Hans Massaquoi, black among the Nazis
Born 19 January 1926. Hans-Jürgen Massaquoi was born. His mother was Berta Beatz, a German nurse, and his father was Al-Haj, son of the Liberian consul, Momulu Massaquoi. The father did not take care of the newborn child, but the grandfather received the mother and the son in the consulate with open arms.
Hans lived in the early years in a parallel reality. While nationalism took hold abroad, in the Consulate most of the surrounding areas of Hansen were black and some domestic whites worked for the Liberian chiefs. On the street, the exotic child received care and adulation. When blacks were above whites, their race seemed advantageous.
In 1932, the consul had to return to Liberia and mother and son moved to a penthouse with no light or water. There ended the easy life I had had until then. The following year, Hindenburg appointed Hitler as Chancellor.
Like many others of his age, he was seduced by the Nazi glow. When her mother worked, she commissioned the neighbor who was caring for Hans, Aunt Möller, to sew svastika in the jersey. In 1936, at ten years old, Deutsches Jungvolk wanted to join the Hitler Youth Children's Group, but they did not allow it. I was a good student and I wanted to be an engineer. But in 1938, the principal of the school failed his report to ensure that the mulatto of students would not reach high school and, therefore, would not study at the university. He entered as an apprentice at a hardware store and there he was there for several years.
When the war broke out, he had not been recruited and, although he was intending to go to the forefront voluntarily, the army opposed it.
Once, a member of the Nazi Party attacked him in a bar and it was his mother, Bertha, who arrested the aggressor. On another occasion, they gave him an allied pilot in the war, and he came out unharmed. But blacks were not systematically persecuted, like Jews or Gypsies. They were considered inferior beings, but there was no need to exterminate them.
After the war he left first to Liberia and then to the United States. He studied Journalism and participated in the civil rights movement led by Martin Luther King, among others. Until his death in 2013, he insisted that Germany was his homeland.
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