Drawing on interviews with the black survivors of Nazi concentration camps and archival research in North America, Europe, and Africa, this book documents and analyzes the meaning of Nazism's racial policies towards people of African descent, specifically those born in Germany, England, France, the United States, and Africa, and the impact of that legacy on contemporary race relations in Germany, and more generally, in Europe. The book also specifically addresses the concerns of those surviving Afro-Germans who were victims of Nazism, but have not generally been included in or benefited from the compensation agreements that have been developed in recent years.

Drawing on interviews with the black survivors of Nazi concentration camps and archival research in North America, Europe, and Africa, this book documents and analyzes the meaning of Nazism's racial policies towards people of African descent, specifically those born in Germany, England, France, the United States, and Africa, and the impact of that legacy on contemporary race relations in Germany, and more generally, in Europe. The book also specifically addresses the concerns of those surviving Afro-Germans who were victims of Nazism, but have not generally been included in or benefited from the compensation agreements that have been developed in recent years.

Did Afro-Germans and other blacks suffer under Nazism? The answer to this question remains vague even for those scholars and researchers familiar with the Nazi era and the Holocaust in particular. Hitler's Black Victims seeks to document the little-known history of people of African descent in Nazi Germany. Drawing on interviews with the few remaining black survivors of Nazi concentration camps and extensive archival research in North America, Europe, and Africa, Lusane breaks new ground with his examination of how blacks were treated under the Nazi regime. Some of the topics Lusane explores are the treatment blacks received in concentration camps, the portrayal of blacks in Nazi propaganda films and the Afro-German resistance movement. Lusane frames this unique investigation in the context of the history of international relations between Germany and Africa -- a history that produced a significant black population in Germany by the end of the 19th century -- to offer a broader commentary on the legacy of Nazi-era black politics and its effect on the state of race relations in Germany today. Book jacket.

Publisher description

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.