To Zinder

The “Final Solution” in History (1988), goes right back to the horrors of the Thirty Years’ War, the storming of Magdeburg on May 10, 1631, when thirty thousand men, women, and children were murdered, and even further back to the mass murder by the Crusaders of eleven hundred innocent inhabitants of Mainz in 1096, to find equivalents to the mass murders of Jews during World War II. Only occasionally was there any debate – for instance, over the events taking place while Joseph Conrad was writing Heart of Darkness and the Central African Expedition was on its way toward Zinder. At the head of the 1898 Central African Expedition was Captain Voulet and Lieutenant Chanoine.

Source: granta.com