[Opinion. By this logic, the Holocaust would not be considered a genocide, either. Genocides big and small have occurred throughout recorded history, both by the victims and the perpetrators. They all deserve honour and remembrance. Every single one is as important as the other. Germany is only arming Israel out of guilt.] ‘They are disturbing the dead’: reconstructing the site of the forgotten first genocide of the 20th century Hanno Hamenstein The Guardian: 5 Jun 2026 ‘They are disturbing the dead’: reconstructing the site of the forgotten first genocide of the 20th century. At least 3,000 Herero and Nama people died in a German concentration camp at Shark Island, Namibia. A new forensic exhibition in Berlin is using digital technology to unearth how colonisers scarred a landscape, and a community. Adolf Lüderitz and Heinrich Vogelsang, the German merchants who helped establish the colony known as German South West Africa. Today, it is widely reported that Namibia’s white minority – less than 2% of the population – owns roughly 70% of commercial farmland. Germany refuses to pay reparations to Herero and Nama descendants, offering instead development aid payments negotiated with the Namibian government. When Germany formally recognised the atrocities in 2021, it described them as a genocide “from today’s perspective” – a formulation critics say avoids the legal and political implications of recognition. By that logic, no act committed before the 1948 genocide convention could fully qualify as such.
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