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[Thread] "We will have to rebuild everything and we, the young people, will have to try to do everything so that such atrocities never happen again." I'm honored to share with you excerpts from the memoirs of my dear, late grandmother, Jacqueline. (1/41)

As promised to some here, I'm reposting one of my Twitter threads I posted to celebrate Victory Day, to which I'm adding another thread I made for the 80th anniversary of D Day (Normandy landings). (2/41)

Thank you. On D-Day, my father was rescued and hidden by folks in a French village, but the Nazis found him and he spent the rest of his years in Stalag Luft III. He was in Paris, however, when the lights returned to the City of Lights that had been dark in all ways for so long.

Tough. 😓 I hope he didn't stay there long. It's funny, when I was young it seemed so far away, but now? It was after the release of some of my favorite films, it was yesterday.

About a year. He arrived 3 months after the Great Escape at the same camp and was one of the POWs who did the forced march of about 500 miles in the middle of the worst winter Germany had seen in 30 years. I got to see where his camp had been a few years ago.

It must have been extremely moving.

It was, but in an unexpected way. I visited where my dad's cabin had been. I stood on the "stage" area where the prisoners performed the Messiah, moving the guards to tears. And I was filled with joy because Dad survived this. He came home, and lived to be 91 years old. Very grateful.