by Carr, Firpo
“Everything that is now in space had its origins [at Mittelwerk], not in America or Russia,” said Rene Steenbeke, a retired Belgian army officer who survived Camp Dora. “This is where a new science started, but it is also where science and death met” (Reuters). Indeed, 27,000 slaves died at Mittelwerk during the war.[121]
Suffice it to say, Johnny Nicolas could easily be mistaken as a cross between James Bond and Frank Abagnale. Who is Frank Abagnale? He was the subject of the movie that was released in 2002 called, Catch Me If You Can.
Based loosely on the true story of con man Frank Abagnale Jr., it’s a giddy cat-and-mouse game between two infinitely talented players (Tom Hanks and Leonardo DiCaprio).
“Catch Me” traces the seemingly impossible rise and fall of Abagnale, who runs away from home in New Rochelle, N.Y., as a teenager in the mid-1960s, when his parents (Nathalie Baye and a nuanced Christopher Walken) announce they’re getting a divorce.
Armed with a checkbook for an account his father opened for him on his 16th birthday, Abagnale starts writing away, and it doesn’t take long for him to begin assuming identities to snag more cash. He poses as an airline pilot, a doctor and a lawyer, jumping from New York to Miami to Atlanta to New Orleans, and his supreme confidence compensates for his baby-faced features. By the time he’s done, he’s amassed $2.5 million.[122]
Steven Spielberg directed this film about Abagnale’s life. However, some Black activists take exception to Spielberg’s work as a slight to Blacks. What they see is a Hollywood run by “Jews.”
Plainly stated, these activists believe that a Jewish conspiracy exists that prevents more outstanding, true life stories of Black survival and heroism from ever reaching the silver screen. “Who cares about Frank Abagnale when you have Johnny Nicholas?” they ask.
Astonishingly, they protest, there are a plethora of films and documentaries by Spielberg and other Jews that dominate both the silver screen and the television tube.
“Give Johnny a chance,” they implore. “He even helped your people, the Jews in the Camp Dora. In fact,” they bemoan, “whether you celebrate Christmas or not, Johnny Nicolas was the real Saint Nick. Let’s celebrate his life in film!”
Chapter Five
The “Rhineland Bastards”—
Germany’s Black Children
“Some of the black soldiers married German women and had families. Others fathered illegitimate children. All of the children became known
as the “Rhineland Bastards.”[123]
—Ina R. Friedman
The Other Victims: First-Person Stories
of Non-Jews Persecuted by the Nazis.
Victims of the Holocaust came in all sizes, shapes, forms, and ages. Before and during World War II, some of the youngest victims of the Nazis were call “bastards.”
The primary definition of the word “bastard,” according to the Oxford English Dictionary (OED), is as follows: “One begotten and born out of wedlock; an illegitimate or natural child.” The German word for “bastard” has the exact same meaning as does the English word.
Obviously, the word “bastard” is a legitimate English word that one would find in the most reputable of English literature.
In fact, the most popular book with that distinction in English, or any number of other languages, is the Bible. And, interestingly, the word “bastard” is found within the pages of the Holy Writ.
At Hebrews 12:8, according to the King James Version of the Bible (the most popular of all English translations), we read the following:
“But if ye be without chastisement, whereof all are partakers, then are ye bastards, and not sons.” In short, “bastard” (Greek, nothos, νόθος) simply means illegitimate son (or child).
Who, then, were the “Rhineland Bastards”? They were the offspring of African French Black soldiers occupying Germany after World War I, and White German women.[†††††††††]
Recall that in Chapter One the Rhineland in western Germany was described as “that rich, highly industrialized area west of the Rhine River.” Since the “bastards” and the families they belonged to lived near the Rhineland, they were called the “Rhineland Bastards.”
As uncomfortable as it is to admit, Hitler’s use of the word could be technically correct, while what he meant by it was both racist and discriminatory. Why?
Because not all “mixed-race” babies that Hitler called bastards were illegitimate. Some of them were the product of an honorable marriage union between a Black African father and White German mother.
That he was racist in calling them such is borne out in another definition of the word “bastard.”
The Oxford English Dictionary also states that the word “bastard” is “a person of mixed breed,” yes, a “[m]ongrel, hybrid, [who is] of [an] inferior breed.”
By this definition some may think of the word “mulatto.” After all, these same “Rhineland Bastards” were also called, by Hitler himself, negermisclenga[‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡], or, in English, “mulatto.”
The Meaning Behind “Mulatto”
Many people may think the word “mulatto” is an innocent reference to a half-Black half-White child. Some may even be proud of themselves that they are even familiar with such a word.
“Oh yea,” they may boast to themselves, “I know what that means. A Black and White child.” Well, they are indeed correct. But, what they may not know is that it is a highly offensive word that degrades Black people specifically.
The etymology of “mulatto” reveals that it comes from the word “mule,” a hybrid animal. This is significant.
The thought was that if White blood were ever commingled with Black blood, then the inescapable result would be an animal. Aryan blood was to remain “pure,” without risk of contamination by Black blood.
The book, Wicked Words: Poisoned Minds—Racism in the Dictionary (2000), has this to say under its “mulatto” entry, which is directly related to our present discussion:
Other dictionaries [besides Webster’s Ninth New Collegiate Dictionary] list the words “hybrid,” “cross-breed,” “mongrel,” and “half-breed” as synonyms for “mulatto.”[124]
Hans J. Massaquoi (first mentioned in this book in Chapter Two), the “mixed-race” or biracial child who grew up in Nazi Germany, said the following about Hitler’s fears of a “mulatto state”:
Hitler then goes on to predict that “if the development of France in the present style were to be continued for three hundred years, the last remnants of Frankish blood would be submerged in the developing European-African mulatto state. An immense self-contained area of settlement from the Rhine to the Congo, filled with a lower race gradually produced from continuous bastardization.”[125]
According to Massaquoi, in 1933, Hitler’s minister of culture, Reichsbauern-fuhrer Richard-Walther Darre, openly advocated the “sterilization of all mulattoes.” A few commentators would argue that this was a “painless” process. The victims themselves would argue otherwise.
By 1937, the Gestapo (the German secret state police) had gathered many of these children for forcible sterilization, before it was “too late.”[§§§§§§§§§] Time was of the essence. We can hear and sense the urgency in Darre’s words:
It is essential to exterminate the leftovers from the black Shame on the Rhine. These mulatto children were created either through rape or by white mothers who were whores. In any case, there exists not the slightest moral obligation toward these racially foreign offspring. About fourteen years have elapsed in the meantime; those of the mulattoes who are still alive will now enter the age of puberty, meaning that there isn’t much time left for long discussions. … Thus, as a Rhinelander I demand: sterilization of all mulattoes with whom we were saddled by the black Shame at the Rhine. This measure has to be carried out within the next two years. Otherwise it is too late, with the result that hundreds of years later this racial deterioration will still be felt.[126]
Massaquoi and others had good reason to b
e concerned about German policy regarding its very own “mulatto” citizenry. This is attributable in part to the fact that other restrictions were placed on these innocent victims:
African German mulatto children were marginalized in German society, isolated socially and economically, and not allowed to attend university. Racial discrimination prohibited them from seeking most jobs, including service in the military.[127]
All precautionary measures were to be taken to prevent the “racial deterioration” of Hitler’s precious Aryan race. What he was ultimately after was called, of all things…
The “Good” Race
The ancient Greek prefix “eu” (ευ) basically means “good.” This is reflected in several English words that have clearly been influenced by ancient Greek. Perhaps the most common of a sampling of these words (which will be briefly discussed below) is the word “eulogy.”
Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary (10th edition) defines “eulogy” as “a commendatory formal statement or set oration,” or simply, “high praise.”
A eulogy is usually associated with a funeral and/or obituary. However, if anyone—dead or alive—has been praised, complimented, or well-spoken of in the strictest sense, he or she has been eulogized.
This is because the word “eulogy” is the combination of two Greek words: “eu” (ευ), meaning “good,” and “logos” (λογος), meaning “word.” So, “eulogy” literally means “good word.”
Our next kindred word is “euphemism.” The same dictionary tells us that it is “the substitution of an agreeable or inoffensive expression for one that may offend or suggest something unpleasant.”
The part that mentions the “agreeable or inoffensive expression” is something that “sounds good.”
This is the precise meaning in Greek of the word “euphemism,” which is the combination of “eu” (ευ), which means “good,” and “pheme” (φεμε), which means “to speak,” or “sound.” (When one speaks, he or she is making a sound.) Yes, something “agreeable” also “sounds good.”
Now we come to our final word that is specifically relevant to the subtitle above: eugenics—the “good gene.”
Eugenists (people who study eugenics) say that the method has a good and bad side to it. That is to say, the study of eugenics is listed in two different categories: positive eugenics and negative eugenics. World Book Encyclopedia states:
Eugenists … want to improve future generations by encouraging persons who are above average mentally and physically to have more children. This is called positive eugenics. Eugenists also propose that persons who are below average mentally or physically have fewer children. This is called negative eugenics.[128]
What is not mentioned here, unfortunately, is that White racist scientists have traditionally implied or stated outrightly that Blacks are inferior and should therefore have fewer and fewer children until there are, at least theoretically, no more Black people on the face of the earth.
The Nazis’ warped idea of eugenics masqueraded under the banner of legitimate science. And it especially aligned itself with what is perhaps the most popular scientific (and racist) theory ever, Darwinian evolution.
Drawing upon Social-Darwinism which emphasized the “survival of the fittest,” Hitler exploited the idea and—as his propaganda machine built up—spewed out the claims of certain anthropologists and pseudoscientific eugenicists (“race scientists”) to promote his idea of a master Aryan race.[129]
Historians and researchers who have concentrated their studies on the role the Nazis played in the ‘pseudoscience of eugenics’ suspect that Black Germans and the “Rhineland Bastards” were included as subjects of Nazi experimentation in this area.
Under the Nazis, eugenicists performed medical experiments on Jews and also on blacks and other minority groups. On July 20, 1942, Dr. Ernst Grawitz, SS Chief Physician, reported to Heinrich Himmler that racial blood testing had been performed in 1938 on the serums of “whites and blacks.” Some of the test subjects were perhaps “Rhineland Bastards” or African-Germans.[130]
This is yet another source that reveals that “African-Germans,” “Rhineland Bastards,” and “blacks” in general were all subjected to heinous medical experiments. Sadly, there was another group of players in this sick game of Nazi eugenics. Who were they? Racist American scientists![**********]
What may be shocking to some is the fact that Nazi scientists and American scientists collaborated on the practice of eugenics prior to World War II on an international level wherein the darker skinned races, particularly Africans and descendants of such in the Diaspora, would be eliminated, at the very least, through attrition.
Stefan Kühl, author of the book, The Nazi Connection: Eugenics, American Racism, and German National Socialism[††††††††††], has much to say on the subject, as is indicated in the very title of the book, please note the following review of the book.
Positive review of Stefan Kühl, The Nazi Connection: Eugenics, American Racism, and German National Socialism (New York: Oxford University Press, 1994). Kuhl demonstrates that until the outbreak of World War II, there was great interaction between racist American eugenicists and Nazi race scientists—and that much of their work was financed by the Pioneer Fund, which is still actively supporting research that demonstrates that intelligence is inherited.[131]
The American medical scientists employed “certain methods of eugenics” in connection with Blacks in the United States. At least Edward J. Larson, as documented in his book, Sex, Race and Science: Eugenics in the Deep South,[‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡] thinks so. One reviewer of his book writes the following:
Larson makes the point that certain methods of eugenics, such as compulsory sterilization, came to the South later than other states, precisely because the South was “backward” and resistant to the progressive reforms.[132]
A juxtaposition of what happened at the start of the rise of National Socialism in Germany in 1933 to what happened in America in 1932 with regard to the “Tuskegee Experiment” proves very revealing.
Some see the striking resemblance in medical experimentation on Blacks in both countries as more than a mere coincidence. They see collusion.
For forty years, from 1932 to 1972, 399 African-American males were denied treatment for syphilis and deceived by officials of the United States Public Health Service. As part of a study conducted in Macon County, Alabama, poor sharecroppers were told that they were being treated for “bad blood.” In fact, the physicians in charge of the study ensured that these men went untreated. In the 25 years since its details first were revealed, the study has become a powerful symbol of racism in medicine, ethical misconduct in human research, and government abuse of the vulnerable.[133]
To this very day, there are frightened Holocaust survivors who, irrespective of their race, color, or national origin, are afraid of well-meaning doctors who dawn white coats.
“Racism in medicine”? “Ethical misconduct in human research”? “Government abuse of the vulnerable”? Nazi Germany maybe? No. The United States of America!
Such experimentation was not likely to happen to Whites—not even to those considered “poor white trash.” They and their children were still considered to be members of “the good race.”
The Black child, on the other hand, even in “the Land of the Free,” unlike any other, is and has been the brunt of disparaging racist names. And, regrettably, these offensive names have not been restricted to the German “Rhineland Bastards.”
Take for example the term “tar baby.” The Oxford English Dictionary says that it is “a derog[atory] term for a Black [in the] U.S.” The term “pickaninny” is another one. According to the American Heritage Dictionary, the offensive word is “[u]sed as a disparaging term for a young Black child.”
Again, the Black child has no equal when it comes to these unenviable designations. This is true whether it is in Nazi Germany, the United States of America, or anywhere else in the world.
In order to halt the spread of “mulatto” babies, Hitler had to obviously halt the conjoining of their would-be parents—a Black male with a White female, or, a White male with a Black female.
Forbidden “Mixed Marriages”
The consensus of the German populace—even before Hitler came to power—was that White German men should not marry Black African women.
Not surprisingly (although some might indeed be surprised), some Germans were very aware of skin color differences and had a penchant for disliking dark-skinned people from Africa.
Even before Hitler, Germans were very color-conscious. Though Germany had had colonies in Africa prior to World War I, there were taboos against Germans marrying black women. The introduction of black troops after World War I became known as the “Black Disgrace.” Vicious cartoons condemning the “neger” circulated in the newspapers.[134]
Even before the Fascists came to power, violent protests against these liaisons and attacks on the products of these relationships became quite common. The children were called “Rhineland bastards” and it was decided that the men were nothing more than ‘black rapists’. Their offspring would lead to the bastardization of the German race and as such, the children had to be rendered infertile through a painless operation: sterilization.[135]
To stem the tied of “Rhineland Bastards” Nazi Germany’s Nuremberg Laws were set into motion. Among these laws was a provision which prohibited the union, whether in honorable marriage or otherwise, of a Black and a White, irrespective of the obviously heterosexual (the Nazis had a distaste for homosexuals) gender combination.