Dear Editor:
Re: Sent to the Russian Front, Burnaby NOW, Nov. 10, re: Helmut Lemke.
Nice of you to illustrate the Second World War from the enemy’s point of view. I, however, cannot see how we need to feel for a guy who tried to murder my father and those of his generation.
Sure, he did not have much choice, but he is still not apologizing for his role in the war and certainly not for his country. Saying how he felt the war was justified because Germany was in such an economic recession because of the need to pay war reparations, for a war they were also responsible for.
I knew Mr. Lemke when he was one of my teachers at Burnaby South. It was there I learned of his and Germany’s xenophobia and the right the Germans assumed for ethnic cleansing. He discussed how the purging the German society of what is known today as the intellectually developmental disordered and how it was a good solution Germany used to rid the country of a lot of problems.
Germany in the First and Second World Wars was one of the most heinously fiendish societies in the history of the world, a people that have a lot to live down, and until all the Lemkes are gone we might begin to turn the page.
How about choosing a Canadian veteran to write a story about. Maybe another 17-year-old who crawled up the beaches of Normandy to rid the world of this heinous ilk .
Ron Veigh, Burnaby
