By E.Kingsbury (FSWC Director of Holocaust Curriculum and Learning)

Strand B3.5- Learning on the responses of the Canadian government to human rights violations during the Holocaust; Learning on the impact that global changes in understanding and legislation around human rights since World War II have had on the development of Canada’s responses to acts of hate and human rights violations.

The Fate of People of African Descent under Nazi Occupation

In recent decades, historians have increasingly sought to understand the experiences of non-Jews subjected to Nazi racial hatred, including the fate of Black Germans and others targeted through Nazi policies of “racial hygiene.” Hitler obsessed over fears of racial mixing in Germany in the interwar period.

He wrote about this fear in his 1925 book Mein Kampf, claiming that “Jews were responsible for bringing Negroes into the Rhineland, with the ultimate idea of bastardizing the white race which they hate and thus lowering its cultural and political level so that the Jew might dominate.”

Black Germans were deemed non-Aryan under the 1935 Nuremberg Laws and therefore forbidden from marrying "Aryans." Additionally, at least 400 Black Germans were forced to undergo sterilization from 1937 onwards. Although there was no policy of systematic mass deportation and internment for Black Germans, social isolation and legal discrimination were the norm.

Even less is generally known about the fate of people of both Jewish and African descent living within the Nazi orbit of persecution during WWII. The German occupation of France and the establishment of the antisemitic Vichy regime in July 1940 brought 415,000 North African Jews in Morocco, Algeria and Tunisia under Nazi control. Anti-Jewish laws under the Vichy regime denied Algerian Jews their French citizenship and deprived some North African Jews of property, businesses, and possessions while imposing quotas on many professions. In Libya, Jewish passports were marked, cultural activities were restricted and thousands of Jews were sent to concentration camps. Hundreds with foreign citizenship were sent to concentration camps in Europe.

In November 1942, the German army entered Tunisia, the only North African country to be occupied by Nazi forces during the Second World War. German decrees primarily affected the Jews of the capital, Tunis, but in other communities, such as Djerba, they were also mistreated and conscripted for forced labour. In total, approximately 5,000 Jewish men were sent to forced labor and internment camps in Tunisia. Beyond internment, many women, men and children suffered from the occupation’s difficult conditions, including harassment, physical and sexual violence, arrests, internments and theft of Jewish property and possessions.

These lesser-known aspects of the Holocaust are an important reminder of the expansive nature of Nazi crimes, and shed light on victims usually omitted from traditional victim narratives.

Further Reading:

https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/afro-germans-during-the-holocaust

https://www.yadvashem.org/communities-in-north-africa

https://museeholocauste.ca/en/resources-training/the-holocaust-in-tunisia/

https://www.yadvashem.org/docs/extracts-from-mein-kampf.html