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cali

(114,904 posts)
Sun Aug 7, 2016, 09:41 PM Aug 2016

My mother was responsible for the declassification of Nazi Propaganda at the OWI

She never talked about it- at least not to me. She was a distant kind of mother, but she was quite accomplished. She was born in 1919 and married at the age of 29. From her obit:

At the age of 6, she moved with her family to Europe, living in France and Italy, learning several languages, and acquiring a lifelong love and mastery of French cooking. At 16, she returned to the states to attend college.

As an avid reader with an uncommonly keen memory, she cultivated her strong interest in history, literature and politics her entire life. With the onset of World War II, her language skills led to a job at the French desk of the United States Office of War Information (OWI) in New York City, where she carried out simultaneous translation of radio programming for broadcast into France and worked closely with French expatriate writers on information and propaganda campaigns, also holding responsibility for the declassification of Nazi propaganda. After the war, she continued on at Voice of America, which had been established by OWI in 1942.


She became active in the League of Women Voters and the local and state organizations of the Democratic Party, serving as a delegate to the Democratic National Convention in 1976. Subsequently, she became involved with the New York (blanked that out)serving on the board of directors for many years. She traveled extensively, with particular fondness for London and Paris, where she was a member of the Société Saint-Simon.


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