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I’ve written many letters to the editor in my head, then found, to my satisfaction, that someone else had actually submitted one voicing my thoughts and saving me the trouble. But I don’t think it’s going to happen this time.
Let me personalize an issue to which readers who don’t consume much international news may not give much thought.
I’m a Maine native, but all four of my grandparents, fleeing Russian aggression, emigrated from Poland, coming through Ellis Island, and traveling to southern Maine, where other Poles had settled. There they were employed in the mills, where they could work despite speaking little English.
They went through much hardship to escape the Russian invasion of their homeland, and were relieved, I’m sure, to arrive and settle in Maine. However, family members remained behind, and I recall my grandfather in tears as he read a censored letter from one that was filled with redactions — black slashes, because of what his relation was not allowed to say about life in his country, then part of the Soviet bloc.
Now Russia is ruled by a dictator. An ex-KGB monster who has had his critics murdered through poisoning, shootings and other violent means. And the U.S. is ruled by what I see as a shamelessly amoral con man who seeks to aggrandize himself by entering into “talks” with the Russian thug so that he can boast of achieving “peace” while handing over a country for which he has no right to speak. Meanwhile viciously slurring the heroic leader of that country, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, a brave, selfless leader whose very existence shames both of them.
Our current president famously has little knowledge of history. My father taught history, and in our house you learned about historic events like Britain’s disastrous appeasement of Germany that allowed its aggression to go unopposed, resulting in World War II.
I am glad my grandparents aren’t here to see how the leader of the country to which they fled has embraced the very tyranny from which they were escaping.
Elaine Shute
Mount Desert
