The Theresienstadt film.(Letter to the Editor)

SIR: According to Professor Maley (Letters, October 2004) I offered judgment on a book I had not read. I did not. What I did do was to "contribute a view to the contretemps in ... letters ... about Holocaust language and asylum seekers".

Professor Maley's imagery and similes didn't appeal to me. He used the phrase "banality of evil" when referring to the government's boat people policy. Most literate people would be aware of the origin of this expression. No matter which side of the political divide one may be, it is inappropriate to draw such parallels.

He warmed to his theme: in the wake of this policy which "has caused boundless sorrow to countless innocent individuals"--an over-the-top choice of words--he introduced the Nazi dictatorship by pointing out that "we do not run concentration camps of the German variety". Our government may have "sought to marginalise the judiciary", but this has not been replaced by people's courts. Not all his readers would know that these were created by Hitler for whom the regular German courts were too legalistic. See my last sentence of the preceding paragraph.

One does not need to be a social scientist to be aware that people often react differently to identical stimuli. Nor does this invalidate my belief, arising from experience, observation and reading, that, other things being equal, children in immigration detention centres have it easier than adults.

Lastly, there is the Theresienstadt film. I will leave aside my puzzlement that anyone could attempt to explore a route from Australian immigration detention to a wartime concentration camp in Czechoslovakia. Professor Maley is "intrigued" to read that I have viewed that film. As far as he is aware it does not exist. There are only some "nitrate out-takes" in Yad Vashem. How did I manage to track it down?

The Theresienstadt film I saw was shown by the Australian War Memorial a good many years ago. Much of it consisted of ...