Hitler’s Holocaust blueprint: A new book reveals how the Kaiser’s Germany used concentration camps in Africa to advance their theories of racial supremacy

By MICHAEL WILLIAMS

At the new seafront restaurant overlooking the bay in the tiny resort of Luderitz on the coast of Namibia, tourists are invited to sit out on the balcony, where they can dine on the finest South Atlantic seafood accompanied by vintage South African wines as they take in the views over neighbouring Shark Island.

But little do they know the horrific truth about that view, which the tourist guidebooks describe as ‘stunning’. Shark Island, with its picturesque setting, was the site of the world’s first death camp  –  the German invention that culminated in the Holocaust of World War II, the greatest mass crime of the 20th century.

Three-and-a-half thousand innocent Africans were liquidated here at the hands of the Germans, decades before the rise of Adolf Hitler and the Nazi party, with the tacit sanction of the German emperor, Kaiser Wilhelm II, and his ministers.

As modern diners tuck into lobster and oysters, washed down with chilled Chenin blanc, just yards away beneath the waters lie the bones and rusting iron manacles of the Germans’ victims.

Experiment: The newly invented Kodak roll-film camera was used by wealthier German officers to take home ‘mementoes’ of their time in Namibia

Shark Island is not Namibia’s only gruesome secret. Thousands more bodies are piled in a mass grave under the railway station in the capital Windhoek and more still are piled into a burial pit under the national museum.

The story of the German extermination of the Herero and Nama peoples has been expunged from the history books  –  and the tourists and scuba divers on the Shark Bay waterfront will find no mention of it in their guides.

But now a new book, The Kaiser’s Holocaust, by David Olusoga and Casper W. Erichsen, lifts the veil on a horrific and little-known episode of history.

More chilling still, the book raises another awful prospect. That the Nazi crimes of World War II were not an aberration, as some have claimed, but emerged from a tradition deeply embedded in the heart of German culture, with its warped beliefs about racial superiority, going back into the 19th century.

Hitler hadn’t been born when the German flag was raised in 1883 on the coast of South-West Africa (as Namibia was then known)  –  the first conquest of Germany’s African empire.

Significantly, the first Imperial Commissioner was Heinrich Goering, father of Herman Goering, later Field Marshal of the Luftwaffe and the most powerful Nazi after the Fuhrer.

Goering had already planted the seeds of an experiment that would ultimately lead to their genocide

Hitler hadn’t been born when the German flag was raised in 1883 on the coast of South-West Africa (as Namibia was then known)  –  the first conquest of Germany’s African empire.

Significantly, the first Imperial Commissioner was Heinrich Goering, father of Herman Goering, later Field Marshal of the Luftwaffe and the most powerful Nazi after the Fuhrer.

Until then colonisers had thought Namibia a forbidding place, whose treacherous and fog-bound Skeleton Coast had deterred all but the most intrepid explorers.

But hidden from the gaze of Europeans was a land of enormous beauty  –  a realm of tall grasses, hot springs and waterholes, where an array of tribes prospered by tending their long-horned cattle and hunting the herds of springbok and wildebeest that roamed the land.

Contrary to the German belief, the indigenous Herero and Nama people were not savages. The Herero had a sophisticated culture, having occupied their ancient lands for centuries, while the Nama  –  the mixed-race offspring of early Dutch settlers  –  were ferocious warriors as well as Christians.

Both were more than a match for Goering  –  an overweight provincial judge with a fondness for dressing up in military uniforms  –  who fled the colony, his nerves shattered by their relentless insurrections.

However, Goering had already planted the seeds of an experiment that would ultimately lead to their genocide. German South-West Africa was to become a testbed for Lebensraum  –  the twisted policy of expansion that was to form the heart of Hitler’s ideology.

The ideas were developed in the 1870s by a writer, Friedrich Ratzel, who distorted Darwin’s theory of evolution to argue that migration was essential for the long-term survival of a race. To stop migrating, so the theory went, was to stop advancing and risk being overtaken by other races better fitted for survival.

Teutonic overlord: Kaiser Wilhelm’s African colonies held death camps

What better solution for the Germans living in the crowded cities of the Rhineland than to create a new Germany on African soil? And it was easy to justify the elimination of the local Africans because they were an ‘inferior race’.

However, the Herero and the Nama did not prove quite as ‘inferior’ as the German occupiers thought. For years they stubbornly resisted being driven off their lands into the desert to die, despite huge loss of life at the hands of the Schutztruppe (colonial army) and their ‘cleansing patrols’.

But by 1905 the survivors were weary and weakened. The final straw came when the Kaiser issued an imperial decree expropriating the African lands.

Most of the Africans surrendered and were rounded up into concentration camps to build the colony’s new railways  –  gruelling work where men were routinely beaten and women workers systematically raped. on one section of the line, two-thirds of the prisoners died in 18 months.

But a sinister new idea was forming in the evil minds of the governors of German South-West Africa. An ‘anthropologist’ was commissioned to investigate the prisoners, who reported that it was of ‘vital importance’ for the success of the German colonial project that those races deemed ‘unfit for labour’ should be allowed to disappear. ‘The struggle for our own existence’ depends on it, he warned.

A sinister new idea was forming in the evil minds of the governors of German South-West Africa

And so the first Holocaust was born. Shark Island  –  a bleak rocky islet in the harbour outside Luderitz  –  would become the world’s first death camp and the most feared place on earth for all the black peoples of South-West Africa.

It inspired such terror that on being told he was to be sent there one Herero prisoner fell to the ground bleeding profusely, having drilled his fingers into his neck in a desperate attempt to commit suicide.

Even by the standards of brutality administered by the Germans up to now, what happened inside Shark Island was appalling beyond belief.

A missionary who was one of the first to enter the camp was shocked by what he saw: ‘A woman who was so weak from illness that she could not stand, crawled to some of the other prisoners to beg for water. The overseer fired five shots at her. Two shots hit her: one in the thigh, the other smashing her forearm.’

Another observer tells of the abuse of prisoners forced to carry heavy loads from boats on the shore: ‘on one occasion, I saw a woman carrying a child of under a year old slung on her back and with a heavy sack of grain on her head.

‘The sand was very steep and the sun was baking. She fell down on her face and the heavy sack fell partly across her and partly across the baby. A corporal hit her with a leather whip for more than four minutes, and whipped the baby as well.’

Children at Auschwitz concentration camp. Shark Island, off the coast of the Namibian German colony, was the site of the world’s first death camp – the German invention that culminated in the Holocaust of World War II, the greatest mass crime of the 20th century

The most important witness to the atrocities of Shark Island was the newly invented Kodak roll-film camera, which was used by wealthier German officers to take home ‘mementoes’ of their time there. one surviving snap shows a boy aged about five, his stomach bloated from malnutrition, his only clothing a torn sleeveless vest. In another, an officer poses among the prisoners.

Wearing his military tunic, he stands rigid and poised, walking cane in hand, a group of ragged and frightened African women at his feet.

Many of these photographs of prisoners being mistreated and humiliated were turned into postcards to send back home, often captioned with sardonic comments.

The rape and sexual exploitation of women was not just commonplace but celebrated, and many semi-pornographic images, too, were made into postcards to be posted back to Berlin, Hamburg or Munich.

Unsurprisingly, the inmates started to die in large numbers. Food was so scarce that, according to a witness, when rations were distributed, ‘ prisoners fought like wild animals and killed each other to secure a share’. Others scavenged at the water’s edge searching for limpets, sea urchins or anything else edible.

Those who were not left to die were worked to death, being compelled to carry large stones across the island and drag them into the freezing waters of the bay. They were forced to stand knee-high in the icy sea until they had to be pulled out and their limbs massaged back to life.

After two years, the camp was forced to close  –  70 per cent of its inhabitants were dead, and of those still alive a third were so sick the camp commander believed ‘they were likely to die in the near future’.

But this wasn’t before the prisoners had become a resource exploited in the name of medical and racial science in terrible anticipation of the atrocities of the Third Reich.

In one of the local concentration camps, at a place called Swakopmund, women were forced to boil the severed heads of their own people, and scrape the flesh, sinews and ligaments off the skull with shards of broken glass. The victims may have been people they had known or even relatives. The skulls were packed into crates and sent off to museums and universities in Germany.

Most notorious of all was the Shark Island camp physician, Dr Bofinger. He carefully decapitated the bodies of 17 prisoners, including a one-year-old girl. After breaking open the skulls he removed and weighed the brains before placing each head in preserving alcohol and sealing them in tins for export to the University of Berlin.

There they were used in experiments to prove the similarity between the Nama people and anthropoid apes in a terrible prefiguring of the darkest race experiments of Josef Mengele, the Nazi ‘Angel of Death’, who similarly sent body parts from Auschwitz back to Berlin.

Other experiments were conducted on live prisoners. In a spurious bid to determine whether scurvy  –  an illness caused by poor nutrition  –  was contagious, Bofinger injected prisoners with arsenic and opium, ‘opening up the bodies’ after they had died. No wonder it was said that anyone who went into Dr Bofinger’s field hospital ‘would not come out alive’.

In 1914, World War I broke out and the following year the South African Army seized the colony which had been such a crucible for evil. Germany’s African empire had ended and, after the war, Namibia became a South African mandate, finally achieving independence in 1990.

Goering dreamed of a German expansion in which the weaker people of the earth were destined to fall prey to the stronger

But Germany’s obsession with eugenics did not end in 1915. A few decades later, the people and ideas that drove this merciless colonial experiment would play a vital role in the formation of the Nazis.

Like his father more than half a century before, Reichsmarschall Herman Goering dreamed of a German expansion in which the weaker people of the earth were destined to fall prey to the stronger.

But there is an even more direct and sinister link between the rise of Nazis and Namibia. One of the veterans of the genocide was a Bavarian senior lieutenant called Franz Xavier von Epp, who spent his life propagating the notion that the German people needed to expand their territory at the expense of ‘lower races’.

In 1922, by then a general, he recruited the young Adolf Hitler into a Right-wing militia in Munich and introduced the future Fuhrer to the elite who would one day control the Nazis.

One of them was Von Epp’s deputy  –  Ernst Rohm, founder of the notorious Nazi stormtroopers. Through the connection to Von Epp and other old soldiers of the African colonies, Hitler and Rohm were able to procure a consignment of surplus colonial Schutztruppe uniforms.

Designed for warfare on the savannah of Africa, the shirts were golden brown. The Nazi thugs who wore them were thenceforth known famously as the Brown Shirts. It’s no wonder that in countless pictures and propaganda films, Hitler and Von Epp stand side by side.

Not long ago, Germany’ s Development Minister Heidemarie Wieczorek-Zeul travelled to Namibia to ask for forgiveness, using the term ‘genocide’ to describe the German treatment of the Herero and Nama.

A decent gesture, you might think. But her act was not well-received at home and condemned in the German Press. And she made not a single mention of the existence of the Namibian death camps.

More than a century on, the terrible events that took place at Shark Island, and their link to the rise of the Nazis, remain a sordid secret that modern Germany, it seems, still cannot bring itself to acknowledge.

The Kaiser’s Holocaust: Germany’s Forgotten Genocide And The Colonial Roots Of Nazism by David Olusaga and Caspar W. Erichsen (Faber, £20).

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1314399/Hitlers-Holocaust-blueprint-Africa-concentration-camps-used-advance-racial-theories.html#ixzz3p1wsq9iK
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Konzentrationslager in Deutsch-Südwestafrika

Konzentrationslager in Deutsch-Südwestafrika wurden im Anschluss an den Aufstand der Herero und Nama seit 1904 vom Deutschen Reich in der damaligen KolonieDeutsch-Südwestafrika errichtet.

Der Begriff „Konzentrationslager“ wird erstmals in den Jahren 1904/05 von Berlin verwendet, um Internierungs- und Sammellager für gefangene Herero und Nama zu bezeichnen. „Erfunden“ hatte ihn der britische Feldmarschall und Politiker Herbert Kitchener, 1. Earl Kitchener, erstmals im Krieg gegen die holländischstämmigen Buren in Südafrika um 1900. Er internierte dort die Frauen und Kinder seiner Feinde. Der Begriff „Konzentrationslager“ zu jener Zeit sollte nicht gleichgesetzt werden mit den Arbeits- und Vernichtungslagern des Nationalsozialismus. Der Begriff „Konzentrationslager“ diente in den ersten Jahrzehnten des 20. Jahrhunderts europaweit als Bezeichnung für Gefangenensammellager und ist daher zu relativieren.

Gefangene Herero, ca. 1904

Die gefangengenommenen Aufständischen, Männer und Frauen, wurden in Konzentrationslagern interniert und teilweise zu Zwangsarbeit eingesetzt. Schon 1904 waren Gefangenenlager in Okahandja, Windhuk und Swakopmund errichtet worden. Im weiteren Verlauf des Krieges kamen dann weiter mehr oder weniger feste bzw. offene Lager in fast allen Orten des Landes hinzu.

Die Stadt Swakopmund, sowie die Lüderitzbucht mit der Haifischinsel, heute offiziell Shark Island, hatten sich aufgrund der geringen Fluchtmöglichkeiten für die Anlage eines Gefangenenlagers angeboten. Auf der Nordspitze der Insel hatten die Verantwortlichen bereits 1905 ein Lager für einige hundert Herero errichtet. Da deren Aufstand bereits 1904 niedergeschlagen worden war und die deutschen Behörden in diesen Gefangenen keine großes Sicherheitsrisiko mehr sahen, genossen die Inhaftierten relative Bewegungsfreiheit. Soweit gesund, wurden sie tagsüber zu Arbeiten in der Lüderitzbucht herangezogen und gegen abends zur Haifischinsel zurückgebracht.

Die Haifischinsel mit dem Lager in der Lüderitzbucht vor 1910

Erst mit dem Eintreffen von 1.700 kriegsgefangenen Witbooi und Bethanier im Mai 1906, welche schon bei der Ankunft von Unterernährung und Krankheiten gezeichnet waren, änderten sich diese Verhältnisse drastisch. Da die Zahl der Neuankömmlinge offensichtlich viel zu hoch für die Insel war, forderte die Lagerleitung gleich zu Beginn sofortige Abhilfe sowie Anlieferung von Nahrung und Kleidung, um das Leben der Gefangenen nicht weiter zu gefährden. Laut diesem Bericht starben zahlreiche Herero infolge der örtlichen Feuchtigkeit und Kälte. Schon kurz nach diesem Eintreffen berichtete der Missionar, Ethnologe, Linguist und Historiker Heinrich Vedder von der Rheinischen Missionsgesellschaft bereits sehr kritisch über die Lage auf der Haifischinsel, was jedoch zu diesem Zeitpunkt keinerlei Resonanz hinterließ. Einen neuen Anlauf versuchte der in Lüderitzbucht wohnende Missionar Emil Laaf, der am 5. Oktober 1905 an die Rheinischen Missionsgesellschaft schrieb:

„Eine große Zahl der Leute ist krank, meist an Skorbut, und es sterben wöchentlich 15–20. Samuel Izaak, der mein Dolmetscher ist, sagte mir unlängst, daß seit dem 4. März, an welchem Tage er sich den Deutschen gestellt hatte, 517 von seinen Leuten gestorben seien. Heute ist diese Zahl noch größer. Von den Herero sterben ebenso viele, sodass man im ganzen durchschnittlich wöchentlich 50 rechnen kann. Wann wird dieser Jammer ein Ende nehmen? Die Leute werden ganz gut versorgt, sowohl mit Kleidung als auch mit Proviant, letzteren können sie nicht alle essen. Aber das Klima ist zu ungünstig…“^[1]

Es stellte sich heraus, dass etliche Gefangene den südlichen Winter mit seinem nasskalten Seeklima nicht vertrugen und trotz ausreichender Verpflegung mit Reis und anderen Grundnahrungsmitteln oft zu erschöpft und krank waren, als dass sie die angebotene Nahrung hätten essen können.

Nach anhaltendem Bitten der Mission entschloss sich der Kommandeur der Schutztruppe, Oberst Berthold Deimling noch im Dezember 1906, zumindest die Frauen und Kinder in das riesige ehemalige Nachschublager Burenkamp nahe Lüderitzbucht zu bringen. Der umstrittene Oberst von Deimling, der schon am Waterberg eine Abteilung geführt hatte, bekannte sich nach dem Ersten Weltkrieg zum Pazifismus und stand der Deutschen Friedensgesellschaft vor.

Als eine seiner ersten Amtshandlungen besuchte der Nachfolger Deimlings, Major Ludwig von Estorff, am 8. April 1907 das Lager auf der Haifischinsel. Nach den besorgniserregenden Berichten, die ihm bisher vorgelegen hatten, wollte er sich nun selbst ein Bild von der Lage machen und war schlichtweg entsetzt.^[2] Waren schon im Winter die Menschen elendig gestorben, so stiegen jetzt, je näher der Sommer kam, die Todesraten noch drastischer. Es ist anzunehmen, dass die zusammengedrängten Menschen an all jenen Krankheiten starben, unter denen auch die deutsche Truppe litt: Skorbut und Seuchen wie Typhus und Ruhr, deren Diagnose und Bekämpfung damals schwierig waren.

Wesentlich verschärft wurde das Problem in Swakopmund durch das dortige Trinkwasser, das mit Krankheitserregern infiziert und abführend war. Bekannt unter dem Namen „Swakopmundia-Diarrhoe“ ließen als Folge des Trinkwassergenusses auch viele Swakopmunder Deutsche vom Wassertrinken ab und wandten sich eher dem desinfizierenden Alkohol zu. Wie es um die Tropenmedizin in Deutsch-Südwest bestellt war und welche Probleme sich auftaten, kann man in Dr. Alexander LionsStandardwerk (sh. Literaturhinweis) nachlesen. Hinzu kam, dass es deutschen Dienststellen während dieses Krieges oft aufgrund der langen, schwierigen und gefährlichen Transportwege nicht einmal gelang, die eigene Truppe mit ausreichend Nahrung zu versorgen. Der Nachschub musste per Schiff übers Meer gebracht und mit langsamen Maulesel- oder Ochsenplanwagen über unwirtliche Sandwege geschafft werden. Oft verhedderten sich die langen Leinen der Treiber und ließen die Karawane stoppen, nicht selten brach auch ein Rad, dessen Auswechseln ebenfalls Zeit kostete. Geländegängige Automobile waren noch nicht entwickelt – ein amtlicher Versuch mit zwei LKW war im Sand gescheitert. Während der gesamten deutschen Kolonialzeit Südwestafrikas fuhr dort keine einzige Benzinkutsche mehr.

Noch am Tag seines Besuches auf der Insel, am 8. April 1907, handelte v. Estorff und ließ am 10. April folgende Meldung an das Oberkommando der Schutztruppen in Berlin telegraphieren:

„Ich habe am 8. April befohlen, daß Hottentotten der Haifisch-Insel nach Burenkamp bei Lüderitzbucht zu verbringen, soweit Sicherheit besteht. Flucht dort zu verhindern. Hauptmann von Zülow, Kommandant Lüderitzbucht, meldet Befehl in Ausführung. Samuel Izaak mit Frauen, Kindern bereits in Burenkamp. Ausreichende Bewachung gewährleistet. Kettengefangene interniert. Veranlassung zur Maßregel ist Meldung von Zülow’s, daß von 245 Männern nur periodisch 25 arbeitsfähig alle übrigen sich nur noch an Stöcken fortbewegen, sodaß weiterer Verbleib auf Haifisch-Insel Hottentotten einem langsamen aber sicheren Tod entgegenführt. Von September 06 sind von 1.795 Eingeborenen 1.032 auf Haifisch-Inseln gestorben. Für solche Henkersdienste, mit welchen ich auch meine Offiziere nicht beauftragen kann, übernehme ich keine Verantwortung, besonders nicht, da Ueberführung und Festhaltung Hottentotten auf Haifisch-Insel Bruch Versprechens bedeutet, das ich mit Genehmigung Kommandeurs Samuel Izaak und Leuten bei Uebergabe gegeben habe.“^[3]

In Berlin reagierte man zunächst schockiert. Erst durch dieses Kabel wurden dem Leiter der Kolonialabteilung des Auswärtigen Amtes, Kolonialdirektor Bernhard Dernburg, die unerträglichen Zustände auf der Haifischinsel bekannt und er forderte genauen Bericht an. Gleichzeitig stimmte er den Maßnahmen von Estorffs zu. Der hatte Zerreißproben mit dem Gouvernement in Windhuk zu bestehen. Wie v. Estorff, in seinem Antworttelegramm an das Auswärtige Amt angab, hatte der als Gouverneur bestimmte Referent im Gouvernement, Hintrager, ihn gebeten, die Herero „wieder nach Insel zurück zu bringen unter Hinweis, daß England in Südafrika 10.000 Weiber Kinder in Lagern sterben ließ.“^[4]

Am 26. April 1907 verfasste das Distriktamt Lüderitzbucht, den Forderungen des Kolonialdirektors Dernburg folgend, einen genauen Bericht über den Gesundheitszustand und die Zahl der nun von der Haifischinsel auf das Festland verlegten Gefangenen mit ihren Frauen und Kindern. Danach wird deutlich, dass am 24. April 1907 von den 573 überlebenden Nama 123 Personen so schwer erkrankt waren, dass nur noch mit dem Tod zu rechnen war. Von den restlichen 450 Menschen waren 50 Prozent der Männer, 25 Prozent der Frauen und 25 Prozent der Kinder erkrankt und hatten teilweise Aussicht auf Heilung.^[5]

Neben all dem Leid für die Häftlinge gab es auch immer wieder Zeichen der Menschlichkeit. So bemühten sich Ärzte mit den damaligen unzureichenden Mitteln ebenso um die Gefangenen wie Zivilpersonen, welche versuchten, mit Rohkostbrei der Skorbut Herr zu werden.^[6] Die zahlreichen Protestschreiben von niederen Beamten, Privatpersonen und Pfarrern über die Jahre hinweg blieben meist ungehört, dokumentieren jedoch das Dahinsiechen der Herero und zeigen, dass viele Deutsche vom Verhalten ihrer Behörden entsetzt waren.

Trotz dieser Maßnahmen mussten Männer und Frauen der Herero, Witbooi- und Bethanier-Nama, welche wieder gesundet waren, genauso wie zur Zeit ihrer Inhaftierung auf der Haifischinsel, Zwangsarbeit im Straßen-, Wege- und Bahnbau leisten, wo sie in teilweise unmenschlicher Art weiter ausgebeutet wurden. So sind von 2.014 Häftlingen aus dem Lager Haifischinsel zwischen Januar 1906 und Juni 1907 1.359 während des Baues der Südbahn zwischen Lüderitzbucht und Keetmannshoop verstorben.^[7]

Literatur

• Kreienbaum, Jonas: „Ein trauriges Fiasko“. Koloniale Konzentrationslager im südlichen Afrika 1900–1908. Hamburg: Hamburger Edition, 2015.
• Medardus Brehl: «Diese Schwarzen haben vor Gott und Menschen den Tod verdient.» Der Völkermord an den Herero 1904 und seine zeitgenössische Legitimation. in: Micha Brumlik; Irmtrud Wojak (Hgr.): Völkermord und Kriegsverbrechen in der ersten Hälfte des 20. Jahrhunderts. Campus Verlag, 2004, ISBN 978-3593372822
• Mihran Dabag; Horst Gründer; Uwe-K. Ketelsen: Kolonialismus, Kolonialdiskurs und Genozid. Fink, 2004, ISBN 978-3770540709
• Jürgen Zimmerer (Hrsg.): Völkermord in Deutsch-Südwestafrika. Der Kolonialkrieg (1904–1908) in Namibia und seine Folgen. Links Verlag, Berlin 2003, ISBN 3-86153-303-0
• Olusoga D, Erichsen CW. 2010. The Kaiser’s Holocaust: Germany’s Forgotten Genocide And The Colonial Roots Of Nazism. London: Faber & Faber. ISBN 978-0571231416
  • Rezension: Williams M. 2010. “Hitler’s Holocaust blueprint: A new book reveals how the Kaiser’s Germany used concentration camps in Africa to advance their theories of racial supremacy”. Daily Mail (Mail Online). 23. September 2010.

Weblinks

• Golf Dornseif, Südwester Konzentrationslager und ihre Geschichte 1904 bis 1908 (pdf; 12,72 MB)

Einzelnachweise

1. Bundesarchiv Berlin, RKA Nr. 2140, Bl. 18: Missionar Laaf an Rheinischen Mission, 5. August 1906
2. Goethe-Institut: Kulturzentrum in von Estorffs Windhuker Haus eröffnet, 12. September 2002 http://www.kulturportal-deutschland.de/kp/quartal.html?sparteid=5&jahr=2002&quartal=3
3. Bundesarchiv Berlin, RKA Nr. 2140, Bl. 88: Estorff an Schutztruppe, Berlin, 10. April 1907
4. Bundesarchiv Berlin, RKA Nr. 2140, Bl. 94: Estorff an Kolonialabteilung des Auswärtigen Amtes, Berlin, 14. April 1907
5. BAB, RKA Nr. 2140, Bl. 111: Bericht des Distriktamtes Lüderitzbucht an Gouvernement, Windhuk, 26. April 1907
6. Rautenberg, Hulda: Das alte Swakopmund Swakopmund, Neumünster 1967
7. Nationalarchiv Windhuk, Akte 456 des Zentralbureaus des Gouvernements von Deutsch-Südwestafrika, D IV 1.3: Feldzug gegen die Hereros, 1905–1906: Kriegsgefangene, 1904–1913, Bd. 5; entnommen aus: Zimmerer/Zeller, S. 83

Shark Island Konsentrasiekamp

Koördinate: 26°38′45″S 15°9′14″OKoördinate: 26°38′45″S 15°9′14″O
Ligging	Luderitz, Duits-Suidwes-Afrika
Bedryf deur	Duitse Keiserryk
Tydperk	1905-1907
Sterftesyfer	Tussen 1 032 en 3 000

Die Shark Island-konsentrasiekamp of “Doodseiland” (Duits: Konzentrationslager auf der Insel Haifisch vor Lüderitzbucht) was ‘n konsentrasiekamp op Shark Island by Luderitz, Namibië wat gebruik is deur die Duitse Ryk tydens die Herero- en Namavolksmoord van 1904–1908. Tussen 1 032 en 3 000 Herero– en Namamans, -vroue en -kinders het in die kamp gesterf tussen sy opening in 1905 en sluiting in April 1907.^[1]

Ná die afskaffing van Lothar von Trotha se beleid van uitwissing van alle Herero binne die grense van die Duits-Suidwes-Afrika deur hulle toegang tot watergate te verhinder, was die koloniale owerhede se beleid “van vee die Hereros uit die bos”, en hulle verskuiwing, hetsy vrywillig of deur geweld, na konsentrasiekampe. ^[2] Shark Island in Lüderitzbaai is gekies as ‘n kamp te danke aan onmoontlike ontsnappingsroetes, die nabygeleë teenwoordigheid van groot getalle Duitse soldate, en die behoefte aan dwangarbeid in die streek.^[3]

Oorlewende Herero in die Kalahariwoestyn.

Verwysings

1. Overmans, Rüdiger (1999). In der Hand des Feindes : Kriegsgefangenschaft von der Antike bis zum Zweiten Weltkrieg (in Duits), 291. “Die Verhältnisse in Swakopmund, zu denen sich Tecklenburg äußerte, stellten keine Ausnahme dar. Noch schlimmer lagen die Verhältnisse im Konzentrationslager auf der Haifischinsel vor Lüderitzbucht, dem größten Gefangenenlager. Dort wurden sowohl Herero wie Nama interniert und ihrem Schicksal überlassen. Die Inhaftierung auf de.” reprinted in Jürgen Zimmerer Deutsche Herrschaft über Afrikaner: Staatlicher Machtanspruch und …(2004). Page 46.” 
2. Erichsen, 2005, p. 26
3. Erichsen, 2005, p. 72-73

Germany admits Namibia genocide

Germany has offered its first formal apology for the colonial-era massacre of some 65,000 members of the Herero tribe by German troops in Namibia.German minister Heidemarie Wieczorek-Zeul told a commemorative ceremony that the brutal crushing of the Herero uprising 100 years ago was genocide.

But the German government has ruled out compensation for victims’ descendants.

A group of Herero has filed a case against Germany in the United States demanding $4bn in compensation.

“We Germans accept our historic and moral responsibility,” Ms Wieczorek-Zeul, Germany’s Development Aid Minister, told a crowd of some 1,000 at the ceremony in Okokarara.

“Germany has learnt the bitter lessons of the past.”

But after the minister’s speech, the crowd repeated calls for an apology.

“Everything I said in my speech was an apology for crimes committed under German colonial rule,” she replied.

The Herero rebelled in 1904 against German soldiers and settlers who were colonising south-west Africa.

Driven into desert

In response, the German military commander, General Lothar von Trotha, ordered the Herero people to leave Namibia or be killed.

Herero were massacred with machine guns, their wells poisoned and then driven into the desert to die.Ms Wieczorek-Zeul repeated that there would be no compensation, but she promised continued economic aid for Namibia which currently amounts to $14m a year.

Germany argues that international laws to protect civilians were not in force at the time of the conflict.

Herero chief Kuaima Riruako said the apology was appreciated but added: “We still have the right to take the German government to court.”

However, correspondents say the lawsuit filed in the US three years ago against the German government and two German companies is seen as having a limited chance of success.

Story from BBC NEWS:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/hi/africa/3565938.stm

Published: 2004/08/14 19:40:41 GMT

German South-West Africa

1884–1915
Flag Coat of arms
Green: German South-West Africa Dark Grey: Other German possessions Black: German Empire Note: The historical extent of German territories are depicted over present-day political borders.
Capital		Windhoek (from 1891)
Languages		German (official), Herero, Afrikaans, Khoekhoe
Religion		Christianity, San religion
Political structure		Colony
Governor
–	1894–1905	Theodor von Leutwein
–	1905–1907	Friedrich von Lindequist
–	1907–1910	Bruno von Schuckmann
–	1910–1915	Theodor Seitz
Historical era		Scramble for Africa
–	Established	7 August 1884
–	Genocide	1904–1907
–	Disestablished	9 July 1915
–	Treaty of Versailles	1919
Area		835,100 km² (322,434 sq mi)
Currency		German South West African mark
Today part of		Namibia

German South-West Africa (German: Deutsch-Südwestafrika, DSWA) was a colony of the German Empire from 1884 until 1915. With an area of 835,100 km², it was one and a half times the size of the mainland German Empire in Europe at the time.

In 1915, during the First World War, German South-West Africa was invaded by the Western Allies in the form of South African and British forces. After the war its administration was taken over by the Union of South Africa (part of the British Empire) and the territory was administered as South-West Africa under a League of Nations mandate. It became independent as Namibia in 1990.

Initial European contact with the areas which would become German South-West Africa came from traders and sailors, starting in January 1486 when Portuguese explorer Diogo Cão, possibly accompanied by Martin Behaim, landed at Cape Cross. However, for several centuries, European settlement would remain limited and temporary. In February 1805 the London Missionary Society established a small mission in Blydeverwacht, but the efforts of this group met with little success. In 1840 the London Missionary Society transferred all of its activities to the German Rhenish Missionary Society. Some of the first representatives of this organisation were Franz Heinrich Kleinschmidt (who arrived in October 1842) and Carl Hugo Hahn(who arrived in December 1842). They began founding churches throughout the territory. The Rhenish missionaries had a significant impact initially on culture and dress, and then later on politics. During the same time that the Rhenish missionaries were active, merchants and farmers were establishing outposts.

On 16 November 1882 a German merchant from Bremen, Adolf Lüderitz, requested protection for a station that he planned to build in South-West Africa, from Chancellor Bismarck. Once this was granted, his employee Heinrich Vogelsang purchased land from a native chief and established a city at Angra Pequena which was renamed Lüderitz. On 24 April 1884, he placed the area under the protection of Imperial Germany to deter British encroachment. In early 1884, the Kaiserliche Marine ship SMS Nautilus visited to review the situation. A favourable report from the government, and acquiescence from the British, resulted in a visit from the SMS Leipzig and SMS Elisabeth. The German flag was finally raised in South-West Africa on 7 August 1884. The German claims on this land were confirmed during the Conference of Berlin. In October, the newly appointed Commissioner for West Africa, Gustav Nachtigal, arrived on the SMS Möwe.^[1]

In April 1885, the Deutsche Kolonialgesellschaft für Südwest-Afrika (German Colonial Society for Southwest Africa, known as DKGSWA) was founded with the support of German bankers (Gerson von Bleichröder, Adolph von Hansemann), industrialists (Count Guido Henckel von Donnersmarck) and politicians (Frankfurt mayor Johannes von Miquel). DKGSWA was granted monopoly rights to exploit mineral deposits.^[2] The new Society soon bought the assets of Lüderitz’s failing enterprises. Later, in 1908, diamonds were discovered. Thus along with gold, copper, platinum, and other minerals, diamonds became a major investment. Earlier, the colonial aim was to dispossess the indigenous peoples of their land, for use of German settlers, as well as be a source of raw materials and a market of German industrial products.^[2]

Lüderitz drowned in 1886 while on an expedition to the Orange River. The company bought all of Lüderitz’ land and mining rights, following Bismarck’s policy that private rather than public money should be used to develop the colonies. In May, Heinrich Ernst Göring was appointed Commissioner and established his administration at Otjimbingwe. Then, on 17 April 1886, a law creating the legal system of the colony was passed, creating a dual system with laws for Europeans and different laws for natives.^[3]

Four German soldiers in a Camel-Schutztruppe patrol, in 1906.

Over the next several years relations between the Germans and indigenous peoples continued to worsen. Additionally, the British settlement at Walvis Bay as well as numerous small farmers and missionaries were all involved in the area. A complex web of treaties, agreements and vendettas increased the unrest in the area. In 1888 the first group of Schutztruppen—colonial protectorate troops—arrived (they were sent secretly) to protect the base at Otjimbingwe. The Schutztruppe detachment consisted of two officers, five non-commissioned officers, and 20 black soldiers.

By the end of the year, the German commissioner Heinrich Ernst Göring was forced to flee to Walvis Bay after negotiations failed with a local tribe. Also, by the late 1880s, the South West Africa Company was nearly bankrupt and had to ask Bismarck for help and additional troops. By 1890 the colony was declared a Crown Colony and additional troops were sent to the area.^[4] At the same time the colony grew through the acquisition of the Caprivi Strip in the northeast, which promised new trade routes. This territory was acquired through the Heligoland–Zanzibar Treaty between Britain and Germany.^[5]

Almost simultaneously, in August through September 1892, the South West Africa Company, Ltd (SWAC) was established by the German, British, and Cape Colony governments, aided by financiers to raise the capital required to enlarge mineral exploitation (specifically, the Damaraland concession’s copper deposit interests).

German South-West Africa was the only German colony where Germans settled in large numbers. German settlers were drawn to the colony by economic possibilities in diamond and copper mining, and especially farming. In 1902 the colony had 200,000 inhabitants, though only 2,595 were German, 1,354 were Afrikaner, and 452 were British. By 1914, 9,000 more German settlers had arrived. There were probably around 80,000 Herero, 60,000 Ovambo, and 10,000 Nama, who were disparagingly referred to as Hottentots.

The “Christuskirche” and the “Südwest Reiter” in Windhoek

“Deutsch-Südwest” devotionalia in a shop window in Swakopmund

Through 1893 and 1894, the first “Hottentot Uprising” of the Nama and their legendary leader Hendrik Witbooi occurred. The following years saw many further local uprisings against German rule. Before the Herero and Namaqua Genocide of 1904–1907, the Herero and Nama had good reasons to distrust the Germans, culminating in the Khaua-Mbandjeru Rebellion. This rebellion, in which the Germans tried to control the Khaua by seizing their property by artificially imposing European legal views of property ownership, led to the largest of the rebellions, known as the Herero Wars (or Herero Genocide) of 1904.

Remote farms were attacked, and approximately 150 German settlers were killed. The Schutztruppe of only 766 troops and native auxiliary forces was, at first, no match for the Herero. The Herero went on the offensive, sometimes surrounding Okahandja and Windhoek, and destroying the railway bridge to Osona. Additional 14,000 troops, hastened from Germany under Lieutenant GeneralLothar von Trotha, crushed the rebellion in the Battle of Waterberg.

Earlier von Trotha issued an ultimatum to the Herero people, denying them the right of being German subjects and ordering them to leave the country, or be killed. To escape, the Herero retreated into the waterless Omaheke region, a western arm of the Kalahari Desert, where many of them died of thirst. The German forces guarded every water source and were given orders to shoot any adult male Herero on sight. Only a few Herero managed to escape into neighbouring British territories.^[6]

Nama POWs in 1904.

The German official military report on the campaign lauded the tactics:

This bold enterprise shows up in the most brilliant light the ruthless energy of the German command in pursuing their beaten enemy. No pains, no sacrifices were spared in eliminating the last remnants of enemy resistance. Like a wounded beast the enemy was tracked down from one water-hole to the next, until finally he became the victim of his own environment. The arid Omaheke [desert] was to complete what the German army had begun: the extermination of the Herero nation.

— Bley, 1971: 162

In late 1904, the Nama entered the struggles against the colonial power under their leaders Hendrik Witbooi and Jakobus Morenga, the latter often referred to as “the black Napoleon“. This uprising was finally quashed during 1907 – 1908 In total, between 25,000 and 100,000 Herero, more than 10,000 Nama and 1,749 Germans died in the conflict.

After the official end of the conflict, the remaining natives, when finally released from detention, were subject to a policy of dispossession, deportation, forced labour, and racial segregation and discrimination in a system that in many ways anticipated apartheid. The genocide remains relevant to ethnic identity in independent Namibia and to relations with Germany.^[7]

The Germans maintained a number of concentration camps in the colony during their war against the Herero and Nama peoples. Besides these camps the indigenous people were interned in other places. These included private businesses and government projects,^[8] ships offshore,^[9][10][11]Etappenkommando in charge of supplies of prisoners to companies, private persons, etc., as well as any other materials. Concentration camps implies poor sanitation and a population density that would imply disease.^[12] Prisoners were used as slave labourers in mines and railways, for use by the military or settlers.^[13][14][15]

The Herero and Namaqua genocide has been recognised by the United Nations and by the Federal Republic of Germany. On the 100th anniversary of the camp’s foundation, German Minister for Economic Development and Cooperation Heidemarie Wieczorek-Zeul commemorated the dead on-site and apologised for the camp on behalf of Germany.^[16][17]

The 1915 South-West Africa Campaign.

During the First World War, South African troops opened hostilities with an assault on the Ramansdrift police station on 13 September 1914. German settlers were transported to prison camps near Pretoria and later in Pietermaritzburg. Because of the overwhelming superiority of the South African troops, the German Schutztruppe, along with groups of Afrikaner volunteers fighting in the Maritz Rebellion on the German side, offered opposition only as a delaying tactic. On 9 July 1915, Victor Franke, the last commander of the Schutztruppe, capitulated near Khorab.

Two members of the Schutztruppe, geography professors Fritz Jaeger and Leo Waibel, are remembered for their explorations of the northern part of German South-West Africa, which became the book Contributions to the Geography of South-West Africa (Beiträge zur Landeskunde von Südwestafrika).^[18]

After the war, the territory came under the control of Britain, and then was made a South African League of Nations mandate. In 1990, the former colony became independent as Namibia, governed by the former liberation movement SWAPO.

Many German names, buildings, and businesses still exist in the country, and about 30,000 people of German descent still live there. German is still widely used in Namibia, with the Namibian Broadcasting Corporation operating a German language radio station, while the daily newspaper Allgemeine Zeitung, founded in 1916, remains in publication.

References

Notes

1. Chronology 1884 Section
2.  ^a b “39-1885”. Retrieved 12 May 2009.
3. Chronology 1886 Section
4. Chronology 1890 Section
5. “Africa”. Encyclopædia Britannica 1. 1910. p. 343. Retrieved 10 February 2009.
6. “Michael Mann – German South-West Africa: The Genocide of the Hereros, 1904-5”. Retrieved 6 February 2009.
7. Reinhart Kössler, and Henning Melber, “Völkermord und Gedenken: Der Genozid an den Herero und Nama in Deutsch-Südwestafrika 1904–1908,” (“Genocide and memory: the genocide of the Herero and Nama in German South-West Africa, 1904–08”) Jahrbuch zur Geschichte und Wirkung des Holocaust 2004: 37–75
8. Casper Erichsen, “The angel of death has descended violently among them: Concentration camps and prisoners-of-war in Namibia, 1904–1908,” African Studies Centre, Leiden, 2005, p. 49
9. Erichsen, p. 23
10. Erichsen, pp. 59, 111
11. Erichsen, p. 76
12. Erichsen, p. 113
13. Casper Erichsen, “The angel of death has descended violently among them: Concentration camps and prisoners-of-war in Namibia, 1904–1908,” African Studies Centre, Leiden, 2005, p. 43
14.  “The loads … are out of all proportion to their strength. I have often seen women and children dropping down, especially when engaged on this work, and also when carrying very heavy bags of grain, weighing from 100 to 160lbs.” Erichsen, p. 58
15. “Forcing women to pull carts as if they were animals was in tune with the treatment generally meted out to Herero prisoners in Lüderitz as elsewhere in the colony.” Erichsen, p 84
16. “Germany admits Namibia genocide,” BBC News, 14 August 2004
17. “Namibia – Genocide and the second Reich”
18. Jaeger, Fritz; Leo Waibel (1920–1921). “Contributions to the Geography of South-West Africa”. World Digital Library (in German). Retrieved 13 April 2014.

Bibliography

• Casper Erichsen, “The angel of death has descended violently among them”: Concentration camps and prisoners-of-war in Namibia, 1904–1908, African Studies Centre, University of Leiden, 2005

Further reading

• Schnee, Dr.Heinrich, (former Governor of German East Africa), German Colonisation, Past and Future – The Truth about the German Colonies, George Allen & Unwin, London, 1926.
• Bullock, A.L.C., Germany’s Colonial Demands, Oxford University Press, 1939.
• Hillebrand, Werner. “‘Certain uncertainties’, or venturing progressively into colonial apologetics?” Journal of Namibian Studies, 1. 2007. pp. 73–95. Online. Accessed 17 December 2011.
• Historicus Africanus: “Der 1. Weltkrieg in Deutsch-Südwestafrik 1914/15”, Band I, Windhoek 2012, ISBN 978-99916-872-1-6
• Historicus Africanus: “Der 1. Weltkrieg in Deutsch-Südwestafrika 1914/15”, Band II, “Naulila”, Windhoek 2012, ISBN 978-99916-872-3-0
• Historicus Africanus. “Der 1. Weltkrieg in Deutsch-Südwestafrika 1914/15”, Band III, “Kämpfe im Süden”, Windhoek 2014, ISBN 978-99916-872-8-5
• Erich von Schauroth: “Liebes Väterchen…”, Briefe aus dem Namaaufstand 1905–06, Windhoek 2008, ISBN 978-99945-68-29-1
• Karl Waldeck: “Gut und Blut für unsern Kaiser…”, Windhoek 2010, ISBN 978-99945-71-55-0

External links

• Klaus Dierks’ chronology of Namibia
• Herero and Namaqua Genocide

• South-West Africa Campaign

• worldstatesmen.org (Namibia)
• The New Student’s Reference Work/German Southwest Africa
• Debie LeBeau’s Development work on Namibia
• “Contributions to the Geography of South-West Africa” from 1920–21 via the World Digital Library
• List of colonial heads of Namibia (South-West Africa)
• List of former German colonies
• Postage stamps and postal history of German South-West Africa
• Germans of Namibia
• Research Materials: Max Planck Society Archive
• Otavi Mining and Railway Company
• German Kamerun
• Togoland
• German East Africa

Shark Island Concentration Camp

Coordinates	26°38′45″S 15°9′14″E
Location	Luderitz, German South-West Africa
Operated by	Imperial German Army
Original use	Officially a prisoner of war camp, in reality a civilian internment camp, described by some as a death camp[1][2][3] or even extermination camp[4][5][6][7]
Operational	1905–1907
Inmates	Herero, Nama
Killed	unknown (estimated at least 1,032 up to 3,000)

Shark Island Concentration Camp or “Death Island” (Konzentrationslager auf der Haifischinsel vor Lüderitzbucht ) was a concentration camp on Shark Island off Luderitz, Namibia used by the German empire during the Herero and Namaqua genocideof 1904–1908. Between 1,032 and 3000 Herero and Namaqua men, women, and children died in the camp between its opening in 1905 and its closing in April 1907.^[8][9][10]

Following the abandonment of Lothar von Trotha‘s policy of exterminating Herero within the borders of German South-West Africa by denying them access to water holes, the colonial authorities adopted a policy of sweeping the bush clear of Herero – both civilians and rebels – and removing them, either voluntarily or by force, to concentration camps.^[11] Shark Island in Lüderitz bay was chosen as a site for a camp due to the difficulty of escape, the nearby presence of large numbers of German soldiers, and the need for labour in the region.^[12]

Although there are records of Herero prisoners-of-war being held in Lüderitz bay as early as 1904, the first references to a camp at Shark Island and the transfer of large numbers of Herero prisoners from Keetmanshoop are in March 1905.^[12] From early on, large numbers of Herero died in the camp, with 59 men, 59 women and 73 children reportedly dying by late May 1905.^[13] Despite this high initial rate of mortality on the island which, with its cold climate, was unsuitable for habitation, particularly for people used to the dry, arid climate of the veld, the German authorities continued to transfer people from the interior to the island, ostensibly because of a lack of food in the interior, but also because they wished to use the prisoners as labour in constructing a railway connecting Lüderitz with Aus.^[14]

Word quickly spread among the Herero of the conditions at the camp, with prisoners in other parts of German South-West Africa reportedly committing suicide rather than be deported to Lüderitz due to the stories of harsh conditions there in late 1905.^[15] The Cape Argus, a South African newspaper, also ran stories describing terrible conditions at the camp in late September 1905. One transport rider who was described as having been employed at the camp in early 1905 was quoted as saying:

The women who are captured and not executed are set to work for the military as prisoners … saw numbers of them at Angra Pequena (i.e., Lüderitz) put to the hardest work, and so starved that they were nothing but skin and bones […] They are given hardly anything to eat, and I have very often seen them pick up bits of refuse food thrown away by the transport riders. If they are caught doing so, they are sjamboked (whipped).^[16]

Many cases of rape of prisoners by Germans were reported at the camp.^[17] Although some of these cases did result in the perpetrator being successfully punished where a “white champion” took up the victim’s cause, the majority of cases went unpunished.^[18]

Whilst the Germans initially followed a policy of sending people from the south to concentration camps in the north, and vice versa,^[19] meaning that Nama prisoners mostly went to concentration camps around the city of Windhoek, by mid-1906 Germans in Windhoek were becoming increasingly concerned about the presence of so many prisoners in their city. In response to these concerns, in August 1906 the Germans began to transfer Nama prisoners to Shark Island, sending them by cattle-car to Swakopmund and then by sea to Lüderitz.^[20] The Nama leader, Samuel Isaak, protested this, saying that their transfer to Lüderitz had not been part of the agreement under which they had surrendered to the Germans, however, the Germans ignored these protests.^[20] By late 1906, 2,000 Nama were held prisoner on the island.

The prisoners held on Shark Island were used as forced labour throughout the camp’s existence.^[21] This labour was made available by the German army Etappenkommandofor use by private companies throughout the Lüderitz area, working on infrastructure projects such as railway construction, the building of the harbour, and flattening and levelling Shark Island through the use of explosives.^[22] This highly dangerous and physical work inevitably led to large-scale sickness and death amongst the prisoners, with one German technician complaining that the 1,600-strong Nama work force had shrunk to a strength of only 30–40 available for work due to 7–8 deaths occurring daily by late 1906.^[23] The policy of forced labour officially ended when prisoner-of-war status for the Herero and Nama was revoked on 1 April 1908, although Herero and Nama continued to labour on colonial projects after this.^[24]

The decision to close the camp was made by Major Ludwig von Estorff, who had signed the agreement under which the Witbooi (a Nama tribe) had surrendered to the Germans, after a visit to the camp in early 1907.^[25] After the closing of the camp, prisoners were transferred to an open area near Radford Bay. Whilst mortality rates were still high initially in the new camp, they eventually declined.

The precise number of deaths at the camp are unknown. A report by the German Imperial Colonial Office estimated 7,682 Herero and 2,000 Nama dead at all camps in German South-West Africa,^[26] of which a significant portion died at Shark Island. A military official at the camp estimated 1,032 out of 1,795 prisoners held at the camp in September 1906 having died, it is estimated that eventually only 245 of these prisoners survived. The over-all figure for deaths at the camp has been estimated as being as many as 3,000.^[8] Combined with deaths amongst prisoners held elsewhere in Lüderitz bay, the total may well exceed 4,000.^[27]

The vast majority of these prisoners died through preventable diseases such as typhoid and scurvy exacerbated by malnutrition, over-work^[28] and the unsanitary conditions in the camps.^[26] The German garrison itself and commander von Zulow used the name “Death Island” for the camp.^[29][30]

Research was conducted by the doctor Eugen Fischer on the skulls of dead prisoners^[31] and on prisoners with scurvy by Dr Bofinger. In 2001 a number of these skulls were returned from German institutions to Namibia.^[32] The captured women were forced to boil heads of their dead inmates (some of whom may have been their relatives or acquaintances) and scrape remains of their skin and eyes with shards of glass, preparing them for examinations by German universities.^[33]

• 
• 

  Head of Shark Island prisoner used for medical experimentation

  References

1. Nazi Empire: German Colonialism and Imperialism from Bismarck to Hitler – Page 48 2011 The concentration camp at Shark Island off the coastal city of Lüderitz became, for all practical purposes, a death camp
2. The Kaiser’s Holocaust: Germany’s Forgotten Genocide and the Colonial Roots of Nazis – Page 220 Casper Erichsen, David Olusoga – 2010 Shark Island was a death camp, perhaps the world’s first
3. Genocide: A Comprehensive Introduction – Page 123 Adam Jones – 2010 – It created the German word Konzentrationslager[concentration camp] and the twentieth century’s first death camp
4. The Nature of Heritage: The New South Africa By Lynn Meskel page 1872 ” the world’s first extermination camp on Shark Island”
5. The Devil’s Handwriting: Precoloniality and the German Colonial State in Qingdao, Samoa, and Southwest Africa George Steinmetz University of Chicago Press page 173 15 Sep 2008
6. Possibly the Shark Island Konzentrationslager was the world’s first death camp and largely functioned as an extermination centre
7. Border Conflicts in a German African Colony: Jacob Morengo and the Untold Tragedy of Edward Presgrave P. H. Curson page 49
8. ^a b Zimmerer & Zeller 2003, p. 80.
9. Overmans, Rüdiger (1999). In der Hand des Feindes : Kriegsgefangenschaft von der Antike bis zum Zweiten Weltkrieg (in German). p. 291. Die Verhältnisse in Swakopmund, zu denen sich Tecklenburg äußerte, stellten keine Ausnahme dar. Noch schlimmer lagen die Verhältnisse im Konzentrationslager auf der Haifischinsel vor Lüderitzbucht, dem größten Gefangenenlager. Dort wurden sowohl Herero wie Nama interniert und ihrem Schicksal überlassen. Die Inhaftierung auf de.” reprinted in Jürgen Zimmerer Deutsche Herrschaft über Afrikaner: Staatlicher Machtanspruch und … (2004). Page 46.
10. Erichsen 2005, pp. 
11. Erichsen 2005, p. 26.
12. ^a b Erichsen 2005, pp. 72–73.
13. Erichsen 2005, p. 73.
14. Erichsen 2005, p. 74.
15. Erichsen 2005, pp. 75–76.
16. Erichsen 2005, p. 78.
17. Erichsen 2005, p. 87.
18. Erichsen 2005, p. 86.
19. Erichsen 2005, p. 104.
20. ^a b Erichsen 2005, p. 109.
21. Erichsen 2005, p. 113.
22. Erichsen 2005, pp. 113–114.
23. Erichsen 2005, pp. 117–118.
24. Erichsen 2005, p. 119.
25. Erichsen 2005, p. 128.
26. ^a b Sarkin 2011, p. 125.
27. Erichsen 2005, p. 133.
28. Erichsen 2005, pp. 134–139.
29. The Kaiser’s Holocaust: Germany’s Forgotten Genocide and the Colonial Roots of Nazism Casper Erichsen, David Olusoga Faber & Faber, 5 Aug 2010 page 220
30.  Border Conflicts in a German African Colony: Jacob Morengo and the Untold Tragedy of Edward Presgrave P. H. Curson page 49
31. Fetzer, Christian (1913–1914). “Rassenanatomische Untersuchungen an 17 Hottentotten Kopfen”. Zeitschrift fur Morphologie und Anthropologie (in German): 95–156.
32. Cabinet approves return of skulls New Era. 25 March 2011. Windhoek. Accessed 25 March 2013.
33. The Kaiser’s Holocaust: Germany’s Forgotten Genocide and the Colonial Roots of Nazis – Page 224 Casper Erichsen, David Olusoga – 2010

Sources

• Drechsler, Horst. “Let Us Die Fighting: The Struggle of the Herero and Nama against German Imperialism (1884–1915)”, Akademie-Verlag Berlin, 1986 (3rd Ed.)
• Erichsen, Casper W. (2005). The angel of death has descended violently among them: Concentration camps and prisoners-of-war in Namibia, 1904–08. Leiden: University of Leiden African Studies Centre. ISBN 90-5448-064-5.
• Gewald, Jan-Bart. “Herero Heroes: A Socio-Political History of the Herero of Namibia 1890–1923”, James Currey, Oxford, 1999.
• Lau, Brigitte. “History and Historiography: 4 essays in reprint”, Discourse/MSORP, Windhoek, May, 1995.
• Sarkin, Jeremy (2011). Germany’s Genocide of the Herero: Kaiser Wilhelm II, His General, His Settlers, His Soldiers. Cape Town, South Africa: UCT Press. ISBN 978-1-919895-47-5.
• “Report on the natives of South-West Africa and their treatment by Germany.” Administrator’s Office, Windhuk [sic], London: His Majesty’s Stationery Office, 1918. (Blue Book)
• Zimmerer, Jürgen; Zeller, Joachim (2003). Völkermord in Deutsch-Südwestafrika: Der Kolonialkrieg 1904 – 1908 (in German).