Targeted for extinction

Cnaan Liphshiz’s article (“Request to wear kippa rattles the Anne Frank House,” April 23) reminded me of my recent visit to that historical site, which had an almost completely Dutch nationalistic character.

Although it documented the persecution of the Jews, it nonetheless created a universal picture of “man’s inhumanity to man,” which could be a good thing and a lesson apparently well learned, judging by the unending lines waiting for entrance to the museum.

The Dutch had an impressive history of networking to hide Jews and even held a brief though disastrous demonstration against persecution of the Jews. It is a historical anomaly that despite this, Holland had one of the highest percentages (77%) of Jews murdered during the Holocaust.

The question of permission for a Jew to wear a kippa while working in the museum brings to mind Anne Frank’s own words: “Who has made us Jews to be different from all other people?... We can never become just Netherlanders or representatives of any other country for that matter. We will always remain Jews.”

No matter how valuable the universal lessons, the fact that all Jews in Europe were targeted for extinction should never be forgotten. MARION REISS Beit Shemesh

Regarding the letter from Stuart Erdheim (“Bomb the bridges,” May 7) we all know that few countries did anything to stop the genocide of the Jews. But all comments complaining about the failure to bomb the extermination sites and the rails leading to them forget one very important thing.

Before the creation of the extermination camps already about two million of the six million Jewish victims had already been killed by Einsatz groups and military personnel in Belarus, the Baltics and Ukraine, as well as in Rumania.

Auschwitz and the other camps have gotten a lot of attention because of the spectacle of industrial murder they represent, but the old-fashioned way of murder with guns and other weapons also killed many. NORMAN RAVITCH

Savannah, GA