What Did You Do In The War?

Nora Ephron, huffingtonpost.com

One of the things I’ve always wondered about was what it was like to live in the United States during World War II. It was one of the things I’d have most wanted to ask my parents about if they were still alive — my own particular “What did you do in the war, Daddy?” question.

I don’t literally want to know what my parents did during the war. I know. My father had flat feet, so he was 4F. But what I truly wondered was what they knew and when they knew it — about the Holocaust, for example, and the Japanese internment camps. It was a complete mystery to me. I read a half-dozen books on the subject of the United States and the Holocaust and I could never imagine how so many people could have known what they knew and done nothing. Did my parents know? Probably they did. Did they do anything? Probably they didn’t. And why not?

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