Germany and D-Day Reunion

* I write in reply to Ellen Goodman’s column of April 29, “Germany Has No Place at the D-Day Reunion.”

Of course, we should always remember those who died in Nazi concentration camps and those who died trying to free them. It’s important to remember the national denial and the international denial that made the Holocaust possible. Goodman says that the sins of the grandparents should not be visited on the grandchildren. She points out that in 1944 few Germans thought they were getting a welcome liberation from Hitler.

But this is 1994. Anyone who was 18 in 1944 is now 68. If we insist that Germany must be held apart from the rest of the community forever, then World War II will never be over. The Nazis will never die as long as we insist that their descendants can never atone for being their descendants.

And, by the way, alienated youths who join groups such as the neo-Nazis will not feel less alienation and hate by being excluded for their German-ness from the world community.

Let us not emulate behavior we don’t admire and do what the Nazis would never have done: invite Germany to world events like the D-Day reunion.

LAKE NOFER

Woodland Hills

* I was surprised that Goodman lumped Japan teaching its young about the bombing of Hiroshima with neo-Nazis in Germany and Holocaust revisionists in America.

Maybe I’m prejudiced because I’m of Japanese ancestry, but the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki are very important parts of modern Japanese history. Actually, it’s a very important part of modern history, period. In my school textbook, Hiroshima took up one or two paragraphs. In a Japanese textbook, much more information is given.

I don’t think teaching Japanese children about Hiroshima will create another generation of Tojos who will invade Korea and China and all of Asia and try to take over the world!

AKI AKAIKE

Gardena