Later in the war, when he became one of the most decorated and famous fliers in the Eighth, word spread around Thorpe Abbotts that his family was in a German concentration camp. But when someone asked him directly, he said “that was a lot of hooey.” His family—mother, sister, brother-in-law, and niece (his father had recently died)—were all back in Brooklyn. “I have no personal reasons. Everything I’ve done or hope to do is strictly because I hate persecution. . . . A human being has to look out for other human beings or else there’s no civilization.” At the briefing for Münster, Rosie
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