LETTERS

THE FIGHT OVER NAZI GOLD

The barbarism, the degradation that helpless, innocent human beings suffered at the hands of Hitler's Nazi butchers is still horrendous enough. Now to learn that the Swiss banking system is holding on to millions in assets that belong to Holocaust victims or their heirs [WORLD, Feb. 24] is just another example of man's inhumanity. I hope that those fighting to right this wrong persevere and that justice prevails. NANCY L. MATSEY Grafton, West Virginia

Your report about Switzerland and the part it played with Holocaust gold shows us Swiss citizens that we are not as special as we sometimes believe, nor are we better than the rest of the world. We are responsible for our share of the guilt and we must carry it. But if any person is without sin, let him throw the first stone. Fifty years after the end of the war, the veil of secrecy is finally being lifted. And it is not only the Swiss who are looking for fame, power and money. LOUIS NIEDERER Winterthur, Switzerland

The gold in question is not Nazi gold. It belongs to the Jewish people whom the Nazis so inhumanely slaughtered. I trust honorable people worldwide will pressure the Swiss to quickly and equitably right this injustice. ED COLBERT Topsfield, Massachusetts

The capacity for indifference and criminal behavior dwells in all of us, but evil can thrive only under evil leadership. Amid all this finger pointing, who is left off the hook? Adolf Hitler. LISA WALLERSTEIN Livermore, California

Your article was a character assassination of the Swiss people. Some people may have disputes with Swiss banks, but I cannot accept the tarnishing of the national character of an entire country. I am reminded of President James Madison's words: "Each generation should be made to bear the burden of its own wars, instead of carrying them on, at the expense of other generations." CHRISTIAN D. DE FOULOY Richmond, Virginia

You were way off with the comment "One lesson of the wartime experience is that in a conflict between good and evil, neutrality is morally indefensible." Since when has this been true? While it is important to stand up for justice, neutrality in the sense of pacifism has always been morally defensible, as taught by great moral leaders, including Jesus, Martin Luther King Jr. and Gandhi. JEDIDIAH J. PALOSAARI Pasadena, California

Although Jewish groups may be justified in their campaign to recover funds from Swiss banks, their harsh tactics are breeding a new feeling of anti-Semitism. Dredging up the past and trying to forget it are both dangerous. KRYSTIAN DOMARADZKI Chicago

You have done a good service that many of us refuse to undertake: telling the children of the world about our past, even if it is bad. BENJAMIN SNEDEKER Westerville, Ohio

Your report raised disturbing questions: Why were the Project Safehaven documents ever classified by the U.S. government? Why did they remain classified? Who in the U.S. knew how much money was really involved? Who made money besides the "gnomes of Zurich"? ARTHUR S. TISCHLER Newton, Massachusetts

Every country in the world has parts of its past that it would like to forget (for the U.S. it is the enslavement of an entire race, for South Africa the same crime), but it seems as if the Swiss think they should be excluded from international condemnation simply because they bought their way out of World War II. We should all recognize our crimes against the Jews and focus on teaching our children how to avoid spreading the ignorance that was rampant in the early days of the century. APRIL D. REAGAN Apex, North Carolina

It is a little frightening that human beings are still so fond of black-and-white pictures, the binary digits 0 and 1 or the good guy and the bad guy. What technology achieved with fuzzy logic several years ago still seems to be the exception for human judgment. The Swiss are the same human beings as the Germans, the French or the Americans. They are not angels, but they are not devils either. Maybe everyone should start to think in shades of gray. STEPHAN LOEB Binningen, Switzerland

We were offended by the gold-bullion Nazi symbol on your cover. Your choice of this symbol rather than the Star of David was inappropriate and used for sensationalistic purposes. CHERYL and ANDY KAPLAN Gainesville, Florida

Some Swiss like the proverb that says the way you shout something into the forest is the way it will come back to you. So if you want someone to be cooperative, you have to show the same spirit. No aggression, no hostility. If World Jewish Congress head Edgar Bronfman had followed this behavior, maybe the Swiss would move mountains and perhaps even offer him a chair. CATRINA DENKER Zurich

During the war, there were also ordinary, humanely acting Swiss citizens. I was one of 28,000 Jewish refugees saved in Switzerland, although not through any act of mercy of Swiss government policies. My family and I started our flight from Nazi-occupied Amsterdam in July 1942. We traveled through the Netherlands, Belgium, France, Vichy France and the Alps. One September noon, not knowing that Swiss border guards were on watch with binoculars to catch border-crossing refugees, we tumbled down into Switzerland. Right there, a mountain-stalking Swiss family from Champery stumbled onto us. They told us about the guards, hid us in the woods, fetched us after dark, fed us and lodged us, dressed us up to look like respectable people and accompanied us the next morning to a little mountain railway station. We headed for Zurich. Once there, we registered with the Dutch consul and so could not be sent back.

I am ashamed to admit that I do not remember the name of the family. I never saw them again. Now, so many years later, and in sharp contrast to the revelations about the Swiss government's acts and attitudes, I want to thank and salute that wonderful Swiss family for their courageous behavior in saving one bunch of shabby refugees from being thrown into the darkness of the Final Solution. JESHA SHAPIR Tel Aviv

The real issue is broader than blocked Jewish assets and laundered money. It is the conflict between neutrality and moral integrity. My family was German, anti-Nazi and somewhat linked to the assassination attempt on Hitler. In July 1944 they had no other choice than to flee to Switzerland and seek refuge with relatives. Big surprise: the Swiss authorities accepted the four children in the family but turned back the five adults, who were caught, delivered to the Gestapo and imprisoned. When the U.S. Army closed in on Germany, my father succeeded in escaping, but other family members, along with other prisoners, were shot. You mentioned that 30,000 Jewish refugees were turned away at the Swiss border. An equal number of political refugees must have shared that fate. HELMUT SCHMIDT Orgeval, France

The Swiss Confederation made mistakes during World War II like many other countries. We openly talk about them here, and we even welcome discussion from abroad on the subject. Foreign views normally broaden the narrow Swiss mind, if their authors are of some historical competence. Sad, but this modest condition already excludes people like Senator Alfonse D'Amato, whose revelations were not news to us; the average Swiss college student studied this situation years ago. MARTIN ENDER Staretschwil, Switzerland

The Swiss may not have invented the word chutzpah, but they've certainly brought new meaning to it. RICHARD MORSE Bad Soden, Germany

I wouldn't be surprised if a good part of the looted World War II wealth were to surface in countries other than Switzerland. Maybe some of the money is held in banks in New York City, in the home state of Senator D'Amato. CHRIS SCHNELLMANN Steinhausen, Switzerland

REVIEW THE EVIDENCE

Thanks to the jury in the O.J. Simpson civil trial, justice has not been denied [NATION, Feb. 17]. But let us remember that O.J. remains free. Nicole Brown Simpson and Ron Goldman are dead, and at the end of the day, no amount of money will compensate for the miscarriage of justice in the criminal trial. I can only hope that those who feel Simpson is innocent will review the evidence presented at both the criminal and civil trials. This entire ordeal was not about racism. Instead it was about photographs, footprints, fingerprints, cuts, blood, dna, shoes, diaries, domestic abuse and, most important, O.J.'s lies. ANTOINETTE ROWE Burnaby, British Columbia

Prosecutor Christopher Darden's article on the role color played in the Simpson trial was very moving. He summarized what American society is about: race. It was courageous of Darden to assert that the justice system in the U.S. is a farce. Two innocent people were murdered. Why is O.J. so different? Because he has thrown a football and appeared on TV and in movies? No, it is because the case was about black and white. I am proud that I am Canadian. Here, we believe in punishing those who are guilty, and our juries make decisions based on justice, not color. Canada's judicial system would never copy America's madness. White, black, green, purple or red, it doesn't matter what color you are; if you are guilty, you will be convicted. ROSE PAPINI Toronto

TIME TO ACT PRESIDENTIAL

So President Clinton, fresh from his re-election victory and countless fund-raising shenanigans [NATION, Feb. 24], advocates campaign reform while he continues, full steam ahead, to solicit campaign money. This is like the fox volunteering to guard the henhouse after he has eaten his fill. I've never seen such hypocrisy and convoluted ethics in the Oval Office. Come on, Bill, the election is over. Please be a President. JERRAL R. HICKS Las Cruces, New Mexico

WHO OWNS IDEAS?

Let me tell the other side of the story of Petr Taborsky [SCIENCE, Feb. 10]. He was hired by the University of South Florida to work as a lab assistant on a research contract. He knew that the results of the research were the property of the contractor. Taborsky took notebooks containing research data from the lab and refused to return them. He was charged with grand theft and found guilty. Despite a judge's warning, he filed for a patent on the proprietary research and was sent to prison. If every lab assistant working on a proprietary project were allowed to ignore the intellectual property-rights law, research in the U.S. would come to a standstill. White-collar crime is serious business. MICHAEL G. KOVAC, Dean College of Engineering University of South Florida Tampa, Florida

We are the parents of Petr Taborsky. In 1968, after Soviet tanks crushed the Czech revolt against communism, we were lucky enough to come to the U.S. along with our small children. We taught our youngsters the American Dream means hard work and a strong will to succeed. We taught them to be honest, to be principled and to stand up for their own and others' rights. This made it all the more devastating for us to see our son convicted on fabricated and false charges and sent to prison. At the same time, we are proud of our son for not compromising his beliefs or principles. He is now cooperating with others dedicated to students' intellectual property rights in a recently formed organization called s-chip www.ij.net/s-chip/home.htm) The ownership of ideas is a cause of many students who are deprived of credit for their intellectual work by an immoral tradition in some schools. JIRI and DAGMAR TABORSKY Palmetto, Florida

IL POSTINO IN MONTANA

In many communities, post offices are town centerpieces where customers gather for much more than just the mail. In response to Walter Kirn's article on the possible relocation of the post office in downtown Livingston, Montana [Nation, Feb. 24], I would like to note that the U.S. Postal Service takes seriously its duty to preserve post offices and their legacies. From time to time, as populations and mail volume grow, some post offices become too small to handle the increased workload in a way that satisfies customers. We do not take the decision to move a post office lightly. It is never our first choice; we always strive first to expand the existing post office. But sometimes the needs of our customers require a move. We at the Postal Service will do our best to continue to preserve our heritage as we meet America's communications needs. MARVIN RUNYON, Postmaster General U.S. Postal Service Washington

DORNAN'S HEALING JUSTICE

You ran a quite colorful cartoon that portrayed me as stomping up and down on the campaign signs of my opponent [NOTEBOOK, Dec. 2, 1996]. The irony is that through all my campaigns, I told my staff we had one inviolable commandment: "Touch our opponent's private property, their signs, etc., and you will be fired." In early February my opponent's spouse was fined $640 for destroying my signs. Oh, how justice can be healing! On Feb. 26, a congressional committee voted to hold hearings on voter fraud in my still-contested election. That makes five ongoing election-fraud investigations in California's 46th District. I sign myself as the "once and future Congressman"... ROBERT K. DORNAN Garden Grove, California