I met a delightful elderly woman at the last meeting of our local Publisher’s Association. She came to the meeting with a spiral-bound (comb-bound) manuscript of her memories as a young girl in Poland who was forced to move to Germany with her family during WWII and finally emigrated to the U.S. right after the war. It was so interesting to skim through her writings, see the many beautiful old photos of her family and the places she lived. Her 8 ½ x 11 inch size booklet was done in the format of page-long stand-alone short stories about memories of her individual family members, places she lived, events in her life, experiences, etc. She and several others thought her manuscript would make for interesting reading in classrooms – that uniquely personal look at what real life was like for people caught in the war and what it was like to start life over again in a strange new country. I shared my Cherry Blossoms in Twilight book with her and we talked of how important it is to preserve these old memories so that people see how so many innocents suffer in wars and to see that underneath our differences, there is no “us” and “them”, there is only “we.”
Linda Austin
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