Germany's Black Holocaust: 1890-1945

by Carr, Firpo

  In these articles I discuss the Nazi racial policies that applied to Blacks, Jews, Gypsies, persons with mental and physical handicaps, etc. The Nazi mixed marriages and sterilization decrees were used across Germany and its occupied territories. In addition, there were local ordinances which applied to Blacks in particular. It is my theory that because of the small number of Blacks, the Nazis did not develop a “final solution” for Blacks as they did for the Jews and Gypsies. Instead, they used the existing laws. They also went about this quietly; they did not want to draw attention to their treatment of Blacks because they planned to recolonize Africa … and because they were using the mistreatment of Blacks by Americans as leverage against their mistreatment of European Jewry….

  Sincerely,

  [signed]

  Robert W. Kesting, Ph.D.

  Senior Archivist/Records Manager

  Appendix D

  A Black Female Holocaust

  Survivor Finally Speaks Out

  “Kay” is the Black female Holocaust survivor who gave the author a rare interview on Monday, January 20, 2003. In so doing, she broke over five decades of silence. And while she was quite reticent about revealing her story, she did allow entrance into a small corner of her world.

  As one might imagine, she is extremely shy and is, hence, very private about sharing her experience. As a result or consequence of her closely guarded privacy, she has never given an interview to anyone—till now—albeit brief.

  Thankfully, she agreed to give the author a never-before-shared glimpse into a horrible existence in Dachau as seen through the tender eyes of the young, now confused, Black girl she was.

  “Kay” was a delicate child in kindergarten when she was unceremoniously yanked from class by men with large black boots and thrown into Dachau, simply for being Black.

  The trauma she suffered as a little girl who was subjected to inconceivable medical experimentation was at times too much for her young impressionable mind to process.

  Her experiences could fill volumes. But, for now, here is a snippet of Kay’s background in her own words. Please be warned. The entire account here amounts, unfortunately, to nothing less than a tease. Even so, it is still an abbreviated story worth telling.

  As a child, I was called “negerweiwi” [which sounds like “nigger baby” in English]. It literally means “nigger girl.” The word “Frau” is “girl” or “married woman” in German. But back then the Bavarian word “weiwi” was used to refer to a woman or girl.

  As I got older and became a teenager, they then began calling me “soizneger,” which means “salt nigger.” This, too, is Bavarian. I remember asking my peers why they called me “soizneger.”

  They responded by saying that my teeth were as white as salt and they contrasted with my dark “nigger” skin. They also called me Blacky.

  I have an incredible amount of anger roiled up inside me. My experience in Dachau is like a sand pebble in my shoe. It will irritate me for the rest of my life, and there is nothing I can do about it.

  I remember along with others that we had no idea that the war [World War II] was over. This was because people were without radios. They were also in hiding, running around between bombed out building.

  They sought refuge in the mountains, all without knowing that the war was over. It was not over for the blacks and others for over a year as I remember. All communication was lost, yes, cut off. Who could have possibly known what the politicians agreed on.

  Hopefully, in the not-too-distant future, we can expect more in the way of revelations and insights from “Kay.”[§§§§§§§§§§§§§§§§§]

  Appendix E

  A Retired Black Liberator-

  Commander Finally Speaks Out

  On January 21, 2003, the author continued an interview with retired colonel Emmett Simmons, the African American liberator of the concentration camp at Dachau. The initial interview was conducted about three years prior.

  Simmons, who turned 82 on March 30, 2003[******************], was a lieutenant colonel in the United States Army. He was in command of the 758th, 763rd, and 791st tank battalions during World War II. Each battalion was composed of Companies A, B, C, and D.

  The army was segregated when Simmons served, and General George Patton was in command. Simmons has never been interviewed before. A couple of his heretofore unrevealed, fascinating experiences are briefly related here.

  In the first one he tells of his confrontation with two Nazi colonels. The second features his remarkable chance encounter with other Blacks in Dachau after his successful liberation push toward the camp.

  Execution of Nazi Officers

  It was 9:00 am on August 5, 1944. We were just east of Dachau when we encountered the 35th regimen of Hitler’s 36th Panzantha tank division. It had the reputation of being the most vicious of them all. Their orders were to keep the U.S. forces from reaching Dachau.

  As a Lt. Colonel I had under my command three African American tank battalions. The 758th, 763rd, and the 791st. Each battalion had Companies A, B, C, and D. The army was segregated and General George Patton was in command.

  After encountering the 35th regimen, I verified through my interpreter that the two Nazi colonels in charge were familiar with the Geneva Conventions that said we all play by the same rules.

  The 35th had three hundred and thirty (330) Tiger Shark tanks that were superior to our one hundred and ninety-six (196) American tanks. The Tiger Sharks had thicker armor and carried 10-12 men at any given time.

  The colonels verified that they were indeed familiar with the rules of the Geneva Conventions. This being the case, I ordered my guys to surrender. So the ones closest to the colonels raised their hands and began walking toward the Germans. All of a sudden, the Germans shot them down like dogs. I was shocked and horrified.

  I knew some of these boys personally. They had been with me for a long time. A few were from Mississippi, and didn’t have two pairs of shoes. It broke my heart to see them mowed down like dogs.

  I immediately ordered my men to box the Nazis in. Through quick maneuvering we were suddenly now in control. I confronted the colonels as to why they shot my boys down in cold blood. Through my interpreter they said that they thought my boys had stolen a tank. That wasn’t good enough for me.

  By now, we had already marched the colonels and five of his soldiers into the woods, away from the others. After hearing their lame excuse I turned to my executive officer, Captain George Winberg, a half-breed from Mississippi, and said, “You know what to do.”

  As soon as I said that the two colonels started hollering and crying in terror because they knew what it meant. The two machine gunners, the engineer, and two others (seven in all including the colonels), all started screaming and crying for their lives. “Spare me! Let me live!” They fell to their knees, crying, pleading, and begging for their lives.

  Encounter With Black

  Survivors at Dachau

  Once we got to Dachau we were in for the shock of our lives. Aside from the well-known horrors that were beyond description, we were completely surprised to see 8,000 half-breed Germans and Blacks from World War I! They looked at us as we stared back at them.

  There we all were, just gazing at one another.

  My heart went out to them. So, I gave them the benefit of the doubt and made sure that they got their allotted portion of food first.

  However, I came to realize that all we had in common was the color of our skin. These Blacks had German instincts. They even had attitude. They didn’t speak a word of English, but they made it clear that we didn’t belong in their country. I finally had to get tough with them.

  Apparently, they hadn’t seen any Black soldiers other than themselves, and most certainly not any that were in charge. I had my interpreter tell them that I was in charge and that they had to listen to me. They finally got the picture and calmed down.

  The half-breeders were pretty well off, and the Blacks were treated okay too, but not as well as the
half-breeds. As far as comparing their treatment with two other groups of prisoners is concerned, the Blacks and the half-breeds were both treated better than the Jews and Serbs who were treated awfully.

  It is the author’s sincere hope and desire that Simmons will someday put all his stories to pen and paper so that all can read of his highly unusual experiences as perhaps the only remaining Black commander who fought in the European theatre, and certainly the only one that liberated Blacks and others from Dachau.

  Appendix F

  A Black Former Medic

  Finally Speaks Out

  Mr. Jerome Fisher, who will turn 79 on Tuesday, March 11, 2003[††††††††††††††††††], worked as a medic in Europe during World War II.

  More specifically, he and his unit worked extensively at Dachau just after it had been liberated by Lt. Col. Emmett Simmons.

  He was interviewed telephonically by the author on January 21, 2003.

  I originally wanted to go to Tuskegee to be a pilot. Some of us had taken the IQ test and passed, but so many applied that it was too full. Being the only school of its kind, there was nowhere else we could go. So I joined the medical corps and drove an ambulance for the 37th medical division.

  The role of my all Black unit in the aftermath of the Holocaust was to retrieve all the piles of dead bodies in Dachau and give them a decent burial. The U.S. Army made the remaining German soldiers dig the graves.

  The fellow medics from the U.S. army medical division who were white were held back as we were sent in to get these disease-ridden, rotting bodies. They sprayed the black medics with DDT before sending us into the infested chambers.

  I am among the last of the black medics alive today. We all had respiratory ailments throughout our lives after being sprayed with DDT. It was only later that they fully realized the adverse effects of the toxic agent. The ones who died early on from direct content died prematurely.

  Our job was indescribably horrific. We also had to take the bodies out of the ovens. The Black companies helped us carry these bodies out the crematorium.

  It was estimated that we brought out 25,000 bodies over an eight square block area. Some were still half-alive. I saw humans eating human parts.

  Even though they sprayed us with DDT, almost everyone in my unit has died from tuberculosis or some other disease they no doubt caught from getting the bodies out of Dachau. There are only three of us alive today.

  I established the first Black church in Compton, California and have been here since 1964 when Mayor Crane was in office and President Bush, the Daddy, had his family right over there on Santa Fe Avenue.

  Fortunately, Mr. Fisher has been taped and interviewed by the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. It is my hope that this brief interview here will serve as a springboard to more written material on Mr. Fisher, one of three who has managed to stay alive until now.

  1

  1st Battalion (German). 55, 254

  100th Fighter Squadron 94

  116th SS Panzer Division 55

  17th SS Infantry Division 55, 254

  1974 Yearbook of Jehovah's Witnesses 176, 193

  2

  2003 Yearbook of Jehovah's Witnesses 178, 194

  2nd Battalion 254

  21st Battalion 254

  3

  35th Regimen 264, 265

  36th Panzantha Tank 264

  37th Medical Division 267

  332nd pilots 47, 79, 80, 81, 82

  333rd Field Artillery Battalion 55, 252

  4

  477th 90, 94

  7

  7th U.S. Army 253

  71st Infantry Division 255

  758th Tank Battalion 264

  761st Tank Battalion 255

  763rd Tank Battalion 264

  791st 264

  8

  87th Cavalry Reconnaissance Squadron 117

  9

  99th Pursuit Squadron ...75, 76, 78, 81

  A

  Abagnale, Frank 118, 119

  AFL-CIO 108

  Africa.. 1, 2, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 15, 22, 24, 27, 29, 39, 52, 53, 56, 74, 75, 76, 103, 123, 134, 144, 146, 153, 175, 197, 198, 204, 209, 216, 217, 218, 219, 220, 234, 235, 236, 237, 238, 240, 241, 242, 243, 249, 254, 261

  African 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 14, 16, 22, 23, 24, 25, 27, 28, 29, 30, 33, 36, 40, 41, 42, 43, 44, 45, 46, 47, 53, 54, 55, 57, 58, 66, 69, 72, 73, 75, 76, 86, 87, 89, 90, 95, 101, 104, 105, 110, 111, 114, 123, 125, 126, 128, 130, 133, 136, 138, 139, 141, 142, 143, 144, 146, 153, 155, 156, 157, 160, 161, 162, 163, 164, 165, 167, 169, 172, 174, 179, 180, 194, 213, 216, 218, 219, 220, 222, 224, 235, 236, 239, 242, 244, 245, 247, 248, 249, 250, 252, 253, 254, 255, 259, 260, 264

  African-Americans 7, 157

  African-Belgian 58, 252

  African-French ..36, 39, 40, 123

  Africans 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 13, 14, 15, 16, 22, 24, 29, 31, 35, 41, 43, 66, 67, 129, 139, 140, 143, 157, 175, 176, 180, 197, 219, 220, 231, 235, 236, 237, 241, 242, 259, 260

  Afrika Korps 52

  Afrikaners 123, 248, 269

  Afrodeutsche 156, 157

  Afro-German 35, 57, 103, 104

  Afro-Germans 28, 138, 141, 157

  Afrolook 156

  Air Force. 75, 76, 77, 82, 89, 90, 93, 97

  Algeria 39

  al-Husseini, Haj Amin 229

  Allied African troops 259

  Allies 29, 252

  Altadena, CA 94

  Aly, Goetz 106

  America 1, 16, 30, 35, 43, 47, 56, 57, 65, 73, 75, 77, 79, 87, 88, 95, 104, 108, 116, 117, 118, 120, 130, 133, 135, 140, 141, 142, 143, 144, 156, 159, 160, 161, 166, 170, 171, 172, 190, 196, 197, 202, 206, 209, 215, 230

  American 2, 3, 4, 26, 28, 33, 34, 35, 36, 42, 44, 45, 46, 53, 54, 55, 57, 58, 60, 72, 73, 76, 80, 83, 87, 88, 89, 90, 95, 96, 97, 100, 103, 105, 108, 114, 116, 117, 128, 129, 130, 133, 135, 136, 140, 141, 143, 146, 153, 156, 157, 158, 161, 162, 165, 167, 169, 171,172, 174, 180, 193, 194, 195, 197, 198, 199, 203, 206, 207, 213, 215, 218, 220, 222, 224, 226, 230, 250, 251, 252, 253, 254, 255, 260, 264, 265

  American Broadcast Company 57

  American Heritage College Dictionary--Third Edition, The 100

  American Heritage Dictionary 133

  American history 3, 76, 103, 162

  American Holocaust 219

  American Nazi Party 192, 194, 198, 200, 202, 205, 225

  American Swastika 129

  Anderson, Charles 76, 98

  Anglo-Saxon 197

  animals 29, 30, 143, 144, 171, 205, 237

  Annotated Pink Swastika, The 65

  anthropologist(s) 128, 147, 245, 247

  Anti Defamation League.. 180, 189, 223, 226

  antisemitism 220, 240

  Aquino, Michael 168

  Arab American 225

  Arkansas 208

  Army Air Corps 76, 82, 97

  Aryan 31, 32, 33, 35, 42, 124, 126, 128, 160, 165, 172, 176, 191, 210, 211, 222, 226, 227, 239, 241, 244, 246, 251

  Aryanize 210, 211

  Ashanti 215, 216, 232

  Asia 74, 196

  Asians 191

  Atlanta, GA ...98, 118, 190, 197

  Atlantic Ocean 118

  atomic bombs 205

  Auschwitz 23, 250

  Austria 81, 174, 251, 254

  Autobiography of Malcolm X, The 195, 203, 231, 270

  Aviation History 76, 98

  B

  Baca, Lee 190

  Baden-Powell, Robert 214, 215

  Baer, Max 34

  Baldwin, James ...195, 201, 202

  Baltimore, MD 223, 224

  bastard.. 59, 122, 123, 136, 138, 225

  bastardization 125, 134, 139, 247

  bastardizing 139

  Battle of the Bulge 185

  Bavaria 163

  Bavarian 210, 248, 263

  Bavarian Ministry of the Interior 248, 263

  Baye, Nathalie 118

  Bebel, August 236

  Bechhaus-Gerst, Marianne 259, 260

  Behl, Thomas 230


  Belgian .118, 143, 148, 179, 253

  Berlin 5, 27, 28, 33, 49, 58, 65, 70, 80, 106, 156, 157, 166, 230, 234, 243, 244, 248, 249, 250, 259

  Berzerker 188

  Bethanie 1, 16, 234

  Bible 122, 162, 163, 166, 167, 193, 194, 246, 270

  Big Ben 216

  biracial.. 57, 124, 132, 136, 146, 213

  Birchites 203

  Birdwell III, Nelson Benjamin. 181, 182, 183, 184, 186, 187, 188, 189

  Black abolitionists ??

  Black African 2, 4, 8, 35, 36, 39, 59, 175, 218, 256

  Black Birdmen 72, 82, 92

  Black Disgrace 134

  Black History Month .116, 156

  Black Muslim Movement ..206

  Black nationalists 193, 196, 208, 231

  Black Panther Battalion 255

  Black Panther Party (see also "New Black Panther Party") 108

  Black POW(s). 47, 53, 58, 54, 57, 106, 248

  Black prisoners ..47, 52, 55, 57, 253

  Black separatism 197

  Black separatists 195

  Black Skin, White Masks 142

  Blood, Linda 169

  Blowback 129

  Bluford, Guion S. ("Guy") 76

  Boers 123, 249

  Boer War 123, 218, 249

  Boston, MA 214

  Boston University 116

  bourgeois ...32, 67, 68, 238, 239

  bourgeoisie 67

  Bower, Tom 128

  Boyce, William D. 215

  Boys Scouts 65, 215

  Braun, Eva 60

  Brauny, Erhart Richard 106, 120, 256

  Brenner, Lawrence J. (Judge) 182, 183, 185

  British 4, 5, 6, 7, 52, 75, 116, 169, 215, 216, 217, 218, 219, 220, 235, 251, 252