That is a very interesting story. One of the best nonfiction books I’ve ever read was written by an American woman who was living in Dresden at the time it was firebombed. I can’t recall the name of the book, unfortunately. It was the story of how she got herself & her three kids to safety. They came so close to not making it out alive, it wasn’t funny. The woman bore no grudge at all against the Americans who were even then trying to bomb the refugees. She knew it was all part of war, & she tried to do her part [to save her kids] while respecting the American pilots for doing their part at the same time.
Anyway, I just don’t get the German-antisemitic connection. I wish I cd grasp it. You’d think after the holocaust, they’d be doing everything humanly possible NOT to discriminate against Jews. Yet here they are, slipping back toward the mistakes of the past. It’s so troubling.
‘All the arrogance has been bred out./s’
Lol. All the stubbornness didn’t get bred out of me. I’m not as hardheaded as my German grandmother...but then she was in a class of her own. But stubbornness has an upside too. I stick to my guns, & also have a track record of finishing long, difficult projects. So for that I’m glad.
My grandmother was U.S. born German & the best Grandma anyone could hope to have. Grandpa was a Slovenian immigrant but nothing but English was ever spoken in their house.
Didn’t even know that stubbornness is a German trait but that could explain German determination in two World Wars.
In 1983 I attended the wedding of a U.S. retiree’s son to his German girlfriend. The wedding banquet at the local Feuerwehrhaus was lavish & also featured a special tribute to the bride’s Oma und Opa including poems read in their honor. A good time was had by all & as an American just trying to speak German, I was `family’. A side of Germany not often experienced.