Even after compensation?
Especially after “compensation.”
ETA: reported for forum change.
Since there’s no simple factual answer to this, let’s move this over to IMHO for now.
Colibri
General Questions Moderator
Do all Jews hold a grudge against all Germans? Of course not. Do some Jews hold grudges against some Germans? Yes.
As for how many Jews and how many Germans? I don’t know, but here are interesting thoughts on the situation:
http://jewishvoiceny.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=659:american-jewish-grandson-of-holocaust-survivor-becomes-german-hockey-star&catid=119:sports&Itemid=316
Some do! I was the gentile guest at a Passover dinner once. The grandfather of the family asked me about my Germanic-sounding name. I said that my family originally came from Switzerland. He said, “Okay, then, it isn’t your fault.”
Well, my wife and I are Jewish and my wife’s best friend is German, so I’m guessing not, or at least very little for my generation (2-3 generations removed from Holocaust survivors). We had some distant Polish relatives who died in the camps, but I can hardly blame modern Germans for the crimes of their grandparents/great grandparents. It might also help that we’re not particularly religious. I should also add that my wife’s friend’s great grandfather served in the German Navy during WWII - I believe on a surface ship of some kind.
If you asked my grandmother, however, she would tell you about how German antisemitism exists everywhere and how she would never buy a Volkswagon, BMW, or Mercedes on principal. She definitely still holds a grudge, but for her, she remembers being a child during WWII and even though they were in New York at the time, she was still deeply affected by the Holocaust and obviously knew the aforementioned Polish cousins, who are complete strangers to me.
What about German Jews? Do they hate themselves?
I think there’s a lot of Jews who hold a grudge against the generic German people without having any ill feelings against any German in particular.
I’ll assume the thing about compensation comes from ignorance. The idea that Germany has somehow compensated the Jewish people for attempted extermination would not go over well with any Jews I know.
All Jews hate themselves. It’s in the rules.
Yes. Both of them.
It really depends. Jews famously do not all agree with each other.
However, I do know that my aunt, who actually is a Holocaust survivor (she was in Bergen-Belsen, among other places) will not buy German products if she can help it.
I agree that it’s probably a generation thing. For a long time, my parents, who love to travel, avoided Germany. They’ve ‘outgrown’ that, I think.
I’ve never felt ill against the current people or country of Germany, and was happy to visit when I had a chance.
FWIW, my family was not very religious when I was growing up, and I consider my self an atheist instead of a Jew at this point.
-D/a
Well as a sort of comparison (not a full one since Japan never tried to actually physically genocide Korea), my family (including my grandmother who was born during the occupation) is not particularly anti-Japanese: my grandmother reads Japanese novels, we use Japanese goods and so on although my aunt (who was born after occupation) said the 2011 earthquake was punishment for Japan’s misdeeds and hoped the country would fall into the sea.
There is a similarity in those feelings I think. For many people the victory over Germany and Japan was not enough to quench residual anger. There was no real pound of flesh taken from either country because they were already in ruins when the war ended. Some will argue there is a pecking order in acts of inhumanity, but when you’re being starved, raped, tortured, and murdered, I don’t think you care much which travesty you are a statistic in.
I’m certain the key to why German and Japanese porn is so weird will be revieled in this thread.
I’ll be watching…
This could be what is known as a joke though.
In any group of millions of people, you will find someone who holds almost any position you can think of. In the '90s I was part of an Internet group that also included a woman who was Jewish and who definitely held a deep grudge against Germans; she would bring this up every time someone mentioned visiting Germany or buying a product from a German company. However, she was a bit of a jerk in a lot of other ways, too, so…
The Jewish communities of Germany are growing, and much of that growth is immigration from Russia and elsewhere in Eastern Europe. (Some of Toucanna’s links include more information about this.) So some Jews, at least, consider (say) Berlin a better place to live than wherever they come from.
Mr. Neville’s grandfather, who died last year, wouldn’t buy a German car. He fought the Germans in WWII. His wife still gets compensation from the German government for her time in a concentration camp. The car thing is as far as his dislike of Germans and Germany went, as far as I know, though.
Mr. Neville doesn’t want to travel to Germany. He didn’t seem to care much when I rented a car and got a VW Jetta, but it might be a different story if I were to want to buy a German car.
I’m not Jewish but a lot of my closer friends and co-workers have been. At least one of them finds the idea of compensation pretty awful. In his case his mother survived through dumb luck and charity and several older siblings and her parents were killed. This was a very gifted family intellectually and the loss is immeasurable. He’s never asked for or received any compensation and he prefers to just earn his own money, which he does, quite well.
There is a Jewish member of this board who still pretty much refers to every German as a Nazi, despite the fact that this member of the board was born after the war was over - yet still finds it appropriate to be hateful to all Germans who were also born after 1945.
I know there is the theory of living with the sins of your father, but it starts to get ridiculous and cruel when you are still beating up on people for the sins of their grandfather, great-grandfather and great-great grandfather.
I have seen 14 year old kids from Germany devastated when called “Nazi” by ignorant assholes. Those kids don’t even remember the Berlin Wall, let alone a war that even their parents had nothing to do with.
And speaking specifically of Berlin, Berliners are quite proud of the fact that Berlin never supported Adolf nor the National Socialist Party. For instance, in the 1932 general election, Hitler’s party only won 22.5% of the vote in Berlin. In an interview, someone once asked Hitler who he was most afraid of and his answer was “Berliners.”
The point is, lumping every German alive today as a Nazi who holds responsibility for the atrocities of WWII is not some solemn testament/oath to family loyalty, it is ignorant, hateful bigotry.