Mari Serebrov's Blog - Posts Tagged "genocide"

“There are German leaders, like August Bebel, who speak out against the dangers of a racial pride that flows forward from the Crusades to be fueled by today’s ‘science’ of eugenics. A pride that’s the foundation of a national policy that says all other people, by divine right, are to be valued only for their service to the German empire. And if their best service is extermination, so be it.
Mari Serebrov
“This time it was the Herero and the Namas. How do I know that, in the future, it won’t be the Jews again?” – Kov, in "Mama Namibia"

Less than 40 years after the Kaiser unleashed the first genocide of the 20th century in German South West Africa, that same racial pride fueled the Holocaust.

Bent on erasing the Jews, the Nazis employed many of the techniques used to eradicate the Herero and Nama – death camps, starvation, medical experiments, rape, and denial. And just as it did in 1904, the rest of the world looked away.

Today, the nations of the world honor the victims of the Holocaust through monuments, museums, and organized remembrances. But they have forgotten the victims of Germany’s other genocide.

“Mama Namibia” seeks to change that. The first novel to tell the Herero story, “Mama Namibia” shows the human cost of genocide through the eyes of a 12-year-old Herero girl and Kov, a Jewish doctor serving in the German army.

“When they died, their bodies were thrown into the great river for the sharks. Then they were forgotten. As if they had never lived.” – Kukuri, in Mama Namibia

These are Kukuri’s words to Jahohora as he tells her about the thousands of Herero and Nama who died in the German concentration camp at Shark Island in South West Africa more than a century ago. For the victims of this death camp, there were no gravestones, no monuments and no descendants to remember their names.

We can never give the genocide victims back their names. But we can remember them – as well as the victims of other genocides – in stories, in song, through poetry, on stage and on film.

In telling their stories, we give voice to their humanity. In grieving for them, we mourn for their past and the future they were denied. And in remembering them, we break the silence that allows genocides to continue unchecked.

This is the purpose of Mama Namibia, a historical novel about the first genocide of the 20th century.

So why spend years writing a novel like Mama Namibia and doing a Facebook blog about a genocide that happened more than a century ago?

First of all, the 1904 genocide in what was then German South-West Africa is not ancient history. Its victims were the parents and grandparents of people who are alive today.

The consequences of that genocide continue to haunt the descendants, impacting their daily lives economically and emotionally. The extermination of 85 percent of the Herero and half the Nama made them a minority in the country that was to become Namibia. While they have a small voice in the government today, their communities often get the short end of government spending on schools, roads, and other improvement projects so desperately needed for economic growth.

Some of them still live in exile in Botswana and Angola. Many of those who live in Namibia remain landless because the land of their ancestors was taken by others.

German officials continue to marginalize the descendants of the genocide survivors by refusing to meet with Herero and Nama leaders to discuss an official apology and meaningful reparations. Instead, they insist on negotiating only with Namibian officials who are from tribes not targeted by the genocide.

And Germany has yet to make a comprehensive effort to find all the bones of Herero and Nama genocide victims that were taken there as souvenirs or for “scientific” research. While some skulls have been returned to Namibia, many more are packed away in German universities, museums, and, perhaps, attics. They need to be buried in the land of their ancestors.

Secondly, the 1904 genocide provides context for other genocides. It shows that the Holocaust didn’t happen in a vacuum or at the whims of one monstrous man. It also highlights the need for other nations to stop a genocide in the making instead of waiting to punish the guilty years after thousands or millions of innocent people have been slaughtered. And it reveals that if a country doesn’t have to answer for its national crimes, it – and other countries – will repeat them.

If genocide is to end, we all must become more aware of the past and of what’s happening in other parts of the world today. And we must not turn away. The danger is that with every genocide we deny or ignore, we grant permission for the next.

Like a river or life itself, a good story flows naturally, its current carrying readers to forgotten lands, times past, or places unimagined. It introduces them to characters they’ll never forget, opens their eyes to the possible and the impossible, and fills them with hope and sadness.

Just as no two people see the exact same rainbow, no two people will experience a book in quite the same way. Thus, a reader completes the story the author began.

I was reminded of that when I did a Facetime interview about my historical novel Mama Namibia with a book club in southern California this past summer. One of the club members asked me about my favorite supporting characters in the book. After answering, I turned the question back to them. It was fascinating to see how the characters spoke differently to individual readers.

I see the same thing in reviews of Mama Namibia: Based on True Events, the story of a young Herero girl who survived alone in the desert after her family was killed in a German ambush during the first genocide of the 20th century.

Different passages and scenes in the novel speak to readers based on their own back stories. For instance, the story may echo with family history for a Herero journalist. For first-time tourists visiting Namibia, it can help them see the landscape in a new way. For a mother whose son is with the Peace Corps in Namibia, it can help her imagine his adventures.

For lovers of history, it opens the curtain on a tragedy too long denied. And for those who recognize that yesterday shapes tomorrow, it begs the question, “What if this genocide had not been ignored at the time?”