In my day, your ethnic culture was always used in the first sentence, like what are you, german, or english, and I said both. My father was English, and my mother German, but her family arrived in 1881, if you came in 1950, like my next door neighbors did, then it was a brand new issue.
My mother disliked almost everyone, while my father enjoyed everyone, even our neighbors who were Hitler youth children, and fought in World War II, my father couldn't care less. I think that was because after being in Normandy and going to Berlin he saw too much devastation.
Took me a lifetime to get him to open up about the war, and even when he did, he tried his very best to remember the nicer things, like liberties in Paris, a few extra days in Switzerland, and his days in England having tea and dancing at the USO. He did manage to tell me many stories before he died, drinking wine in the cellar during a bombing, and an archway at a blown up Hotel when a sniper had him in his sight.
Anyone' life is always there own, you can either make good, or bad out of almost any situation, the day they removed my lung was one of my best days, I learned how to breath again, still brings a smile to my face.
