German and Jewish

[A Potts]

One of my client's is descended from the Jews in Germany just before World War Two (he is born and raised in Australia).

He is a very nice guy and we have become good friends.

I was invited around for dinner and his mother was there. She is now in her late 80's and was born in Berlin. I was told that that she left Nazi Germnany in 1939 to go to Australia (she ended up with her uncle in Sydney).

A very interesting thing came from the conversation.

I was told that her older brother had fought with distinction on the western front in the First World War. I then asked how she felt about Germany.

She said that 'she loved Germany and I am a German!'.

She stated that one of the hardest things (obviously other than the holocaust) was for her to be considered not German. She has always considered herself German and that it was very hard to be suddenly treated a alien when her family had been there for 300 - 400 years, by the Nazis.

I found this very interesting.

[Panzerschreck]

I totally agree with you, this was very interesting reading I must say. Of course, all germans wasn't nazis, so the way she thinks is maybe not so strange after all.

[Harry Ree]

Quite true.These people were German and many fought in the Great War for their country.They saw themselves as Germans first and Jewish second.

Alas for too many, the warnings from what was happening in Germany from January 1933 went unheeded.Many thought that a civilised nation,a nation of culture would not stoop to the depths it did for the next 12 years.

It has to be said that there were some in Great Britain who thought favourably of the Hitler regime from the fear of Russian ideology rolling westward.These people were of the social classes that had some influence in public life. One such person was the owner of a national daily and I am sure had Hitler been successful in taking the British Isles, these people would have enacted the Vichy role and willingly accomodated Hitler.

For the German masses who rejoiced at Hitler's victories as he put right the wrongs, as he and his followers saw it, of the Versailles Treaty, they would turn round in defeat and say "We were never Nazis"

Those people who were able to escape from Germany to the British Isles gave valuable service to their adopted country,the majority serving in British military units under assumed names.For some families, their escape from Germany was to France and the Low Countries where the nightmare of persecution and death was enacted again as these countries were overrun by the Nazi hordes.