Stumbling blocks / Stolpersteine
am 17.09.2007 von http://transblawg.eu
For years, Günter Demnig, a Cologne artist, has been creating bronze stones embedded in the pavement outside the former homes of Jews murdered in the Holocaust.
They are called Stolpersteine - stumbling blocks.
On September 14th the first stone was laid in Berlin for an African, Mahjub bin Adam Mohamed. So the Observer reports today, under the heading first memorial to black victims of Nazi genocide. Here's a picture of one from Wikipedia (German, English):
It's a sad story, but there's more to it than the Observer spotted from Vienna.
Husen, as he was later called (a Germanized form of Hussein), was born in Dar-es-Salaam in German East Africa in 1904 and was an Askari - sort of East African Gurkhas. He fought for Germany in the First World War, although he was a child. He later made a living in Germany, was given a German passport (later taken away), married a German woman, had three children. Before and during the war he worked teaching Swahili at the Seminar für Orientalische Sprachen in Berlin and playing the 'good African' in German films.
From about 1936 on, the German Ministry of the Interior secretly had policemen taught Swahili, to be ready to take back the former German colonies. Husen taught these policeman from 1937, in great secrecy.
He was arrested for miscegenation in 1941 and died in Sachsenhausen concentration camp.
You can order handcarved British East Africa Askari soldiers here.
Here, from a page about foreign language assistants at the Oriental Languages school in Berlin, an …
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» Die Hintergründe zum Thema der 12. Fuhlsbüttler Filmtage 2004
» Stolpersteine - Wikipedia
» Stolpersteine - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
» First memorial to black victims of Nazi genocide | World | The Observer
» k’alebøl: bubbles & troubles from the land of the fretting nun
» BRITISH EAST AFRICA - ASKARI COLONIAL SOLDIERS, carved wooden soldiers
british east africa, Askari colonial soldiers, individual hand carved wooden soldiers.
» Afrika in Berlin - Ein Stadtspaziergang des DHM
» Stolpersteine
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