The Last Long Journey of the Herero
The Documentary Podcast
BBC
4.3 • 2.7K Ratings
🗓️ 14 November 2018
⏱️ 27 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
In 1904 the Herero people of South West Africa made their final stand against German Colonial troops with their backs against the slopes of Waterberg mountain in today’s Namibia. The battle marked the beginning of what has been called the first genocide of the 20th Century as tens of thousands were killed, driven into the desert to die and thousands more held in concentration camps. The Nama, another indigenous group suffered the same fate soon after. And their deaths fed a bizarre and gruesome trade in body parts, driven by racial anthropologists in Germany intent on proving the superiority of their own race.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Winthoque, the National Museum of Namibia. I'm with Director Esther Gorgosis and the former Bishop Zifania Camita. |
| 0:15.0 | This is the room for human remains. |
| 0:17.0 | I'm sure you can see it's a controlled temperature. |
| 0:20.0 | So the Director has special gloves on that allow us to actually open one of those boxes. |
| 0:27.0 | But these are very sturdy cardboard boxes. |
| 0:32.0 | Very, very carefully layers of paper are removed. |
| 0:35.0 | That's one of the skulls. |
| 0:38.0 | The directors ever, ever so carefully removing one of the skulls from the box. |
| 0:46.0 | What does it feel like to hold this person? |
| 0:50.0 | How should he address it? |
| 0:51.0 | How should one feel? You feel it. You are reminded of the pain which these people have gone through. |
| 0:58.0 | I'm Johannes dell from the BBC. Come with me now as I try and find out why this skull and others left |
| 1:05.4 | Namibia in the 1900s for Germany |
| 1:08.0 | and when he recently returned on the last long journey of the Herrera. |
| 1:13.0 | They were living people, they were killed. |
| 1:16.0 | In some cases, or many cases, their own wives, |
| 1:20.0 | asked to scrap the skin from the skull. So it's a very painful situation. |
| 1:27.0 | At the dawn of the 20th century a gruesome and bizarre global trade in human body paths was flourishing. |
| 1:34.0 | They used to boil the heads to soften the flesh. |
| 1:40.0 | And then the women, the Nama and the women were given these heads from the boiling |
| 1:47.9 | ports to take us to scrap the meat off so that it's just the bone. |
| 1:55.0 | Demand was fueled by European scientists. |
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