Thank you for this Bill. I have spent a few hours reading the excellent book "Out of Hiding; Holocaust Literature of British Columbia edited by Alan Twigg with an excellent and thought provoking essay on ways of hiding by Yosef Wosk. That included the question of what the German people knew and what the world knew and cared not to know, because as Mavis wrote there is no way to process the capacity of human beings to commit such atrocities, or permit them. My father was in the training division of the RCAf and was sent to Britain to help prepare the Canadian troops to come home. He was on the last ship carrying Canadian soldiers home. It took a whole year. But he came back with photos many of the troops brought back from Germany and actually was involved in making photo packs for the men (he never mentioned women) to bring home. He also had a German Luger pistol and a Nazi Flag, These were packed away in a trunk and I used to show them to my little friends. I was born after the war, so this would have been in the early 50's.
As a child, these did not horrify me as they do now. They were so remote from anything I could comprehend. My Mother was terribly upset and burned the flag and the photos and the gun was stored somewhere far out of reach and finally given to a collector. Only now, looking back to I realise how immediate the war and the Depression dn so many of the early tragedies of the 20th Century were to them. And the fact that there were only 20 years between the wars seemed like a lifetime to me then, but not my parents. And here we go again.
I will pass this on to Geoff H, Bill.
Thank you for this Bill. I have spent a few hours reading the excellent book "Out of Hiding; Holocaust Literature of British Columbia edited by Alan Twigg with an excellent and thought provoking essay on ways of hiding by Yosef Wosk. That included the question of what the German people knew and what the world knew and cared not to know, because as Mavis wrote there is no way to process the capacity of human beings to commit such atrocities, or permit them. My father was in the training division of the RCAf and was sent to Britain to help prepare the Canadian troops to come home. He was on the last ship carrying Canadian soldiers home. It took a whole year. But he came back with photos many of the troops brought back from Germany and actually was involved in making photo packs for the men (he never mentioned women) to bring home. He also had a German Luger pistol and a Nazi Flag, These were packed away in a trunk and I used to show them to my little friends. I was born after the war, so this would have been in the early 50's.
As a child, these did not horrify me as they do now. They were so remote from anything I could comprehend. My Mother was terribly upset and burned the flag and the photos and the gun was stored somewhere far out of reach and finally given to a collector. Only now, looking back to I realise how immediate the war and the Depression dn so many of the early tragedies of the 20th Century were to them. And the fact that there were only 20 years between the wars seemed like a lifetime to me then, but not my parents. And here we go again.
Never has a social media "like" seemed less appropriate.