The Slippery Terrain of Truth: HITLER AND MY MOTHER-IN-LAW

"The first time I met my mother-in-law, Patricia Hartwell, she displayed her World War II trophies, the highlights being Hermann Goering’s medals and his tiny Minox camera, Goebbel’s silverware, a couple of scary-looking Lugers, Hitler’s napkins, and blank orders he’d signed in case anybody was around after his suicide. I was thirty, I had my own war, Vietnam, and this detritus was from a conflict thirty years old that my generation associated with fuddy-duddies. So what if she was the only woman reporter to cover both the Pacific and European fronts? That war was covered."

Terese Svoboda on what happens when we mix personal memories with public histories - read here.