Surely it is not ok to say this..?

[CristinaYang]

I was out with a large group of work colleagues on Friday night. They all seem to be normal, nice people.

We were talking about places in Europe we had visited, and our favourite places. I said my favourite city so far was Berlin. I absolutely loved Berlin. The people were so friendly and welcoming and, I mentioned, that on the walking tours we did I had admired how they didn’t shy away from Germany’s role in the war. I liked the way the dealt with it in terms of their monuments and the way tour guides spoke etc. Granted I was only there a couple of days and I certainly wouldn’t claim to be any kind of expert but I felt it was sensitively and honestly spoken about but there were no attempts at denial or justification. This is a summary of the conversation, a few people chipped in and agreed with me etc.

Anyway one woman then pipes up “I’m sorry, is anyone else just not ok with Germans, even now?!” I was aghast and thought oh dear that’s awkward. I was then even more aghast by the people that nodded in agreement, made comments about relatives killed in concentration camps and how they still “feel weird”, “can’t warm to them” etc.

But how can they blame Germans for that these days? It’s an entirely different generation of people and things have moved on. You can’t blame individuals for it. I realise that may be simplistic but as I said I’m no expert and I don’t want to spout off about things I don’t fully understand.

Drink was taken (not by me, i wasn’t drinking) but no one seemed to be out and out hammered.

Is this a secretly commonly held view these days? I can’t imagine that it is...

My mil was a jew living in germany .she was only 4 when her family came to the UK as refugees.She fully understood what was going on and remembers living in terror in Germany terrified of being rounded up .She still has nightmares about it occasionally seventy odd years on.Eben though her and fil don't drive anymore, she insists on having a car with a full tank of fuel in the garage just incase they need to ' get away quick

Agree holy

I think one of the problems is that it's all very well to say 'sorry' when you are well off and can still get a great education/jobs etc. When you indirectly profit from the industrial and social engineering that took place. Everyone else who has been targeted sees this massively unfair structure where a lot of their family has been wiped out, struggle for survival and a decent education, major generational PTSD, unfairly jailed, kids often taken away, they get called terrorists and criminals on a whim etc. I still think there are simply massive levels of denial from those who actually benefited from the holocaust.

What utter ejits, I say that as a woman of Jewish descent who lost family in the Holocaust.

To blame an entire nation for an atrocity that a minor minor portion of their country did is like hating all muslims because of 9/11.

Stupid. Utterly bloody bananas.

Holy: Exactly. I see ordinary Brits as suffering just as much from these policies.

The German population lived in terror of the Nazis. During the 1930s there were public executions of German citizens who were discovered to be anti-Nazi. There was only one political party, Hitler was a dictator.

Yes, my family were affected by the actions of the Nazis in WW2. No, I have no issues whatsoever with Germans in general, have friends and relatives who are German and find them very warm and nice.

It's not actually fair to blame all Germans for the world wars, obviously, but they're not that long ago... Within living memory... I dont think it's surprising that there's still a bit of feeling about it and i don't think these comments were that seriously meant, although obviously i dont know, i wasn't there. I'm still (very) faintly at the French because of the Norman conquest. Racial memory I suppose. But it doesn't actually affect my feelings to, or treatment of, any actual French people. It's more if i think of 'the French' as a homogenous class (which obviously they're not).

Don't know where that at the beginning appeared from!

OP I suddenly thought
Could this colleague be the type who likes to say things they dont necessarily think to check the responses?

I don't think it's an uncommon view especially if you have never met any Germans! One of my friends at school was German even though she'd always grown up in the UK and she used to get teased because of it. She wasn't very popular anyway so perhaps it didn't help but it was a thing which happened.

We moved to Germany and DH's parents were very uneasy about it, especially MIL and they won't come and visit. My Grandad struggled with it too. I could understand more for him because he lived through the war, but he actually came around in the end and said it was a long time ago and no hard feelings.

I like Germans but there is certainly a view among a lot of British people that they are not really to be trusted, and are humourless and boring. I find this funny because of all Europeans, Germans are some of the most likely to share and appreciate British style humour.

Love the idea of blaming the French for the Norman conquest. Normans (Norsemen) were descended from the Vikings who had invaded France a few hundred years previously. The French were the victims - blame the Danes.

Daily Telegraph reader by any chance?

It's ignorant and very sad. Maybe the Germans have the last laugh though: stronger economy, better welfare system. I'd rather live there than here.

the vast majority of Germans I have met are gentle, friendly and actually have a very similar sense of humour to us brits. I most certainly wouldn't judge them by the actions of some of their fellow countrymen no more than I hope people don't judge me by some of ours.

I grew up with a German 'uncle' who was actually my nan's boyfriend. An ex prisoner of war. Must have caused quite a stir in the little village they lived in. He never went home after the war. So our family has always viewed the Germans as no better / worse than the British. All victims of history.

Oh, she was an immature, attention-seeking twat. As is anyone who blames people for anything their ancestors did.

I would probably have said to her, 'No, but then I don't know many stupid people...'

I have a German friend. They are very disorganised. Seems un natural to me ;)

I think the British education system is partially to blame here. We learn nothing about any mistakes or atrocities that 'we've' committed in the past, so people grow up thinking Germany/Japan etc are the bad guys and the U.K. And America are the good guys. Furthermore the new curriculum encompasses 'British Values' - Democracy, rule of law, mutual respect. However I'm pretty sure historically many people in Kenya, India, Ireland etc wouldn't have found those values to be particularly symptomatic of the British.

It's quite embarrassing to admit this because I consider myself to be fairly well educated and open minded, but the older members of my family are very anti-Irish, so I've grown up hearing a lot on crap generalisations about Irish people. However, at school I learned at school about Gladstone and the Irish question which you would think would've given me a more balanced view than British Army = good/Irish people = bad. Yet I was in my late twenties, when I watched the film Hunger, that I was presented with a different narrative to the one I'd heard all my life. I remember watching it and feeling so stupid that there was a whole different perspective on the matter that had just never occurred to me. Obviously, I had never hated Irish people in the way that some of my family had, but nor had I questioned why the IRA existed or why they began bombing or why the peace process was so complicated .

I like to think that since that realisation, I think much more critically about things, but it did give me a small insight into how people end up with mindsets where they can see things in such a black and white way.

Another daughter of German Jews here who thinks that is not ok. I once had an old friend whose mother went NC with one of her sons because he married a Swiss girl, whose dad had been in the German army in WW2. Friend said this was an insult to her grandfather's memory (he had been in the British army). I was and just said, "If I can be friendly with Germans I really think you ought to be able to". Mind, this girl and her mother had issues with every human tribe (they once told me that Jews are 'clannish' - ta for that) and that's really the point, isn't it? Like bullies, xenophobes are just looking for targets.

It’s racism. Pure and simple.

Anyone who says it’s because... yadayada is just a more ignorant racist. That includes underdogs too! My family are Scottish snd Irish and I’m sick of anti English comments. They say it like it’s ok because they are ‘the oppressors’. Racism again.

"As events gathered force, Protestant mobs, vigilante groups, and the police targeted Catholic homes and families. An ethnic cleansing campaign began, and Catholics living in Protestant neighbourhoods were harassed, assassinated, and burned out of their homes"

Secret courts, death squads, bombing of businesses, shoot to kill policies

Endangered Peoples of Europe: Struggles to Survive and Thrive

This was in the 1960s. This is still real to us and it is events like the holocaust which fund and enable them to do this. We can't just 'move on' :(

I can understand why you were disturbed by people’s reactions........but........it wasn’t that long ago that 6 million Jewish people were systematically murdered. Obviously one can’t blame the German population for the actions of a nut case but these things linger in the memory.
Also, they have no sense of humour 😄

User "We can't just 'move on' "

Nor can any of us move on from people we lost in any number of horrors.

Do I blame anyone who wasn't connected? Of course not. You might as well blame me for what you've described there.

I bet she reads the Mail. You need to show her their infamous "Hurrah for the Blackshirts" headline.

What have current day Germans got to do with those responsible for atrocious acts during a war that ended 73 years ago? 99% of those people are dead!

FWIW OP Berlin is one of my favourite cities in Europe too. And in general I really like Germans. All the ones I've got to know have been very funny and very easy to get along with.