Growing Up Black in Nazi Germany
Hans-Jürgen Massaquoi was the former Managing Editor of EBONY magazine and was inspired by 'Roots' author Alex Haley to write the story of his own unusual childhood.
Massaquoi decided to share his experience of being "both an insider in Nazi Germany and, paradoxically, an endangered outsider." His autobiography, "Destined to Witness: Growing Up Black in Nazi Germany," was published in the U.S. in 1999, followed by a German translation. He shares his familiarity of growing up black in Nazi Germany as being one of very few German-born biracial children in all of Nazi Germany; who were shunned but not persecuted by the Nazis. This very powerful story was created for the German Television in a two part docudrama in 2006.
Massaquoi was born January 19, 1926, in the port city of Hamburg. Massaquoi lived a simple, but happy childhood with his mother, Bertha Nikodijevic, a German nurse, and his father, Al-Haj Massaquoi. His father, Al-Haj, was a law student in Dublin who only occasionally lived with the family at the consul general home in Hamburg. Although when his grandfather was recalled to Liberia, Massaquoi's father decided to return to Africa as well but his mother insisted on staying behind. Massaquoi then grew up with his mother in a working-class neighborhood of Hamburg.
The daily life of young Massaquoi was remarkable; one of very few mixed race children in Nazi Germany. Like most of the other children his age, Massaquoi dreamed of joining the Hitler Youth. Hitler Youth was a paramilitary organization of the Nazi Party, made up of Hitlerjugendproper, young boys between the ages of 14 to 18, or of Deutsches Jungvolf for boys between ages as young as 10 to 14 years old.
However, he soon realized the true nature of Nazism and that his skin color made him a target for racial abuse. In contrast to German-Jews or German-Roma, Massaquoi—a German-Negro—was not persecuted. "Unlike Jews, blacks were so few in numbers that they were relegated to low-priority status in the Nazis' lineup for extermination," he said in a 2001 interview with London's The Independent newspaper. He was just a second-class citizen, which became a blessing in disguise during World War II for his impurity spared him from being drafted into the German Army. However as unemployment, hunger and poverty grew rampant, Massaquoi tried to enlist, but was rejected.
After the collapse of Germany at the end of the war, he played the saxophone in clubs that catered to the American Merchant Marine and worked as a translator for the British occupying forces.Eventually he left Germany, first joining his father's family in Liberia, before moving to Chicago on a student visa to attend an aviation mechanics school. He was drafted into the U.S. Army in 1951 and served stateside during the Korean War. Afterward, he became a U.S. citizen, earned a bachelor's degree from the University of Illinois and began a career as a journalist.
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