Picture: John F. Kennedy visited Berlin in 1962, he told the people at
the Berlin wall:
"Ich bin ein Berliner."
AUSTRIA - Vienna, April 4th, 2003
Dear Mr. President,
I'm German and was born in 1951 in Frankfurt/Main, Germany.
I would like to tell you a small story about my father serving in the German army during a time period which was close towards the end of World War II. He was only 17 year old, a teenager, when the Nazi regime drafted him as being part of the German army, that was fighting against the U.S. forces. Only after spending 6 months in the German army, he became a POW of the American Armed Forces. My father mentioned that he never killed anybody in the war and I believe him.
When I was a boy, my father told me many stories about his encounters with American soldiers in Germany. These stories still move me until this very day. While my father was in an American prison, the American soldiers fed him and gave him extra chocolates and chewing gum.
I'm telling the same stories today to my own kids. I believe that American soldiers had all of the reasons to hate Germans, like my father for example, but they didn't.
Your people are kind, serving, righteous, forgiving and loving. As a boy I grew up in Frankfurt in the middle of the 1950s. Close to our home, there was a very busy street and many American soldiers passing by in big trucks gave us young German kids chocolates and chewing gum. We then saluted the soldiers and they saluted back. I still remember this.
When J.F. Kennedy was assassinated in 1963, my father cried for this American President he had never met. I was only 12 years old, when every evening I prayed for J.F. Kennedy and his family. 20 years ago, my father and mother still wanted to immigrate to the United States, but for some reason, it never worked out. My father passed away in 1993. He loved and respected the United States a lot and somehow I picked up the same spirit, for which I'm very grateful.
Thank you America and all the Allied Forces, for liberating Germany (and big parts of Europe as well) from Nazi Fascism during World War II in 1945.
At present I live in Austria and I’ve noticed a lot of Anti-American sentiments all over Europe, caused by the war fought against the brutal regime of Saddam Hussein. This attitude saddens me very much. With all of the demonstrations you can watch on international TV channels against the U.S., together with the reports from the mass media, you might easily come to the conclusion, that the U.S. is the “bad guy” with Saddam Hussein coming out as the good one. I don't see any demonstrations or critiques against Saddam Hussein on that very same TV channels. Nobody seems to criticise his regime in the media, neither do we witness human chains against this evil Iraqi terror.
As a German, I felt very content, when some six weeks ago the leader of the German conservative Christian Democratic Union opposition party, Mrs. Angela Merkel, flew to the U.S. and showed solidarity with your Government. I was so happy seeing this; one really needs to have a lot of courage, to make a statement like this.
Dear Mr. President, I would like to tell you this:
There are also MANY MILLIONS of German citizens who support in their hearts the U.S. and all Allied forces against this tyrannical regime in Iraq. And I'm proudly one of them.
I believe: there will be no peace, if it is peace at any price. There was peace in the Soviet Union, yet millions were killed, tortured and enslaved. There was peace in Cambodia under Pol Pot, but three million died; there is peace in North Korea today, but millions are starving as a result of a corrupt government.
The war against Iraq reminds me of the Vietnam War in the 1960s, when the whole world opinion was against the U.S. The world supported communism and thought it to be the answer for the oppressed classes. Was it not like this?
Today, with the Iraq crisis, I can see many similarities. Are the political leaders in the so called “Free World” blind and don't understand what Saddam Hussein has done against his own people some fifteen years ago and is still doing? Have they forgotten history? I think that Saddam Hussein is a potential danger for the civilized world and should be removed now.
When John F. Kennedy visited Berlin in 1962, he told the German people at the Berlin Wall:
„Ich bin ein Berliner."
After September 11th, 2001, I'm saying proudly today:
„Ich bin ein Amerikaner."
Dear Mr. President, may God in Heaven bless and guide you in your wisdom. I pray for you and the integrants of your Government, for the Allied Forces stationed in Iraq and the whole Middle East region. I also pray for the suffering people in Iraq that they may soon be liberated and taste freedom and democracy, as we, the German people, have experienced after the United States liberated us from a dictator and a tyrant.
GOD BLESS AMERICA!
Sincerely,
Wolfgang Schawaller