LL-L "Migration" 2005.12.16 (07) [E]

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16 December 2005 * Volume 07
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From: Frank Verhoft <frank.verhoft at skynet.be>
Subject: Immigration

Hi everybody,

For quite some time i'm looking for information on Chinese immigants in the
lowlands (especially in Antwerp, but also
in Belgium and the Netherlands). It's no problem to find information on the
Turkish, Moroccan, Jewish, Russian, etc. population/immigration, but weirdly
enough, i can hardly find any decent publication on Chinese in Belgium. One
publication so far by KU Leuven, but it was a bit too general and
superficial.
Information i got from 2nd and 3rd generation (Belgian-)Chinese themselves
is rather scattered and unclear.

Does anybody of you know about any publication on this topic?

Maybe it's a bit beyond the scope of this group (if so, forgive me), and
maybe i interpret Lowland-culture too broadly.
On the other hand, to name one most visible things, Chinese restaurants are
so common in Flanders, i even can't imagine a village here without one. As a
former resident of Antwerp it's hard not to see the local  "Chinatown" :-)
(Actually it's only one street, though economic and cultural activities are
growing.)

Groetjes,

Frank

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From: R. F. Hahn <sassisch at yahoo.com>
Subject: Migration

Hi, Frank!  Good to hear from you again.

I can't answer your question, but it reminds me of something I've been 
trying to read up on for a couple of years or so.

Germany now has fairly good-sized Chinese communities, some families having 
lived there for generations.  In Northern Germany, you can find Chinese 
business establishments even in smaller towns and cities on the Heath. 
Before the 20th century or the late 19th century, however, there were 
virtually no Chinese people in Germany, except the odd visiting scholar.  In 
the early 20th century, Chinese sailors, mostly Cantonese speakers, began to 
settle in Hamburg.  They tended to work as laundry workers, cooks or 
dishwashers, and later some of them opened their own laundries or 
restaurants.  So there was a small Chinese community in Hamburg, apparently 
Germany's only one then, consisting of anywhere between one hundred and a 
few hundred persons, almost all of them male.  The climate then was 
relatively liberal, for Hamburg had been a congregation point of people from 
all over Europe, especially from Eastern Europe, many of whom originally 
having planned to migrate overseas.  Some Asians and Africans settled there 
too, as did a small number of African Americans (besides settling in 
Berlin), especially during the Weimar Republic era when they felt more 
accepted in Europe than in their native country. Already then there were a 
few German-born people of part African or East Asian parentage.

Little mentioned are the injustices committed against Hamburg's (= 
Germany's) Chinese during the fascist era.  While they were not actually 
sent away for extermination, they were rounded up and arrested by the 
Gestapo, held for days at the Fuhlsbüttel police lockup and finally sent to 
labor camps or to convict factory and railroad labor in Hamburg-Wilhelmsburg 
(as were some people of African origin).  A few of them did not survive 
this.  This was called the _Chinesenaktion_ and began at the crack of dawn 
on Saturday, May 13, 1944.  (Meanwhile, Japanese people were to be treated 
as "honorary Aryans" ...)

To add post-war insult to injury, the records of this "action" mysteriously 
disappeared at or after the end of WW II, the case has been declared eluding 
all investigation, and claims and questions about reparation for affected 
Chinese Germans have been dismissed off-hand and summarily, the federal 
courts having found that the affected persons "had not been persecuted on 
racial grounds" ...

Regards,
Reinhard/Ron 

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