My Grandmother saved up a fund for me for my wedding. When I graduated from grad school I convinced my parents to let me use the money to back-pack through Europe and visit family. And they said O.K.
My relatives in Germany told me how mislead they were in their school systems during pre-war times. One of my German cousins who fought for the Nazis told me that he was amazed how kind the Americans were after he got captured. He said the American POW camp was the best part of war!
I had a friend who spent time in a concentration camp. She was a Quaker, and they caught her using her papers to help Jews to escape Germany.
They tried to make her divorce her Jewish husband; and even though he had deserted her, she had a legal mind, and crammed the Nazis own laws down their throats. She survived the camp, and went on to become one of the first professional female chemists employed by a big company in the US, and married the second time to a good American man.
She always said that she was ‘allergic to barbed wire’; didn’t like seeing angry protests in DC, because she had seen what that sort of thing led up to in Germany. (And that the fleas in the camp didn’t bother her ;-)
She lived a long, good life; and taught me a lot about experiences that I had never thought I would ever encounter.
But I’ve thought of her and her experience quite often in recent months. The concept of ‘Never Again’ seems to have been forgotten by many on these shores - if it was ever even known by the ignorant people doing mindless violence on our streets today.