29 APRIL 1995, Page 30

Anti-Britishism

Sir: The article by William Cash that you ran last October was taken by the Jewish community in Hollywood, and elsewhere, to be anti-Semitic and to be suggesting that affairs there were run by a Jewish cabal.

An uproar ensued accusing your maga- zine of anti-Semitism, which was of course transparent nonsense to anyone who had actually read what non-Jewish Cash had written.

Now, ('What did you do in the occupa- tion, Daddy?', 8 April) we appear to have near anti-Britishism in a contribution from a Jew who suggests that we, the British, would have behaved in defeat much as those unfortunates who did have their country occupied by the Germans.

This premise seems to be based in the main on our failure to do more for the Jews during their terrible sufferings elsewhere and on the alleged behaviour of the inhabi- tants of the Channel Islands.

But whereas under 2 per cent of the arti- cle concerns itself with the latter, an amaz- ing 35 per cent uses the former to impugn our ability to have resisted morally an occu- pying force once invaded.

The point is surely that we were not occupied because we beat the Germans in the Battle of Britain and that the 385,000 Jews in England — many of whom had been given, by us, refuge from Nazi perse- cution before the outbreak of war — were not deported and fewer Jews were mur- dered in Europe — however terrible were the numbers that did not survive because we and our Allies did eventually overcome.

Like many other British, the war bore hardly upon me and my family. My mother — an ambulance driver — was killed in the Blitz; my father died an early death worn out from trying to keep a business in Lon- Batteries running low. Don't know how much longer we can go on. . . ' don running throughout the war, whilst devoting each weekday evening and all weekends to commanding a Home Guard battalion. I was lucky: the Germans only caused me to lose a leg.

Ms Applebaum has no right to try to tell us how we might have behaved had we been occupied — we might well have behaved as others did — simply because she feels that we provided her people with insufficient support.

John Mawer

5 Upper Street, East Dean, Eastbourne, East Sussex