The Nazis and the Black Holocaust - Further Readings at OnePeoples.com

When Adolf Hitler came to power in 1932, the racist policies of the Nazis impacted other groups besides the Jews. The Nazis' racial purity laws also targeted gypsies (Roma), homosexuals, the mentally challenged, and Blacks. Precisely how many Afro-Germans died in Nazi concentration camps is not known, but estimates put the figure at between 25,000 and 50,000. The relatively low numbers of Blacks in Germany , their wide dispersal across the country, and the fact that the Nazis concentrated on the Jews were some factors that made it possible for many Afro-Germans to survive the war. One such survivor, who now lives in the U.S. , published a book about his experiences as a Black child growing up in Nazi Germany.

Hans-Jürgen Massaquoi , the retired managing editor of Ebony magazine, was born in Hamburg to a Liberian father and a German mother in 1926. zSB(3,3);if(!z336){var zIsb=gEI("adsb");if(zIsb){zIsb.style.display="inline";zIsb.style.height="0px";zIsb.style.width="0px";}var zIss=gEI("adss");if(zIss){zIss.style.display="inline";zIss.style.height="0px";zIss.style.width="0px";}}

In his book, Destined to Witness : Growing Up Black in Nazi Germany , Massaquoi describes with stunning frankness how as a young boy he so badly wanted to fit into the Nazi culture that he had a babysitter sew a swastika on his sweater. He wore it to school only once before his mother removed it and tried to explain to him why he could not join the Hitler Youth. The German title of his book, Neger, Neger, Schornsteinfeger ("Negro, Negro, chimneysweep"), reflects one of the many taunts he heard as a young boy.

When the war came to Germany , Hans-Jürgen had more than the Nazis to worry about. Heavy Allied bombing forced him and his German mother Bertha Baetz to flee Hamburg . He attributes his survival to good luck and the help of his mother and German friends. In 1947 he went to Liberia before immigrating to the United States and joining the army as a paratrooper and later studying journalism at the University of Illinois . That led to his career at Ebony .

In Germany Massaquoi had avoided the tragic fate of many Blacks during the Nazi era, but it was usually more difficult for adult Blacks. The luckier ones were forcibly sterilized but allowed to live. Others were sent to concentration camps. Some Allied prisoners of war, including Black French colonial soldiers and African Americans, were interned in Stalag-III-A at Luckenwalde near Berlin . In the summer of 1940 about 4,000 Black POWs were sent to Luckenwalde. In 1941 300 of them were forced to act as extras in the German film Germanin (1943). Other Black POWs also appeared in Quax in Afrika (1943, with Heinz Rühmann).

Speaking of movies, Neger, Neger, Schornsteinfeger , a German TV movie based on Massaquoi's book, is scheduled to air on German TV in fall 2006. Actress and producer Whoopi Goldberg, who owns the English-language rights to his book, has been trying to get Massaquoi's story made into a major motion picture for at least eight years, so far without success.

More Categories:
Afrodeutsche (Afro-Germans), Afrikaner (Africans), Afroamerikaner
Blacks living in Germany today fall into several categories. German-born Blacks are sometimes called "Afrodeutsche," but the term is still not widely used by the general public. This category includes people of African heritage born in Germany . In some cases only the father or mother is black, with the other partner being German or European. But just being born in Germany does not make you a German citizen. (Unlike many other countries, German citizenship is based on the citizenship of your parents, and is passed on by blood.) This means that Blacks born in Germany , who grew up there and speak fluent German, are not German citizens unless they have at least one German parent. However, in 2000 a new German naturalization law made it possible for Blacks and other foreigners to apply for citizenship after living in Germany for three to eight years.

Another category is Blacks from Africa, the Caribbean, the United States , or some other place, who are living and working in Germany , sometimes for decades. A well-known African American example is Ron Williams , born in Oakland , California , but unknown in the U.S. Germans know him from his frequent television appearances and his wide-ranging entertainment activities. Williams is active in Germany in combating prejudice and racial discrimination. He has visited over 80 schools for his "Schultour für Toleranz." Lately he is best known for his theatrical Ray Charles show in Germany and other European countries. Before that he portrayed Martin Luther King on tour in 300 cities across German-speaking Europe . Williams, a former GI who got his start as an announcer for AFN (Armed Forces Network) in Stuttgart in the 1960s, is a multitalented performer who sings, acts, plays in a band, and appears on German talk shows. He has directed films and played various roles in movies and on German TV, and has done the German voices for feature and animated films, including Harry Potter and The Little Mermaid . For more see www.ron-williams.de (in German).

Up until the late 1980s and early 1990s Germans freely used words such as Neger ("negro" or the n-word), Negerkuss ("negro kiss," a type of chocolate candy), Farbige ("colored"), and other terms that are considered either offensive or inappropriate today. But the relatively new word Afrodeutscher (Afro-German) is still not widely used in the German language today.

Because black Germans are such a small minority, many Germans really have not developed the sensitivity and awareness of how to act around people with dark skin. It was not many years ago that a Duden editor, when asked why his respected German dictionary still listed "Neger," but did not contain the word "Afrodeutsche/Afrodeutscher," defended the use of the word "Neger" by saying that skin-color discrimination was not a language problem, but a social-political one. My 1999 Oxford-Duden German-English Dictionary lists several afro/Afro - compound words, including Afroamerikaner and even Afrokubaner , but not Afrodeutscher ! For Germans the issue of "political correctness" in this regard resembles the American debate over the use of "Indian" names for sports teams. In the German music world, the Afro-German rapper B-Tight caused a stir with his song "Der Neger in mir" ("The Nigger in Me"). Many of his fellow black hip-hop and "Deutschrap" singers took offense at the song's lyrics, containing words like "Scheißnigger."

NOTE: The following German-English glossary should be used with caution. Many of the German terms listed here are perjorative and/or offensive. Some of them were used during Nazi times (and later) to denigrate Blacks.

Besatzungskind, das "occupation child," a child born of a black GI and a German mother after 1945
Farbige, der colored (person)
Mischling, der mixed-breed, bastard
Mohr, der moor ( dated term )
Mulatte, der mulatto m.
Mulattin, die mulatto f.
Neger, der negro ( but also has a bad connotation similar to "nigger" )
Negerkuss, der "negro kiss" ( chocolate candy )
More 'PC' term: der Schokokuss ("chocolate kiss")
Negerlein, das little negro, "Black Sambo"
Negermusik, die negro music, jazz ( term used by Nazis )
neger sein to be broke ( slang, dialect )
Rassismus, der racism
Schwarze, der/die black person (male/female)
ein Schwarzer a black man, eine Schwarze a black woman
Zehn kleine Negerlein Ten Little Negros/Sambos (Ten Little Indians)
Adé, D-Flame, Torch, Ebony Prince, and Linguist are the names of 'afrodeutsche' Rapper

It's hard to imagine an issue or image more riveting than Black Germans during the Third Reich. Yet accounts of their lives are virtually nonexistent, despite the fact that they lived through a regime dedicated to racial purity.

Clarence Lusane is an excellent and prolific writer and a brilliant thinker. In Hitler's Black Victims , he turns his laser-like intelligence on yet another timely topic: the experience of the Black people in Nazi Germany. Neither Black history, nor European history, will be the same again.