From: Beller2000@aol.com

Date: Tue, 27 May 1997 02:24:20 -0400 (EDT)

Subject: a reply

5/26/97

Dear Bernie,

I am so pleased to be on your mailing list. This last dispatch was fascinating and informative to a level that I wouldn't expect to encounter in an anything but the most highly specialized journal. All those logistics were so compelling. And I was intrigued - at first put off, in fact, but subsequently I took another look - at the repeated parallels that were made between the current situation in North Korea and the situation of the Jews inside Germany during the second world war. Not long ago the Sunday Times Magazine published, as their cover story, a correspondence that took place between a German chemist and an American department store sales clerk who was his cousin. From out the blue this guy gets news that his cousin and his family are in dire straights. Never even knew he had this cousin, but he is galvanized into action. A correspondence ensued, which lasted for several years, as the American cousin struggles to come up with money to assist in the immigration of his German cousin - never met him - and his family.

The catch here is that while the Nazi's, of course, are the villains here, they are relatively faceless compared to the sales clerk's Jewish in-laws, who are filthy rich, but who are extremely reluctant to part with what for them is pocket change to assist in the saving of their German cousin. In the end the family makes it through but the father - the cousin who initially wrote his American counterpart asking for help - dies in a concentration camp.

I bring all of this up and recount it in such detail because besides evoking all sorts of issues from that time, your letter raised the more general issue of how one acts when one knows that large numbers of people are in dire need. And how inaction is likely to be perceived in the future, both morally, polticially, and in rather blunt public relations terms that do in fact have some consequence for business.

It is a very galvanizing missive. I thought the image of a generation of sickly children - too alive to be statistics, but damaged irreparably - was very compelling. I am really curious to know what sort of response this ggets. And of course I wish you the best with it, and hope you're feeling better.

best,

tom

P.S. Please note my new email address