LETTERS TO THE EDITOR: GUN-CONTROL EFFORT SOUNDS LIKE NAZIS

To the editor:

The current controversy about gun-control legislation prompts me to recount the following experience taken from the memoir I have been working on for my grandchildren

During the last few weeks of World War II in Germany, the group of POWs of which I was a part was marched through the rural countryside from Nuremberg to Moosburg. The Nazis wanted to use us as bargaining chips in the peace talks that were bound to come. However, our objective was to stay north of the Danube River as long as we could in hopes that a spearhead of the U.S. Army would liberate us. Most of our guards had been reassigned to front-line duty, and often we would see a guard only once or twice a day. Our American senior officers were able to stall for 17 days before the guards were ordered to exterminate us all if we weren't south of the river by noon April 27.

While stalling, we spent a lot of time trying to trade chocolate and powdered coffee from Red Cross food parcels with any housewife who could speak English. A surprising number could. We wanted eggs and bread in return. The few men we saw were either very old, handicapped or prisoners from the armies of our European allies who had accepted parole to do farm work. We encountered many women who claimed they had disagreed with Nazi programs from the beginning. Our question to them: "Why, then, did you let them get away with what they did?" Their answer was most often another question: What could we do?" Our answer was that no group in the United States could get away with anything like that.

We reached Stalag 7A late on April 27. The camp was liberated by the U.S. 3rd Army at noon on April 29. After assembling at the main gate around 2 o'clock to hear a short address by General Patton, I went back to the tent where my blanket was. In late afternoon, one of my friends cam by and suggested that I might be interested in what was going on at the main gate. In front of a building where the Nazis had stored weapons confiscated from their citizens, the GIs had placed rifles and shotguns so that the stocks were in the road and the barrels on the curb. They had run a tank over them to remove them as a possible hazard. I could see that many were real collectors items: double barrels, over and under, carved stocks, silver inlaid, carefully etched commemorative pieces.

Where were the pistols and revolvers? Men at the scene were talking about the beautiful handguns that had been discovered. All of these had become souvenirs of the tankers and of a few former prisoners who happened to be watching the destruction.

It was easy to understand why the GIs wanted the guns immobilized. But now I remembered something one civilian had said after the usual "What could we do?" She had added, "The police and the burgermeisters kept records and always knew who had guns."

Registration of guns had provided a master list of whom to go to when the Nazis felt threatened and decided to confiscate.

What ought we to do?

EDWARD M. BENDER

Cape Girardeau