The American Spectator

Reader Mail

p> HAIL TO THE CHIEF br> Re: R. Emmett Tyrrell's What Terrible Things Were Done : /p>

Mr. Tyrrell, I've always loved you (gusting to pure adoration after such landmarks as The American Spectator's cover of a mouse-size Jimmy Carter trying to climb into the huge presidential picture frame and your book The Liberal Crackup).

p>Beautiful and timely article today. br> -- Hilda Hardcastle br> Bath, Maine /p>

Editor Tyrrell's experience of learning about the holocaust brought back vivid memories. As he, I attended a Catholic grammar school in the early '50s and was also less than a perfect gentleman in class and often got sent out for discipline. But we didn't have a library with magazines, just a hallway in which to stand at attention. My dad was an editor of a small town paper and interested in everything national, political and cultural. My mother was well educated and a published poet. So we had books and magazines at home, including Look and Life and many others. So I perused those photos of German camps at home, in my livingroom, sitting in my Dad's leather recliner (the only luxury he allowed himself). And, luckily, I had parents who took the time to discuss those horrible, horrible pictures with me, my brother and sisters.

The conversation extended from the living room before dinner, right through dinner. The conversation was about Evil. And that it has to be opposed. Quickly. Without waiting. My Dad was especially eloquent about the political delays in the U.S. about entering that fight about that particular evil and how many of those people may not have suffered at all had we the backbone to face the difficulties earlier.

Here we are, many years later, facing similar choices.

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