On reflection, my last post sounds as though I'm crowing a bit - 'look what a lovely Advent we're having!'.
Not so, but it does look as though, however shitty this Advent might be, the coming Dark Years, under the rule of The Mad Mophead, are going to be even shittier for very many people.
I do rather like the cartoonish image of being pompously pumped up and offended when someone calls someone in a photo a "Nazi Grandad" then slowly deflating when you discover that your Grandad was, indeed, a Nazi.
One showed a young man wearing a uniform with an eagle and swastika badge, the other an older man.
Pfft. I'm going to say that ^this^ was a bit of a giveaway...
And surely if the family wanted to honor their ancestors, and allegiance to the Fuehrer was not central to their identity, there would most likely be portraits in civilian clothes such that an inn keeper would wear.
It seems to me that many Germans are reluctant to look too hard into their family history because they are frightened and embarrassed about what they might find.
This hotel owner appears to have been undone by assuming his own relatives could not possibly have been Nazis. Sadly he was mistaken.
My brother's host family for his German student exchange was headed by a father who had won the Iron Cross on the Eastern front.
I mean, fair do, they didn't hand them out like sweeties, but while he was out there in his tank, millions of people were being gassed and shot and starved and worked to death behind him. Most likely, some of our distant relatives.
In the town where I used to live, the locals buried the German dead alongside their own sons in the military cemetery. Even, apparently, in the midst of the worst part of the war.
When I stood there with my weeping grandfather years ago it seemed strange, and yet I think people in his generation were able to separate in their minds ordinary enlisted soldiers from the rabid crazed Nazi party and those murderous nutters in the SS.
If you refer to the disaster which has just occurred, to wit, the Election, then yes, I agree.
I am resolved to dip out of all the Christmas services at Our Place, as I don't think I can stand any of the 'joyful' hymns etc. As far as I can tell, there is no god, anyway. Or, if there is, s/he doesn't give a toss for this poor world.
Imagine seeing the face of God, and that face is Boris Johnson.
Astounding, yet reports of today's parliamentary session suggest there are people alive today who claim to have seen just that.
I guess that should make me feel better about these rapidly accelerating End Times.
ETA: these are bitter jokes ONLY and not in any way meant to tempt anyone towards loss of faith. If anything, reading the spoilers in Revelation about how the world shall be on fucking fire, and still they did not repent! makes me feel like it's all on track, and certainly not grounds for any loss of faith. Not even faith in humanity generally (excluding certain individuals and institutional groupings).
In the town where I used to live, the locals buried the German dead alongside their own sons in the military cemetery. Even, apparently, in the midst of the worst part of the war.
When I stood there with my weeping grandfather years ago it seemed strange, and yet I think people in his generation were able to separate in their minds ordinary enlisted soldiers from the rabid crazed Nazi party and those murderous nutters in the SS.
Dyce cemetery, near Aberdeen, has the graves of the Luftwaffe who died on bombing raids on Aberdeen. They are tended just as carefully as the British graves. The men, all ten of them, from four crashes, were barely out of their teens when they died.
St Andrew's Church, Inverurie, still has the German Bible used by German prisoners of war when they worshipped there.
If you refer to the disaster which has just occurred, to wit, the Election, then yes, I agree.
I am resolved to dip out of all the Christmas services at Our Place, as I don't think I can stand any of the 'joyful' hymns etc. As far as I can tell, there is no god, anyway. Or, if there is, s/he doesn't give a toss for this poor world.
Imagine seeing the face of God, and that face is Boris Johnson.
Astounding, yet reports of today's parliamentary session suggest there are people alive today who claim to have seen just that.
I guess that should make me feel better about these rapidly accelerating End Times.
ETA: these are bitter jokes ONLY and not in any way meant to tempt anyone towards loss of faith. If anything, reading the spoilers in Revelation about how the world shall be on fucking fire, and still they did not repent! makes me feel like it's all on track, and certainly not grounds for any loss of faith. Not even faith in humanity generally (excluding certain individuals and institutional groupings).
It seems to me that many Germans are reluctant to look too hard into their family history because they are frightened and embarrassed about what they might find.
This hotel owner appears to have been undone by assuming his own relatives could not possibly have been Nazis. Sadly he was mistaken.
Well my relatives were. I looked through several family photo albums in the Rhineland some years ago with my father's young cousin, born 1942. His and our families are the only survivors of that war. I saw many of the NPNP family wearing brownshirts and the swastika armbands from the 1930s, and the same people and more wearing Wehrmacht uniforms later. There were 4 of them SS as well. 'of course the regular army were not Nazis'. They are my family. All killed in the war except one, and all of the women and children except for one, my cousin's father, also killed by carpet bombing after D-Day. The one surviving soldier was captured by Americans after Monte Casino and was later killed in Michigan while a POW after the end of the war. I suppose he deserved it. Perhaps my cousin didn't deserve to survive either, as his father was the wrong sort of German. But I'm glad he did. These relatives are kind people and not Nazis today.
This thread puts me in mind of a line in a novel that I've just finished reading, Sean Michaels's Us Conductors. In it, the narrator, Leon Theremin, relates a conversation amongst his Gulag science colleagues: We all agreed that there is a God, and he's a son of a bitch. [Not quite verbatim.]
Comments
Not so, but it does look as though, however shitty this Advent might be, the coming Dark Years, under the rule of The Mad Mophead, are going to be even shittier for very many people.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/dec/16/austrian-hotel-owners-drop-nazi-grandpa-court-case
I do feel a tiny bit sorry for the owners, but.. well.
Pfft. I'm going to say that ^this^ was a bit of a giveaway...
And surely if the family wanted to honor their ancestors, and allegiance to the Fuehrer was not central to their identity, there would most likely be portraits in civilian clothes such that an inn keeper would wear.
Just displaying a photo of someone - anyone - wearing a swastika is insensitive, to say the least.
God knows, Austria suffered enough under the Nazis, surely.
This hotel owner appears to have been undone by assuming his own relatives could not possibly have been Nazis. Sadly he was mistaken.
I rather think the hotel owners were just careless, and fell foul (to the tune of Euros10000) of Someone Who Noticed...
I mean, fair do, they didn't hand them out like sweeties, but while he was out there in his tank, millions of people were being gassed and shot and starved and worked to death behind him. Most likely, some of our distant relatives.
Obligatory.
When I stood there with my weeping grandfather years ago it seemed strange, and yet I think people in his generation were able to separate in their minds ordinary enlisted soldiers from the rabid crazed Nazi party and those murderous nutters in the SS.
Imagine seeing the face of God, and that face is Boris Johnson.
Astounding, yet reports of today's parliamentary session suggest there are people alive today who claim to have seen just that.
I guess that should make me feel better about these rapidly accelerating End Times.
ETA: these are bitter jokes ONLY and not in any way meant to tempt anyone towards loss of faith. If anything, reading the spoilers in Revelation about how the world shall be on fucking fire, and still they did not repent! makes me feel like it's all on track, and certainly not grounds for any loss of faith. Not even faith in humanity generally (excluding certain individuals and institutional groupings).
Dyce cemetery, near Aberdeen, has the graves of the Luftwaffe who died on bombing raids on Aberdeen. They are tended just as carefully as the British graves. The men, all ten of them, from four crashes, were barely out of their teens when they died.
St Andrew's Church, Inverurie, still has the German Bible used by German prisoners of war when they worshipped there.
Yes. I was being mildly despairing.
Surely the Gospel is about seeing the Face of God in everybody?
Yes, awkward that.
Sort of rings true, sometimes.