Ashamed of being German

[Moonbeam]

I posted about my family’s experiences before. See below…

@Moonbeam

This brought back memories of my childhood in a small Midwest town. My parents immigrated from Germany to the U.S. a few years before I was born. We were treated very poorly by some of the neighborhood kids. We were called “krauts” and other slurs.

Once a group of boys threw rocks at my older sister and chased her home. Fortunately, she was able to run faster than them. If they had caught her, I’m not sure what would have happened.

Early one morning, a group of boys shot a barrage of marbles at our house using slingshots until my parents chased them away. I was pretty happy when I was able to collect hundreds of marbles from the front lawn that had bounced off the roof and house. Marbles were pretty popular back then.

One time, my little brother (he was only 3 or 4 at the time) was riding his tricycle on the sidewalk in front of the house and some much older neighborhood boys tried to steal his tricycle from him. He started crying and my mom could only get the boys to stop by grabbing a broom and chasing them away with it.

The neighborhood kids told us often that we were going to hell because we weren’t Catholic like they were. We were Buddhist which was unusual for German immigrants and especially for a small Midwest town.

Ultimately, my parent’s solution was to move the family to California when I was ten years old. Even back then, California was known for diversity and being more open-minded about things like religion and birth country and so forth. I have lived in California ever since.