Text 24923, 58 rader
Skriven 2008-12-12 09:52:49 av Ward Dossche (2:292/854)
  Kommentar till text 24908 av Roy Witt (1:397/22)
Ärende: Re: Attitudes (was: The New National Anthem)
====================================================
RW>WD> My parents lived through 4 years of occupation and didn't need to
RW>WD> speak German either.
 
RW> That's because the day of language requirements hadn't been met. They may
RW> not have been forced to speak it, but their offspring (you) certainly
RW> would have been, forcefully if required, schooled in German. Thus, your
RW> parents would have to speak it or be turned into the Gestapo for
RW> violating the law that all German subjects will speak German.
 
You obviously have no idea how life was under the occupation. It went on as
normal as could be with a number of setbacks mainly being the shortages of
everything except as of 1942 herring.
 
My mother recalled that life was very organised ... "Ordnung und Disziplin".
She could not recall any misbehaviour of German troops against the population
except against Jews and as retaliation against resistance attacks.
 
She told that if a German military person misbehaved, the standard punishment
was "eastern front". Remember Herman the Ferret in "The Great Escape". A girl
could walk the streets after dusk and when encountered by Germans and having
identity checked would be escorted home for safety reasons and delivered at the
doorstep with a click of the heels.
 
My grandmother living in a village in the countryside remembered having once
seen 2 Germans there on a motorcycle with a sidecar. After checking at townhall
they left and that was it for the duration of the war. There was hardly any
criminality because the punishments were too harsh.
 
My mam also recalled that all that dramatically changed after liberation. Most
of Belgium was liberated by the Brits and Cannucks. The Brits fairly well
behaved, the Cannucks allowed themselves more liberties. After that when the
port of Antwerp was cleared from mines and shipping started arriving there
(cutting supply lines from France by some 600km) it was mostly Americans in
town. She recalled that drunken fights were the rule of the day, girls were
getting nailed against their will whenever and wherever. Complaints with
military authorities yielded nothing in a disgusting way (they were "former
Nazi whores" or "bringing it onto themsleves"). Law and order, "Ordnung und
Disziplin" ... were gone.
 
In 1994 when 50 years of liberation were celebrated and bunches of mainly
Canadian and American veterans returned to parade through the streets, there
were signs everywhere reading "Are you my father?"
 
That is how living under occupation was related to me by my mother, her sister,
my father, both my grandmothers, a surviving grandfather, uncles, aunts,
nieces, cousins ...
 
Don't think that life under occupation was a daily hell, and that after
liberation it was a daily heaven.
 
It was splendid to be liberated and to be free ... free from war, from
shortages, from certain limitations ... what came in place was not always what
was generally expected.
 
 \%/@rd

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