"What I think people did not realize is that the Nazi time in Germany was only 12 years. What 12 years can do to society and what can happen, it doesn't need to be 50 years or 100 years," said Berlin-based German historian Katharina Oguntoye.

The crimes, subjugation, racism, enslavement and genocide committed against Jewish, Roma, Sinti, LGBTQ and other communities have been well-documented.

But for Germany's Black community, gaining recognition for the crimes and abuses it endured has not been easy.

Historian Robbie Aitken, based at Sheffield Hallam University in the UK, has studied Germany's Black communities for 20 years. He noted that there was a reluctance in German society to recognize and accept that Black people have been part of Germany since the late 1800s.

"We're talking about people who crossed borders, who moved a lot, and we're talking about a time period where the Nazis themselves destroyed documents so finding out information was difficult," he told DW.

"I think this is being kind of slept on by a lot of historians. And there's a lack of general public and academic knowledge about the period."

The German Empire in Africa in the 1880s brought Germany into contact with Africans, their labor and their territories' resources. The colonies included Cameroon, Togo, German East Africa, and Namibia, which were later lost after Germany's defeat in World War I.

While exact figures are not known, several thousand people of African descent arrived in Germany from various regions of Africa, the........

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