Sunday 15 November 2009

For Freedom and the Fatherland

When someone thinks about concentration camps they normally think of the Second World War and places like Auschwitz and Majdanek but they forget about the United States concentration camps for the Native American people in 1830s and the ones in the Philippines in 1900s. Spain also had them in Cuba in the 1870s. But today we were wondering around in the Krugersdorp area where one of the 109 (45 for whites and 64 for black Africans) concentration camps was built by the British in South Africa. Over 26,000 Boer women and children died in these camps but sadly I can't find the number of black Africans who also died. At the Burgershoop Cemetery Matthew wanted to know why there was so many small graves all in rows each one with a small headstone which read "Konsentrasiekamp 1899-1902 Rus in Vrede". Records indicate that 664 children under the age of 15 died here at the Krugersdorp Concentration Camp between 1901 and 1902. Somewhere I've read that there are over 1,800 concentration camp graves at the cemetery. Sadly the old cemetery is in very run down and is in need of major intervention. Rest in peace all those women and children who innocently died in a war fought over a hundred years in the quest for gold.

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