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May 15, 2019DT_kcls rated this title 4 out of 5 stars
‘The Last Year of the War’ is an utterly compelling story that needed to be written and needs to be read. I learned so much from ‘The Last Year of the War’. It wasn't until the "acknowledgements" that I learned most Americans were unaware of the interment of German and Italian Americans, nor that while Japanese interned were granted reparations there was "no governmental review of acknowledgement of the same violation of civil liberties regarding German Americans." It makes me sad to think how scared my Italian and German grandparents, all of whom immigrated in the 1920's, must have been during that horrific time, to have celebrated & embraced their new country only to be held in contempt and blame. It’s sad that today's young people are not learning this in schools and have no real concept of this history. Between revisionist history, bias in textbooks and social justice tearing down reminders of the past, they have no opportunity to know this valuable history. Some profound quotes: ~*~ "Did you know"? I asked papa when we heard the first radio broadcasts about the camps after the surrender, after the airwaves were no longer controlled by Nazi officials. "Did you know the camps were like that?" … "It didn't matter what I knew or didn't know," he finally said, his voice weighted with sadness. …"How can it not have mattered?" I replied. "All those people, Papa! They did nothing wrong." I felt tears of anger and shame sliding down my face. "How can you say it doesn't matter what you knew or didn't know?" "Because I could not stop it, Elise!" Tears were trickling down my father's face now too. "I could not stop what was happening. No one could! I couldn't stop it when we were in the States and I couldn't stop it here!" … … I saw then, perhaps more clearly in that moment, how my father's hands were just stronger versions of my own hands. They were the same as any man his age. The same, the same, the same. The same as those of the innocent man in the death camp & the same as those of the Nazi soldier who'd raised his rifle and shot him dead. What made the three men different from one another was not their nationality or the shape of their hand or even the blood that flowed under the skin of their fingers. What made the 3 men different was how they chose to think. We decide who and what we will love and who and what we will hate. We decide what we will do with the love and hate. Every day we decide. It was this that revealed who we were, not the color of our flesh or the shape of our eyes or the language we spoke.” ~*~ What a profound lesson that so many in our government, our country & our world need to RE-LEARN. I am hopeless that they will. ~*~ “Rina brings us tea as we talk & fill the gap of sixty-plus years. Surprisingly enough, I find that being with Mariko at age eighty-one is like being with her at fourteen. The years have not changed us all that much. I had been so certain that the girl I knew as Mariko was gone, and that I was so very different from the Elise Sontag who survived the war, but sitting with Mariko now I see that girl is still with me. We do not become different people as we age; we just add layers of experience onto who we already are. All that I was at fourteen I had brought me into the years that followed”.~*~ 4 BIG stars