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Other personal autobiography
Summer in Germany
age 16
I will record more about events surrounding this trip. (A few years back, I looked at Bernal Diaz's account of Hernando de Cortez's assault on the Aztecs. Diaz was writing 50 years after the events, and I thought, "This must be full of inaccuracies caused by faded memories." I will be writing about my German summer 54 years afterwards, and some of those memories seem so vivid...)
For now, I offer a link to the diary I kept that summer. 54 years later, I'm reluctant to read it lest I be embarrassed by my youth.
Note that I was in Bavaria 13 years after the end of WWII. This fact, as I recall, prompted a good deal of ciriticism of my parents for letting me go. I experienced no anti-semitism.
I wrote weekly articles published in the Atlantic City Press. I'll see if I can find them on-line.
I also wrote the following three letters to my parents. (When I glance at them, I'm struck with the upbeat intensity and mental searching of my 16-year-old self, and I'm struck with how cynical and pessimistic I became over the intervening years.) I don't know why I didn't date these letters, though the dates amd chronological sequence are probably possible to figure out, especially with reference to the diary. I have a vagure memory of having borrowed a small portable typewriter to bring on the trip..(I had recently taken typing, which continues to this day to seem like my most valuable high school course.)
When I get around to reading these materials, I'll be interested to see the state of my written English at age 16.
