Esther M. Zimmer Lederberg Memorial Website
Eugenics
Shark Island Extermination Camp

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Shark Island, German South West Africa was the world's first Extermination Camp (Vernichtungslager).

The objective of the policy of German South West Africa Governor Theodor von Leutwein was not to destroy the indigenous populations (Herero, Nama, Damara) in order to seize their land to encourage settlement of German farmers; nor was it to seize or kill the cattle. Leutwein's objective was not genocide, and he was wise enough to realize that the indigenous population could be used as a labor supply. However, such Flavian tactics (Fabius Maximus, opposing Hannibal) left Leutwein open to attack at home, with a public who wanted the instant gratification of a decisive defeat of the indigenous peoples of German South West Africa. (This was the same problem Fabius Maximus had with the Roman public, who wanted him to quickly defeat Hannibal.) As a consequence, Leutwein was pushed aside by Kaiser Wilhelm II and replaced by Lothar von Trotha, already known for his brutality in China as well as German East Africa. The result was the genocide of the indigenous population, the economic ruin of German South West Africa, and the eventual loss of the German colonial empire.^{1, 2}

As a consequence of this failed, brutal policy, Trotha was forced to leave German South West Africa and replaced by Friedrich von Lindequist, who completed the genocide with the use of extermination camps and concentration camps. In order for this policy to be acceptable at home, propaganda was employed. The claim was made that the 'barbaric' indigenous population wished to murder defenseless women and children. In fact, only four German women were killed, and one German child.

Shark Island Extermination Camp is regarded as the world's first extermination camp (Vernichtungslager). Three thousand Herero and Namaqua rebels in the German-Herero conflict of 1904-1908 died there. While one of the first known uses of the concentration camp was in Cuba during the Spanish-American War in 1896 (by General Valeriano "Butcher" Weyler, followed by the British during the Second Boer War,^{3, 4}, Shark Island was the first "camp" created with the explicit purpose of extermination, rather than being solely for containment. Since the extermination at Shark Island was restricted to specific peoples, it was the first recorded effort to exterminate a race or a people; thus constituting genocide or or ethnic cleansing.

Arrival at Shark Island

Just as with the extermination and concentration camps during the Third Reich, unsuspecting victims were transported by train or on foot from collection camps or other concentration camps to Shark Island Death Camp. The less lucky (such as those who were sick or starving) were shot before they got to Shark Island.⁵

The weather was typically ice-cold gale force winds. The prisoners (men, women and children) usually had no or very few blankets, little food (they were provided with rice but had no prior familiarity with rice, nor did they have the required cooking utensils), families were split apart. Violence from German schutztruppers (protectorate army) wielding sjamboks (whips) was common, as was rape.^{6, 7}

Conditions at Shark Island

One should bear in mind that, as previously noted (see the table of concentration camps at German South West Africa), indigenous people were interned by the German colonial government, in a number of other concentration camps, collection camps and work camps:

Medical Experimentation

The skulls of prisoners were harvested to be used as part of the medical experimentation program to prove that the indigenous peoples of German South West Africa were of an inferior race. These skulls were studied by such people as Eugen Fischer (see F. Birkner and H. von Eggeling¹⁹, and Dr. Bofinger.

Exposing Shark Island Extermination Camp

In August 1912, before the First World War, a British foreign office official commented:

The Report on the natives of South-West Africa and their treatment by Germany. Administrator's Office, Windhuk [sic], London: His Majesty's Stationery Office, 1918 is known as "The Blue Book". It was removed from sale in 1926 and destroyed.

"A number of eyewitness accounts do exist and some victim accounts are found in the Blue Book, which recorded accounts of the atrocities committed during the Herero war. Since the British produced the Blue Book during World War I reservations about its objectivity remain. However, the sentiments contained in the 1918 Report were already present in a British report of 1909, which stated:

"The Blue Book was the first investigation into the genocide. As Rhoda Howard-Hassmann points out, 'Germany committed genocide in South-West Africa with an impunity broken only by a British inquiry after the former country's defeat in World War I. So keen were the German settlers to suppress evidence of the genocide that they attempted to have the Blue Book banned as post-war British propaganda. The all-white legislative assembly adopted a motion to destroy all copies of it. Its distribution was prohibited and library copies were removed and destroyed. In the rest of the British Empire, the Blue Book was also removed from libraries and sent to the Foreign Office.'"²²