation
was an
effective method of
genocide.
Gypsies
were
deported
to
Poland,
the Czech
Republic,
Russia,
the
Ukraine, Serbia,
and the Crimea. In the last three areas
alone,
Einstazgruppen
records reveal
300,000
Gypsies
were
murdered.40
In
Poland
alone,
estimates of murdered
Gypsies
range
from
500,000
to
600,000.41
The
similarity
between
Gypsy deportations
and Jewish
deportations
is
striking.
Local
police
collected
deportees
and each
group
had a
transport fuhrer. "Properties
and
possessions
of
deported
Gypsies
were
confiscated
as was that of the Jews."42
Conclusion
This
paper
is an
attempt
to
argue
for the need to rethink the
historical
paradigm
in which the Nazi holocaust
against
various
groups
is viewed. The current
paradigm's
unidirectional
approach
has
become almost axiomatic in Holocaust
historiography.
There is
indeed an
urgent
need for scholars to establish the
complex
connections that demonstrate the
equal-opportunity
nature of Nazi
atrocities to all
non-Aryan groups.
In the last
analysis, history
is
always
a social construction extracted
from the raw material of historical events. Such social constructions
become "historical truths." "Historical
truths," however,
can not
dogmatically
claim the status of actual facts of
history. Complex
social construction
is,
at
best,
what
any
good
historian
or
scholar can
hope
to achieve. This means that the Nazi Holocaust
historiography?
or for that
matter,
any
historiography?the
one-dimensional
paradigm
must
give way
to a
paradigm
which
painstakingly
shows how one set
of
important
historical
developments
becomes
a
complex
and
inseparable part
of another set of
equally important
historical
developments.
The
advantage
of such a
paradigm
shift is that it
minimizes the
problem
of historical imbalance in the social
construction of
history.
The
danger
of
transforming history
into
interest-group politics by any group?whether
Black,
Gypsy,
or
Jew?is therefore reduced.
24
Notes
I. Millan
Kundera,
The Book
of Laughter
and
Forgetting (New
York:
Harper,
1999),
trans. Aaron Asher.
2
.
Juhani
Koponen,
J,
Development for Exploitation
:
German colonial
policies
in Mainland
Tanzania,
1884-1914 Helsinki:
Tiedekirja; Hamburg:
Lit
Verlag, 1994), pp.
46-47.
3.
Africanus,
The Prussian Lash in
Africa:
The
Story of
German Rule in
Africa,
by "Africanus." (London:
Harder and
Stoughton,
1918), p.
97.
4
.
Koponen,
,
Development for Exploitation, Helsinki/Hamburg,
1994, pp.
46
47.
5.
Ibid, p.
45.
6.
Africanus,
The Prussian Lash in
Africa, p.
72.
7. Steven T.
Katz,
"Quantity
and
Interpretation:
Issues in the
Comparative
Historical
Analysis
of the Holocaust" in Holocaust Genocide
Studies,
vol. 4
no.
2, (1989).
8. Paul Conkin Roland
Stromberg,
The
Hierarchy
and
Challenge of History
(New
York:
Dodd,
Mead and
Co., 197), p.
131.
9. Mark T.
Gilderhus, History
and Historians
(New
Jersey:
Prentice
Hall,
1990), p.
30.
10.
Sybil
Milton,
"The Context of the
Holocaust,"
in German Studies
Review,
vol.
X, ffl,
no.2
(1990), p.
269.
II.
Ibid., p.
270.
12.
Katz,
"Quantity
and
Interpretation," p.
127.
13.
Ibid., p.
121.
14.
Ibid., p.
134.
15.
Ibid., p.
141.
16.
Ibid.,p.l44.
17. E. H.
Carr,
What Is
History? (New
York: Alfred A
Knopf, 1963), p.
24.
18.
Ibid., p.
32.
19. Adolf
Hitler,
Mein
Kampf (Boston: Houghton
Mifflin, 1971), p.
286.
20.
Senghor,
and
many
of his
compatriots,
were
together
in
prison
cells until he
was
miraculously
released
by
the Germans due to
failing
health;
at least that
was the reason
given by
French authorities. "In June of
1940,
he became a
prisoner
of war of the Germans
...
His African
companions
in
captivity relay
among
each other the tales of Black heroes
...
he reveals the
poignant
character of this solitude."
See,
Michael C.
Mbabuike,
Notes on the Poems
of
L. S.
Senghor,
Poet
of
Lost
Villages (New Jersey:
Andre and
Company,
1989), pp.
6-7.
21. Reiner
Pommerin,
"The Fate of Mixed Blood Children in
Germany,"
in
German Studies
Review,
vol.
5,
no.
3, (October 1982), p.
317.
25
22.
Ibid., p.
317.
23.
Ibid., p.
31S.
24.
Ibid., p.
319.
25.
p.
320.
26.
p.
322.
27.
Johnny
William,
"Hitler's
Forgotten
Black Victims" Political
Directory
online at www.davevd.com,
September
26,1997, p.
5.
28. Donald Kenrick and Grattan
Puxton,
The
Destiny of Europe's Gypsies (Bnew
York: Basic
Books, 1972).
29.
Ibid., p.
74.
30.
Myriam
Novitch,
"Gypsy
Victims of Nazi
Terror,"
in the UNESCO Courrier
(France, 1984), p.
1.
31. Ibid.
32.
Ibid., p.
2.
33. Raul
Hilberg,
The Destruction
of
the
European
Jews
(Chicago: Quadrangle
Books, 1961), p.
439.
34. Paul
Polansky,
Black Silence: The
Lety
Survivors
Speak
(New
York
City:
Cross-Cultural
Communications, 1998).
35. New Presence
magazine, (February 1999),
reproduced by
the Patrin Web
Journal.
36.
Novitch,
"Gypsy
Victims of Nazi Terror.
37.
Katz,
"Quantity
and
Interpretation," p.
141.
38.
Milton,
'The Context of the
Holocaust," p.
271.
39.
Ibid.,
p.217.
40.
Hilberg,
The Destruction
of
the
European
Jews, pp.
436-439.
41.
Ibid.,pA3%.
42.
Ibid., p.
439.

Other Victims of The Holocaust

Încărcat de

Informații document

Descriere originală:

Titlu original

Drepturi de autor

Formate disponibile

Partajați acest document

Partajați sau inserați document

Opțiuni de partajare

Vi se pare util acest document?

Este necorespunzător acest conținut?

Drepturi de autor:

Formate disponibile

Other Victims of The Holocaust

Încărcat de

Drepturi de autor:

Formate disponibile

OTHER VICTIMS OF THE HOLOCAUST

Author(s): Michael C. Mbabuike and Anna Marie Evans

S-ar putea să vă placă și