SIR – Think of a country where the people feel frustrated, distrust their politicians and speak angrily of their country being destroyed by foreigners, scroungers and malingerers.

No, not Britain in 2011 but Germany in the early 1930s. Auschwitz and the Final Solution to exterminate European Jewry came quite late in the history of that dreadful era.

Before that the Third Reich had killed many thousands of Germans who were disabled, mentally ill, unemployed, petty offenders, travellers, trade union officials and religious figures; in fact anyone seen as a stain on the Fatherland.

Hopefully, adult readers as well as the young people who visited Auschwitz (Worcester News, May 10) will take time to reflect how this came about in what was a modern, sophisticated, industrialised nation.

It is no use saying: “It could never happen here.”

That is what many Germans said, to their later cost.

DEREK FEARNSIDE
Worcester