BERLIN, Germany — Lying alongside tombstones at the Columbiadamm cemetery in Berlin’s Neukölln district sits the Herero stone, splashed in red paint, to symbolize the blood spilled by the Kaiser Franz Guard-Grenadier Regiment Nr. 2.
The Herero Stone sitting in the Columbiadamm cemetery.
Put up in 1907, the stone commemorates the seven fallen soldiers who fought in the Kaiser’s army in German southwest Africa, in present-day Namibia. The untold story is more important: What the monument failed to acknowledge was the nearly 100,000 Africans who perished at the hands of the regiment.