Monica:
From your YouTube video, I can see that you are a talented, and intelligent person, and, as a Jew, and a fellow musician, I would like to address your clearly well-meaning statements made in the video.
First, I would like to apologize for the verbal abuse you endured as a German immigrant child from other, Canadian, children. This shows you that even children have the human propensity for cruelty to others. It's regrettable, but it is part of human nature, not just in Germany but in Canada, and the world over.
Secondly, I completely understand the anger you had toward your parents as a child. In your young mind, you must have felt that they were complicit in the hatred, persecution, and murder of Jews that you had heard about, and you asked the question.
And, in their response, I believe they told you the truth.
I know a Jewish German woman who lived in Germany and survived the WWII years. She told me the same thing that your parents told you. That there were many good Germans, living quiet, private, family lives who had absolutely nothing to do with the wholesale slaughter and murder of Jews which, according to the well-kept records of the Nazis did, in fact, take place.
The Nazis, may their crimes be avenged by G-d, were meticulous keepers of records. This is why they tattooed numbers on the concentration camp prisoners. In addition to reducing human beings to mere numbers in a ledger, they prove -- by the Nazis own accounting and testimony -- that 6,000,0000 Jews were murdered, and that those who could not be good workers were, in fact, sent to the gas chambers. Then, of course, there was the Final Solution plan, recorded in the Wannsea conference of January 1942.
The Nazis conducted a fierce and fearsome reign of terror. While it is true that huge waves of German, Austrian, and citizens of other countries embraced Hitler and the Third Reich, it is equally true that millions of ordinary German citizens were either unaware of the worst or horrified but paralyzed by their fear and inability to do anything to change things.
Just as millions of Jews were paralyzed and unable to change their circumstances, so were many good German people.
From listening to you talk, and viewing your demeanour, I would have to think your parents were among this latter group.
The only apology you need to make to your parents, then, is the one that almost all of us have to make. That, in the rashness and incomplete wisdom of our youth, we condemned them unfairly.
Mark Twain said, "When I was fourteen years old, my father was so stupid, I could barely stand to have him around. By the time I reached twenty-one, I was amazed at how much he'd learned in seven years."
You don't need to deny the Holocaust in order to vindicate your parents. Not all Germans were fervent Nazis. If your parents told you they had no involvement in the horrible events which took place, talk to my Jewish German friend who lived through it all.
She will tell you there were many German people who had no part in the Holocaust. Therefore, you have every reason to believe that your parents were, just as they said, innocent, notwithstanding the Holocaust did, in fact, happen.
Think well of your parents, for, in all likelihood, they told you the truth: that there was, indeed, a terrible Holocaust but they had no idea of the extent of its brutality until after the war -- because they had nothing to do with it.
Respectfully,
Gord Lindsay
