Destined to Witness
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Destined to Witness: Growing Up Black in Nazi Germany, is an autobiographical book by Hans J. Massaquoi.
In his autobiography the author, former managing editor of Ebony, tells the story of his growing up in Hamburg. He was born in 1926 as son of a German mother and a high ranking officer of the consulate of Liberia, the only independent black African state at that time apart from Ethiopia. His grandfather was the Liberian consul-general to Hamburg. When his father and grandfather went back to Liberia in 1929, his mother decided to stay in Germany. She made their living working as a nurse, and she and the little boy had to move from the elegant villa to a modest cold-water apartment in the workers’quarter Barmbek.
In the 1930s only a few black people lived in Germany, most of them in the Rhine area, children of German mothers and French-African soldiers. During WW I France had recruited troops from her African colonies, mainly from Senegal. These children in the French-occupied Rhineland were called Franzosenkinder (French children).
In the northern part of Germany black people were so rare that most people never had seen one. Until the 1970s they were called Neger (negro), and it was not considered derogatory. When immigration from Africa grew, discussion about the “N word” grew as well. Today people from black Africa are called Africans, omitting the fact that Arabs also live on the African continent.
Considering this and the Nazi’s obsession to exterminate all non-Aryans, it is almost unbelievable that Hans Massaquoi had never suffered serious persecution by the authorities, although he was rebuffed when he applied for membership in the Hitler Jugend (Hitler Youth), while every young male German was obliged to be a member.
Destined to Witness, in German titled Neger, Neger, Schornsteinfeger (Negro, Negro, Chimney Sweep), was a great success in Germany, remaining on top of the bestselling list of the German weekly Der Spiegel for a couple of months. A screenplay has been adapted from the book and movie shooting started in 2005. The film was run first on October 1 and 2 in 2006 as a two-parter on german ZDF tv channel.
