Well, this is my theory on why my mother-in-law's family is so fricked up.

My mother-in-law's grandfather was half-Jewish. Enough to piss off the Nazis and throw them all into the camps. Out of a family of nine (parents, seven children) only two survived- my wife's grandmother and great-aunt. I'm not going into details but as you can imagine they were subjected to some horrible shite. My wife's grandfather was from Yugoslavia. After the Germans invaded in 1941, he was put into a work camp and nearly worked to death before liberation. He met my wife's grandmother in Austria in early 1946 at a Red Cross camp. They were married more as a convience than love, as it was a way to help them get out of Europe and to Australia. They got there in 1947. They had kids. They described both parents as no-nonsense, virtually emotionless people who showed little outward affection towards their children. Taught their children not to trust anyone or anything; that everything has an ulterior motive. They basically had PTSD. Children grow up. Both aunts and uncles of my wife carry on the example of their parents with their children. It is to a lesser degree but you can tell it is there. My mother-in-law, who is divorced from my father-in-law, is one needy emotional psycho who would throw you under a bus in a heartbeat. She blames it on a shitty childhood, which I tend to believe that it was. She has aliened two of her children; my wife is the only one who will talk to her. She has grandkids that barely knows she is alive. So it all affects them. Sure, it may not have anything to do with the Holocaust but as a third party observer, that is what the dots connect to indirectly at least. Just a theory anyway.

This post was edited on 3/21/17 at 2:24 pm