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  • Destined to Witness: Growing Up Black in Nazi Germany by Hans Massaquoi book cover
  • Destined to Witness: Growing Up Black in Nazi Germany by Hans Massaquoi book cover
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Destined to Witness: Growing Up Black in Nazi Germany

by Hans Massaquoi

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A childhood in Nazi Germany, seen from the margins

$17.08 USD
$28.47 USD $17.08 USD
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Paperback New English

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AlbakiReads Editorial

A childhood in Nazi Germany, seen from the margins

Hans Massaquoi’s memoir recounts growing up Black in Germany as Hitler came to power. Born to a prominent African father and a German nurse, he remained with his mother after his father returned to Liberia. The account traces his childhood in a society whose boys’ institutions and educational pathways were not open to him on equal terms: he was excluded from the Hitler Youth and faced barriers to secondary education and a profession. Alongside these constraints, the memoir describes his early attraction to Hitler’s movement and the fear of Gestapo raids and Allied bombing that marked life at home. Its historical perspective is shaped by one child’s experience of belonging, exclusion, and danger under Nazi rule.

Good fit for readers who enjoy

  • Readers interested in personal accounts of childhood under Nazi Germany.
  • Readers seeking memoirs about Black identity and exclusion in European history.
  • Readers interested in biographies that connect family history with broader political change.

Themes

Black identity in Nazi GermanyChildhood and political indoctrinationRacism and exclusionFamily separationFear and survival under dictatorship

Based on publisher information and book metadata.

Book overview

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. 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. Like other German boys, Hans went to school; like other German boys, he swiftly fell under the Fuhrer's spell. 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. Ironic, moving, and deeply human, Massaquoi's account of this lonely struggle for survival brims with courage and intelligence.

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