More than Gratitude: A Generational Legacy from War-Era to Modern Family
When my kids were young, I often reminded them that they needed to put their “problems” in the proper perspective. What I meant was that they needed to be more appreciative of their lives — and what they had — spiritually and materialistically. I most often made the comment when they were acting like spoiled children — for example, when my fourteen-year-old said that she needed new clothes after we’d just gone clothes shopping for her a month earlier.
When I was young, my dad was an expert at putting my life in the proper perspective for me. He shared stories of growing up during World War II in Germany and surviving the Holocaust. He spoke about how in his early teens he was sent to a concentration camp. He ate only food scraps and at nightfall collapsed on the only things there were to sleep on — wooden barracks with hundreds of other prisoners. He was grateful for his job in the kitchen peeling potatoes, because he always had food.
