Destined to Witness: Growing Up Black in Nazi Germany
| Author | : | |
| Rating | : | 4.80 (606 Votes) |
| Asin | : | 1901250873 |
| Format Type | : | paperback |
| Number of Pages | : | 347 Pages |
| Publish Date | : | 2013-01-27 |
| Language | : | English |
DESCRIPTION:
"Not a holocaust story" according to Gregory Smith. Blacks were not part of Hitler's final solution, but that doesn't mean they were not discriminated against. Hans was the son of a white German mother and a black father who wasn't around very much. He grew up with a German identity while at the same time being reminded that he wasn't an Aryan. He was still an antisemite, in his youth, as was everyone else, and tried to join the Hitler You. Five Stars Gene Elliott Amazing account of growing up, going to school and surviving in Nazi Germany as a black child.. Exceptionally interesting I really enjoyed reading this book and gaining a clearer understanding of what life was like in Nazi Germany and the post-war period. One really understands, after reading this book, how the nooze was gradually tightening for non-Aryan citizens in Germany. It was also interesting to learn about the author's visit to the 1936 Olympics, the influence of Joe Louis on his persona and the atti
He tells of life after the war, of befriending black American soldiers, of moving to Liberia in 1948 and of his subsequent move to America in 1950, where he came to feel that racism was as prevalent as it had been under the Third Reich. The Reich's racial politics were so steadfastly drummed into German schoolchildren that the young Hans quickly acquired an anti-Semitic outlook only to realize that he was also subject to discrimination as a non-Aryan. Massaquoi and his mother survived both Nazi rule and the devastating 1943 British bombing of Hamburg. He sought intellectual escape from German nationalism through reading books by Jules Verne, Arthur Conan Doyle and James Fenimore Cooper; in his idealization of African-American athletes Joe Lewis and Jesse Owens; and by learning how to play jazz and his involvement with the "swingboys" officially condemned as purveyors of "degenerate" music and dance. . Soon after his birth in Hamburg in 1926, the author
Like other German boys, Hans went to school; like other German boys, he swiftly fell under the Fuhrer's spell. Ironic,, moving, and deeply human, Massaquoi's account of this lonely struggle for survival brims with courage and intelligence.. The son of a prominent African and a German nurse, Hans remained behind with his mother when Hitler came to power, due to concerns about his fragile health, after his father returned to Liberia. This is a story of the unexpected.In Destined to Witness, Hans Massaquoi has crafted a beautifully rendered memoir -- an astonishing true tale of how he came of age as a black child in Nazi Germany. So he was crushed to learn that, as a black child, he was ineligible for the Hitler Youth. His path to a secondary education and an eventual profession was blocked. He now lived in fear that, at any moment, he might hear the Gestapo banging on the door -- or Allied bombs falling on his home