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My sister (Schwanger) lives in one of the coolest cities I've ever been to. It's an intense place, the capitol of Germany, it has all of the WW2 history, the wall coming directly down the middle of the city which only came down in 1989, a very environmentalist feel, an urban/green party sense, but a very strong sense of guilt underlying the progressive nature of the place.
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Last summer, Beckybunny and I had a houseguest, who was (what Chippy liked to describe as) my brother-in-law's brother-in-law's colleague. "Elmer Fudd" told us about how the popular sentiment in Germany is that people don't display their pride in being German. It's only recently that one politician has said some tempered statement to that effect-- but qualified and understated and as mild as can be. "Proud to be an American" bumpersticker is not within their realm of understanding. And this guy got in trouble.
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Elmer described the situation as something like (and I was in full party mode at the time, so correct me if I'm wrong) as the politician saying, "well, Germany isn't a bad place, we are pretty tolerant, are pretty diverse at this point, we take care of our land and the Earth, and despite our rough history, right now is an OK time to live in this land, but we mustn't forget our past."
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We have not been the only guests in the casa di Blumcagni over the past few days, there was a woman from other sister's program who's moving to Berlin, and then a friend of my father's who visited with his daughter.
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My father's friend, a German national, was a child during WW2, living in Berlin, and told us some fantastic stories when we were having lunch together one afternoon.
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He was a child during the war. He watched the city burning from his stoop when he was five. His father, who was in the nazi army, had been killed a few years earlier, so it was just 3 little boys and his mom, trying to make their way.
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He described being evacuated from his building while the city was being bombed, after the Russians had liberated the section of the city. To make sure they were able to keep the apartment they were living in, he and his family had to walk 10 miles, hop a freight train, and his mom had to go off into the bushes with a Russian soldier to make sure they made it back to their apartment before it was claimed by someone else. And their experience was completely normal-- only difference was that most of their neighbors lost their apartments, either due to bombs or looting or squatting.
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He remembers Germans hiding their teenage daughters in attics to keep them away from the Russian soldiers-- he thought that rape was part of the 'spoils of war' for the Russians.
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But, he said, the Russians loved children. He remembers standing with his brothers next to a barbed wire fence, accepting soup and bread from the Russian soldiers through the fence. They were starving, literally, so this is the way they survived.
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A few years later, during the occupation, his mom was 'dragged' to a dance with one of her friends, and met an American soldier there. They formed a relationship that he (the soldier) thought was temporary. My dad's friend and his family moved from base town to base town with this man until he was called back to the states. i.e. he supported them, she was kind of his mistress.
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He got called home, and after a while, he realized that he missed her enough to send for her and the boys. He wrote her a letter asking her to come. But when they got there, it was 'no more German' for the family. My father's friend was 13.
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Listening to this story, I saw pure raw anger on his face-- toward his step-father, his mother for being desperate enough to follow this man that didn't treat her very well, toward the Russians for raping his mom.
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I was relaying this story to my brother-in-law as we were walking from one the beach bar (beach chairs, sand, and reggae music next to the river) to a beer garten (800 picnic tables, LOTS of beer) one night. I talked about how I had no idea how bad the Russians were to the Germans after the war, and how awful that must have been to the Germans who made it through the war.
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My B-i-L gently reminded me about how there's never an easy answer, not all of the Russians were bad, there were just a few bad eggs, and that all human interaction is nuanced. He reminded me that this was war-time, and the people left there were part of the Nazi party.
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My immediate thoughts was-- Abu Graib, Gitmo, and how the world sees the US, versus how we're not ALL, bad, are we? There are just a few Lindy Englands in the army, not all of us throw Korans into toilets?
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And then my second thought was-- the Russians weren't as bad as the Nazis, were they?
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And then my third thought was-- my friend's father was a Nazi.
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Just that word brought up boiled anger, a reeking mass of bile (or was it just too much beer?) towards Germans in general.
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I was too upset to talk, but B-in-Law managed to say something that sunk in, which I could imagine is the only thing that keeps most young Germans who feel guilty about their ancestor's pasts sane. He said that the Nazi system started as a party, and were a group of bad apples that created a system (i.e. no fillibusters, a one-party {republican} DEMOCRATIC system that grew a bunch of scary, genocidic ideas of a few into fruition. Not all of the Germans were Nazis, they just had no choice, and an overwhelming faith in the system.
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B-in-Law said that he was genuinely worried that the USA would end up going in the same direction, and this isn't the first time that this has been said to me by a German.
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This just lead me to 150 thought paths to follow in thinking, but the only absolute I've learned from this whole exploration is that a knee-jerk reaction is never the right one.
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It's been pretty intense.