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!
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