To the Editor:
Having read Mr. Curran's comments on French foreign policy in his column "A Gap in the Generations," on May 12, 2003, and being myself a French citizen, I would like to provide your readers with the following remarks:
When Germany invaded Poland in Sept. 1939, France and Britain declared war on Germany. The subsequent fight and Franco-British defeat that took place in May 1940 showed more vigor and lan than the United States' policy of isolationism.
In 1940, the U.S. State Department rejected a Swedish proposal for a joint rescue of 20,000 Jewish children from Germany. The children perished in death camps.
According to the "Encyclopaedia of the Holocaust," the percentage of the pre-war Jewish population killed in the Holocaust in various countries is as follows:
France : 22.1 percent
Germany : 25.0 percent
Poland : 90.9 percent
Mr. Curran does not provide any explanation for the difference of attitudes of France and Poland in world affairs in 2003.
