In 1800 several thousand Aborigines lived in the colony of Tasmania: seventy years later he last full-blood woman on the island died. That is often quoted as a classic example of genocide. But the killing of Aborigines by shooting, poisoning, etc. lasted only a few decades. Later the Aborigines were persuaded by a man they regarded as a friend to leave their territory and go to small islands, where they would no longer hold up white settlement. Sicknesses and neglect on the islands rapidly destroyed that human group whose ancestors had occupied Tasmania several millennia earlier. The lecture will largely concentrate on the deeds of George Augustus Robinson, the apparent friend of the Aborigines, who on the one hand really wanted to help them, but on the other exploited the situation to enrich himself and finally did nothing to avoid the catastrophe.