Letters - 20 May 2016

From a forgotten hero to membership

A forgotten hero

In Bill Bingham’s interesting article about Albert Schweitzer (29 April) he mentions that German soldiers ‘at that time’ (world war one) had ‘Gott mit uns’ (God with us) carved into the buckles of their uniform belts.

I spent the last eighteen months of world war two as a prisoner of war in a ‘working camp’ in Zittau, the little German town at the point where the frontiers of Germany, Poland and the Czech Republic coincide, and where I now have good friends.

Our guards were neither the sadistic bullies nor the mindless morons of fiction, but remarkably like ourselves. They too (members of Adolf Hitler’s army) had ‘Gott mit uns’ carved into the buckles of their uniform belts.

I’m inclined to think that they found it as incongruous as we did.

Ernest Hall

Children’s Charter

Congratulations on the article on a ‘Children’s Charter of Developmental Rights’ (13 May).

How about this? Every adult must make any child (or adult?) feel: ‘Yeah, it would have been OK to have been born an offspring of that person.’ It is quite a criterion!

Volker Heine

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