SHOULD the Government decide to establish a Holocaust Memorial Day, it would do well to remember the US Army prison camps in Germany and France at the end of the Second World War.

Almost four million German soldiers were held prisoner outdoors in unsheltered barbed wire enclosures with little or no food or water for months on end.

No toilet facilities were available, Red Cross parcels were not distributed. At least 750,000 died of malnutrition and disease. Thousands of ex-US Army marquees and tents which were available were refused.

The French Army took some 740,000 from the Americans to use as reparation labour. Also starved and ill-treated, 250,000 died. Most were soldiers of the Wehrmacht, but thousands were women, children and old men.

Two books, both by the same author, James Bacque, 'Other Losses' and 'Crimes and Mercies' paint a very sorry picture of American humanity. Both contain photographic and photostatic evidence and show beyond doubt that it was not only the Germans who were capable of barbaric behaviour.

ALAN PEARSON (Mr), Park Lee Road, Blackburn.

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