Destined to Witness
"As a toddler, Hans Massaquoi, the son of a well-to-do African and a white German nurse, lived a privileged life befitting the grandson of a diplomat. Yet concern for Hans's frail health caused his mother to remain with him in Germany when his grandfather and father were compelled to return to Liberia. That decision was to change Hans's whole world. He and his mother became part of Hamburg's working-class poor, forced to live in a cramped attic apartment without hot water and electricity. But their change in social status was to be only the beginning of their hardships."--BOOK JACKET. "For twelve agonizing years following Hitler's rise to power, Hans, like all non-Aryans, was dehumanized and devalued by the Nazis. Ironically, Hans, like his classmates, fell under the Fuhrer's spell and thus was deeply hurt when, at age ten, he was told that he was ineligible to join the Jungvolk, the junior division of the Hitler Youth. Since admission to secondary education was contingent on Hitler Youth membership, Hans was automatically barred from any professional career. Living in constant fear of death, either by the Gestapo executioners or Allied bombs, Hans was increasingly in danger until liberation by British troops in 1945."--BOOK JACKET. "Alone, without the comfort of a sympathetic racial community, Hans faced the constant threat of the Nazi ethnic-cleansing policies. In an exercise in self-reliance, he developed his own instincts to survive physically and psychologically in a country consumed by racial arrogance and hatred and openly committed to the destruction of all "non-Aryans." Destined to Witness is Hans's testament to survival."--BOOK JACKET.