I remember my mother once saying when I was young, perhaps only a teenager, that she had heard on the radio someone saying that 'maturity is when you can forgive your parents'. I have never forgotten it, especially since she then added that she thought if that were true she would never be mature. I was too young and scared to ask her what she needed to forgive my grandparents for, which is a pity because I am now left to guess and will never know whether my guesses are accurate. I do know that she was very angry with her parents, probably until the end of her life. I suspect the same is true of my father although that is more difficult to judge.
I also thought to myself at the time that maybe I would never be mature either. and by that criterion I am still on the journey to maturity. It seems to me that often forgiveness is a slow process and comes from gradually gaining insight into why people behaved the way they did, recognising that, in the case of parents, almost all of them do the best they can with what they've got (which of course includes their own early experiences).
I am grateful that my own children seem to have made much faster progress in that journey than I have. I'm painfully conscious of many mistakes which I made with them but in the end they seem mostly to have left behind any anger and resentment they may have felt as a result. And that's the most important experience I have of being forgiven.

Interesting post Patricia - I am sure it mirrors the feelings of many.

This really resonates with me. My mother lost three brothers, two in the first war and one in the second and her aunt, uncle and three cousins were shot dead by Nazi soldiers in France when cousin Emil was discovered to be running a radio transmitter for the Maquis. My two elder sisters were killed in a bombing raid.

After the war in 1948 we had German POWs stationed in our town. Our Parish Priest, who was Dutch, had fled from his seminary in 1938 and had been appointed chaplain to the POWs as the only German speaking priest in the diocese. He asked parishioners to host a POW for Christmas and my mother, understandably, found the idea very difficult. However, she and my father were persuaded to accept a POW and did so. I remember the lad, I was only three and he must have been about 20. He was a lovely gentle person and so grateful and happy to spend Christmas with us.

I still have a carbon copy of a letter my father wrote for him to take through the border when he eventually returned home to Hamburg asking the officials to allow him to keep a number of items which various parishioners had given him. Nothing grand, some textiles, knits and a few edible treats. He was the son of a butcher and was hoping to find his shop and family members still there on his return.

I often wonder what happened.

My dad was at Dunkirk, and later in Burma. He rarely talked about the war.
In the 50s we had a German family living with us, and from the 70s onwards he communicated with a Japanese family whom he got to know having taken them on a tour round Scotland. They exchanged Christmas cards and family photos. Yet even yesterday I told my mother-in-law that my son had gone to Berlin, and she immediately said she still hadn't forgiven them for what they did in the war. Strange, isn't it?

My grandfathers were in WW1, parents/parents in law/aunts and uncles in the 2nd War. Without exception, they talked of forgiveness, learning from the horrors and living lives that recognised difference.

My father was in Libya during the war, he never talked about his experiences other than to say being in North Africa had given him an enduring hatred of sand, this manifested itself when we were sitting on a Sussex beach which we did annually when visiting my grandparents who lived by the sea. He didn't seem to harbour any grievances against the German people, my mother spoke a fair bit of German and my parents went on holiday to Germany on several occasions. On the contrary I remember my father moaning about Remembrance Day saying something along the lines of "we should all move on". On the other hand his sister, my aunt who had travelled the world, refused to go to Germany because she said they had started two world wars.

After my mother died I found a photograph album my father had compiled during the '40s, some showing action during the war years when he was in Libya. I'm glad I have it and hope one of my children will pass it on.

I also have photographs of maternal grandfather when he was in the navy at the time of the 1914-18 war and although my paternal grandfather wasn't English he also fought in the British Army in World War I, sadly no photographs.

I have just finished reading "Aftermath" the book which he wrote based on this experience in Germany it is a great read .I could not put it down and it took me to a time in history I know nothing about.