Shark Island Concentration Camp

"Nama & Ovaherero
Genocide Monument
1904-1908
Shark Island
Luderitz. 22 April 2023
In Memory of the
Nama and Ovaherero Genocides
Here stood the thr Shark Island Concentration Camp.
Initially established in early 1905 as a concentration
camp for the Ovaherero slave labourers for the construction
of the Luderitz-Aus Railway. The first Imperial Governor
Freidrich Von Lindequest continued with what was started
by Curt Von Francois and Lothar Von Trotha as the
extermination order of the Witbooi Nama (12 April 1893)
Ovaherero Extermination Order (02 October 1904)
and the Nama Extermination Order (22 April 1905)
by military operations, but now extermination meted
out through slave labour, starvation, rape, exposure
to adverse conditions and killing.

More so, this concentration camp became the slaughter camp
and final execution of the extermination of the Nama and Ovaherero
people who could not otherwise be used and killed by slave labour
and exhaustion. it is here where most Nama leaders met
their fate, including Gaob Coornelius Frederick.

We commemorate the lives and souls of over
4000 Nama and Ovaherero peoples who died here at the hands
of Germany in defence of the sovereignty of Great
Namaland and Hereroland.

Inaugurated by Goab Johannes Isaack
(Chairperson of the Nama Traditional Leaders Association_
and Paramount Chief of the Ovaherero Prof Muutjimde Katjiva
on 22 April 2023"

Shark Island was originally an Island but it was connected to the mainland by reclamation. It was the site of one of 5 'prisoner of war camps' in German South West Africa that became concentration and extermination camps leading to what is considered the first Genocide of the 20th Century.

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Source

• Text: Sharky Ward
• Photos: Anthony (Sharky) Ward (1), Anthony (Sharky) Ward (2)