General Chat

Then you don't know what they're up to......

Yep, that is the saying, personally I prefer to keep my enemies as far away as possible.

Agreed there were Polish freedom fighters and French fighters no one disputes that, but all over Europe locals in many cases helped round up the Jewish people.

I believe the saying is keep your friends close and your enemies closer still...

How about keeping your friends closer?

The EU constitutes the anschluss surely, and was that not deamed to be such a threat to the stability of Europe that it was expressly forbidden by the Treaty of Versailles?

This was watched and encouraged by the Poles and the French amongst others"

Not by the Poles who were slaughtered by the Einsatzgruppen nor by the the many Poles who joined 'our' RAF, nor by the French resistance.

With respect Rollo I truely feel for your OH family and the awful struggle they had, but quite how that makes you want to remain in Europe is beyond me. They suffered at the hands of the Germans. This was watched and encouraged by the Poles and the French amongst others. No person was sent to a concentration camp from the UK except for the Channel islands.
I'm not saying the current Government of any of those countries would do any of these things today, but quite how this will make you want to remain....other than keep your "enemy" closer lines....

Sometimes the subtlety of a sledge hammer works best ;-)

I recall when on my history course, one young man who had, along with the group who were all mixed ages, just watched footage of German Jews being deported to a concentration camp ( the film which I had not seen before had been recently released in the west after the fall of the Berlin wall) and this tough young rugby player was in tears. He was way too young to have seen most of the programmes I did or to have heard from parents 'about the war'. It was the first time he had realised that the people about to be murdered were not 'different' . he had always had a mental image of Hassidic Jews, 'different' looking, very obviously Jewish Jews....not this mix of rich and poor, not the "assimilated" people who looked like all the other people of that period.... the little blond child holding her mothers hand in fear looked,surprise surprise far more aryan those who saw her as sub-human.

I think it is important to remember that it was small steps, and only a very short time from this comment by AH in 1919, to the Holocaust.

"rational anti semitism must lead to systematic legal opposition and elimination of the special privileges which jews hold. its final objective must unswervingly be the removal of the jews altogether" Hitler 1919

I fear isolationism and the politics of division could lead that way again. I believe we need to remain, to retain our influence in Europe and be part of it so we have a voice, to change what needs to be changed. IMO the good that being in the EU does 'us' overall outweighs what might be seen as the drawbacks ( some of which are NOT drawbacks, imo also) .

One superb reason for doing so, Rollo.

My OH has no living relatives on her mother's side.Indeed her mother died when my OH was a teenager on account of her experiences in Paris 1942-45.

Here is where most of my OH's mother's family spent Christmas 1939:

https://goo.gl/YZtA5d


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