Used by the Germans as a brutal concentration camp from 1904 to 1908. Shark Island was founded in 1795.

Like many other European countries, Germany established several African colonies in the 19th century. The native inhabitants, including the Herero, Nama and Khoikhoi peoples, tried to adapt to and resist German rule. As more German settlers arrived, they took over more land and resources and began to rely on forced and enslaved labor.

The survivors were sent to the Shark Island concentration camp, which became known as Death Island due to stories of its brutal conditions, meager food rations and death toll. It was home to a German physician, Dr. Bofinger, who was said to have carried out sinister racial scientific experiments and inhumane tests, such as testing the contagiousness of scurvy by injecting prisoners with opium and arsenic.

On Shark Island, the Herero and Nama people were beaten, starved, and enslaved. German geneticist Eugen Fischer conducted medical breeding experiments to study the physical and mental traits of the people imprisoned in the camp. Over 3,000 skulls belonging to the Herero and Nama people were sent back to Germany for further experimentation.

The racist ideas developed in the colony were fed back to German educational institutions, where Fischer’s research would eventually be read by Adolf Hitler. One of Fischer’s students, Josef Mengele, would later conduct human experiments and send people to their deaths in the gas chambers of Auschwitz.

The camp closed in 1907 and the prisoners were moved to an open area near Radford Bay, where the death rate eventually dropped. Today, there is a small memorial on the harrowing peninsula.