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Rosemarie Pena is one of thousands of children born to African-American GIs and white German women after World War II

BY CARRIE STETLER

RUTGERS TODAY

She grew up in Willingboro, New Jersey, as Wanda Lynn Haymon, the only child of an African-American mother and father who made her feel special and loved. But when relatives whispered at family gatherings, she knew they were talking about her. One day she asked her parents if she was adopted.

“Do you feel adopted?’’ they answered.

She did, but had no proof until 1994 when Wanda Lynn discovered that she was born Rosemarie Larey in Viernheim, Germany, the daughter of a black soldier and German mother. Although she was born in 1956, just 11 years earlier, Nazis, who regarded blacks as racially inferior, sent some of the estimated 25,000 Afro-Germans to concentration camps. Many were subject to medical experiments or were forcibly sterilized. Others simply disappeared.

After the war, the stigma of bearing a bi-racial child was so great that many mothers brought their children to orphanages, which often placed them with African-American families in the United States.

Today, Rosemarie Pena (her married name) is completing her master’s degree at the Rutgers-Camden, in the Department of Childhood Studies, researching the history of “brown babies,’’ as they were known at the time of their birth, as well as people who identify as Afro-German around the world.

Pena also heads the Black German Cultural Society of New Jersey, an academic organization that connects Afro-Germans internationally. Its mission is to document and inform others about black Germans and their history. For post-war adoptees like Pena, the society helps them find closure and connects them with others who share

In Germany, blacks comprise only 2 percent of the population and are spread out geographically, Pena says. As leader of the group, she has connected with a new generation of Afro Germans. Despite their German nationality, they are often regarded as outsiders, whose German accents draw looks of confusion.

“A lot of people think saying you’re black German is an oxymoron. People see them as foreigners, even when they were born there and have German nationality,” Pena says.

Pena was abandoned by her mother, as in infant, left on the snow-covered steps of a black military family stationed in Germany. They brought her to an orphanage, and eventually she was adopted by the Haymons. Pena’s childhood in Willingboro was happy – except for the nagging feeling that her mom and dad weren’t her birth parents.

In 1995, she tracked down her birth mother and learned some details about her infancy and abandonment. She invited her birth mother to stay with her for two weeks in the hope of establishing a relationship. Her mother accepted, but the two never grew close. “We were strangers,’’ says Pena.