It was a warm summer night in 2020, shortly after the first Covid-19 lockdown was lifted in Germany, and Omar Diallo wanted to celebrate the Muslim festival of sacrifice Eid al-Adha with two friends from his native Guinea.

“We enjoyed life, made music, walked around the city at night – we just wanted to be together again and have a good time,” 22-year-old Diallo told the Associated Press in Erfurt, eastern Thuringia.

He was not prepared for the outcome of the day. Suddenly Diallo and his friends found themselves facing three white men dressed in black.

“They shouted: ‘What do you want here, you damn foreigners, get out of here!’” Diallo recalled.

“First there were three, then five, seven – they surrounded us from all sides. We couldn’t run away and then they started chasing us,” he said.

At some point, Diallo managed to call the police. When they finally arrived, the attackers ran away. One of his friends was beaten so badly that he had to go to the hospital.

“I was just trying to survive,” Diallo said. “I didn’t do anything wrong. All of this happened because of the color of my skin.”

Anyone who is black in Germany has always been exposed to racism – from everyday humiliation to deadly attacks. In East Germany, the risk is even greater.

After the Second World War, West Germany developed into a democratic, diverse society. In East Germany, on the other hand, where a communist dictatorship ruled until the end of 1989, residents had little contact with people of other ethnicities and were not allowed to travel abroad freely.

According to experts, radical right-wing extremist forces, particularly in Thuringia, have created an environment that is hostile towards minorities, including black people.

With the rise of the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) party, Black Germans and African migrants like Diallo are now increasingly concerned.

In Thuringia, where 2.1 million people live, state elections will be held on September 1. In the polls, the AfD, which has a strong anti-immigration stance, is ahead with 30 percent.

In 2023, the non-governmental organization Ezra, which helps victims of right-wing extremist, racist and anti-Semitic violence, documented 85 racist attacks in Thuringia. This is only a slight decrease from the 88 attacks in 2022, which Ezra described as “a historic high in right-wing and racist violence” in the state.

“In recent years, a right-wing extremist movement has formed in Thuringia, which has contributed to a noticeable ideological radicalization of its supporters. Politically, the Alternative for Germany party is the main beneficiary of this,” write Ezra and a consortium of organizations that pursue racism in their annual report.

The AfD regional association in Thuringia is particularly radical and has been under surveillance by the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution for four years as a “proven right-wing extremist” group.

“Authoritarian and populist forces, which are currently becoming very strong here, pose a great danger for Thuringia,” says Doreen Denstaedt, Thuringia’s Minister for Migration, Justice and Consumer Protection.

Denstaedt, daughter of a black father from Tanzania and a white German mother, was born and raised in Thuringia.

The 46-year-old Green Party MP said she was “always the only black child” in the communist GDR. As a teenager, she was never allowed to go home alone because of the risk of racist attacks and she was sometimes subjected to racist insults at school.

“I experienced it myself that people called me a foreigner, which confused me at first because I was born in Saalfeld in Thuringia,” said Denstaedt.

She fears that in the current political climate, racist narratives are becoming acceptable in the mainstream of society.

“My biggest concern is that people don’t question (these prejudices), especially when they are not affected themselves,” she said.

It is not clear exactly how many black people live in Germany today, as the different ethnic groups are not recorded in official statistics. However, estimates put the number of people of African descent at 1.27 million. More than 70 percent of them were born in Germany, according to the Integration Media Service, which monitors migration issues in the country.

The history of racial discrimination in Germany begins long before the Nazis began to exclude, deport and ultimately murder black people in the 1930s and 1940s.

From 1884 until the end of the First World War, the German Empire owned numerous colonies in Africa. These included areas in what is now Tanzania, Burundi, Rwanda, Namibia, Cameroon, Togo and Ghana.

The German government has only recently begun to confront the injustice committed at that time. In 2021, Federal President Frank-Walter Steinmeier called on Germans to confront the country’s cruel colonial past, and in 2023 he apologized for the killings in Tanzania over a century ago during the colonial era.

Daniel Egbe, a 58-year-old chemist from Cameroon who moved to Thuringia to study in 1994, is shocked at how little Germans know about their colonial history. He believes this ignorance could also contribute to the unequal treatment of black people.

“I have been giving lessons at school,” Egbe told AP. “I tell them a little about myself and especially the fact that Cameroon was a German colony. Many students don’t know anything about Africa or the German past, and this needs to be put on the map.”

Egbe, who took German citizenship in 2003, founded the organization AMAH in the eastern Thuringian city of Jena, which helps university students and migrants from Africa when they experience discrimination.

He is concerned about the rise of the AfD, but has no intention of leaving.

“We will not leave, we will do our part to change this society,” he said. “People are mostly afraid of what and who they don’t know. We have to change things through education.”

Diallo, the Guinean who was attacked in Erfurt four years ago, also promised to work for an improvement in the situation of black people in Germany.

Although the attack traumatized him, it also gave him strength to fight for justice, he says. A year ago he enrolled in law school in Munich, but he still visits Erfurt frequently, where he supports Youth Without Borders, a network of young migrants.

“I don’t yet know exactly how I will change Germany, but I know I will do it,” he said.