To the editor:
Accompanying the daily devastating news of Russia’s inhumane war in Ukraine, the name Trostenets, a town near Minsk in neighboring Belarus, was mentioned. It gave me a jolt. Maly Trostenets was the site of one extermination facility used for the annihilation of Jews by the Nazis and their willing collaborators in WWII; and millions of Jews were living under state-imposed hardship in this wide and “convenient” Pale of Settlement in Central and Eastern Europe. Others were shipped to its concentration and extermination sites from Western Europe; my grandmother and her young daughter were among the victims transported there from Germany. As Celine — no humanitarian himself — said, in the shocking book that assured him renown, “Journey to the End of the Night”: “When men can hate without risk, their stupidity is easily convinced, the motives supply themselves.”
And although surprisingly little about this worthy news is reported by the mainstream media, in addition to Israel’s establishing a field hospital in Ukraine, despite the danger, with a staff of about 100 doctors and nurses, thousands of Ukrainian refugees are being welcomed by Israel, the size of a country that Texas could accommodate about 31 times! And many of the youngsters are being well-cared-for in children’s villages, possibly by descendants of the remnants who survived a previous era of inhumanity.
Ruth Heuberger
Great Barrington
