Commentary
A friend of mine is German Canadian. He was born in Germany, came to Canada at the age of 5, and speaks German fluently today. My own story is similar: I was born in the Netherlands, came to Canada at the age of 7, and speak Dutch fluently.
He and I are friends, but our grandparents were not.
My own grandfather fought against the Nazi invasion of the Netherlands in May 1940, and spent years in a prisoner-of-war camp in Germany. He returned home in 1945 with severe and permanent psychological damage. My grandmother, along with the entire Dutch population, suffered through five years of brutal German occupation. This included the Hunger Winter of 1944-45, when tens of thousands of people in the Netherlands starved to death….