MAZEL TOV
Many of the veterans of Germany’s
Southwest Africa extermination campaign
went on to become key Nazi activists
or otherwise inspired major figures in
the Third Reich. For example, Hermann
Goering idolized his father, Heinrich, for
his role as governor of Southwest Africa.
In the 1920s, former colonial Trooper
Franz Ritter von Epp went on to hire Adolf
Hitler, fund the purchase of the Nazi news-
paper Volkische Beobachter and, with Ernst
Rohm, helped found the Storm Troopers.
The Storm Troopers even adopted the
desert sand-colored brownshirt uniforms
worn by the troops deployed in Africa.
BLACKS IN GERMANY
After the 1919 Treaty of Versailles stripped
Germany of its African colonies, German
citizens were shocked to see African
soldiers patrolling their streets. It is not
widely known that when France occupied
post-Great War Germany, it deployed
20,000-40,000 colonial African troops.
The Germans reacted with a bitter
national protest movement, imbued with
sexual imagery, called “Black Shame on
the Rhine.” When a generation of Afro-
Germans arose, denigrated by Hitler and
the Nazis as “Rhineland Bastards,” they
were among the first to be forcibly steril-
ized.
When the Nazis came to power, like
throngs of other loyal Germans, some Afro-
Germans tried to join the Nazi Party. Hans
Massaquoi, son of a Liberian diplomat and
a German woman, was among those who
wanted to sign up with his local branch
of the Hitler Youth, just like the rest of his
schoolmates. Young Hans was astonished
to discover that the 1935 Nuremburg Laws,
defining German blood and racial status,
applied to him — denying him admittance.
His teacher reluctantly told him that
joining the Hitler Youth was now impos-
sible. “But I am German,” implored Hans,
“my mother says I’m German just like any-
body else.” Nearly hysterical, he pressured
his incredulous mother to take him to the
nearest Hitler Youth recruitment home,
where he was roundly told to leave.
From that moment on, Massaquoi
learned to live with the twin fears that the
Gestapo would knock on his door or that
Allied bombs would rain down on his
roof. After the war, Massaquoi was able
to imigrate to the United States, where
he became a paratrooper with the 82nd
Airborne Division. Later, Hans became
a marcher alongside Rev. Martin Luther
King Jr. in Chicago. In Chicago, he took
a job with Jet magazine and then Ebony,
where he rose to become the managing
editor.
JEWS MENTORING BLACKS
Ironically, African Americans were
impacted beneficially by Nazi policy
again in the 1930s when refugee Jewish
professors, ousted from their posts in
Germany, immigrated to the United
States. Some 50 such refugees accepted
teaching positions in historically black
colleges and universities, helping to men-
tor the generation that fought the civil
rights struggle.
Among the students who credit the
inspiration of German-Jewish professors
is Joyce Ladner, who went on to orga-
nize civil rights protests with Medgar
Evers and who would later rise to the
leadership of the Student Nonviolent
Coordinating Committee (SNCC) and the
Congress on Racial Equality (CORE).
Ladner’s mentor was Ernst Borinski,
a Jewish sociologist who arrived from
Germany in 1938 and eventually taught
at Tougaloo College in Mississippi. Others
include Dr. Joycelyn Elders, who went
from being mentored by a German-
Jewish professor to a distinguished career
in medicine. In 1993, she became sur-
geon general of the United States.
“The German-Jewish professors had
a tremendous impact on young blacks
in the South,” summed up African
American attorney Jim McWilliams, who
attended Talladega College.
U.S. RACIAL ‘SCIENCE’
In the 1940s, when African American
soldiers were deployed to Europe, Nazi
soldiers who encountered them treated
them mercilessly, often committing mas-
sacres and war crimes against them when
they were POWs.
After the fall of Berlin, returning
African American soldiers discovered
Nazi racial policy was in force in some 27
U.S. states that had adopted forced ster-
ilization laws based on corrupt German
eugenic pseudoscience. Ironically, this
race science had been nurtured in
America first and then transplanted to
Germany.
In American state after state, eugenic
boards quoted Nazi race theory and stat-
utes as justification to sterilize blacks and
even confine them in camps as a social
protective measure. In Connecticut, one
state program even sought to implement
Nazi-style race-based expulsions and
organized euthanasia of those deemed
unworthy of life.
We have only begun to chart the
impact of German policy on those of
African descent. More would be known,
but such research remains almost com-
pletely unfunded and indeed unsup-
ported. However, this much is certain: All
misery bleeds the same color blood. Any
man’s persecution should inspire every-
man’s crusade.
*
to our
ESSAY CONTEST
WINNERS!
1 st
Hannah Katz | Frankel Academy
2 nd
Zachary Collen | North Farmington
3 rd
Randi Traison | Frankel Academy
Thank you to all the high school seniors
who took the time to share their ideas
on how Jewish values can help create
a future free of domestic abuse.
May your creativity and dedication
continue to serve you well as you
continue your education.
100 MENSCHES is a group of men who are
taking a stance against domestic abuse and are
committing to being a part of the solution.
For more information on joining 100 Mensches,
please contact Ellen Yashinsky Chute at
248.592.2666 or eychute@jfsdetroit.org.
100 Mensches is an initiative of JCADA,
the Jewish Coalition Against Domestic Abuse,
a program of Jewish Family Service.
JCADA promotes education and awareness
about domestic abuse and serves as a resource
to the one in five families affected by this issue
in the metro Detroit Jewish community.
Human rights writer Edwin Black is the New York
Times bestselling author of IBM and the Holocaust,
War Against the Weak, and The Farhud. He can be
found at www.edwinblack.com.
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May 26 • 2016
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