Dear Editor:

Megan Clouse’s letter (“Dividing the Community,” Sept. 30), rife with self-importance and ignorance, beggars good sense and decency. The Holocaust was the state sponsored extermination of six million Jewish people. Through mass shootings, gas chambers, starvation, and forced labor, the Nazis killed two out of every three Jews in Europe. Claiming that she is somehow as persecuted as the victims of history’s most infamous genocide is offensive and merits no serious consideration.

I find it equally abhorrent that the Register’s editorial staff would choose to publish it. As an historian who studied the Nazi occupation of Europe, I am appalled by this thoughtless decision — imagine how our Jewish friends and neighbors must feel! We will never be able to build a just, diverse, and inclusive community so long as we give credence to such obscene hate speech — Clouse’s claim is one step short of Holocaust denial. By giving a platform to this outrageous comparison, you have vacated your editorial responsibility, become complicit with Megan’s racism, and reflected poorly on the entire Boothbay community.

Mike Bartles

Boothbay Harbor