“I share it not for myself, but to tell you what we all went through - and to show that whatever difficulties you, too, encounter, they can be overcome.
While we were working on this book, I found an old newspaper with a story about my medic unit from before the war. The page was brittle, the ink faded, but if you were patient and careful, the words came clear enough. It seems to me that is a metaphor not only for memory, but my aim: to pass down what I remember before it fades, so you, too, can know and remember.
Age tugs at me, dimming what I can see when I look back. but I found that working on this book sharpened what I knew, making my memory clearer. That, too, is a metaphor. The harder we work to remember, the better we get at it. The more we remember, the better we become at mastering the present.”