When you think of Nazi Germany, you mostly think about the human rights abuses, and the
concentration camps like Auschwitz.
But have you ever wondered what happened to the black people living under the Third Reich?
It turns out that even though there were racial laws demanding the extermination of the Jewish
and Roma people, there were so few Africans living in Germany, that they were not considered
to be one of Hitler’s main priorities.
One very special mixed race boy grew up in Germany during the Third Reich, and he lived
to tell the tale.
Not only did he manage to survive unscathed, but he also desperately wanted to join the
Nazi Party.
He was an actual prince, and he grew up to become a writer.
This is the incredible story of Hans Massaquoi.
Early Life Hans-Jurgen Massaquoi was born in Hamburg,
Germany in 1926, but he didn’t look like most of the blonde haired and blue eyed babies
born into the country.
His mother, Bertha Baetz, was a German nurse, and his father, Al-Haj Massaquoi was the prince
of the African country Liberia.
When Hans was born, Al-Haj was a law student studying at Trinity College in Dublin.
The plan was for Bertha and Al-Haj to get married after graduation, and she lived with
her future father-in-law, King Momolu.
The King received his college education in the United States, and he became the first
ethnically African diplomat to live and work in Germany.
Liberia had elected a president, so while the position of King was still a powerful
one, he was more of a figurehead for the tribal leadership.
For years, King Momolu had lived with five wives, which was a tribal tradition.
But he gave up that lifestyle in favor of a more western way of life, and married a
woman named Rachel Johnson.
They had several kids together, and they accepted Bertha and Hans into their happy home.
At that time, the only other mixed race children living in Germany were called “The Rhineland
Bastards”.
In 1919, Western Germany was occupied by the Allies, which included Afro-French soldiers.
The German women thought that these men were exciting and exotic, and many of them had
affairs with the African soldiers.
However, after the soldiers left Germany, many of the women were pregnant, and they
gave birth to mixed race babies.
People were shocked, and racist Germans were disgusted that women would ever do this.
Many of these mothers could not handle raising the children alone, and they were called “whores”
for having these affairs.
Children were given up for adoption, and the government spread propaganda depicting black
men as rapists.
These children were seen as a product of foreign brutality.
However, only one woman out of the hundreds of mothers to mixed race children ever came
forward to claim that she had been raped by a black soldier, while the rest said that
they had a consensual romantic relationship.
In the 1920’s, Germany's economy was struggling to recover from World War I.
The Massaquoi family were royalty, and they were wealthy and exotic.
This made them well respected in the city of Hamburg, and they were treated by everyone
as esteemed guests.
Bertha Baez got to experience living with this royal treatment, and she was prepared
to move to Liberia to get married and have a new life as an African princess.
Unfortunately, Al-Haj abandoned Bertha and Hans, and he never returned to Germany.
King Momolu was furious with his son, and he threatened to force Al-Haj to marry Bertha,
but she did not want that.
Momolu agreed to continue to support Bertha and his grandson in the consulate mansion
in Hamburg for as long as possible.
When he was very young, Hans believed that black people were the superior race.
His family was wealthy, and most of the German people were poor by comparison.
They also had several maids and servants that were all white.
On top of that, Bertha’s friends would fuss over him as a toddler and compliment his skin
wherever he went.
Hans never met his father in person, and only communicated with him through letters.
So his grandfather stepped in to help raise him, and he grew up having a very happy childhood.
When he was seven years old, King Momolu was asked by the President of Liberia to return
to his home country, and his duty as the German consulate was over.
He offered to bring Hans and Bertha to live with him in Liberia, but she refused to leave
when she knew that Al-Haj did not want to marry her.
Bertha was an independent woman, and she decided to go back to work as a nurse, and raise Hans
as a single mom.
They moved to a working class neighborhood in Barmbek, where they could only afford to
rent an attic apartment.
Hans became friends with two boys in the neighborhood named Fiete and Klaus, and they played together
every day.
The three boys were good kids, and they got to know many of the people in their town.
Even though he was able to make close friends, Hans was bullied by the other boys in school
for the color of his skin.
Children would taunt him with a racist rhyme that is so offensive, we aren’t going to
repeat it in this video.
The children said that his skin was dirty, and they said horrible things about his mother.
Despite all of this bullying, Hans was incredibly bright, and he was one of the smartest kids
in his class.
He wanted to be an engineer when he grew up, and he drew sketches of bridges from a very
young age.
His teacher encouraged him to pursue this career, even though she secretly thought that
it would not be possible in Nazi-occupied Germany.
When he was 7 years old, Hans asked his babysitter to sew a swastika patch on his sweater, so
that he could wear it to school.
He wanted to prove to all of his bullies that he was a German.
Of course, he was a child, and he didn’t fully understand what being a “Nazi” meant.
A photographer at the school snapped a picture of him wearing the swastika.
When Hans’ mother saw him wearing this when he got home, she quickly removed the symbol,
telling him that their family did not believe in the Nazi party.
However, like a lot of other kids, Hans rebelled against his mother, and continued to try to
fit in with the rest of the children in school.
In 1935, when Hans was 9 years old, the Nuremberg Laws were passed in Germany, which made it
illegal for Aryans and Non-Aryans to have sex or get married.
This included anyone who was not born with pure German blood, which included Jews, Roma,
and of course, black people.
Hans Massaquoi was classified as a “Non Aryan”.
His mother was sheltering him from learning about the Nuremberg Laws, and she wanted him
to have a normal childhood.
He could not understand why so many people were being mean to him, and he wanted to know
why he couldn’t just be like everyone else.
People would point and stare at him in the streets, and whisper about the color of his
skin.
Back in the 1930’s, the slang term everyone used for black people in Germany was the “N-word”.
White people were calling Hans the N-word all day, every day.
He desperately wanted to fit in, and was willing to go along with what everyone else was doing.
Hitler Youth Envy When Hans was in school, he sat in the classroom
together with the other German children.
He was taught about how Hitler was a hero who saved the nation from poverty, and how
Germany was the greatest country in the world.
The minds of these young children were being brainwashed.
None of these kids knew that the Nazis were killing and torturing innocent people, and
they grew up to be loyal followers of Adolf Hitler.
When boys turned 10 years old, it became mandatory for them to join the Hitler Youth.
From Hans’ perspective, the members of the Hitler Youth wore cool uniforms, and it seemed
like joining a club similar to the Boy Scouts.
Hitler Youth got to take days off of school, and they marched in parades while crowds cheered,
and firework were set off in their honor.
Propaganda posters were everywhere, and it made it seem like the Hitler Youth were able
to play games all day and receive special treatment.
There was even a novel titled Hitler Youth Quex that came out in 1932, and the movie
version premiered in 1933.
Comic books and Disney movies were banned in Germany, so these kids looked up to these
Nazi characters of propaganda as their heros, instead.
In 1936, Hans turned 10 years old, and he believed that it was finally time for him
to join the Nazi party.
All of the boys in Hans’ school stood in the yard, and their principal called out their
names one by one to announce their official enlistment in the Hitler Youth.
Hans stood and waited in anticipation for his name to be called, but it never was.
Out of 800 kids, he was the last one left standing.
For anyone who has felt the pain of being picked last in gym class as a kid, imagine
that humiliation times a thousand.
Determined to be included, Hans went with his best friends to a Hitler Youth office
in Hamburg to try to sign up, but they did not allow him to join either, because he was
a non-Aryan.
The Nazis even began to hang signs in his local playground, saying that non-Aryan children
were no longer allowed to play there.
His friend’s parents appreciated how badly Hans wanted to join the Nazi party, which
kept him in good graces with most of the adults in his life.
The one and only thing that could help restore some of Hans’ pride in his heritage that
year was the fact that an African American runner named Jesse Owens dominated the Berlin
Olympics in 1936.
This cause a huge scandal for the Nazis, who were trying to prove to the world that their
Aryan race was the best at everything.
Years later, as an adult, Hans Massaquoi met Jesse Owens in person and thanked him "for
allowing me to walk a little taller among my peers that summer."
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Teenage Years Growing up, Hans would have no way of knowing
that despite all of the horrible things he went through, he was extremely lucky.
There were very few Afro-Germans living in the country during the war.
Since Germany had colonized parts of Africa, exterminating them from their mainland was
a low priority compared to the Jews and Roma.
However, a German anthropologist called Dr. Wolfgang Abe released a study that concluded
that mixed race children were genetically inferior to pure Aryans.
He said that they were aggressive and dangerous, and that their mothers were basically just
incubators for an alien race that wasn’t fully human.
He believed that it was necessary to sterilize all mixed-race people who were left living
in Germany.
Many Afro and Asian-German people were caught by the SS, and they were forced to undergo
surgeries that would sterilize them so that they could no longer have children and pass
on their DNA.
Hans Massaquoi was able to avoid this fate, because the authorities knew that he was a
prince, and he was protected under a sort of diplomatic immunity.
When he became a teenager, Hans found out that even though he was a full German citizen,
the Nazi laws prevented him from having any hope of a successful future.
Since he was non-Aryan, Hans was not allowed to pursue higher education, so his dreams
of getting an engineering degree and designing bridges was crushed.
He tried to enlisted in the German army after graduating High School, but he was denied
entry, because of his race.
Non-Aryans were not allowed to hold a job and earn an income, either.
The Nazi government made sure that he was left with almost no hope of having any kind
of life after High School.
Thankfully, a local blacksmith took him under his wing as an apprentice.
After learning his craft, he went to a job counselor to see if he could get a work assignment.
He did not expect much to happen, since he knew that he was not allowed to work, but
he showed up with examples of the things that he had created during his apprenticeship.
He hoped that maybe they would see his skill, and make an exception to the rules.
The SS officer looked over his papers, and told him that he could not give him a job,
but someday soon, he believed that Hitler would help Germany retake their colonies in
Africa, and they would need a loyal black man like him to help them.
Hans began dating a white girl for a short period of time, and he took her dancing at
night clubs that played American swing music, which had been banned by the Nazi government.
He was taking a lot of risks, especially since this girl’s father was an SS officer.
They had to meet in secret at night.
One evening, he was caught, and brought in to the police station.
Dating a white girl was violating the Nuremberg Laws, and to make matters worse, the police
officers that picked him up claimed that he was trying to mug her.
Such relationships were forbidden and classified as Rassenschande (race defilement) by the
race laws.
These would have been serious enough crime to send him to a concentration camp.
Thankfully, one of the police officers from his neighborhood recognized him, and vouched
for his good character.
He was able to get off the hook, but he had to end his relationship, because it was far
too dangerous for them to be together.
Meanwhile, during the war, the Germans kept African prisoners of war separate from white
people.
They were sent to a prison called Les Frontstalags, where they were tortured and treated like
animals.
The fact that Hans Massaquoi was denied entry to the German army was a real blessing in
disguise, because he would never have to carry the weight of guilt on his shoulders for participating
in crimes against humanity on behalf of the Nazis.
Many of his close friends that he grew up with would die in the war.
When the Allies were bombing Germany, Hans and his mother had to live in hiding.
During the period following the Allies near destruction of Hamburg, he befriended the
family of Ralph Giordano, a half-Jewish acquaintance of the Swing Kids jazz devotees.
The Giordanos managed to survive the war by hiding and helped Massaquoi and his mother
secure a nearby basement after their Hamburg neighborhood was destroyed.
Giordano, a lifelong friend, became a renowned journalist as well.
In 1945, when the war was over, neither of them had anything left.
Hans knew how to play the saxophone, so he got a job playing jazz and swing music in
night clubs for the American soldiers, which supported him and his mother until they could
move on with their lives.
After The War When World War II was over, American troops
were stationed in Germany, and black men entered this all-white country once again.
Just like the era of the “Rhineland Bastards”, more mixed-race babies were born when German
women had relationships with black soldiers.
Since they were fresh out of the Nazi regime, racism was still a very powerful force in
Germany.
The vast majority of these mothers did not want to keep their babies, and thousands of
mixed race children were given to orphanages.
Ebony Magazine brought attention to the issue by coming out with a now-famous cover with
an image of a black child with bright, blue eyes, that said; “Homes Needed For 10,000
Brown Orphans.”
Thousands of American families stepped up to adopt these children and bring them over
to the United States, but many of them remained to start the new generation of Afro-German
people.
In 1948, Hans Massaquoi’s father, Al-Haj was able to arrange for him to leave Germany
and move to Liberia, so that they could meet each other face-to-face for the first time.
Hans realized that while his mother had always tried to speak well of him, his father was
actually rather arrogant and selfish, so they didn’t have a very good relationship.
Even though he thought that Liberia was a beautiful country, and he could have inherited
a crown, Hans did not want to stay there for the rest of his life.
He emigrated to the United States with a student visa, because he planned to go to college.
There was a mixup with the paperwork, so he was forced to serve in the Korean War for
two years as a paratrooper even though he was not an American citizen.
In 1950, he was finally able to start his college classes at 24 years old, and earned
a journalism degree from the University of Illinois.
After graduating, he worked for an African American publication called Jet Magazine,
and later moved to Chicago to work as the editor of Ebony Magazine.
Hans got married and started a family of his own in the US.
For years, he only told the story of his life in Nazi Germany to his children, and only
decided to write his autobiography, Destined to Witness: Growing Up Black in Nazi Germany,
after he retired from his journalism career in 1999.
The story of his life was shocking to a lot of people, and it was eventually made into
a German movie in 2006.
“All’s well that ends well,” Hans Massaquoi wrote.
“I’m quite satisfied with the way my life has turned out to be.
I survived to tell the piece of history I was a witness of.
At the same time, I wish everyone could have a happy childhood within a fair society.
And that was definitely not my case.”
Hans Massaquoi died in 2013 on his birthday, after turning 87 years old.
At the time of his death, Massaquoi was married to the love of his life, Katharine Rousseve
Massaquoi.
He had two sons by a previous marriage, Steve and Hans Jr., who also survived him.