By Monika Schaefer. In the early 1950s, Otto Schaefer and Editha Schmilinsky emigrated from Germany to Canada. They met, fell in love, married and soon had children. I am one of those children.

My mother and father were proud of their heritage, though they were told again and again they should not be. Germans were brutes, warmongers and responsible for “the Holocaust.” We children were also taught this in school.

It was reiterated in every movie or TV program we saw. I wholeheartedly believed that our people were responsible for the greatest crimes in history.