Bert Dybdahl recently wrote, and the Bellevue Reporter published a letter, arguing that statues of traitorous defenders of slavery should remain in place because to remove them is tantamount to rewriting history. I think Mr. Dybdahl is wrong. Here’s why:

I’m not black. In fact I was raised by European immigrants in a lily white, middle class neighborhood north of Chicago, so how can I empathize with descendants of slaves who are deeply offended every day by these memorials to the monsters who fought to keep them enslaved?

It just so happens that my father was a Holocaust survivor. I know I would be enraged if statues of Hitler, Goering, Himmler, Eichmann and the rest of the Nazi leadership had been erected all over America; statues that glorify those deplorable degenerates as brave warriors of a noble cause.

The statues of the leaders of the Confederacy are no different. They are deeply offensive. Every person who cherishes the ideals upon which this nation came into being should also be offended by them irrespective of their heritage. You can’t be both a defender of democratic ideals and a defender of the Confederacy.

Peter Glass

Bellevue