What happened to black Germans under the Nazis

[BlueMTexpat]

A targeted group that has received scant attention ...

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/what-happened-to-black-germans-under-the-nazis-a6839216.html

The 1935 Nuremberg Laws stripped Jews of their German citizenship and prohibited them from marrying or having sexual relations with “people of German blood”.

A subsequent ruling confirmed that black people (like “gypsies”) were to be regarded as being “of alien blood” and subject to the Nuremberg principles. Very few people of African descent had German citizenship, even if they were born in Germany, but this became irreversible when they were given passports that designated them as “stateless negroes”.
...
Instead, the process that ended with incarceration usually began with a charge of deviant or antisocial behaviour. Being black made people visible to the police, and it became a reason not to release them once they were in custody.

In this respect, we can see black people as victims not of a peculiarly Nazi racism, but of an intensified version of the kinds of everyday racism that persist today.

Very interesting read. I wish that I could post more.

[brer cat]

1. Thank you for posting this

historical record that usually merits a footnote at best in accounts of that period. Having grown up in the Jim Crow south, this hit home: "One legacy of that was a long silence about the human face of Germany’s colonial history: the possibility that black and white Germans could share a social and cultural space."

K&R

[BlueMTexpat]

2. I am so sorry that you had to grow up

in a Jim Crow era anywhere, but especially in a country that prides itself on its "equality, fairness, and justice."

[steve2470]

8. so sorry you had to grow up in the Jim Crow south

[heaven05]

3. did America learn

Last edited Sat Jan 30, 2016, 01:35 PM - Edit history (1)

How to treat POC from Nazi Germany or did Nazi Germany learn how to treat POC from America? Same question regarding s. Africa during it's apartheid era.....I believe the answer is apparent. The lesson is still being taught to the world in this the 21st century....leader of the world....true

[oberliner]

4. There were no African-Americans in Nazi Germany

By the very definition of the term.

[steve2470]

6. come on, you knew what he meant

Geeze louise, sometimes this place is PEDANTIC UNDERGROUND.

[oberliner]

13. I saw something similar on CNN

When a reporter was describing an incident going on in France and they described the people in question as African-Americans even though they were obviously not Americans.

[dhill926]

26. I have seen it spelled "jeez louise...."

I kid...I kid...

[heaven05]

8. ha!!!

Very transparent....laughable really😄

[m-lekktor]

15. One of the titles of the books I listed in post #14 seems to imply otherwise.

I haven't read it yet but the name of the books is "Hitler's Black Victims: The Historical Experiences of European Blacks, Africans and African Americans During the Nazi Era (Crosscurrents in African American History)".

[oberliner]

16. It doesn't imply otherwise

I know it's just semantics, but Black people in Germany are not African-Americans.

Afro-Germans, perhaps.

The terms in German are Afrodeutsche or Schwarzdeutsche.

[BlueMTexpat]

21. Chuckle. eom

[steve2470]

5. the Nazis probably got a few lessons from the Jim Crow south, the bastards nt

[Mira]

7. I will be very interested to study this tonight.

I was born in Germany at the very end of the war, and left for America on a coal freighter when I was not quite 20. My memory is that the black people I met in my first two decades of life were all my age, and there were just a few isolated ones. They were the children of American soldiers and German women. When I first came to the US I remember clearly that I was utterly fascinated by how black grown women look, I had hardly ever seen one, they were wives of American soldiers stationed in Germany in the immediate post war era, living in Army barracks and not mingling with the German people.

What I am saying here is that in my, albeit limited, experience there weren't really black people in Germany, but it is certainly no surprise to learn that the few blacks would have had grave problems in Nazi Germany. In subsequent visits there, and other European countries, I witnessed this has changed radically. The aura of a black person in Europe, as I have observed, is that of a person who is one of any and one of many and that we are all one. There is as I see it a cloak of "blackness" that is the first thing projected from and to American blacks, to be subject for interpretation by others around them. I found that to be missing in European black people.

I fully realize there is international audience and participation here on this board, and am only giving a little background and observation that is strictly my own, and after having left Germany a half a century ago it's all I know, and except for occasional visits in Europe not current.
This post gave me a minute to reflect back.

The timing of this is interesting to me, I saw a play here last week about 2 homosexual inmates at Dachau. The name of the play is "Bent", and it chronicled the treatment of those inmates, one of whom disguised himself as a Jew to get better treatment.
Imagine that!

[heaven05]

10. I was born in Germany 1948

Lived there 2 years...before being adopted....wonder what those two years did to my impressionable mind and spirit....question makes one go hhmmmmmm5

[JustAnotherGen]

18. Oh my

I never knew that. Interesting.

[BlueMTexpat]

25. Interestingly, those German nationals

I have known and worked alongside have been among the most humanitarian and compassionate individuals I have known.

Be proud of who you are!

[JustAnotherGen]

19. I lived there until I was 5

1978 - I didn't know older white people could be cruel to children until I came to the US. Even on military housing - I didn't know. Your parents and grandparents peers learned. They were very very kind.

[randys1]

27. You personally experienced older white Americans being cruel to you as a child?

How do you live that and not be so bitter you react very differently than you are here?

What special trait do you have, that I dont, that allows you to not react VERY DIFFERENTLY as I know white people would do?

[JustAnotherGen]

30. My mom

Her mom, her dad, their parents -were not.

I also on her fathers side? Was the only great granddaughter as my mom was the only grand daughter with only uncles.
That kind of worked out well for me!


My mom's parents and paternal grandparents were mixed coouples too.

Lutheran marries Jewish girl in the late teens nd converts.

Thir son marries a Methodist girl in 1945 - and converts. . They "got" things.

My mom was books and art and crafts. My dad was adventure and sports and stars. We got a lot of hugs.

I had a really good family!

[randys1]

31. Interesting family there.

I love talking about my mom.

She was the one who befriended Maya Angelou when I was a kid.

[JustAnotherGen]

32. Get out!

This cool!

[mountain grammy]

11. Thanks for posting

Good article and it does explain the German government's open arms for refugees. While our American south built monuments to the leaders of the war for white supremacy, Germany, for the most part, owned their history and have attempted atonement.

[JustAnotherGen]

20. +1000 n/t

[BlueMTexpat]

22. This is exactly right.

See, e.g., http://www.stiftung-evz.de/eng/home.html

Origins of the Foundation EVZ

The Foundation "Remembrance, Responsibility and Future" (German acronym EVZ), established following several years of national and international negotiations, was the outcome of an initiative launched by German industry and the German Government.

The Law on the Creation of a Foundation "Remembrance, Responsibility and Future" was passed on 2 August 2000 with the support of all parliamentary parties in the German Bundestag. The law provided for individual humanitarian payments to be made to former slave and forced labourers and other victims of National Socialism. The disbursement of these payments commenced in 2001 and was completed in 2007.

In his foreword to the concluding report on the payments programmes, German President Horst Köhler declared that the activities of the Foundation had "helped to promote public recognition that this wrongdoing was indeed criminal and that responsibility for it needed to be expressed in tangibly financial terms."

Part of the Foundation's role is specifically "Remembrance."

[appalachiablue]

12. Thanks for posting this important article focusing on a terrible part

of Germany's history that is not given due attention. Growing up I had a good friend in school who's mother was a kind, brilliant woman and European language professor. She was possibly the child of colonial and German parents I've since realized from comments my friend made and learning so much more about this deplorable treatment in the Nazi era.

[m-lekktor]

14. There are two books dealing with this on my "to purchase soon" list.

This is a topic you don't hear about as much


Hitler's Black Victims: The Historical Experiences of European Blacks, Africans and African Americans During the Nazi Era (Crosscurrents in African American History)

"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."

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0415932955?keywords=Hitler%27s%20Black%20Victims&qid=1454078777&ref_=sr_1_1&s=books&sr=1-1

Destined to Witness: Growing Up Black in Nazi Germany

"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."

http://www.amazon.com/Destined-Witness-Growing-Black-Germany/dp/0060959614/ref=pd_bxgy_14_img_2?ie=UTF8&refRID=0KNR9R2S6DPNFJC06927

[BlueMTexpat]

23. Thanks so much for those links.

Those books have been added to my reading list.

[Number23]

17. An amazing find. BlueMT, could you please post this piece in the Black History that Doesn't make it

Into the History books thread that is pinned to the top of this forum. Thanks so much!

[BlueMTexpat]

24. Just saw this now, Number 23.

If it hasn't already been posted there, I'll do it now.

[PatrickforO]

28. If Trump gets in, this same shit will begin to happen to

blacks, Mexicans and others of Hispanic descent, and Muslims. Basically anyone with brown skin will be fucked.

These heavily armed right wing nutjobs that are Trump's fervent base of supporters are horrifyingly similar to the early SA or the Stahlhelm. The problem with right wing hyper-nationalist demagoguery is that when they get in power, the oligarchs settle in like old, white, wrinkled, liver-spotted profit-vultures because they know there's gonna be a war soon. Hitler's guys bashed heads in the street and Trump's supporters are bashing heads in his rallies.

So...right wing, hyper-nationalist xenophobe dictator combined and shaken with a bunch of oligarchs makes a fascist vinaigrette.

Think I'm kidding? It cost the world upwards of 80 billion lives to get rid of Hitler, Mussolini and Tojo, and then we had a cold war that lasted another 35 years and gave us a bunch of proxy wars where tens of thousands of our people perished, not to mention hundreds of thousands of people in the countries where we fought. My dad fought in the Second World War and hoped until the day he died that we'd never, ever have to fight that kind of battle ever again. Now, here we are positioning ourselves to fight it against Trump and the current batch of billionaire oligarchs.

There's one candidate that seems to be the best bet. For me, at least. I'm a middle aged white guy, so take that with a grain of salt, but I'm supporting Bernie all the way. People of color will have to make up their own minds who they want to support. I hope it is Bernie, because I think he's got a great package to inject some serious economic and social justice into our nation.

I urge all of you reading this to caucus or vote in your state's primary. It's THAT important. It really is.

[BlueMTexpat]

29. If ANY Republican gets into the WH,

basically everyone is f*cked.

But POC will be f*cked worst of all.