Rich Mazur
17 Oct 2018
News / "It's too late for Germany" (but not for Poland) [1798]
I never thought the day would come when I would be a better German than you are. Just kidding...
Yes, it does mean that Germans are better. By a mile. And, no, it was not luck (other than the timing) that Germany is great today. It takes a collective determination, intelligence, and a devotion to the rules of law and decency to create a society like yours.
Let me give one example how I personally benefited from this. After the Warsaw Uprising was over, my "nana" and I ended up in a camp in Hamburg. When my mother got the news, she asked a German officer who was staying with her mother in Radom to get her the necessary travel documents . He did and with it and cigarettes as a bribe, she went to Hamburg and got me out. On her way back to Warsaw, she had to seek shelter along with other German women and their kids during a raid by the Allies. Once inside, she was treated as one of them to food and diapers, with her obviously lame command of German as a clear proof that she was a foreigner and "hostile" one on top of that.
My point is that you can give Germany a lot more credit and still be factually correct.
....we just lucked out with our blessed birth in this country in these times, that doesn't mean we are in any way better!
I never thought the day would come when I would be a better German than you are. Just kidding...
Yes, it does mean that Germans are better. By a mile. And, no, it was not luck (other than the timing) that Germany is great today. It takes a collective determination, intelligence, and a devotion to the rules of law and decency to create a society like yours.
Let me give one example how I personally benefited from this. After the Warsaw Uprising was over, my "nana" and I ended up in a camp in Hamburg. When my mother got the news, she asked a German officer who was staying with her mother in Radom to get her the necessary travel documents . He did and with it and cigarettes as a bribe, she went to Hamburg and got me out. On her way back to Warsaw, she had to seek shelter along with other German women and their kids during a raid by the Allies. Once inside, she was treated as one of them to food and diapers, with her obviously lame command of German as a clear proof that she was a foreigner and "hostile" one on top of that.
My point is that you can give Germany a lot more credit and still be factually correct.