German club meeting with a bit of history.

We met this month for our regularly scheduled German language Treff. It was our first since coming face-to-face with the young, confused right-extremist kid, M., back in November. 'Keyboard warrior' that he was, I didn't really think he'd come 'round to yell at us for not taking his praise of Putin, 'hero of the European and Christian people', seriously. Still, I wasn't feeling too sure of myself, so I asked the hubs to come along with me this meet-up for moral, and, perhaps, physical support. A couple of other group regulars told me today that they would have 'up and left' had M. shown his face. Who could blame them?

The group was fairly large this time around. We were again a mix of regulars and a few new-comers. One of them was W., an 85-year-old German man who'd emigrated from Nuremberg in 1953. He was a young teen when Allied forces nearly destroyed the city. W. spoke in a slightly hurried fashion, his fränkisch-inflected German sometimes hard to follow. During the raids, his family hid in the bomb shelter in the basement of their building. He also made clear that the bombs being dropped were 'fire bombs'. At one point during the onslaught, the building next to his was completely destroyed. W. told me his father died in '44, but he didn't say how. During the funeral, casualties from the bombings were being brought into the cemetery. He told me of seeing a dead boy about his own age. Face frozen in shock & arms raised, the teenager's body had already undergone rigor mortis. 'I'll never forget it'. He also said to me that he had no idea why he was spared. I ventured with 'reines Glück' and he nodded.

W. heard a bit of what had transpired at the last meet-up with respect to M., the right extremist in water wings. His response was, and I'm paraphrasing, 'I give everyone the benefit of the doubt, and only after they prove themselves to be unworthy do I tell them to get lost.'

-sounds good to me, W., sounds good to me.