I can still remember the time I called my Mother a Nazi. The frustration and hate in my voice at being different, half German, in a small town with small minded “friends” who taught me a word and passed on the hate.

I got more of an understanding of the war in the moments she took to sit me on the edge of her bed, opposite the ash veneered dressing table, and explain than I was to get later in history lessons. How the faces of the Russians, cold and desolate, trooping past her house from the front line still haunted her even then. How she had lost her friends, the Jewish children from the village and how she had to listen from afar to the Cantor singing. The horror of Kristallnacht, which we remembered every year with a candle burning all night in the window (many years later, when she died, I found she still had the date in her diary with birthdays and more happy anniversarys) and of course the personal pain of the loss of her brother, conscripted to be a Nazi, taken by force and lost forever somewhere in Europe.

I sat there, mouth open, listening to the stories. It all fell into place. Why we used to go to Petticoat Lane to eat Latkes at the Jewish deli, why we were so tolerant of Poles, Indians, even gypsies that turned up at the door. Why we shared.

We all make mistakes when we are young. I’m sure Harry didn’t mean anything by it. But, in a media savvy culture, where images rule and remain it’s amazing to think that this has happened. Someone must have advised him. Warned him.

What I’m sure he under-estimated, as I did, is the impact the war made on people, the memories they carry even to today and how words and images can upset people.

I’m sure if my Mum was here now she’d sit down, take out the old photographs that I now have and explain.