Religion and Ethnic Cleansing

Recently an acquaintance said to me that the Holocaust happened to the Jews because they had not accepted Jesus Christ. As a Jew and a humanist, I was so deeply offended by his comment that I chose not to debate him at the time, but it has caused me great consternation and distress.

This person is a fundamentalist Christian and a Ventura police officer.

In light of what we know from history and what we see and hear daily in the graphic news reports of “ethnic cleansing” in the Balkans, how can any rational person still believe that anyone deserves to be mistreated, exiled or annihilated because they are different?

MARSHA WEBER, Ventura