RAF welcomed

In case any readers think that Astrid Essed (“War crimes”, Letters, 12 august) is typical of Dutch opinion, may I add a Dutch voice to recent condemnations (and I do wonder how old she is)?

Around 18,000 Dutch, with 30,000 British like my husband’s uncle, spent over three years as slaves on the Burma railway and/or in Changi jail.

My grandfather was chief inspector of police in Amsterdam and helped Jews to escape until his betrayal by colleagues. As he also knew too much about the Germans’ crimes, he was shot in September 1944 with other political prisoners after D-day success changed the course of the war.

My father was taken as forced labour to Germany from 194345. His sister and my mother (while feeding her first baby!) were involved in the Dutch resistance, and, like thousands of others, were reduced to eating tulip bulbs in the Hunger Winter of 1944/45. When they heard RAF planes flying over to bomb Germany or heard about them on their hidden illegal radio, they rejoiced – even though Rotterdam was also a target.

Another aunt and uncle worked in what is now Indonesia in the 1930s, so were incarcerated from 1942-45 in a Japanese POW camp with their four children; their youngest daughter was born there.

Whatever the exact legal definition of “war crime” is, it is nonsense to use that term which puts Allied actions to rid the world of these tyrannies

on the same level as Germany’s aggressions, occupations and Holocaust (which would have been far worse if Germany had not been beaten by early May 1945); or as the Japanese equivalents, their treatment of POWS and plans to murder them if Japan was invaded (which would have caused far more deaths on both sides than the A-bomb). ANNETTE BIRKETTUPPENKAMP Horseleys Park, St Andrews