Black Actors Who Were Holocaust Victims
African actors suffered a gruesome fate during the Holocaust which many people are not aware of. Rest in peace Entertainers Mandlakazi and Khwili, Hilarius (Lari) Gilges, Valaida Snow, and Mahjub bin Adam Mohamed. I checked the library and found out Mohamed's films are available somewhere, but not in this library.
Tanzanian not the only black Nazi victim
September 11, 2007 Edition 1
The article "African victim of Nazis won't be forgotten" (The Star, September 4) mentions only a single victim of Nazi atrocities, a black man named Mahjub bin Adam Mohamed from Tanzania, who is honoured with a brass plaque in Germany.
Whether the glaring omission is by design or by ignorance, it is imperative to disclose more egregious past world war German violations of the sanctity of human life in which many black people died.
As a result, no amount of brass plaques will assuage the long term effects of destruction and suffering wreaked by German bombers and troops.
In 1915, at the height of World War 1, two black South African actors Mandlakazi and Khwili took the West End of London by storm and enthralled theatregoers at the Globe Theatre with a play UMamiya, based on a popular Zulu love story.
The production came to a sudden end from the German air raids. The famous landmark and home to Shakespeare's plays was reduced to rubble in the blitzkrieg, which the two actors survived.
But they never made it home. Their Durban-bound ship was torpedoed by a German submarine in the middle of the Atlantic. No one survived. Our two ambassadors were killed in a senseless and callous act against innocents.
Can any brass plaque compensate for such a tragic loss?
Furthermore, during World War 2 in 1943, German soldiers shot and bayoneted black prisoners of war, totally disregarding the provisions of the Geneva Conventions.
White prisoners from the Allied Forces were spared.
Who were these black soldiers? Where did they come from? The answer is in an essay, Blacks and the Holocaust, which was published in the Negro Digest, a now defunct magazine of the 1950s.
It was a publication of Johnson Publishers of Chicago, the most powerful black publishing house in America and home of the prestigious Ebony and Jet magazines. Although it is now out of print it is available in the archives of the publishing house, and every issue is kept for record in the American Library of Congress in Washington DC.
According to the essay, some of the soldiers came from South Africa. Apparently, these included members of the Coloured Legion and a black battalion from Natal.
Others were from Senegal in West Africa, and the rest were a separate regiment of so-called "Negro Volunteers" from the US.
There were some survivors from South Africa who were truck drivers and hospital orderlies. They had witnessed the slaughter and came back home to KwaBhanya village to talk about it.
Among them were Lawrence Glover, Alfred Magwegwe Mwelase, Makhenzi Thusi and the Xaba brothers, Abednigo and Mabhidi.
Their reports of the bloodbath were dismissed by the white officers as rantings and ravings of shell-shocked lunatics whose brains were already addled with congenital syphilis contracted from "eating forbidden meat".
Perhaps the fascinating story of Mahjub bin Adam Mohamed, the Tanzanian, will stir German consciences and the rest of the world to reopen the scandalous saga in the Negro Digest.
All people of conscience, including church leaders and academics, should mobilise forces and pool resources and put pressure on the German government to investigate and expose this disgraceful concealment of the truth and give compensation where it is due.
I am ready to start my own investigation through the Cwaninga Institute of Research and Education, which I am setting up to collect and disseminate empirically researched data to educate people about their history.
Dr Mbuyiseni Oswald Mtshali
Soweto, Joburg
http://www.thestar.co.za/index.php?fArticleId=4027488
Tanzanian not the only black Nazi victim
September 11, 2007 Edition 1
The article "African victim of Nazis won't be forgotten" (The Star, September 4) mentions only a single victim of Nazi atrocities, a black man named Mahjub bin Adam Mohamed from Tanzania, who is honoured with a brass plaque in Germany.
Whether the glaring omission is by design or by ignorance, it is imperative to disclose more egregious past world war German violations of the sanctity of human life in which many black people died.
As a result, no amount of brass plaques will assuage the long term effects of destruction and suffering wreaked by German bombers and troops.
In 1915, at the height of World War 1, two black South African actors Mandlakazi and Khwili took the West End of London by storm and enthralled theatregoers at the Globe Theatre with a play UMamiya, based on a popular Zulu love story.
The production came to a sudden end from the German air raids. The famous landmark and home to Shakespeare's plays was reduced to rubble in the blitzkrieg, which the two actors survived.
But they never made it home. Their Durban-bound ship was torpedoed by a German submarine in the middle of the Atlantic. No one survived. Our two ambassadors were killed in a senseless and callous act against innocents.
Can any brass plaque compensate for such a tragic loss?
Furthermore, during World War 2 in 1943, German soldiers shot and bayoneted black prisoners of war, totally disregarding the provisions of the Geneva Conventions.
White prisoners from the Allied Forces were spared.
Who were these black soldiers? Where did they come from? The answer is in an essay, Blacks and the Holocaust, which was published in the Negro Digest, a now defunct magazine of the 1950s.
It was a publication of Johnson Publishers of Chicago, the most powerful black publishing house in America and home of the prestigious Ebony and Jet magazines. Although it is now out of print it is available in the archives of the publishing house, and every issue is kept for record in the American Library of Congress in Washington DC.
According to the essay, some of the soldiers came from South Africa. Apparently, these included members of the Coloured Legion and a black battalion from Natal.
Others were from Senegal in West Africa, and the rest were a separate regiment of so-called "Negro Volunteers" from the US.
There were some survivors from South Africa who were truck drivers and hospital orderlies. They had witnessed the slaughter and came back home to KwaBhanya village to talk about it.
Among them were Lawrence Glover, Alfred Magwegwe Mwelase, Makhenzi Thusi and the Xaba brothers, Abednigo and Mabhidi.
Their reports of the bloodbath were dismissed by the white officers as rantings and ravings of shell-shocked lunatics whose brains were already addled with congenital syphilis contracted from "eating forbidden meat".
Perhaps the fascinating story of Mahjub bin Adam Mohamed, the Tanzanian, will stir German consciences and the rest of the world to reopen the scandalous saga in the Negro Digest.
All people of conscience, including church leaders and academics, should mobilise forces and pool resources and put pressure on the German government to investigate and expose this disgraceful concealment of the truth and give compensation where it is due.
I am ready to start my own investigation through the Cwaninga Institute of Research and Education, which I am setting up to collect and disseminate empirically researched data to educate people about their history.
Dr Mbuyiseni Oswald Mtshali
Soweto, Joburg
http://www.thestar.co.za/index.php?fArticleId=4027488
Comment
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Comment by DJ Judah on June 27, 2008 at 9:07pm - Very good post. It is sickening how black history seems to disappear completely!
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