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Mar. 9th, 2025 11:59 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
conuly‘You are free again’: farewell letters of executed Belgian resistance fighters found, 80 years on
So, Belgium has a small German-speaking population. My grandmother had a story about a neighbor who was from that population, and part of the resistance, and one day the soldiers came to search his house. Not his house specifically, I don't think, they were conducting a set of spot checks. So he went out to chat with the first arrivals at his gate, in German, and when the main group arrived the first few said "Oh, we don't need to check him, he's good" and they walked on!
The moral of this story, as always, is that humans are the weak point in any operation. The human instinct for sympathy and/or laziness can not be overestimated.
(Of course, she had another story about when the Germans left, and somebody put out a flag as they were leaving, so a squad circled back around and murdered him and his family. I guess they weren't feeling particularly sympathetic or lazy that day.)
So, Belgium has a small German-speaking population. My grandmother had a story about a neighbor who was from that population, and part of the resistance, and one day the soldiers came to search his house. Not his house specifically, I don't think, they were conducting a set of spot checks. So he went out to chat with the first arrivals at his gate, in German, and when the main group arrived the first few said "Oh, we don't need to check him, he's good" and they walked on!
The moral of this story, as always, is that humans are the weak point in any operation. The human instinct for sympathy and/or laziness can not be overestimated.
(Of course, she had another story about when the Germans left, and somebody put out a flag as they were leaving, so a squad circled back around and murdered him and his family. I guess they weren't feeling particularly sympathetic or lazy that day.)
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Date: 2025-03-11 07:34 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2025-03-12 09:39 am (UTC)Everybody has ancestors who executed innocents. I'm a Brit, we've hardly been exemplary. This is not to make light of war crimes, just to say that wherever evil resides in humanity, it's not a taint in the blood.
no subject
Date: 2025-03-12 09:48 am (UTC)