Madam, - Some correspondents to this page have cited Germans, British and Spaniards as contenders for the dubious honour of creating the modern concentration camp.
But surely the system of "Indian Reservations" gives post-independence America some claim to this distinction? Early photographs show reservation villages enclosed by walls or palisades guarded by US soldiers. With their livelihoods destroyed, and meagre supplies of inferior food, the families imprisoned in these camps faced a virtual death sentence.
Holocaust denial is a crime in some countries. But denial acknowledges the moral outrage associated with extermination, and is therefore less repugnant than holocaust condonation, which makes no such acknowledgment.
Winston Churchill's testimony to the 1937 Peel Commission on Palestine illustrates this point: "I do not admit that the dog in the manger [ Palestinian Arabs in Palestine] has the final right to the manger, even though he may have lain there for a very long time. . .
"I do not admit that a great wrong has been done to the Red Indians of America or the black people of Australia. I do not admit that a wrong has been done to those people by the fact that a stronger race. . . has come in and taken their place." - Yours, etc,
PAT MULDOWNEY, University of Sao Paolo, Brazil.