<p>smile12157</p>
<p>There are very few Germans left who had any part in the Nazi era. My German friends, who are the same age I am, 62, were of course born after the war, but they are extremely remorseful about what happened during those years. </p>
<p>Years ago, in 1969, I spent a summer working in a restaurant on Helgoland, an island in the North Sea belonging to Germany. The Helgolanders are Frisian speakers and had some unhappy experiences during the war, like being conscripted into the German army and having to evacuate their islands so that a U-Boat base could be built. I never heard an offensive comment from any of them. However, a fellow student, who worked in a restaurant on the German mainland, did overhear some ‘unreconstructed’ veterans make comments he found disturbing but not specifically antisemitic. That generation has nearly all passed away.</p>
<p>Most Germans are well disposed towards Americans and Israel. However, throughout Europe there are some on the radical left whose pro-Palestinian bias is tinged with antisemitism. There are also some neo-Nazi gangs, especially in the former East Germany. Personally, I think the leftist prejudice is worse in France and Britain, where there is unfortunately also some endemic antisemitism among other groups who ought to know better better considering the many contributions Jewish people have made in those countries.</p>
<p>Germans appreciate it when a foreign visitor makes an effort to speak the language. It is a fun language to learn, and to an English speaker an unintentionally funny language.</p>
<p>I have often wished that I had learned French, but my brother and his wife, who were fluent French speakers after two years in the Peace Corps in Senegal, found that people in France would pretend to misunderstand whatever they said. A French Canadian friend vowed never to return to France after so many people told him he could not speak French, his native language. This only shows that there are rude people everywhere.</p>
<p>Not being Jewish myself, I can’t speak directly to your concerns, and to be perfectly honest, in spite of knowing the language and having close German friends, I haven’t been able to rid myself completely of anti-German prejudices common to my generation.</p>
And remember a decade or two back, when the Japanese car companies were meekly going along with the Arab economic boycott against Israel? If I’d have needed a new car at that point, I’d have bought a German vehicle instead of a Japanese one. Even US car companies have anti-semetic dirt in their histories–Henry Ford was a right b<em>st</em>rd of an anti-semite.</p>