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The Swahili teacher killed in a Nazi concentration camp
Black people were among the victims of the Nazis. The documented case of Mahjub bin Adam Mohamed also offers insight into Germany s colonial past.
While doing research at Germany s Federal Archives, Marianne Bechhaus-Gerst came across a document that shows there was a Swahili teacher named Mohammed Husen who was taken to the Nazis Sachsenhausen concentration camp in Oranienburg, north of Berlin. I was really surprised by that document, because despite my studies as an Africanist historian, I did not know anything about the experiences of Africans during the Nazi era. Even when I researched the topic in academic works, I did not find any studies about it, says Marianne Bechhaus-Gerst, a professor of African Studies at the University of Cologne.