My late mother was Norwegian, born in 1942 during the Nazi occupation. I knew her father [my grandfather] who was active in the Norwegian Resistance throughout the occupation and survived the War, living till 1993. He was blown eighteen months before the end of the War and was thus an outlaw in his own country for his anti-German activities. Eighteen months of never staying in one place for more than one night. In his old age he would sometimes start a story, but never once did he get to the end of it. He would go quiet and then take himself to bed.
I am not going to gloss what my grandmother [his wife] told me as she really could not forgive the Nazis, though my grandfather accepted some difference between Nazi and non-Nazi Germans.
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I visited Lublin [Majdanec] Camp in Poland in 2006. It was the day after All Souls Day [which Poland takes very seriously], and there was the first snow of Winter at Lublin. It was an unforgettable visit and the place was terrible even then. I still have the little visitor guide in Polish and English. I last read through it at Easter last year.
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If anyone is curious as to how the people of Britain might have reacted had the Nazi invasion of the UK taken place, they need only read up on the occupation of the Channel Islands. No room for doubt after that. The British would have collaborated in sufficient numbers to allow the horror to have happened here in the UK. The British have no reason for smugness on this. The evidence is there for anyone to examine and think about.
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I have absolutely no hope for human nature. As a specie we are tribal at a very primal level. Of course we think we have a liberal outlook that suppresses this more or less inherent tribalism, but it is there and shows its ugly head in countless instances throughout history and still in the post Holocaust era. I don't think the Western Judeo-Christian culture is inherently more or less flawed than other cultures. Look at Myanmar today concerning the treatment of their Muslim minority as an ongoing tribal horror.
Strangely, we have advanced to a point where the human population has long ago exceeded what is sustainable, and as the system of agriculture collapses under the weight of this population and its destruction the of environment, I believe that the worst of the tribal evil of our specie is still in front of us.
Best wishes from George