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    Destined to Witness: Growing Up Black in Nazi Germany
    Destined to Witness: Growing Up Black in Nazi Germany
    Destined to Witness: Growing Up Black in Nazi Germany
    Audiobook19 hours

    Destined to Witness: Growing Up Black in Nazi Germany

    Written by Hans Massaquoi

    Narrated by Peter Jay Fernandez

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    About this audiobook

    What would life be like for a black boy growing up in Nazi Germany? This unprecedented autobiography answers that question with the spellbinding true story of Hans J. Massaquoi's life in Hamburg during the height of Hitler's regime. Hans is the son of a black Liberian diplomat father and a white German mother. His father returns to Africa at the beginning of the war, leaving them behind in poverty and without the means to flee. Bewildered, Hans is force-fed ceaseless anti-semitic and anti-African propaganda in his schools. Within this tense atmosphere, increasingly violent Nazi policies and Allied bombing raids make Hans and his mother's lives a desperate day-to-day struggle for survival. Through countless close calls, Hans perseveres by his ingenuity, strength of character and a liberal dose of good luck-eventually going on to find his father in Liberia and emigrate to America. Peter Jay Fernandez's intense narration brilliantly punctuates all of the tragedy and triumph in this monumental audiobook.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherRecorded Books, Inc.
    Release dateJul 19, 2013
    ISBN9781470366483
    Author

    Hans Massaquoi

    Hans J. Massaquoi emigrated to the United States in the early 1950s. He served in the U.S. Army and then became a journalist for Johnson Publishing, where he was managing editor of Ebony magazine. He was an active participant in the civil rights movement. The father of two sons, Hans lives with his wife, Katherine, in New Orleans, Louisiana.

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    Reviews for Destined to Witness

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    • 4/5
      5671. Destined to Witness Growing Up Black in Nazi Germany, by Hans J. Massaquoi (read 21 Jan 2020) This book was published in 1999, Its author was born in Hamburg, Germany, on 19 Jan 1926, to a German who was a girlfriend of a a son of a Liberian consular official in Hamburg. He had minimal contact with his black fat5her as he grew up in Hamburg, and went to German schools and was often the victim of racist discrimination. The book tells the story of his growing up in interesting detail. He wanted to be a soldier but fortunately the Nazis would not permit that. After the war he went to Liberia where he was with his father for a bit, but they did not get along. Eventually the author arrived in the United States on a student visa, but was quickly drafted and was in the U.S. Army while the Korean War was going on, but never served except in the U.S. I found the account consistently interesting and good reading, and wished he had told more of his life afterwards, when he became an editor of Ebony magazine and met Joe Louis, Jimmy Carter, and other prominent folk. He also married and had two sons but never tells of his wife and very little of his sons. His mother eventually came to the U.S. as well. This book interested me much and I am lucky to have found it.. Wikipedia has article on him. He died in 2013.
    • 5/5
      One of the most impressive autobiographies I ever read. A gripping, honest account of the years leading up to World War II and surviving them in Hamburg, Germany.
    • 4/5
      The fates seemed to be against Hans Massaquoi from the beginning, as he entered the world to an unwed, white, German mother and black Liberian father nearing the dawn of Nazi Germany. Despite the many trials, tribulations and emotions Massaquoi experienced, he survived. While the majority of the book is based in Nazi Germany, this recollection also follows Massaquoi to Liberia in search of life with his father and the United States in search of education and freedom. Escape from racism may be an impossible task.
    • 5/5
      Hans is the son of a German mother and a Liberian father, who survives the war relatively unscathed by the pervading political spirit of discrimination and persecution of "the other", largely thanks to the willingness of his own community to downplay his differences. Having avoided the fate of many other black Germans, particularly in the Rhineland, Hans finds himself caught up in the firebombing of Hamburg towards the end of the war.Relatively speaking, there aren't many books about the black experience of Nazi Germany out there. I don't wish to offend anyone, but the market of first-hand Holocaust accounts is largely dominated with the Jewish story, and quite rightly so, in that the Jews were the largest single victim group. However, I'm intrigued by the experience of other minority groups and I would fully recommend this one as a great place to start for anyone sharing that interest. Gripping, profound and utterly memorable.