Celebrating Veterans Day and Healing Old Wounds in Animation

Some things are tougher to celebrate than others on a site like this that normally tries to stay out of real-world issues as much as possible. But we all like cartoons, right?

25 years ago, the Berlin wall came down, and today we honor Veteran’s Day. In a cartoon that’s ironically also a commercial (hey, capitalism did win, after all) for room-rental service Airbnb, the daughter of a former guard on the wall talks about her father’s healing process. It hit a chord with me, since my late grandfather actually made sure to track down and forgive the German prison guard who held him captive in World War II, and they became friends.

I know today is a day for the living rather than the dead, but it’s been less than a year since the veteran closest to us suddenly left this world, and we’re still reeling. Treasure them while they still stand.

And to all the readers who have served, in whatever capacity – I know my timing is off, but I’ll say it anyway: welcome home.

Now here’s a cartoon.

Wall and Chain: a story of breaking down walls from Airbnb on Vimeo.

via It’s Art Magazine