Do we know of any non-European Holocaust victims?

by GoonCommaThe

Obviously a wide array of minorities of European descent were murdered in the Holocaust, but do we know of any non-European victims? How much do we know about them?

TheFairyGuineaPig

Yes, Jews in Tunisia, Morocco and Libya (under Italy) both suffered and were killed or forced into slave labour, with Jews in Algeria also suffering from restrictions and discrimination, particularly in education. In Morocco, over 2000 Jews were interned in work camps, throughout Morocco, with many of them dying from the poor conditions. Outside of being worked to death, Jews who weren't interned were fired, harassed in the streets, assaulted, banned from non-Jewish centres of education, forced to move into the traditional quarters of towns (mellahs). However, oddly enough, in Morocco, the definition of 'Jew' was not strictly based on parentage, rather on religion, this was not the case in Libya, Algeria or Tunisia.

In Algeria, Jews lost their citizenship, banned from holding certain jobs and positions, expelled from schools completely, had their property confiscated, and 2,000 were placed in work camps to build a trans-Saharan railway, where, again, many died. The Jewish community in Algeria was far more integrated than the Moroccan Jewish communities, and the discriminatory laws were also far more heavily enforced.

In Tunisia, things were different. First, under Vichy rule, authorities were hesitant to enact antisemitic laws, with the Vichy Governor himself visiting synagogues and delaying putting the laws in place for as long as possible, and the laws in place were slightly different, with property largely not being confiscated, Jewish newspapers continuing to operate and Jewish doctors allowed to treat Jewish patients (but not non-Jewish ones). However, when the Germans arrived, things changed dramatically at the request of the SS, who wanted 3000 yellow star wearing Jews to work in work camps across the country. To find these three thousand, Jews were literally being kidnapped off the streets. Synagogues across Tunisia were destroyed. Jews were assaulted in public. Eventually, the authorities forced the Jewish communities themselves to choose who to sacrifice. By the end, they actually managed to surpass the 3000 Jews initially requested, having around 6000 prisoners across 32 work camps. Conditions were absolutely brutal, with many dying. Property was confiscated in the wider Jewish community, including houses, and large fines were issued to Jewish communities, leaving them even more vulnerable than before.

Ultimately, across Tunisia, Morocco and Algeria, around 10,000 Jews (out of 400,000, that's 1 in 40) were used as slave labour in work camps, many of them dying. Jewish communities as a whole all suffered under harsh laws, although to what extent they suffered varied by country, depending on their integration, the will of the French authorities and the presence of the Germans.

In Libya, things were quite different, due to Italy mainly, but also because of their varied origins and citizen shops, and also because of where they actually lived within Libya, meaning that in Tripoli, Jews made up 25% of the population, and were highly integrated, so laws essentially cutting them off from the wider population affected them deeply, although many Jews also lived in rural or semi-rural areas as well. It's important to note that there are no Jews left in Libya, although this isn't because of the Holocaust. In Libya, Jews possessed many different citizenships. Those who were British citizens were eventually sent to Bergen Belsen or Dacahu (all 900 of them) where many died.

In 1938, Italy's 'Race Protection Laws' were instituted, at first, somewhat weakly, until 1940 when the situation worsened dramatically and the laws were fully enforced. Jewish people were blocked from entering state positions or skilled professions- so essentially any well paid jobs- and Jewish children were removed from secular schools. No Jew was allowed to marry a non-Jew. Jews were not able to leave the country. Jews were attacked in the streets and Jewish cemeteries and synagogues desecrated. They also suffered from damage caused by bombing raids and attacks by the Allies, which led to 30 deaths and the destruction of synagogues.

In 1941, British forces briefly captured Cyrenaica where many Jews were living, a few hundred managed to escape with them. After this, Jews were expelled from that region and removed elsewhere, with some Jews also given the death penalty as punishment for supporting the British forces.

In 1942, sfollamento ('emptying') began, a campaign to eradicate or remove Libyan Jews. This was when British Jews were sent to Bergen Belsen or Dachau, French or Tunisian Jews (about 2000) were sent to camps in Tunisia and Libyan Jews were sent to Libyan concentration camps? They had little food, diseases ran rife, many died of malnutrition and dehydration, typhoid, or from assaults by camp workers intended to humiliate the Jewish labourers. Unlike the work camps of, for example, Tunisia, where it was men who were largely sent to camps, here, it involved whole families. Libyan Jews who were to be deported had their names posted in public areas and synagogue doors, so they could prepare for departure, but escaping would mean fierce reprisals and others being taken. Then they would be loaded onto cattle trains, where they would survive on whatever food or water they had managed to smuggle with them, for a week's journey to reach the camp, where they'd work without rest for twelve hours a day or so.

The most feared of all these camps was Jado, where the majority of Libyan Jews were sent, staffed by Italian officers and Arab and Italian guards, and they were kept there until the 1942 when they were liberated, and stayed until 1943. 3,000 Jews were initially sent to two work camps, many of them eventually returning to their homes (possibly to be sent to another camp in the future). 3,000 Jews were sent to Jado, 500 or so died.

In all, in North Africa alone, around 19,000 Jews therefore entered work camps or concentration camps, although the number is likely a bit less due to crossover between Jews who worked in the first few Libyan work camps, and those later sent to Jado, with all Jews having discriminatory laws inflicted upon them, barring them from education and work.

Jan_van_Bergen

This depends on how you define Holocaust. If you mean it to be the "planned genocide of European Jews" which is a pretty standard definition, then almost by definition, the answer to your question is "no, there were not any non-Europeans murdered in the Holocaust".

That being said, many people will include the mass incarceration and murder of other groups as part of the Holocaust, including groups like Soviet POWs, Sinti and Roma, homosexuals, handicapped, so-called a-socials, and so on and so forth. And if one uses this wider definition (or one bores down the the kernel of your question about non-European victims of Nazi persecution), then we'd see that absolutely there were non-European victims of the Nazis. One of the most easily identifiable groups would be Africans of various stripes. Africans made up sizable portions of Allied armies and were, by and large, not afforded the protections of the Geneva conventions (as white, Western allied soldiers almost always were). Because the argument could be made that Afro-Germans, Afro-French, and other Africans who lived in Europe were European, I'll stick with African-Americans, who wouldn't fall under that category no matter how we define it.

African American[s] soldiers who were captured by the Nazis faced various fates, ranging from simple internment in alien nationals camps, to internment in Gestapo prisons, to forced labor and starvation at POW camps, to internment in concentration camps (and all of the wonders that accompany that dismal fate), and to summary execution upon capture. Pretty much all of this contrasts pretty starkly with how the Nazis treated white troops from Western countries.

Source USHMM

EDIT: the strikethrough, as not all African Americans captured by the Nazis were soldiers.