Letters
Thanks for the continued provision of Smith’s Report and listings of available publications. This contact is especially welcome in that Internet access at my place of business is subject to censorship. Linkage to your Website (and that of IHR) is prevented by the ominous WEBTRAC CONTROL, which lists your site as one prohibited under the category of “Hate Speech.” I will soon have a robust home computer suite up and running and I will be able to access CODOHWeb whenever I choose.
C.H., DE
I didn’t know we had fallen victim to WEBTRAC. It would be interesting to know how many places of business use this censorship service.
Here is a list of translators in Vilnius. If ever you want to put information in Lithuanian, Russian, etc. on the Internet on CODOHWeb you can contact these services. Most of the universities here now have access to the Internet in their libraries for students. Many of our students speak English. I myself have seen to it that about 500 students at Lithuanian universities now have your Website location. I hope to add a few hundred more after the school break ends.
O.M, Vilnius
I read Confessions (the excerpt from the second “enlarged” edition) and I must say that it really is an interesting look at your life. The humor, the sadness, the ostracization. It really struck me how much your underlying logic strikes at the heart of the Holocaust taboo. The patriotism, the self-promoting, the fear that if the Germans weren’t the scourge of the earth, then we wouldn’t look quite as good at Dresden and Hiroshima. The chapter on “human” soap shows how ridiculous it is. I still hear that soap story repeated as fact. Thinking about what you said when you saw Ram Dass in the market strikes a chord with me. Ordinary people really are the ones worth spending time with. They are more inclined than intellectuals to think—why does it all have to be true? Why do the Nazis have to be the most insidious creatures in human history? You’re right about the danger inherent in how so many Jews cherish these horror stories and pass them down to their (our) kids. A sure-fire way to breed bigotry and hate.
B.G. (student) NY
Bibliographic information about this document: Smith's Report, no. 54, May 1998, p. 8
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