Controversial kinship: From colonial rule to the Holocaust?

The exhibition begins with a striking juxtaposition: a hippopotamus-hide whip used in African colonies displayed alongside a canister of Zyklon B, the poison used in Nazi gas chambers. This contrast highlights both the differences and connections between colonial violence and the industrialized mass murder of the Holocaust.

Curated by Professor Stephan Malinowski of the University of Edinburgh, the exhibition does not aim to settle the debate about comparing these systems but to tell its story. "I do think this is nonsense," Malinowski stated regarding the notion that colonial countries should be more attentive to colonial crimes because they're not discussing the Holocaust.

Violence and exploitation

The display connects colonial brutality to Nazi rule through various artifacts and examples. In the 1930s, anti-colonial thinkers from India to the Caribbean argued that colonialism and fascism were two sides of the same coin. George Padmore observed in 1938: There is nothing new or original about the blustering exploits of Hitler and Mussolini. They have all been used before by the British in their efforts to obtain the subjection of less powerfully armed and more industrially backward people.

Hannah Arendt argued in "The Origins of Totalitarianism" (1951) that colonial territories served as laboratories for racial ideologies that later "boomeranged" back into Europe. The Congo Free State under King Leopold II became notorious for extreme brutality, including executions, amputations, and sexual violence to enforce rubber production quotas.

Forced labor was central to Nazi rule, with around 13 to 14 million forced laborers mobilized, a scale comparable to the transatlantic slave trade. The Nazis sought to extract value from victims at every stage, confiscating property, exploiting labor, and even harvesting gold teeth and hair from the dead.

Racial ideologies

While racism underpinned both colonial empires and Nazism, Malinowski notes the goals were fundamentally different. Colonial powers presented assimilation as a path to advancement, while the Nazi regime offered no such opportunities to Poles, Russians, or Jews. "This is definitely not something that the Nazi regime is offering to Poles or to Russians or let alone to Jews," Malinowski added.

Historian Edward Kissi points out that Nazi violence was annihilatory and exterminatory compared to colonial violence. "Even in racism, colonial color-based racism and colonial anti-Jewish sentiments were fundamentally different from what the Nazis pursued," he explains, noting how Nazis pursued the elimination of Black-Germans through forced sterilization.

Genocide and memory

The exhibition acknowledges the genocide of the Herero and Nama in German South West Africa (present-day Namibia) from 1904 to 1908, where an estimated 60,000 to 80,000 Herero and 10,000 Nama died following General Lothar von Trotha's "Vernichtungsbefehl" (extermination order). This is now regarded as the first genocide of the 20th century.

The exhibition draws no direct parallel between the Holocaust and colonial violence, particularly regarding industrialized killing in Nazi death camps. "Where the two things really diverge is the Holocaust and is the systematic mass murder of the European Jews and it's murder for the very purpose of murder," explains Malinowski.

The display opens amid renewed debates over settler colonialism and the meaning of "never again," sharpened by Nicaragua's case against Germany at the International Court of Justice over German support for Israel during the war in Gaza. These tensions are reflected in visitors' comments in the exhibition's epilogue.