GERMANY ACKNOWLEDGES FIRST GENOCIDE OF THE 2Oth CENTURY, THE HERERO AND NAMA
Hambira, Kavenam, and Gleckman-Krut, Miriam (July 8, 2021). Germany Apologized for a Genocide. It’s Nowhere Near Enough. New York Times. https://www.nytimes.com/2021/07/08/opinion/germany-genocide-herero-nama.html?action=click&module=Opinion&pgtype=Homepage
ED NOTE: This acknowledgment by Germany, at long last, is of great importance to students of genocide, and an important breakthrough in respect of combatting long-lasting denials of the perpetration of a genocide. For all of us who are concerned with denials of the Armenian Genocide, this is an encouraging example of a government that has long sidestepped and denied its commission of a known genocide coming full around to acknowledgment and to some process of financial compensation as well. However, it should not in any way be taken as a disappointment by the many who unknowingly erred and would refer to the Armenian Genocide as the first genocide of the 20th century. The enormity of the Armenian Genocide is in no ways reduced by its not being the first in an historical period. At the same time, the Herero-Nama Genocide now joins the Armenian Genocide as early scenarios – some say “rehearsals”– of wanton exterminationist killing by Germany which then goes on to perpetrate the Holocaust in the 1940’s.