On my first visit to France (in 1996), I’m in a bank waiting for my wife to do some currency exchange when an older French gentleman walks up to me and asks (in fairly decent, but heavily French-accented English) if I’m an American.

I tell him yes I am, and he shakes my hand vigorously and proceeds to thank me and all Americans for saving him and his family on D day in WW2. He showed me a very worn rubber-band-bound pocket English/French dictionary that he says he carries so that he can practice his English – so that he can be prepared for an encounter such as this.

He went on to describe how his family was rounded up into a concentration camp and as a small boy, how his father tried to calm the family, knowing they were soon likely to be gassed.

He said that the Americans…