Hans Massaquoi Interview

Yes. Well. So instead of praising me for having you know follow his instruction and having done something on my own and this it to you rated me for not coming up with something that was as good as we stuffing it. People. Instead of. You know what. Instead of praising me for what I had done on my own initiative you berated me for not having come up with the same quality that he that he said his instrument to. This is correct. So but the worst thing I ever experience from this particular teacher was when I was about it and I was about eight at 10 years old at the time and he

took me to a side and said boy when we're finished with the do you will be next. So I did not know exactly what that meant at the time but I knew it was the tone and the voice was so menacing that I knew. You know it was not something that I could look forward to. He was at one point lecturing the students in the wake of your demonstration of being able to do the same thing that he did. He was lecturing the students about the superiority of the area and race and about the inferiority of all other races. He felt the church showed him up. That was probably the case but there was daily fear whenever we had. And and of course I had been the principal of the school or have another he was a kind of from the same cloth.

We should point out that this interview is being conducted in the Holocaust Museum in Washington so that any noises that people hear in the background from time to time have to do with the business of the museum at the time of the evening that we are talking. So OK so I have read it. The principal was just s hate for he too used any opportunity to demean me to make me feel inferior and to point out to the rest of the class that I belonged to an inferior race. And this is where the problem came in because at the same time I managed to still keep decent grades. In fact sometimes you do that you know in today's world and think that. Kids already self esteem so fragile and can be so easily shattered and that's probably true. How did you manage to maintain your self-esteem and get good grades in that situation. That had to do it. She had everything to do with it because she from the from the very get go you know

hammered into me you are just as good if not better than your classmates. Don't any Don't let any teacher tell you different and you must start but not alone my mother but I've been where I don't want to give the impression that my whole young life was just one big tragedy I had a lot of fun. There were many. There were many people who were in my corner. For instance it was another music teacher who after discovering that I had some musical talent offered to give me free violin lessons which he did until I just found that I could just couldn't hack it. I did not provide this and I think it because Germany among boys the violin was something for sissies. That's what they were saying. So you didn't walk around in the street with a violin case.

As a boy you know an accordion Yes. Anything else but a violin so I mean that was peer pressure right. And so I came already with preconceived ideas. But when he offered this teacher offered to give me free violin lessons my mother insisted to for me to take advantage of it even though she had to come up with the money to buy a violin. That's what she did. And second hand. And I tried but it didn't work. Violence is not it was not meant for me. As a young boy you realize that there is a great deal of prejudice against you and you as the book says are a witness. You see things unfolding around you but you don't realize how systematic It really is. Was there a point at which you became aware that the fact that you were not incarcerated placed in a concentration camp was maybe just a

fluke. Well I became aware that there was a systematic effort against people like myself none Ariens. And I became aware of it almost overnight when I and my classmates wanted to join the Hitler Youth Movement. And you know I wanted to walk in the street wearing one of those brown shirts and black shorts and blow a fanfare or one of those huge drums. And when I tried to I was told that I would qualify. I was a non area and none Ariens were allowed to join the movement. That to me at the time was the beginning of my fascination with Hitler because then I knew I didn't fit in and would never fit in and that in

fact may have been danger lurking somewhere in the future because from that point on it goes way through life in Nazi Germany. What are your observations doing at that time about what was happening to Jews. We knew this. The average person in the street knew that to swear persona non-grata that they where they were depicted as the lowest on the human scale. And so there was because the Nazis made no secret that was there. The key to their ideology and we knew there for a bit and we also knew that Jews were put into concentration camps. But for the most part we did not know. And I'm done speaking about that average German in the street did not know

exactly what went on that there were mass killing factories that there were places that where Jews were slaughtered by the hundreds of thousands. Most of us didn't know at the time. But that's not to say that many Germans didn't know because it took a gigantic organization to put to put concentration camps together and to operate them. So many people didn't know about the man in the street for the most part didn't know and if you knew kept his mouth shut because there were certain advantages to Hitler had made good on some of his campaign promises. He almost eradicated unemployment of a sudden all Germans were gainfully employed again and that went far in persuading some people well you may not be may not be a good guy but you know we're doing better than we did before we were out of it. So they were seduced

by some of the the benefits that came with being part of the Nazi. System. Do you find that outside of Germany in the years since then when you have told this story some people were incredulous that you were unaware about the systematic extermination of Jews that was going on at the time I have read some reviews of your book in which the reviewers seemed to imply or infer from the book that you had blinders on that you and a lot of Germans were not seeing because you did not want to see. How do you respond to that. I can only say what I saw what I experience and in my judgment my best. First of all I never saw one due care to a concentration camp when I was little. I did eventually see

people who turned out to be concentration camp inmates being. Take him to a place in central Germany in the Hartz mountains to a place that turned out to be a concentration camp but I didn't know it was a concentration camp to after the war when the when the Allies opened the camps once and looked into it and so I can say with with a certain degree of conviction that the average person did not know the extent everybody knew the duce were not treated kindly that Jews were probably mistreated in these concentration camps. But I'm talking about the extent mass slaughter thousands and thousands of people. I do not believe that people

in my neighborhood with whom I had contact every day and who would have not you know kept this from me if they were talking among them so I am convinced that they did not know. You mentioned growing up that you didn't see any other black people besides your own family when they were there. Did that change as you got older. Here you are walking around. You speak perfect John Letts makes your curiosity in Nazi Germany. Was there a point at which you began to encounter other plans. The only exception was when I was still young when my mother took me and friend a little girl in Hamburg and there we saw we went to what was advertised as a culture show an African village and then among

animals monkeys zebras you name it was the same kind of fence that separated the animals from the onlookers separated the onlookers from this African village which consisted of several straw fat huts and there were some African. Very primitively dressed Africans stomping maize and preparing their food. That was those were the only Africans I mean lakhs outside my own family that I saw but that was still when I was rather small. Later after the war or during the war there were there were no Africans but Tibet to my knowledge. And how did you deal with the personal issues of adolescence

dating socializing given the fact that you were the only parcel looking like you in that environment. Well first of all it had been made clear to me that German girls where we're off limits to me I were not supposed to have any romantic involvement with German women. And the way I coped with it was I secretly dated and had a girlfriend and we both knew about the where aware of the dangers and really eventually split up because of the danger goes I felt it was. I put her into much of a risk including myself so we broke up. But it had to be done in a clandestine way you know. How did you at that point define yourself. German was the

only the only language you know it was the culture you knew and here you are being told that you are less than a human being in this country. How did you define yourself if not as German. That's how I define myself in spite of everything. And this obviously it was difficult to to accept the fact that I was not that I was persona non-grata that I was unknown area and therefore a non person. But it did not. Did not change my. There was nothing else for me to identify where I could. I didn't have a group of blacks somewhere and I said well these are my buddies or you know and that's what makes my situation so different even from the Jewish experience because I do swear a community even in suffering. They were a community. They rent

you rent to the slaughter house as a group. I was always alone. I did not have any anyone to identify rip other than other Germans you know. Is that something that you were acutely conscious of at the time. At the time what their what their longings that you had at any point to have a community in which you could have lost feelings of kinship and confidence outside of your mother. I didn't I wasn't sophisticated enough to think all that through but I I I know that I despised the way I look because I blame my looks for everything. Especially after one girl told me she said You look much better with a hat. I hated my hair and often my mother had straight hair everybody had straight hair around and there was quite different from the person in this country a black person.

I said I would rather be white because there is no need for that. But in my situation there was absolutely nobody else to identify where I wanted to be. That's the only thing I have asked of life to be just like everybody else. And it was impossible that it would look like that.