60 years after the UN Convention - Dag Hammarskjöld Foundation

colonialism and the holocaust – towards an archeology of genocide 103
The parallels with colonialism are not just limited to ideological justifi
cations for conquest and domination; they are also evident in the
techniques of rule. With the exception of the settler colonies, where
the ratio of Europeans to the indigenous population gradually shifted,
a small elite consisting of colonial administrators and military ruled
over a far more numerous local population that was unable to participate
in government. Colonisers and colonised were ruled by diff erent
legal systems, and this ‘dual legal system’ rested on racial criteria.
Advantages for Europeans in this ‘racially privileged society’ (rassische
Privilegiengesellschaft), however, were not limited to formal law (Zimmerer
2001a: 94-109). The situation coloniale penetrated all spheres of
social interaction between colonisers and colonised. The former were
always privileged in every respect. They had their own schools and
kindergartens, their own counters at post offi ces and other government
agencies. This constant symbolic subordination was evident, for
example, in German Southwest Africa where Africans were obliged
to salute whites, and forbidden to ride horses and use the sidewalk. In
occupied Poland, too, Poles had to display appropriate humility before
the Germans by making way for them on sidewalks, removing
their hats and saluting. They were prohibited from attending cinemas,
concerts, exhibitions, libraries, museums and theatres, and from
owning bicycles, cameras and radios (Burleigh 2000: 450f). To be
sure, this everyday discrimination pales in signifi cance in comparison
with the contemporaneous mass murders, but it nevertheless provides
an indication of an often overlooked line of tradition of German policy
in the occupied territories. The ideal of the ‘racially privileged society’
is also the basis for the following statement by Hitler: ‘Our Germans
– that is the main thing – must form a closed community like a
fortress, outside the centers the lowest horse boy must stand above any
of the natives’. 22 Of course, this only applied to that part of the local
population whose right to life was recognised at all.
Not only was the separate treatment of Germans and non-Germans,
or whites and non-whites, prescribed legally and in everyday life in
both colonialism and National Socialism, but active steps were taken
to avoid any ‘mixing’ of the two populations. The problem of maintaining
the separation of the privileged upper and the non-privileged
lower strata was particularly acute in the settler colonies where there
was a relatively large number of European residents. So-called people
of ‘mixed-blood’ (Mischlinge), who blurred the boundaries between
the races, were seen as a potential threat. Thus attempts were made
to prevent such occurrences and, beginning in the English colonies
22 Hitler, 17 September 1941; in Jochmann (1980: 62-63).