Friday, February 23, 2018
The Byunskis
Peter Gay (1923-2015), My German Question: Growing Up in Nazi Berlin (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1998), pp. 179-180:
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My father did his best, in fact, to be a good citizen-to-be. When he encountered complaining refugees, whom he disdainfully called "the Byunskis," he was pitiless with them. This unlovely epithet was loosely based on an invidious comparison popular with a number of German Jews who had not adjusted to the United States: Bei uns in Deutschland war alles besser, they would say, "At home in Germany everything was better." Though not normally a preacher, my father would give little sermons on the text of gratitude. Emigrés ought to be glad to be alive and to have landed in the hospitable, democratic United States.
