CC0002

Did You Know?

The concentration camp at Aus, Namibia, was established by German colonial forces during the Herero and Nama genocide (1904–1908) in German South West Africa, not in 1915. The camp held captured Nama and Herero people, including women and children, under brutal conditions. It was one of several such camps across the colony, where prisoners faced forced labor, malnutrition, and disease. The camp was located near the town of Aus, in the arid region of what is now the Karas (//Karas) Region of southern Namibia. Aus itself is a small settlement that gained later prominence as a railway stop on the line between Lüderitz and Keetmanshoop. The camp operated during the early 1900s, and its prisoners were often used in railway construction or other colonial infrastructure projects. The exact number of deaths at Aus is not precisely documented, but mortality rates in these camps were extremely high, with estimates for the overall genocide ranging from tens of thousands of deaths. The 1915 date in the query likely refers to the period of South African military occupation during World War I, when South African forces defeated the Germans in South West Africa. However, the camp itself predates that year. Today, no significant physical remains of the Aus camp are visible, and the site is not a formal heritage monument. Historical research on these camps has grown since the early 2000s, with German and Namibian scholars documenting their role in the genocide, which is widely recognized as the first genocide of the 20th century.

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