My Take On It

What do you mean there were no blacks in Germany during WW II?

Since the start of my exploration of a memoir called Destined to Witness: Growing Up Black in Nazi Germany I cannot put it down. There are very few books that highlight the experiences of black people during Hitler's evil reign. When inquiring about this in high school, I was often told, "Don't think that blacks weren't killed because the Nazi's accepted them...they weren't killed because there were no blacks in Germany at the time." Well the strange reality is, there WERE blacks in Germany during the second world war. Their numbers were probably few and most of those were mixed-race (if I'm not mistaken). The story as I see it, is that blacks were given low priority status on the enemy list. How ironic it is that this beautiful black child (the author Hans J. Massaquoi) was a victim of racial harassment but was still force fed hatred of Jews by Nazi school officials. He admits that this venomous teaching led him to hate Jews until he realized that as a person of color, it was ridiculous for him to hate on the basis of ethnicity. I would encourage anyone who wants to learn about the experiences of blacks in Nazi Germany to read this book. So far, I am walking away from it learning that there were some pretty decent Germans living under Hitler. I was presently surprised.

Labels: Hans J. Massaquoi

posted by LorMarie @ 7:07 PM 0 comments