Touchy subject

Yesterday a friend had a birthday party/housewarming at her and her boyfriend's house. As most of us sat in the living room enjoying cake and other good food, the husband of another friend happened to make note of something on the fork he was using. He pointedly asked my friend where the fork came from, but didn't say what was on it. The fork got passed around to each of us and as each person looked at it, they all took on the same shocked expression of raised eyebrows. It was a Nazi fork. It was embossed with Nazi symbols, and my friend had no idea how it ended up in her house. To top it all off, the guy who had noticed it and who was eating from it was German. He wasn't offended though and jokes were made about how the host must have planned for him to end up using it. Once the host also learned about this fork that had somehow made its way into his kitchen drawer, he joked back that the German guy must take the fork along when going to other people's houses to pin this on the hosts (plus, since the host is Dutch, he had to throw in a "you've probably stolen my bike while you're at it!") It was just some good, ol' World War II humor. I don't think anyone was truly offended, though the German guy said that when he was a student (I think somewhere outside of Germany) and he first saw the Fawlty Towers Germans episode, he was so hurt that he left the room. But he had grown up in an atmosphere where the war was a horribly shameful thing that no one talked about, and here were these English people making all sorts of offensive jokes. He said he's moved on since then, especially after living for so long in Holland.