I promised this for yesterday, but here it is today and I’m just barely making it. Where does the time go? Anyway, here’s the story. Remember, I’m in Europe in 1951 while the effects of WWII are still obvious. And it’s about the letter I received from my brother who was back in the states, a civilian after his wartime service, especially useful because of his excellent ability to speak and write German.
I received a letter from him while I was in Germany. When I opened it there was a photo of his daughter, my little niece Nancy, framed by a cut out section of paper, At first I thought it was a creation of my clever, creative, and funny big brother, but then I realized a whole segment of his letter had been removed, a victim of the Russian censors in Linz, Austria where, by the way, my brother had served his last years in the service. What a feeling! And to think this censorship happened all the time to the people around me. What a terrible experience, never to know what he said to me.
Of course, I was fortunate to be returning eventually to the United States, the land of the free, where we would never experience censorship. I would find out what he had said. But what a feeling, a whole piece of what I should know had been taken away from me.
In spite of our German guide who had warned, “This will come to your country someday,” I had never imagined censorship would come to us, banned books and all, including historical topics to be excluded from our public schools.
monagustafsonaffinito 