Namibia's Herero and Nama debunk the "single story" of 'Holocaust', exposing white supremacy's collusion to exclude

I think it's safe to say, that most of our knowledge of holocaust and reparations comes from the "single story" of Germany and the Jews.  But, as stated in the following introductory piece by Abagond:

"People who blame the Jewish Holocaust on Hitler and the Nazis alone need to think again: Germany showed itself to be a genocidal nation when Hitler was just 15."

Quiet as it's kept, the Jews were neither the first, nor the only people to suffer Germany's greed and insecurity-induced, depravity.  Their first victims?  The Herero and Nama peoples of Namibia.

Do stay with me as Abagond educates, with some African history that has been all but buried amidst the collusion of white supremacy.

~#~

Cross-posted with permission, from Abagond:

The Herero and Nama genocide

Thu 26 Jul 2012 by abagond

The fortunate ones: Herero who escaped the German genocide, c. 1907

The Herero and Nama genocide (1904-1908) was carried out by Germany in South West Africa, now called Namibia. It killed 60,000 Hereros and 10,000 Nama, 50% to 70% of them. It featured concentration camps, skin-and-bone people, mass graves, medical experiments and good German record-keeping – more than 30 years before the Jewish Holocaust.

People who blame the Jewish Holocaust on Hitler and the Nazis alone need to think again: Germany showed itself to be a genocidal nation when Hitler was just 15.

There is no guesswork about this being a genocide: we have the orders, the letters and the diaries that leave no doubt that the Germans meant to wipe out the Herero and Nama and take their land. It was not just a case of a general gone mad or a war gone wrong.

present-day Herero woman, 2010

In the late 1800s there were 80,000 Herero and 20,000 Nama. Both had land and they herded cows. The Herero were Bantu and lived in the middle of Namibia, the Nama were Khoisan (Hottentots) and lived to the south. They were armed with rifles.

The Germans were badly outnumbered and outgunned. They were in constant fear of an uprising, which in turn put the Herero in constant fear that war was about to break out. And so it did in 1904.

At first the Herero were winning: the Germans were not just outgunned, but the governor was away in the south fighting the Nama.

General Lothar von Trotha

Germany, afraid of losing face, sent General Lothar von Trotha with men, cannons and machine guns – weapons the Herero had no defence against.

The Herero were defeated and massacred at the Battle of Waterberg. Most Herero escaped and fled across the desert to British Bechuanaland (Botswana), men, women, children and cows. The German army pursued. Only 1,000 Herero made it across the border to British territory. The rest died of thirst or were gunned down by the Germans. It was senseless and gruesome but when questioned Von Trotha said he wanted their “total extermination”.

Von Trotha was a dark angel of Darwin:

Where the climate allows the white man to work, philanthropic views cannot banish Darwin’s law “Survival of the Fittest”.

The Nama were next. They fought a hit-and-run guerrilla war. The Germans fought back by burning down all their houses and granaries.

Studies on Nama, Herero and mulattoes at the camps supported German ideas about race and genocide. About 3,000 skulls were sent to Germany for further study.

About 17,000 Herero and Nama, some half-white, were sent to concentration camps along the coast, like Shark Island. They were forced to build the Otavi railroad – men, women and children, underfed, some skin and bones, raped and whipped, worked till they dropped. Conditions were so terrible almost half never made it out of the camps alive.

Those who lived through the genocide were tattooed and forced to wear an identity badge around their necks. Their movements were controlled by the government. With land and livestock gone they had little choice but to work for Germans in the new racial hierarchy.

And yet still the Germans feared them.

A hundred years later Germany apologized but did not think they owed the Herero and Nama anything more than their fine words.

Source: “Forgotten Genocides” (2011), edited by Rene Lemarchand

~#~

Yes, the Herero and Nama Holocaust -- which included the plundering of their land -- give the absolute lie to the "single story"of Jewish ownership of the word.

I don't know about you, but as a child of the African Diaspora, it wasn't until a year or so ago, that I knew anything about these facts.  But, it's no real surprise that this particular story is hardly, if ever  disseminated is it?  After all, it is the victor who writes the history.

I thank Abagond for both, writing and permitting me to repost this heretofore, mostly buried, African history truth.   I have to admit though, it was Brother Asa's, The Forgotten Namibian Genocide, posted over at AfroSpear in late September, that rocked my soul and had me hearing Jimmy Baldwin whispering:

I have said that the Civilized have never been able to honor, recognize, or describe the Savage. Once they had decided that he was savage, there was nothing to honor, recognize or describe.

Yes, I read Abagond's post, and yes, I saw the pictures.  But this was way more than that. The stories told in the BBC documentary embedded there -- were Baldwin's words writ large.  The unvarnished truth told, based on facts documented by the Germans themselves, confirms that.  What it also shows, is  the mastery with which white supremacy colludes, to make and keep those not similarly situated -- invisible.  After watching it, I felt the need to leave an immediate comment.  Here's a part of what I said:

"I didn’t know anything about this until Abagond’s post; they taught me nothing about this in Catholic school, or my movin’ on up, predominantly Black, public school, nor my Alabama HBCU! That, is not only a damned shame — it’s the most effective trick ever played! That’s why we have no unity, Man. We don’t know shit about “those ties that bind” — nor anything at all about those, who bind the ties.  Chilling.{smdh}

Even worse, schools still, to this day, mandate the teaching and learning about “The Holocaust” the Jews experienced (as if it were the only “holocaust” ever) — at the hands of these same Germans — but nothing about this! Insulting, to say the very damned least. What about our children having to know and understand this shit along with its historical implications on them, today?"

After leaving that comment at Asa's, I was reminded of a long, back-and-forth where I'd been taken to task by white and Black alike -- for using the term, "African Holocaust" in a comment on this post last year.  The post was about that, "Woman is the Nigger of the World" Slutwalk sign, but it evolved  (or devolved, depending on how you see it) after I said, on 10/8/11 @4:05 pm, in response to someone else:

Thanks Laura. When I read that – You can’t expect millions of people to understand the complex history and impacts of the word when they are simply copying their favourite music artist….” BS, I had to step away from the computer for awhile, because it just wears me out sometimes how white folk will say just anything – even, and especially if it’s stupid – to hold onto that privilege. Millions of people understand the complex history of the Jewish Holocaust (6 million) and impacts of the slurs so associated, however the African Holocaust (20+ million) – not so much. {smdh}

The issue in the comments then became --"Who has the right to use the word, holocaust" with a comment from Layla on 10/10/11 @ 6:49 p.m.  It's quite long, so I'll just post the first paragraph and you can follow the link to read the rest of it, as well as, the rather lengthy, sometimes heated contretemps among the ladies:

I’m curious to know what the author to the OP has in mind when she writes of “off-limits terminology … reclaimed by Jewish communities”. The only one I can really think of is usage of the term ‘holocaust’ which refers to the specifically genocide committed by Nazis in WWII. And yet Deb (#comment-4964) has decided to appropriate that term for herself by referring to the “African Holocaust...The fact that nobody called out Deb in her appropriation of ‘Holocaust’, combined with these other musings, make me think that we care less about eliminating oppression and social justice for all and more about how we can discursively advantage ourselves and ‘our people’. It’s this tribalism that depresses me more and more.

My response to her was equally lengthy, but here's some of it starting on 1010/11 @ 10:35pm:

That the only “off-limits terminology” of which you can think, as relates to the Jewish community is ’holocaust’, seems disingenuous at best if we’re going to engage in real talk here (I’ll get to that in a minute).

But first of all, ‘holocaust’ as defined by Merriam-Webster (and crunktastic) includes: mass slaughter of people; especially: GENOCIDE. Though often capitalized to refer to the Jews, that is NOT it’s only definition (translation – it’s not all about the Jews. Therefore, as much as you’d like to believe I’m “appropriating” a term that is the sole purview of a specific group of people – I am not (but your statement is too funny on its face, given all the “appropriation” in which white folk – and those who subscribe to “Being White and Other Lies” have engaged, but I digress). As crunktastic said in her reply, “you should go read a history book, or two, or five.”...Your use of the word “inane” followed by “oppression” versus “genocide” – along with your willingness to vehemently defend Jewish “genocide” while merely lumping the African Holocaust (and yes crunktastic, I do view it as such) in with other “oppression” already tells me you are comfortable making some people invisible – *full stop*

Crazy stuff right?  Regardless, the way I view it hasn't changed -- it just got better-educated, thanks to German hubris.  And as I looked back at the exchanges through a "less warm" lens," I realized, I'd missed a most important comment, directly related to this post, made by eshowman on 10/11/11 @ 4:29 pm.  She said:

Layla, one of the ways that white privilege works is that whites do not have to utilize any intellectual rigor in their comments about race and expect to be seen as valid, Hundreds of African ethnic groups were decimated during colonization of Africa and German tactics used to wipe out the Herero and Namaqua in what is now Namibia were simply less sophisticated practice for what they would to 9 million people (not iust 6 million Jews), including all black Germans 50 years later. Are you saying that the Africans pain felt is less important that that of the Jews?

So caught up in Layla's foolishness, I'd overlooked the reference that would've led me to this history lesson a year before Abagond's post.  But it didn't register -- because I didn't know a damned thing about it!

For the second time now, the video on Asa's post has become "unavailable" (through no fault of his; first the YouTube video disappeared then, the Google video disappeared!).   Luckily (at least for now) I'd found it in parts on YouTube and saved it to this draft.  I'm going to post as many of the six as I can and just hope you get to see them before they too, are all pulled.  Please see it through to the end, I promise there's lots to  learn:

• "But what few people realize, is that places like Auschwitz were not Germany's first concentration camps, and the Holocaust was not Germany's first genocide."
• "But the ghosts of the Namibian genocide have been re-awoken.  They've returned to haunt modern, liberal, post-war Germany.  And in doing so,  they force Germany to wake up to a very, uncomfortable fact -- that the dark, racial theories that helped to inspire the Nazis, run much deeper into German and European history than most people want to acknowledge."
• "Today, the grandchildren of those who survived the Namibian genocide have begun to fight for compensation, and for Germany to acknowledge the first genocide of the 20th century -- the genocide of the Second Reich."  And us?  We just happy as hayell to have a Black face in the White House. {smdh}
• Isn't it funny how white supremacy treats German "slums," finding more space for them to spread out, as opposed to American "slums," which somehow, don't deserve the same effort?  America's MO is to blame us "Others" for our circumstances, choosing gentrification to solve our "ghetto" problems.  What damned good does that do us??  Let's not lie to ourselves anymore m'kay?  There's quite a bit of uninhabited land in America.  Hell, during my numerous roadtrips  -- up and down the East coast; across the country, back and forth to the Middle Coast (read, "Belly of the Beast"); or day-trippin' from Monterey, down to San Diego, or up to Big Sur,  I've seen plenty "purple mountains' majesties"; "amber waves of grain" and some "fruited plains!"
• "One reason for the slow pace of colonization was that the land was already the living space of the local African peoples...like colonists elsewhere, they would have to take that land from the Africans."  And to this day -- nothing about that has changed!  What I wanna know is, will we children of the African Diaspora, ever, collectively "stand our damned ground?"  It seems to me that, unlike the Herero and Nama, modern-day Blacks, living in Western societies especially, are so wrapped up in our assimilation -- we cannot even perceive of being "convinced that there was no other option but to resist." {smdh}

Namibia Genocide 2/6 cannot be embedded "by request" (whose "request," I wonder)  Here's the link -- you can still watch it on YouTube.  After you do, maybe you can explain to me why this part, in particular, has been censored (I do have some thoughts as to why, but I'll hold them for right now).



"This world is being redistributed.  With time, we will inevitably need more space.  And only by the sword, will we be able to get it.   This is a matter for our generation, and for our existence."

Man!  That shit sounds like, looks like, and feels just like our faux, "American empire" being led by the Changeling, who has, to-date:

• disrespected Pakistan's sovereignty so he could brag about murdering Osama (Can you imagine some foreign country, rollin' up on us like that without getting -- slaughtered??)
• disrespected Libya's sovereignty so he and Hilary could brag about murdering Qaddafi  ("We came, we saw, he died."  How crass is that?!)
• and as a result of undercover fomenting of rebellion, soon, he'll disrespect Syria's sovereignty because that's what his string-pullers demand
• declared Afghanistan his "necessary war"
• sent U.S. troops to Australia to guard the Uranium sitting on indigenous land;
• kowtowed to Israel on the spread of settlements on Palestinian land (as Dr. Clarke said, "Who told you God was in the real estate business?"); on Iranian sanctions that are choking the sovereign country's ability to do business, hobbling its economy; and certainly on the ever-present, "war " whistles
• continued to grind that financial, foot-on-neck in Haiti, in collusion with Daddy Shrub and Slick Willy, ousting democratically elected leaders in favor of those loyal to empire
• helped the rest of the western, white supremacists install a puppet to rule in Côte d'Ivoire "by the sword"
  
  
  
  
• "Numbered metal tags?"  It just befuddles me how, we readily ignore the pain and suffering of our own, for that of supposed "allies" who historically had their hands all over the slave trade.
• Death certificates with "death through exhaustion" pre-printed on them -- just like my SC birth certificate,  pre-printed with "Negro" on it. {smdh}
• "Forced slave labor" -- sounds just like America, right?  Tell me, who built that damned White House and all of those fine buildings up in Washington, DC?
• "Today this cemetery is the playground for the tourists who ride dune buggies over the remains of the Herero dead." Is that not similar to what has happened to more Black graves in America than we can count, all over these alleged, United States?  When I went to James Island (now Kunta Kinte Island) in The Gambia, there was definitely some Pan-African "warmness" happening when, given its significance, we saw some young, white Europeans playing around on the "Freedom Flagpole" (it's around the 0:45 click in the video).  My few trips there taught me that Europeans do find the country to be their "playground" when they're on holiday).
• And Shark Island?  The African "Auschwitz," if I do say so myself.

• Just like the "postcards" sent and saved here in America, the poster children of white supremacy also had an affinity for photographing those they'd exterminated.
• A municipal camping site?  Really??
• Apparently cattle-cars were the rage, long before Jews rode to their fate in them.  But, true to the collusion, it is only the Jewish suffering that has been memorialized (listen to the reasons for this project, and I'll bet you a nickel you'll see white Tennessee's, racist slip showing).
• "A new history of the colony was fabricated..." -- There's nothing new under the sun when dealing with white supremacy, Family.  My prayer is that we  will all, sooner, rather  than later -- get that shit through our heads!

This is where the Jews enter the picture -- after Germany had already perfected their tactics.  So  the "Oppression Olympics," with which I'd been accused in the afore-mentioned post last year is certainly moot.

"The descendants of the Herero who had survived the genocide began to revive their history.  But what they discovered was that the story of the genocide had been completely wiped from official memory.  Three generations of white Namibians had been born into a nation where only their history was officially accepted."

Family, we re-e-e-ally have to start recognizing that this is how people's histories get erased.  If you can't, you should -- because it's all the same shit different day.  For Germany to have built "a huge statue to celebrate their victory over the Herero, actually on the site of their biggest concentration camp," is absolutely unconscionable -- but again, hardly surprising given with whom we're dealing.  And "the land!"  What the hell can be said about that?  Unless you're deaf, dumb and blind, there's no way you can't see what's happening with "the land" -- all over the world -- and not be able to put two and two together.

Per the narrator, the Von Trotha family's apology notwithstanding, "This apology will not appease the Herero, solve the land issue or end the reparations case."  And it should not.  Hell, people can't eat apologies, nor can they build homes or pass down wealth to their children on them as the colonizers have.  Now don't get it twisted, apologies are good,  if, and only if, they're sincere, and backed up by some real, tangible action.  Like my Grandmama used to say, "It ain't what dey say, Debi -- it's what dey do!"

In Part 1 of the six videos, the narrator says, "This is the story of the genocide that modern Germany has not come to terms with."  No shit!  To this day, not only is Germany still ignoring the living survivors and descendants of this African Holocaust, perpetrated for the purposes of "greed is good," land-grabbing barbarity; experimentation to prove their Aryan-ness was superior to our African-ness; "practice" for what was to come for the Jews, almost 40 years later  (as eshowoman noted in her comment above), and of course -- facilitating the collusion of the White Supremacist Capitalist Patriarchy (WSCP).

How is that you ask?  My Sister, bell hooks, defines the WSCP here.  And as I understand her, it evokes a political world that we all frame ourselves in relationship to.  Moreover, its ideology allows anyone -- willing to collude with the forces of racism and imperialism in order to preserve the institutional construct of interlocking systems of domination that define our reality -- to be a part (so it ain't just white folk).

Keeping that definition in mind in relation to the Jews, Germany gets to look like the appropriately, and generously repentant, former savagely murdering, oppressive regime to the rest of the White Supremacist Capitalist Patriarchy who, complicit, and turning a blind eye when Hitler and the Nazis were exterminating Jews -- get to share in that lookin' good (a regular, "alabaster bretheren alliance" until most recently, with the Changeling, dutifully taking on America's guilt, with his, "I have Israel's back" pronouncement; the "Son of Africa hasn't said jack about having any Africans' backs however -- unless of course, it jibes with what the string-pullers want him to say);  AND, Jewish victims of the Nazis, get to not only own the word "holocaust" -- but to benefit handsomely from the owning, here, there and everywhere -- all while the experiences of Africans are relegated to a position akin to Ralph Ellison's, "Invisible Man."

There is much with which I agree in this piece -- The Legal Claim for German Reparations to the Herero Nation.  However, this small portion is illustrative of the collusion of the WSCP, marginalizing folk as they usually do:

"It would be both a futile and dishonorable discourse to venture into any kind of a comparative analysis of genocide - and such a discussion is irrelevant for purposes of the Herero position. Genocide is genocide: murdering an African tribe cannot be rotely (sic - I think remotely is what was meant) compared to murdering a European people, or a European nation. Nothing that the Herero say in any way dismisses or diminishes the unique crimes that Germany committed against Jews. Modern international law of reparations is dominated by extensive Jewish claims for reparations against Germany and other countries, but this is not the limit of reparations claims. Even in the context of World War Two, reparations have been paid to others, including $1.2 billion to Americans of Japanese descent for their imprisonment and loss of their lands. Also reparations have been made in a parallel settlement to Japanese Canadians, and a case is pending against the Japanese for reparations for Korean "comfort women," forced into prostitution by the Japanese army. Other European claims, including that of the Romani people, raised by other peoples subjected to mass extermination in concentration camps, have failed. None of these claims for reparations compare to the Jewish holocaust, but their success, nevertheless, represents important advances in human rights law." (emphasis mine)

Yeah, I couldn't wrap my brain around the emphasized portions.  Particularly given what followed them.  Still, it's an analysis worth a read, if for nothing else, than this simple observation:

The Herero did not "invent" their demand for reparations. Rather, it is derived entirely from their careful reading of modern German history. Germany is making reparations to both individual Jews and the State of Israel for acts of genocide inthe 1930s and 1940s, scarcely thirty years after the Herero War. The Herero ask an obvious question: what is the legal - or moral - distinction between German genocide directed at Jews and German genocide directed at Africans? Surely, in the modern world, a racial distinction cannot account for this difference in policy. Or is the distinction based on some meaningful difference between genocide in the Herero War and World War Two? As it was simply put by Mburumba Kerina, a Herero activist, "(T)he concerns of the Hereros must be seen in the same light as that of the Jewish people." (emphasis mine)

Now don't you think, with all these "lettered, Black, American academics" all over every manner of media and "higher education" (I use those last two words very loosely, given who's had, and continues to have, their hands on the "higher education" rudder.  Guess you can tell, I'm not much for impressing folk with symbolism) -- they would've been able to use all those alphabets to come up with an effective and feasible demand for reparations for Black folk here in America (instead of just lining their pockets). But they haven't. Yet, many of us, look down our noses at our family across the water as "savages," just like the WSCP does. (smdh)  But unlike us, they went to work  -- researching all the variables and coming up with a legal plan that's sound, which still may not survive the machinations of the WSCP -- but they stood up, and continue to do so.

~#~

Okay finally, I want to wrap this up with the beautiful, critically thinking, young sister, Chimamanda Adichie, and her warning about, "The danger of a single story" -- because it applies.  She says:

"...So that is how to create a single story; show a people as one thing, as only one thing, over and over again, and that is what they become.

It is impossible to talk about the single story without talking about power.  There is a word, an Igbo word, that I think about whenever I think of the power structures of the world and it is "nkali," it's a noun that loosely translates to -- "to be greater than another." Like our economic and political worlds, stories, too are defined, by the principal of "nkali." how they are told, who tells them, when they are told, how many stories are told -- are really dependent on power.

Power is the ability not just to tell the story of another person but to make it the definitive story of that person. The Palestinian poet, Mourid Barghouti writes that if you want to dispossess a people, the simplest way to tell that story, is to tell the story and to start with, secondly.  Start the story with the arrows of the Native Americans and not with the arrival of the British and you have an entirely different story.  Start with the story of the failure of the African states, and not with the colonial creation of the African states, and you have an entirely different story."

I started this post on the heels of Yom Kippur (which ended Wednesday, September 26 ) and I'm wondering -- for which behaviors, did Jews "atone" and "repent?"  Was it for their ongoing inhumane treatment of the Palestinians whose land they took and continue to occupy like the Germans?  Or was it for their racist treatment  of Africans whom they daily abuse, both physically and psychologically and at times, try to exterminate?  Or maybe, for the truth they've contorted and used, in collusion with the WSCP that allows them to continue to own the word "holocaust" as only theirs, in return for all manner of special dispensations and varied reparations from Germany and the rest of the White Supremacist Capitalist Patriarchy worldwide?

Back to Chimamanda:

"Stories matter. Many stories matter.  Stories have been used to dispossess and to malign, but stories can also be used to empower and to humanize.  Stories can break, the dignity of a people, but stories can also repair that broken dignity... The single story creates stereotypes, and the problem with stereotypes is not that they are untrue, but that they are incomplete. They make one story become the only story…The consequence of the single story is this: It robs people of dignity. It makes our recognition of our equal humanity difficult. It emphasizes how we are different rather than how we are similar."

I agree -- but first, "many, many, more of our stories" must be told -- by us (I heard Nina Simone whispering as I wrote that). Until then...




Related:
Putin vows ‘Russia will never forget Holocaust’
Wholesale Murder of Africans
Namibia: The return of the Herero and Nama skulls- Coming to Terms With a Difficult History
Namibians welcome home skulls taken to Germany
The Paper Clip Project