A Jew at Shark Island

ROMAN GRYNBERG FOR MANY Jews, a visit to the extermination camps of Auschwitz in Poland has become de rigueur, an almost semi-religious ritual that for even the grandchildren of the Nazi Holocaust has become obligatory. As the son of survivors of the Holocaust, it was never discussed in our home.

It was a source of horror and shame that is difficult to explain to anyone who has not seen or been part of the industrial scale murder committed by people who believe you are sub-human (Untermenschen in German).

I was born in Poland after the war and my family came from the village of Sokolov Podlaski in the east of Poland. In 1939 when the Nazis invaded, no-one imagined what awaited the three million Jews of Poland. However, my family – being keenly aware of the Nazi hatred of Jewish socialists – decided that crossing the Molotov-Ribbentrop line into the then Soviet Union would be about the only thing that would save their lives. They were right to do so and hence I am alive. Much of the rest of the Jewish population and much of my family was exterminated at the death camp at Treblinka. 

In 1943, the Jewish inmates rebelled at Treblinka. While some escaped, the vast majority were simply gunned down by the SS. The Nazis then destroyed the death camp following the rebellion. So even if I wish to visit one of the death camps most associated with my village, it is not possible to do so.

While working at Unam I decided to visit Lüderitz simply to see the fishing industry. I had read much about the genocide of the Herero and Nama during the 1904-07 rebellion against the German colonialists. With trepidation, I wanted to see the prototype death camp established by the German colonial authorities to murder those who had rebelled against them. It was the early prototype of what the Nazis would do to the Jews and other European subhumans-gypsies, Slavs, gays and Soviet prisoners some 35 years later. 

People often refer to Shark Island as a concentration camp. This is a misnomer. Concentration camps are where one concentrates populations that are opposed to you and has been used as an instrument of war for a very long time. The British did this with the Afrikaner population during the Anglo-Boer war and with the Chinese in Malaya. The intention is not to murder the entire population even though death rates may be high because of poor conditions. A death camp is where one intends to exterminate people.

So I decided, with some reluctance, to visit Shark Island. It is of course no longer an island and is connected to Luderitz by road. To my surprise it was not at all what I expected and what has been put up there should be a source of enormous shame to all the people of Namibia. This is hallowed ground, where people were sent to freeze and to be exterminated because they would not accept colonial rule and dared to rebel. Instead what is there is a pleasant place with a campground and nice little hotel and a very large monument to the German pioneers who settled the area. Next to it is a small memorial to Captain Cornelius Fredericks, who was one of the most important Nama leaders who rebelled and who died there along with what is estimated 1 000 to 3 000 Nama and Herero prisoners, including men, women and children.

The idea that the German community would decide to put up a monument to their pioneers, i.e. colonialists, at such a place is far greater a shame for a free Namibia than the case of the Reiterdenkmal statue, which was treated as an odious colonial relic and removed from its place in Windhoek. To put a memorial to colonialism on the site of the Shark Island death camp is akin to creating a monument to the SS at Treblinka or Auschwitz.

The German government recently acknowledged that what was done to the Nama and Herero people was indeed a genocide. And so, as part of their reparations, the German embassy should work with the German community at Lüderitz to remove the monument to the German pioneers. 

The German community has every right to recognise their part in Namibia’s history but it is inconceivable that such a monument should be on Shark island. The island needs be converted to what it must be – a sacred place where free men and women ponder and remember what murder and brutality were inflicted on the ancestors of the Nama and Herero peoples when they dared to demand the right to live in freedom in their own lands.

* These are the views of Roman Grynberg and not necessarily those of Unam where he is employed.