Eugenics and racism also played a terrible role in the German colonies of Africa. In Namibia, the Germans, on gaining Namibia as a colony in 1884-85 (after the partition of Africa at the Berlin conference), began to seize the lands of the Herero and Naama tribes. They pushed them into the deserted areas where the land was poor. The German settlers raped their women. They were called baboons, disrespected, and used for cheap labour. Eventually, these tribes decided to rebel and fight off the Germans. They initially killed the German settlers and left the women and kids alive.
In response, the Germans sent a large battalion of soldiers to Namibia to wipe out the two tribes. With advanced weapons, they quickly destroyed the two tribes, killed almost all their men, and chased the rest into the desert where they starved and thirsted to death. They also killed their women and children. The remaining were rounded up and sent to concentration camps, where they were worked to death. Thousands were used as ‘human guinea pigs’ for experiments to prove eugenics.
Pregnant women were ripped apart and their babies were taken out, leaving both mother and baby to die. These were done to experiment with human pregnancy. They were injected with poisons and other chemicals to see how they will react to it. They were beheaded, their heads were deskinned like goats, and their skulls were sent to Germany to study human anatomy and prove that whites were superior to blacks.
This was the first genocide in the 20th century and the German government has both apologized for these crimes and offered compensation to Namibia. Thousands of human skulls and bones were sent to Germany for experiments and remain in their museums and medical schools. Some of these were returned to Namibia for burial recently.
For these Germans, the black man was not human, but apes. The same doctors and people who carried out these atrocities lived to continue the same crimes against the Jews in Auschwitz, Dachau, Birkenau, and other concentration camps in World War II. Namibia was only a testing ground.
Between 1904-1908 when these atrocities occurred, the population of the Hereros and Naamas was reduced by 80%! Today, they are a minority in Namibia. For millions of their descendants, justice still remains a dream.
Thanks for reading. Happy Sabbath!
