Ancestors - how do you relate to them?

[Toxikmynd]

Didn't Rommel want Hitler deposed and refused to kill Jews? He ended up killing himself rather than be captured and killed for his defiance. He strikes me as an honest guy who wanted to serve his country and became horrified when he found out what his government really wanted.

Yes actually you're correct.
He had to make a choice between his family or himself. He chose himself to die.
I'm actually good friends with his great niece.

He was still a Nazi though and is considered a terrible person to someone who doesn't dig deeper than what appears on the outside. I used him as reference for that reason.

 

[Toxikmynd]

I guess it's people's choice about paying respects to evil ancestors. If I'm to be thankful to such creatures for me being in this world today...well, let's supposing all my immediate predecessors came by also, but by way of...
-rape
-forced, unwanted, evil, or illegal marriages

You see people, evil...is evil, whichever way you put a twist on it. What crimes your ancestors had done...would you commit such crimes today and then turn around to your future seed and say,"Respect me"...would you do it? I wouldn't, because SHAME IS SHAME, just as evil is evil. I've known many of northern European blood of both Christian and Moslem backgrounds(Asian, Asatru years ago, but I've been a Moslem convert for over the last 2 years) who looked at me strangely as if I had lost my senses when I say.."Hey, about those rampaging warrior ancestors of long ago?!"...a sort of question not well received in some quarters..

Definitely isn't the place to get into this but saying evil is evil is very Abrahamic and I don't personally believe that evil is evil.
There's reasoning to everything.

 

[peanutbutter63]

And, my above reply being one of MANY and varied reasons why many solitary and independent-minded Asatru ended up going off on their own and carving up their very own, unique, and highly individual nonChristian Germanic paths. Some such in my case, have ended up disappearing from the scene altogether. I still love the...
-elder futhark runes
-havamal
-norse myths and sagas
...but my life is now different