The Nuremberg Laws issued in 1935 included a whole series of racist and discriminatory regulations, including the Law for the Protection of German Blood and Honor, the Reich Citizenship Law, the Universities Law, the Civil Service Law. The laws affected not only Jews, but also Roma and Sinti (“Gypsies”) as well as Africans and Asians – something that is still relatively unknown. That got Germany into diplomatic difficulties with Japan and with Arab and Indian allies, in fact everybody that they characterized as “non-Aryans”. The law on “race defilement” (Rassenschande) was a constant threat, especially for us younger “Afros”. We were derisively called “mongrels” (Mischlinge) or “mulattos”. That was derived from the Portuguese mulo, the cross between a donkey and a horse, which was unable to reproduce. The various so-called “races of mankind” are perfectly able to reproduce, because they all have the same origin, the same roots. But in those days it wasn't just the Nazis who tried with all their might to deny the fact.

My mother's two sisters, who had adopted my half-brother Herbert, both worked. Aunt Else was a dressmaker and worked at home. She was often ill and depended on the support of her younger sister Elfriede, known as Friedel. Aunt Friedel worked in the office at Siemens. It was simply unthinkable that she should burden herself with a black boy – especially under the conditions of the Nazi period. I couldn't expect that. My fate was the ben Ahmeds.

Uncle Mohamed was to some extent protected by the fact that he had Spanish citizenship, and Aunt Martha, who wasn't married to him, along with her sons, Günther and Herbert, still counted as citizens of the Reich under the Nuremberg Laws. They got by with a combination of pragmatism and opportunism. As a Moroccan and a Muslim Uncle Mohamed had sympathy with anti-Semitic ideas and on that score he never had trouble with the Nazis. On top of this, as a citizen of a state that was not hostile to the Nazis he was safe from official persecution or harassment as long as he behaved himself. He couldn't read or write himself, but he subscribed to the Völkischer Beobachter. I often had to read parts of it aloud to him. When we were called upon to show the flag we hung out the swastika.