Britain recruited 372,000 soldiers in their African colonies.
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By Baboucarr Sankanu
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Gambians who were drafted by Great Britain to fight the Japanese Imperial Army in Burma, are among the group of African veterans of the Second World War being honored at a touring exhibition in Germany.
The exhibition titled,”The Third World in the Second World War,” is currently hosted by the museum on the local Nazi history of the City of Cologne. The exhibition will move to another European city on January 16th 2011.
Speaking at the opening, museum curator Karl Roessel said, “for more than 12 years, a group of freelance journalists, called Rheinisches JournalistInnenbüro, based in Cologne and supported by a group of researchers called Recherche International e.V, have been trying to overcome the Eurocentric views of the history of World War II.
He added that the first result of the research in 30 countries over a whole decade was the publication of the book “Unsere Opfer zaehlen nicht – Our victims don’t count” in 2005, followed by a special educational edition for teachers and school kids, which was published in 2008.”
On September 1st, the 70th anniversary of the beginning of WWII in Europe, an exhibition on the forgotten role of third world countries and people was presented for the first time at the Uferhallen in Berlin's cosmopolitan “Wedding” district to tour afterwards through different cities in Germany, Switzerland and Austria until the end of 2011.
Recherche International eV, one of the groups behind this unique project, is still hoping to find a publishing house for an English edition of the book “Our victims don’t count”, which was selected by 24 critics in Germany as the most important non-fiction book of the month, when it came out.
African countries like Senegal, The Gambia, Ghana, Nigeria, Cameroon and Ethiopia could be included on the exhibition's itinerary whenever feasible.
African and the War
At the outset of the war, the French colonies in Africa were divided into four sectors: North Africa, West Africa, Equatorial Africa, and Madagascar. After the Franco-German armistice in 1940, the collaborators of the pro-German Vichy Regime controlled these colonies. This meant that the native troops, commanded by French officers, were not fighting for the anti-Hitler coalition. Only gradually did they follow General de Gaulle's call in 1940 "For a Free France". Towards the end of the war, more than half a million Africans from the French colonies were fighting on de Gaulle's side. At times, they made up fifty to sixty per cent of the soldiers in his ranks. But when it came to marching into Paris, African troops were allegedly replaced by Whites because the French commanders did not want Africans to free their capital. At least 320,000 soldiers in the French army came from the North African colonies.
In return for fighting the Germans, Algerians were promised independence. However, when they demonstrated for that cause, waving Algerian flags, on May 8, 1945, the French army massacred 45,000 people. Worldwide, May 8, 1945, the day of Germany's capitulation, came to be known as the day of liberation from fascism and war. In Algeria, this day was one of the darkest in the nation's history.
During World War II, the French army committed another massacre, murdering soldiers from Senegal. In 1944, in the outskirts of Dakar, "Camp de Thiaroye" housed "Senegalese bowmen" who had come home exhausted from European battlegrounds. When they were not paid the promised wages, they revolted. The French swiftly moved in military trucks and fired at the crowd, killing many Senegalese soldiers. Ousmane Sembène, the most prominent contemporary Senegalese writer and film director, saved this incidence from sinking into oblivion by turning it into a movie titled "Camp de Thiaroye."
The British recruited 372,000 soldiers in their African colonies. Tens of thousands of them from Ghana, Gambia, Cameroon and other West African countries were shipped to Asia via South Africa to fight against the Japanese in the jungles of Burma. After the bombardment of London, the British urged their African colonies to collect goods for homeless and orphaned children in England. Africans, themselves lacking basic goods at the time, donated rice and contributed millet, goats and money. The Masai provided 40,000 heads of cattle for British soldiers on the frontlines.
Opposite of Europe - African Film Festival
The exhibition is part of the special section of the eleventh “Opposite of Europe XI - New Films From Africa“, festival in Cologne.
Explaining the program outline, the festival director Christa Aretz said “out of 300 entries, 55 movies from 22 African countries were selected and screened. Panel discussions with 17 filmmakers from Egypt, Algeria, Cameroon, Morocco, Congo, Rwanda, Tunisia, USA, France and Germany were held.
The festival took place from the 19th of September to the 4th of October 2010, at the cinema hall of the film forum of the Northrhine Westphalia (NRW) within the Museum Ludwig complex in Cologne and at five other locations across the city. The festival presented, besides the awardees of the Pan African film festival FESPACO 2009 in Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso, new discoveries from other international festivals like those in Carthage, Zanzibar, Durban, New York, Brussels, Tarifa and the Berlinale.
The spectrum of the genres demonstrated the diversity of the African cinema and ranges from comedies and love stories, thrillers and science-fiction to political explosive documentaries and video installations. One of the short-film screenings presented the winners of a directors' competition organized by the Goethe-Institute in Africa under the title „Latitude“.
From Egypt, there was a film reel with 19 movies from different African countries which showed the history of African animation movies including one of the first African cartoons ever produced in 1937.
The festival also provided a cinematic preview for the exhibition about African mega-cities presented by the Rautenstrauch-Joest-Museum Cologne, under the title “Afro polis, City, Media, Art“.
Special screenings for schools in the morning, performances of the dance and music group BAOBAB from Ghana, a live-act by the Afro-German girl band “Tamika & Mamadee”, part of the anti-racist musician initiative “Sisters“, as well as readings of African authors like Seffi Atta from Nigeria enriched the festival program.
For the theatrical release of the documentary “Kinshasa symphony,” the conductor of the first Congolese orchestra, Armand Diangienda came personally to introduce the film.
The film festival ended with “the forgotten liberators,“ (A nos morts) dance theatre performed by migrants of the “Memoires Vives” company from Strasbourg, France.
The “Opposite of Europe - New Films From Africa“ is an exclusive bi-annual film festival that provides a promotional platform for authentic audio-visual and related arts works by Africans, descendants of Africans and other non-Africans on themes of African bias. The festival \was organized by Prince Bubacarr Sankanu and his associates of the FilmInitiativ Koeln, Germany (www.filminitiativ.de).
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