In his letter, “Papal Silence?” (Dec. 16), William LaRochelle accuses me of “denunciation of the Catholic Church” and “despicable slander,” basing his argument on one single statement in my letter, “Facts Ignored” (Dec. 3), namely “… the deafening silence in the face of the Nazi persecution of the Jewish people and the Holocaust. …”

My letter was an answer to William Slavick of Pax Christi who wrote that Israel’s response to the indiscriminate slaughter of its innocents “has squandered the good will Jews enjoyed worldwide after the Holocaust.”

I pointed out the long history of European anti-Semitism.

Having lived in Nazi Germany as a teenager and due to my upbringing, I was acutely aware of what was going on around me – the hate propaganda against the Jews, the exclusion of Jews from the professions and all social life, Kristallnacht, the disappearance of our Jewish fellow citizens, the concentration camps.

Except for a few isolated protests by brave people like Cardinal Archbishop Clemens von Galen, Father Bernhard Lichtenberg, Protestant Pastors Martin Niemoeller, Dietrich Bonhoeffer and others – in violation of the Concordat the Vatican had concluded with Hitler – there was indeed a deafening silence. This I know from first-hand experience.

What was needed was extraordinary, vigorous and sustained protest action, including excommunication of Hitler, by the highest moral authority of the world.

For this passivity and “dereliction of duty” the Polish and German bishops, as well as Pope John Paul II, himself apologized to the Jewish people after World War II.

Dr. Klaus D. Kuck, Lewiston