The son of a prominent African and a German nurse, Hans Massaquoi came of age as a black child in Nazi Germany. Like other German boys, he swiftly fell under the Fuhrer's spell, but was crushed to learn that his race made him ineligible for the Hitler Youth. 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 and moving, Massaquoi's 1999 account of his lonely struggle for survival brims with courage and intelligence.