'Africa to Auschwitz: Germany, Genocide and Denial' Part 6: Dr. Reinhart Kößler

As part of the Holocaust Memorial & Tolerance Center of Nassau County (HMTC) program, "Africa to Auschwitz: Germany, genocide and Denial" which took place on May 22, 2016, Dr. Reinhart Kößler, author of "Namibia and Germany: Negotiating the Past" discusses "Germany, Collective Memory and Denial."

The program was about the first genocide of the 20th century and its impact on Nazism. From 1904 to 1908, Imperial Germany murdered at least 80,000 Ovaherero and approximately 10,000 Nama during Germany’s colonalization of Southwest Africa, in the region known today as Namibia. This was the first time this topic was presented in the United States, publicly and with an international panel of experts.

In many ways, this genocide became a proving ground for the Holocaust. Many of the perpetrators became prominent in Nazi Germany, such as Dr. Eugen Fischer, an anatomist who conducted “experiments” at the Shark Island concentration camp and later ran the teaching institute for Nazi eugenics and SS physicians.

Today, descendants of the genocide continue to fight for official recognition, restitution, and the return of all victims’ remains from Germany to Namibia.