Growing up black in Nazi Germany: One man's story

Massaquoi and his mother

May 23, 2001
Web posted at: 3:30 PM EDT (1930 GMT)

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By Shelley Walcott
CNN NEWSROOM

NEW ORLEANS, Louisiana (CNN) -- Hans Massaquoi is the retired managing editor of Ebony magazine, a post that gave him access to statesmen, civil rights leaders and celebrities for more than 30 years. But when it came time to write his autobiography, Massaquoi chose not to focus on his decades of success in the United States. Instead, in "Destined to Witness" (William Morrow), Massaquoi tells what it was like to grow up black in Nazi Germany.

"The main thing is I didn't want to be an outsider," Massaquoi said in an interview from his home in New Orleans. "My color set me apart from everyone."

Massaquoi was born in 1926 in Hamburg, Germany. His mother, Bertha, was a German nurse, and his father was the son of a former African tribal king who was Liberia's first consul general in Germany. They never married.

While Massaquoi was still an infant, his father returned to Liberia, leaving Massaquoi and his mother to fend for themselves. Massaquoi was one of just a handful of blacks living in Germany at that time. His African features made him a standout, but he said his classmates and teachers accepted him ... at least early on.

"But then in 1933, when Hitler took power, everything changed," Massaquoi said. "All of a sudden, racism became the No. 1 priority in Germany."

Massaquoi was just 7. At first, he said he was fascinated by the rise of Adolf Hitler and the Third Reich. So fascinated, he had his baby sitter sew a swastika onto one of his school sweaters.

"My baby sitter was an old lady who was politically, totally unsophisticated," Massaquoi said.

"And of course when my teacher saw it, she saw the contradiction. She happened to have a camera, and she took this picture, which then became the cover of my book."

But Massaquoi's mother didn't find the swastika nearly as endearing. When she saw it on her son's sweater, she ripped it off and told him to never wear such a thing again.

Massaquoi's childhood became filled with more restrictions and rejections as Nazi ideology became more entrenched in German society. But Massaquoi said he and his mother could not leave the country because they were too poor to travel.

With no other blacks to identify with, Massaquoi developed a fascination with Nazism, especially with a group known as the Hitler Youth.

"The Hitler Youth was an organization that had the boys marching through the streets, blowing trumpets and fanfares and beating drums and walking around with flags waving," Massaquoi said.

"And they would go on overnight hikes and all the kinds of things that appeared sort of Boy Scout-like, with of course plenty of political indoctrination on the side."

But Massaquoi was not allowed to join, a great disappointment at the time. A teacher told him black children were not welcome. Massaquoi's teachers often reminded him he was "not one of them." One even made a not-so-veiled threat.

"He said, 'When we are done with the Jews, you'll be next,' " Massaquoi said. "And I knew that the Jews were not treated kindly. I knew that Jews went into concentration camps. I knew that Jews were maligned and their shops were destroyed and they were driven out of their businesses and that sort of thing. I had seen much of this."

The horrific treatment of Germany's Jews hit particularly close to home when the father of one of Massaquoi's Jewish playmates poisoned the family. Massaquoi said the man decided his family should commit suicide before German soldiers could ship them off to a concentration camp.

Massaquoi credited his own survival to pure luck. He said, even though he was routinely spotted by German soldiers, neither he nor his mother were approached by authorities.

But life remained difficult for Massaquoi, especially as he grew into adolescence. In school, he routinely faced vicious remarks and racist name-calling. Even though he was a good student, he was not allowed to go to high school. And, when other German teen-agers started dating, Massaquoi knew that was out of the question for him.

"I had this hanging over me throughout my childhood and especially during my teens when it was made clear to me that if I ever got caught with an Aryan girl in any type of romantic situation, it could mean sterilization or execution," he said.

Massaquoi played saxophone in clubs to support himself and his mother after World War II ended.

By the time he grew fully aware of the Nazi regime's true nature, Germans were at war, and Massaquoi's life became even more of a delicate game of survival.

He and his mother were nearly killed when British forces leveled Hamburg in 1943. The apartment where they lived was destroyed.

Massaquoi and his mother boarded a train for the German countryside, where they stayed with his mother's relatives. There, Massaquoi witnessed prisoner convoys passing through the village on the way to a concentration camp -- a fate Massaquoi said he managed to avoid because he fell under the German radar.

"Blacks were so few throughout Germany that they were not part of the German priority -- the priority for killing people," he said. "We blacks were not a threat in the sense that Germans perceived Jews to be a threat."

When the war finally ended in 1945, Germany was in ruins. Massaquoi said he was able to save his mother and himself from starvation by playing saxophone in clubs that catered to American soldiers.

He eventually left Germany for Liberia, where he lived with his father, Al-Haj Massaquoi, for two years. After his father's death, Massaquoi immigrated to the United States.

Massaquoi lives in New Orleans, Louisiana.

Massaquoi's life in New Orleans is a far cry from the neighborhoods of Hamburg. Even though he knows his life was constantly in danger, Massaquoi said he still has some warm feelings for his childhood home. He said age and experience have taught him that Germans did not hold a monopoly on hate.

"Racism is almost seen everywhere throughout the world," he said. "You see it in Rwanda, in Burundi. You see it in Kosovo. You see it in Northern Ireland. You name it, there's racism.

"Racism is a universal thing, and I think all people -- all decent people in the world -- have to stay extra vigilant to make sure the kind of excesses that happened in Nazi Germany will not re-occur."

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