MAGGIE O’KANE’s report (Guardian July 29) describing Muslim women and children incarcerated for five days in cattle-train wagons at the end of which time seven children, two mothers, and two old women were found dead, is too near the experience of our Jewish brethren under the Nazis for us to remain silent. The implementation of “ethnic cleansing” of the unwanted in the former Yugoslav republics is a chilling reminder of the tragic past.
The report continues with the appalling details of 2,000 Muslim men holed-up in a football stadium in Bratunac, systematic murder and stories of windows smashed in Muslim shops.
Six million Muslims do not have to be slaughtered before Jews protest at this brutal carnage, and this we do with that sense of outrage we wish had been manifested when Kristallnacht took place in Germany on November 8, 1938— when Jewish shop windows were smashed as a precursor to the systematic murder of Jews.
Arnold Wesker and Dannie Abse, Zygmunt Bauman, Monica Bohm-Duchen, David Cesarani, Tony Dinner, Moris Farhi, Peter Halban, June Jacobs, Gabriel Josipovici, R. B. Kitaj, Barnet Litvinoff, Emanuel Litvinoff, Simon Louvish, Hyam Maccoby, Sir Claus Moser, Colin Shindler. London N3.
Guardian 4 August 1992