Germany is slowly rediscovering its colonial past which ended with defeat at the end of the First World War. But the immigration of Africans had begun long before and these people remained in Germany after 1918. An exhibition currently in Berlin traces the history of an Afro-German family from the end of the 19th century to today. Recently, paving stones of memory were laid to honor black people persecuted under the Third Reich.
” I wanted to become a doctor, but I didn’t have the right to pass the baccalaureate and even less to study. In 1936, I was expelled from school with the last Jewess there, because we were not considered worthy of attending a German school. »
Zoya Aqua-Kaufmann was 18 when she suffered this discrimination like so many others under the Nazi regime. She performed as a dancer until 1939 like other Afro-Germans who survived in regime productions cultivating racial clichés. With the war, she no longer has the right to work. After the birth of her son Hans Joachim, she chose to go underground to avoid further persecution or forced sterilization. She was denounced and interned with her child in a camp where she was released on May 13, 1945. Her demands for recognition and compensation after the war only led to meager results.
Zoya Aqua-Kaufmann’s grandson, Daniel Lienicke, witnessed the laying of the two cobblestones in front of his grandmother and father’s last home: ” For me, this day is the culmination of this long work of memory. It was very moving. I think my father and my grandmother would rejoice and feel very honored. »
Some 100,000 paving stones of memory have been laid in Germany and Europe to recall the memory of people murdered, deported or persecuted under the Third Reich. Of the 10,000 in Berlin, those for Zoya and Hans Joachim Aqua-Kaufmann are only 6th and 7the for Afro-Germans.
Tahir Della from the initiative “Black people in Germany”: This lack of recognition can also be explained by a forgotten German colonial past without which of course these people would not have come to this country. And this past must become visible. »
These cobblestones of memory, initiatives of civil society, exhibitions in Berlin museums show that this German colonial past and its consequences arouse more interest today. Dominique Eyidi is the grandson of Cameroonian activist Joseph Ekwe Bile. Arrived in Germany in 1912, he fought during the First World War before engaging during the 1920s in the fight against colonialism and for the rights of black people. He left Germany in 1932 and returned to Cameroon in 1935.
” There is a work of memory that is being done and this work must be reinforced. It is important that there is recognition not only pecuniary, but also moral; this is perhaps the most important in the end. »