The barbaric 9/11 attack on America by Islamic terrorists has deeply traumatized our great country forever. We will never forget this.

Many family members of the victims, as well as other Americans throughout the country, have expressed their deep anguish about the prospect of having a mosque built so close to the spot where their fellow Americans were slaughtered “in the name of Islam.”

The argument that allowing this project to go forward would show America’s religious and ethnic tolerance misses the point entirely. Our great country has nothing to prove in that regard, having given refuge and asylum to millions of Muslims and other refugees from all over the world.

As an American of German extraction, allow me to say this: What if the Germans had proposed to erect a German cultural center right next to the Auschwitz concentration camp where millions of innocent Jewish victims were slaughtered by the Nazis during World War II? That thought would never have occurred to Germany, which has honestly tried to atone for the Holocaust, as much as that is possible, and is today a friend and close ally of Israel and has welcomed again a large Jewish community to the country.

As long as even one family member of the victims of 9/11 is anguished about the prospect of seeing a mosque erected next to Ground Zero, it would, indeed, be a gesture of compassion and decency on the part of the Muslims to abstain from this ill-conceived proposal.

Klaus D. Kuck, Lewiston