As Zeev Jabotinsky wrote, "Everyone writes memoirs; if someone doesn't ... it begins to raise doubts.... [But] real memoirs require one to tell 'the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth.' This I cannot promise. Memoirs are literary works ... and in them it's probably better to mix poetry and truth...." (1) Scholars must adhere to Jabotinsky's cautionary note. We assume that autobiographical writings are hardly accurate and reliable; most often they are a self-conscious effort to present a selective and distorted portrait of the author, often omitting significant and revealing truths. All serious historians, therefore, confront the problem of separating historical reality from autobiographical self-construction.
