Text 24943, 80 rader
Skriven 2008-12-12 10:12:42 av Roy Witt (1:397/22)
  Kommentar till text 24923 av Ward Dossche (2:292/854)
Ärende: Attitudes (was: The New National Anthem)
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12 Dec 08 09:52, Ward Dossche wrote to Roy Witt:


 RW>> WD> My parents lived through 4 years of occupation and didn't need
 RW>> to
 RW>> WD> speak German either.

 RW>> That's because the day of language requirements hadn't been met.
 RW>> They may not have been forced to speak it, but their offspring (you)
 RW>> certainly would have been, forcefully if required, schooled in
 RW>> German. Thus, your parents would have to speak it or be turned into
 RW>> the Gestapo for violating the law that all German subjects will
 RW>> speak German.

 WD> You obviously have no idea how life was under the occupation. It went

You have obviously been creating your own version of history. Just more of
Ward's BS.


 WD> on as normal as could be with a number of setbacks mainly being the
 WD> shortages of everything except as of 1942 herring.

 WD> My mother recalled that life was very organised ... "Ordnung und
 WD> Disziplin". She could not recall any misbehaviour of German troops
 WD> against the population except against Jews and as retaliation against
 WD> resistance attacks.

 WD> She told that if a German military person misbehaved, the standard
 WD> punishment was "eastern front". Remember Herman the Ferret in "The
 WD> Great Escape". A girl could walk the streets after dusk and when
 WD> encountered by Germans and having identity checked would be escorted
 WD> home for safety reasons and delivered at the doorstep with a click of
 WD> the heels.

 WD> My grandmother living in a village in the countryside remembered
 WD> having once seen 2 Germans there on a motorcycle with a sidecar.
 WD> After checking at townhall they left and that was it for the duration
 WD> of the war. There was hardly any criminality because the punishments
 WD> were too harsh.

 WD> My mam also recalled that all that dramatically changed after
 WD> liberation. Most of Belgium was liberated by the Brits and Cannucks.
 WD> The Brits fairly well behaved, the Cannucks allowed themselves more
 WD> liberties. After that when the port of Antwerp was cleared from mines
 WD> and shipping started arriving there (cutting supply lines from France
 WD> by some 600km) it was mostly Americans in town. She recalled that
 WD> drunken fights were the rule of the day, girls were getting nailed
 WD> against their will whenever and wherever. Complaints with military
 WD> authorities yielded nothing in a disgusting way (they were "former
 WD> Nazi whores" or "bringing it onto themsleves"). Law and order,
 WD> "Ordnung und Disziplin" ... were gone.

 WD> In 1994 when 50 years of liberation were celebrated and bunches of
 WD> mainly Canadian and American veterans returned to parade through the
 WD> streets, there were signs everywhere reading "Are you my father?"

 WD> That is how living under occupation was related to me by my mother,
 WD> her sister, my father, both my grandmothers, a surviving grandfather,
 WD> uncles, aunts, nieces, cousins ...

 WD> Don't think that life under occupation was a daily hell, and that
 WD> after liberation it was a daily heaven.

 WD> It was splendid to be liberated and to be free ... free from war,
 WD> from shortages, from certain limitations ... what came in place was
 WD> not always what was generally expected.

 WD>  \%/@rd

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 WD> (2:292/854)

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