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[quote=Anonymous]I am a Jew from Eastern Europe. My grandfather fought in WW2 and lost close friends and relatives in the Holocaust. He lives in Germany now. If hearing German spoken all the time or being surrounded by Germans makes him feel bad, he's never mentioned it. The people who murdered his family were not German -- they were Latvian, Ukrainian, Byelorussian... in much of E. Europe the locals were only too happy to "show initiative" when the Nazis arrived.

I have a close friend who is in her 70s. The stories she tells me sometimes sound almost exactly like my grandmother's stories. Hunger. Running until your little legs can't carry you any more. Mother picking you up, shaking you, telling you to keep running if you want to live. My grandmother was a Russian Jew, running form the advancing German army that killed all her relatives, except for a couple of men and boys who had already been called to the front lines, and survived. My friend was a German, running form the advancing Russian army that raped every woman in her city.

We are hosting an exchange student from Germany this year. She gets nervous at the sight of the Swastika in history textbooks and movies (it's forbidden!) and the orientation she had to undergo to come here emphasized that some of the people she meets will treat her differently because she is German. She is a very mature, kind, brilliant girl who does her country credit. There isn't much we can still teach her, except to emphasize that children are never to be held responsible for the sins of their fathers. And that in order to heal past wounds it is important to talk about them openly and honestly (and with a bit of humor.) [/quote]

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