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My friend’s grandad liberated the death camps but hated Jews.

My friend’s grandad passed a few years ago and Holocaust Memorial Day got me thinking as he was a war hero and veteran but also anti-Semitic.

He fought very bravely for the United Kingdom but regarded WW2 as only a war of aggression between the UK and Germany. He viewed himself as fighting for his country but nothing more. He had no problem with the Nazis policy towards the Jews and yet helped liberate the camps.

There can be no question about his bravery but it is a shame that he never thought about how his actions were part of a wider struggle against tyranny and hate.

Anyone know (or rather knew other) World War Two veterans who were like this?

I could understand a World War Two veteran disliking Germans (AJP Taylor comes to mind) from that period (given Germans were part of the Holocaust System to a significant degree as pretty much all of the historiography will state) but surely at the least enemies enemy as your friend would apply here?

Britain was anti-Semitic in this era but it was not the same sort of anti-Semitism in Germany not genocidal more petty.

Edit: They were concentration camps, although he did later guard some of the people who had been at the “Death Camps”.

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