According to memoirs written by Albert Speer, a high ranking architect and military equipment producer of the Nazi party, Hitler was not pleased with American Olympic athlete Jesse Owens. “People whose antecedents came from the jungle were primitive, Hitler said with a shrug; their physiques were stronger than those of civilized whites. They represented unfair competition and hence must be excluded from future games (2).” This exclusion never came to pass.
The Nazi Regime felt these children were an insult or disgrace to Germany and must be eliminated. “The mulatto children came about through rape or the white mother was a whore,” Hitler wrote. “In both cases, there is not the slightest moral duty regarding these offspring of a foreign race.”(3)”
A law was passed by the Nazi Regime, Commission Number 7, promoted sterilization for children of ‘mixed-blood’. In 1937, local authorities were instructed to make lists of these mixed children. Without parental knowledge or permission, these children were taken from their schools and taken to the Commission. If it was determined that the child was of African descent and German descent, he or she was immediately hospitalized and sterilized.
Some 400 children fell victim to this forced sterilization.
Source:
(1) Terese Pencak Schwartz. Holocaust: Non-Jewish Victims. http://www.holocaustforgotten.com/African.htm (accessed April 15, 2011).
(2) Speer, Albert, and Eugene Davidson. Inside the Third Reich: Memoirs by Albert Speer. Translated by Richard Winston and Clara Winston. New York City: Simon & Schuster Paperbacks, 1970, page 73.
(3) Terese Pencak Schwartz. Holocaust: Non-Jewish Victims. http://www.holocaustforgotten.com/African.htm (accessed April 15, 2011).
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