- published: 04 Jul 2011
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The Madagascar Plan was a suggested policy of the Nazi government of Germany to relocate the Jewish population of Europe to the island of Madagascar.
The evacuation of European Jews to the island of Madagascar was not a new concept. Paul de Lagarde, an anti-semitic orientalist scholar, apparently first suggested the idea in 1885, and it was taken up in the 1920s by Henry Hamilton Beamish, Arnold Leese and others. For its part, the Zionist Movement in 1904-5 seriously debated—though it ultimately rejected—the British Uganda Programme by which Jews were to be settled in Uganda. The adherents of Territorialism split off from Zionism and looked throughout the world for places where Jews might settle and create a state or at least an autonomous area—though they are not known to have considered Madagascar, specifically, in that role.
The leaders of Nazi Germany seized on the idea, and Adolf Hitler signed off on it in 1938. In May 1940, Heinrich Himmler, in his Reflections on the Treatment of Peoples of Alien Races in the East, declared: "I hope that the concept of Jews will be completely extinguished through the possibility of a large emigration of all Jews to Africa or some other colony."
Madagascar, officially the Republic of Madagascar (older name Malagasy Republic, Malagasy: Repoblikan'i Madagasikara [republiˈkʲan madaɡasˈkʲarə̥], French: République de Madagascar) is an island country located in the Indian Ocean off the southeastern coast of Africa. The nation comprises the island of Madagascar (the fourth-largest island in the world), as well as numerous smaller peripheral islands. Following the prehistoric breakup of the supercontinent Gondwana, Madagascar split from India around 88 million years ago, allowing plants and animals on the island to evolve in complete isolation. Consequently, Madagascar is a biodiversity hotspot in which over 90% of its wildlife is found nowhere else on Earth. The island's diverse ecosystems and unique wildlife are threatened by human settlement.
Initial human settlement of Madagascar occurred from 350 BCE and 550 CE by Austronesian peoples arriving on outrigger canoes from Borneo who were later joined around 1000 CE by Bantu migrants crossing the Mozambique Channel. Other groups continued to settle on Madagascar over time, each one making lasting contributions to Malagasy cultural life. The Malagasy ethnic group is often divided into eighteen or more sub-groups of which the largest are the Merina of the central highlands.