Marie Nejar, last Afro-German eyewitness to the Nazi era, dies - THE AFRICAN COURIER. Reporting Africa and its Diaspora!

The artist Marie Nejar, known as »Leila Negra«, is dead. She was the last known black German to survive National Socialism.

Marie Nejar, last Afro-German eyewitness to the Nazi era, dies - THE AFRICAN COURIER. Reporting Africa and its Diaspora!

Marie Nejar, the last known surviving Afro-German eyewitness to the horrors of Nazi Germany and a revered voice in Afro-German history, has passed away peacefully in Hamburg at the age of 95. Her death marks the end of an era — not only as a survivor of a time that tried to erase her identity, but as a cultural figure who rose to prominence in postwar Germany as a singer and actress, and later as a vital chronicler of the Black German experience…

She played and sang with Hans Albers, Heinz Rühmann and Peter Alexander. Now the artist known as "Leila Negra" died in Hamburg. Her biography is reminiscent of the moving life of the Afro-Germans.

As a child, Marie Nejar survived the terror of the National Socialists. Her career in the early Federal Republic was a testament to continued racism. Now she died at 95. Her greatest success was one of my favorite songs as a child. When I sang happily in the early eighties when "The Sweetest Fruits" sounded in the jukebox of our village inn, the career of Marie Nejar had already been over for two decades, the native Hamburg woman at this time wo…