Having written a previous letter expressing my dismay about the deteriorating level of our national dialogue about important issues such as health care reform and other policy initiatives, we have now descended to a new level of moral degradation.

At a Nov. 5 protest rally on Capitol Hill initiated by U.S. Rep. Michele Bachmann, R-Minn., Republican leader John Boehner called the proposed health care reform bill "the greatest threat to freedom that I have seen in the 19 years I've been in Washington."

On a Nov. 5 MSNBC program reporting about that rally, one could see a large poster prominently displayed by the participants with the message, "National Socialist Healthcare, Dachau, Germany, 1945," printed over a large photo of a heap of emaciated concentration camp victims murdered by the Nazis during the Holocaust.

As a teenager in Nazi Germany, I witnessed, at the end of World War II, a long train with open-door cattle cars full of emaciated, hollow-eyed concentration camp inmates crossing the road.

I never thought I would live to see the day when photos and depictions of such horrific Holocaust scenes would be used for blatant political purposes in the United States of America.

We should be better than that.

Klaus D. Kuck, Lewiston