Quote:
Originally Posted by russellw
People need to HTFU. A few months of lockdown is not even beginning to aproach the six years of spending half your nights in an air-raid shelter and living with severe shortages that the WW2 generation had to live through. Not to mention that nearly half the British population lost a family member to the fighting and 30% of the country was under constant bombardment.
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That's an interesting 'You kids have it easy! Back in my day' flex from someone who didn't live through those times
Here's a perspective from 89 year old Nonna, she lived through Italy during their rise of fascism, the heyday of Nazi Germany, German occupation of Italy and the resulting invasion and fighting from both the UK/Americans when they came through as a young girl to early teens by the end of hostilities, the oldest of all her siblings which she was responsible for feeding and keeping herself and her younger brothers alive.
While the British were hiding in their bomb shelter Nonna was scouring the battlefield for dead horses to cut up or killing and eating people's pets that escaped to feed her family, or stealing what she could from farms and begging for food from British and American soldiers while caught up between four countries fighting a war in her backyard.
Yet she's absolutely against all the lockdown restrictions and is concerned about it's effects on our youth from the perspective of employment and inability to go out and enjoy themselves - she accepts her own mortality, that she's at the end of her life and it's not fair that she's being used an as excuse by a government for draconian measures, no one asked her about her thoughts.
So yes while I'm sure the people who lived through WWII faced tougher challenges, I'm interested in their perspectives on having their freedoms curtailed by their own government and what they think having lived through a war fought against authoritarian governments that killed an estimated 50M-70M people.
Does anyone else here have relatives who lived through that WWII period and are still alive to tell their stories?