thanks!

1945 was a longgggggggg time ago, and most of those Germans are DEAD. I think Germany has learned a lot in those
intervening years, and is completely different now.

Yes, we Americans killed a lot of Native Americans and black people. How many ? I don't have the numbers memorized, but I'm sure someone knows immediately.

fluent in German and assimilate--only then to deport them.

I'll have to brace myself before I see this. There is video?

The IRONY of the presentation, and the child's fluency, too, is not lost on most:


During the discussion, entitled “Good life in Germany”, Reem, a Palestinian, told Merkel in fluent German that she and her family, who arrived in Rostock from a Lebanese refugee camp four years ago, are soon to face deportation.

I could spend the rest of the day telling you about them and the Nazi that lives across the street from me along with her 9mm patrolling the street at night looking for someone to shoot. You got the time? Care to listen?

Of course, *some* Germans are assholes, just like some Americans are assholes.

I'll let DFW address your assertion.

At the Human Being level - just one human being to another -

Who would have thought that Germany could be a safe harbor for an 'other'. Xenophobic attacks aside - I hope they take pride in the perception of those in dire straits that Germany is a safe harbor.

Last edited Thu Jul 16, 2015, 01:38 PM - Edit history (1)

Edited: I have been corrected. Sorry.

Not to mention the Turkish Green Party national chairman. Then there's the Turkish guy at my local travel agency (born in Oberausen, speaks better German than Turkish), or the millions of completely assimilated Turks who are first generation, still speak German with an accent, and don't raise an eyebrow with anyone. There are also the Turks at our local mosque who opened the place for the "Nous sommes Charlie" march in our town and put out hot tea and baklava for everyone.

Second class citizens? The Mexicans back home in Texas should have it so good.

I had one German several years ago say to me that he thought they weren't treated well.

Sorry.

These days, no one even blinks an eye any more if you say you're Turkish. It gets more attention if you say you're a vegetarian.

Most seemed to think as you suggest, but there were some who expressed to me that they feel like they are being oppressed.

My experience is only anecdotal, however. I found Germany to be a wonderful, progressive and inclusive place as far as I could tell.

In my experience, the ones who most feel oppressed are the ones who most desire to impose their own way of life on their new home. If you raise a family in Germany, then you have to expect the younger generation to want to be German. As a country with pretty tolerant ways, some families (not just Muslims) can't get used to their daughters wanting to go out and party, and some can't used to the idea that it is NOT OK to beat the crap out of them when they do. German girls don't appreciate being treated like that, either (remember, I raised two of them). The usual complaint is that German girls discriminate against foreign boys in high school. The reality is that they don't appreciate being treated as property, or being labeled as whores if they sleep with their boyfriends, and avoid boys who take that attitude.

You noted that Germany is inclusive. Very perceptive. The postwar generation was the first to get a look at other cultures en masse, and found out they liked what they saw. My younger daughter's class at the Anne Frank elementary school had about 25 kids in it. They represented kids born to parents of about 15 different nationalities (16, if you include my two being half American).

Germany once welcomed the Turks, the Palestinians, and other gastarbeiters.

Die Gastarbeiter came in waves. Turks, Yugoslavs, Spaniards, Italians, some Greeks. There was no wave of Gastarbeiter from Palestine.

They were welcomed because there was (duh!) a shortage of male workers after the war. Many stayed on, and most who did assimilated.

I was able to spend 6 months traveling and staying with Germans in Ulm, Augberg and Stuttgart. It was interesting to talk to them about how they viewed their history.

In the small town outside of Düsseldorf where I live, they have appropriated a sports complex and another few public buildings to house refugees. A legacy of World War II, Germany bends over backwards to accommodate refugees, but if physically just can't handle the numbers that are coming, and some of those in temporary shelters, like this bright girl who learned German in 4 years, will have to leave. Germany can't house or feed or educate all those who would like to come, and Germany has been the most accommodating country in Europe so far. Jobless young men prowl the streets, speaking little to no German, casting angry, envious glances at the affluence around them, and when the frustration of some of them translates into violence, it fuels right-wing sentiment against the moderates who demanded they be let in, if only temporarily.

As for those who wish to dis the country as a whole, well there IS plenty to complain about. The "Beamten" system of burdensome bureaucrats sucks. There are far too many government employees, many of whom are incompetent, uncaring (un)civil servants who can't be fired, and act like they know it. For too long, they have turned a blind eye to violent political extremists, both right and left, in the interest of not appearing like their Nazi predecesors. The East Germans, with their Nazi military uniforms (except the new helmets) and their goose-stepping in public, didn't care, just said "no Nazis here, we're all socialists now!" But their regime collapsed, too. Plus, their arrogant drivers are a menace to every car on the road. A 19% bite of VAT is in everything you buy, and you reach the de facto 51% income tax threshold at about 85,000 Euros gross. Those (un)civil servants need their six week vacations financed by somebody, after all.

On the other hand, it's extremely difficult to get a firearm, and almost no one has one. Six weeks of paid vacation is pretty much standard. Education costs little to nothing. Health care and insurance are nearly universal, though the bureaucracy for this, too, is cumbersome. Cops using firearms are almost unheard-of, though they all carry them. Germans are ALL educated in school about their past, and you will find it difficult to find someone in Germany eager for their country to be involved in any military operation ever. They are pacifist without being isolationist. They encourage every HIGH SCHOOL student with decent grades to take a year abroad and learn another language and culture, and often go a long way to help financing it. My two daughters went to the Anne Frank elementary school up the street from our house. All in all, I'm very happy they grew up in Germany. I'm not sure they would have turned out as well if they had gone to school in Dallas, and there is NO high school in Dallas that regularly encourages 11th graders to take that year overseas to gain understanding of other countries. There is the "School Year Abroad" program run by several schools in the East, but it's limited, expensive, and can't hand out many scholarships due to the high cost of running it.

Then there's my German wife, as Steve pointed out. From the farmland of the far northwest, her dad grew up speaking Pladdütsch, a local dialect not understood by people in other parts of Germany. He was drafted off his farm at age 17 by the Nazis, sent to Stalingrad, where an artillery shell blew off one of his legs, and he returned to his farm a cripple at age 18. My wife, who turned down an offer to work as a model, chose social work instead. She spent her whole working career working with the homeless and the jobless.

Yep, there are some really evil, selfish Germans out there. But there are more evil, selfish Americans than there are evil, selfish Germans these days, and I survive living in Germany as a foreigner as least as well as I would have survived had I continued to live in Texas as an unarmed "libbrul" Democrat.

Last edited Thu Jul 16, 2015, 03:19 PM - Edit history (1)

I'm on vacation, and trying to act like it!

*On edit--it never ceases to amaze me how often people seem to "know" things from what they read off the internet, or heard from their uncle Charlie, or whatever. Nothing beats first-hand experience, and when it comes to Germany, for me that's over 30 years of first hand experience and fluency in the language. Being married to one of the friendliest natives is a perk, of course.

In the States, yes. But I have a somewhat dark complexion and had dark hair way back when, so in Germany some didn't consider me so, and in my last year of high school, my AA classmates claimed I must have some black blood, but that was just because 99% of the white guys at that school had their heads stuck all the way up their asses (GW Bush graduated from there, so you can imagine it wasn't a stretch).

As for racial minorities seeing things differently, you don't need to explain that to me. My two roomies in college were black. We were friends in high school, and when we found we were going to the same college, we asked to room together. We were in West Philadelphia, so I was already a minority there. One night, they invited me along to a party at "The House Of The Family," which was a kind of community clubhouse they sometimes hung out at. The only white guy there (stupid me, I didn't realize it mattered), I was told to leave or get the crap beaten out of me, and my roomies were told in no uncertain terms not to bring anyone who looked like me again, or be threatened with the same fate.

The internet is a seductive source of information. Nowhere near all of it is reliable, and the radical right does not have a monopoly on getting sucked in.

That's why we have the word "Fremdschämen" - to feel embarrassed for the actions of other people...

Grappling with a flood of immigrants for at least 40 years and it seems to be getting worse. I remember when it was mostly Turks working in the U.S. Army mess halls back in the 70s; it was probably difficult for them to find jobs in the German economy. Ugh.

Now, 40 years later, many of the children and grandchildren of those mess hall workers were born in Germany, went to German schools, and speak German fluently, some better than they speak Turkish. Today, while some still work in mess halls, Turks also teach in school (in German), run businesses, work in all social strata, and, in one case anyway, a Turk is chairman of one of the Germany's major political parties.