Heidi Hofmann White, a reader of this column who lives in Belmont, Massachusetts has sent me a copy of her memoir.  Entitled “At the Edge of the Storm,” it focuses mainly on her growing-up years in Germany during the Second World War. I found it fascinating to read.

Though Mrs. White modestly downplays her privately printed book as “flawed and imperfect,” it gives a vivid picture of what it was like to live in Cologne and elsewhere in Germany under wartime conditions. Her home city Cologne was often bombed by huge fleets of British and American planes that started fires and leveled city blocks.

Now 73, Heidi was a child during this agonizing time when her survival and that of her family was often at risk. An ironic twist on her situation came from her father being strongly anti-Nazi, so that he and his wife and children wanted Germany to lose the war. So, though they could have been killed by allied bombs, they remained sympathetic to the cause of defeating Hitler.

Her father, Josef Hofmann, had been a leader in the Center Party and belonged to the inner circle of Heinrich Brüning, who served as German chancellor in 1930-32. A distinguished journalist, Hofmann was chosen after the war by the American occupying forces to be founding editor of the Aachen newspaper. In this same period he also served in his state’s parliament.

Josef Hofmann himself left behind an unfinished memoir that recounts much of his experience during the war. His daughter asks, however, why he neglected to say much of anything about the fate of the Jews under the Nazis. Since he remained a staunch Catholic, I, for my part, would have wondered about his feelings when Eugenio Pacelli, later Pope Pius XII, pulled the Vatican’s support out from under the Center Party, opening the way for Hitler to assume total control.

In 1954, Heidi was to marry an American, Donald White, whom she had met when he was living in Germany as a Fulbright student preparing for an academic career. After a year’s delay because of immigration problems, she moved to this country to join him. She herself had done advanced linguistic studies in her native land and in France and England. One of her abiding regrets is not having finished her degree at the University of Heidelberg.

Cosmopolitan in spirit, Heidi White dedicates her book to her ten grandchildren, born in five different countries. She loves being American but maintains close contact with family and friends in her native land.

I believe that Heidi White can take justifiable pride in what she has written. She has skillfully shared her life and experience with readers, a life that takes on special meaning against the backdrop of a tumultuous history. Reading it, I felt caught up once more in events that have never lost their fascination for me. That a nation of people with such an advanced culture should have fallen prey to unspeakably evil internal enemies continues to provoke astonishment in me.

Heidi White’s memoir arrived in the same mail with “Generations,” the periodical published by the American Society on Aging. The latest issue is entitled “Listening to Older People’s Stories” and brings out the value of those stories for both those who tell them and those who listen to them.

Of course, I did not need evidence for this value, since many years ago I drafted a memoir of my own. At this time, its fate remains unclear but I have continued to work on my story through the years. To me, this kind of writing is not only therapeutic but also productive of invaluable insights into the meaning of one’s life.

A few weeks ago, a friend who is approaching 90 came for dinner, giving my wife and me an opportunity to hear some of her life story. She held us fascinated, regaling us with what it was like to grow up in Manhattan back in the days of Prohibition and the Depression. At one point I asked my friend if she remembered the Empire State Building being built. She did not remember it under construction but, of course, took due note of the tallest building in the world after its completion.

One of the authors in “Generations” lists several qualities one expects to find in a good autobiography. One is the way it embodies “the truth of the life of the writer.” Another is how it serves as a “second reading of lived experience.” The writer does not simply recount memories, however valued, but puts those memories into a framework that enables us to understand their role in a person’s life.

Heidi White’s memoir succeeds on both these counts plus others. If you yourself have not in some form recounted the story of your own life and times, let me recommend doing so. Unless I am mistaken, you will discover a new way of appreciating yourself and your experience.

Richard Griffin