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Letters They Wouldn't Publish
February 17, 2006
Letters to the Editor
New York Times
Dear Editor:
Stephen Holden's review of the new film Sophie Scholl: The Final Days, about German university students who were executed for criticizing Hitler, notes that the film appears at a time "of national debate in the United States about the overriding of certain civil liberties to fight terrorism ... It raises an unspoken question: could it happen here?"
The national debate to which Holden refers focuses on issues of legitimate concern. But there is no reasonable basis for implying that the state of civil liberties in the United States today is comparable, or may soon be comparable, to that which prevailed under the Nazis. Nor is there a basis for suggesting that a film about anti-Nazi activists should stimulate such comparisons.
Sophie Scholl and her friends were arrested, tortured, and executed for the "crime" of non-violent dissent from government policy. They were victims of a brutal fascist dictatorship that had eradicated all civil liberties, and was engaged in aggressive war against its neighbors and the mass murder of millions of European Jews. It should be obvious that U.S. government policies do not even remotely resemble those of the Nazis. Indeed, the national debate that Mr. Holden cites itself is a reminder that America is a free and democratic society, not a society on the verge of eliminating civil liberties.
Cordially,
Rafael Medoff
Director
The David S. Wyman Institute for Holocaust Studies
Melrose Park, PA
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