John- isn't it interesting how personal a subject like history can be? My mother was born in 1939 in Germany. She has shared some of her memories with me, but does not want to speak or read about the Holocaust. I don't fully understand it, but I think that she feels that the suffering of Germans during and after the war does not get acknowledged or the same publicity as the suffering of Jewish people. She's a rational woman, not racist or hateful by any means, yet when this subject is mentioned, her emotions, based on her own loss and suffering, kick in.
I wonder if this also happened with the relatives you mentioned in your response?
I have not travelled much in the South, yet I know that names such as Robert E. Lee, Nathan Bedford Forrest and Stonewall Jackson still carry much weight there. What I have not explored much, (and am unsure even how I'd begin), is why an event that happened so long ago, in this case with no living survivors of the event around to fuel the flames, can still affect a region and its people to the degree it appears to in the South. I think there must be a psychology angle here, don't you?
Thanks for the websites. I will explore them today. Ingrid