Klein Danzig. On the (hi)stories and toponymics of an African internment camp in World War II.

Abstract

‘Klein Danzig’ was a toponym circulating among the German-speaking inhabitants of Southwest Africa. The term denominated an internment camp in Windhoek that existed from September 1939 to February 1941. The camp was set up by the South African administration – the country was a South African mandate territory after the end of German colonial rule; its inmates were male Nazi sympathizers of German descent and functionaries of nationalistic, often heavily nazified organizations. The chapter examines the few published texts on Klein Danzig – memoirs, oral histories, a novel and a recent historical study – and provides an explanation for the naming of the internment facility after the (then) ‘Freie Stadt Danzig’.