Letters, Emails and Website Comments

Learning to ‘read’ each other

I find that approaching things I don’t understand with curiosity instead of judgment leads to healthy discussion and, as stated in the last paragraph, productive connection [“Long Beach’s first human library puts phrase ‘I’m an open book’ to the test,” June 6, 2014]. This event seems to have embodied that philosophy. I’m sorry I missed it.
Leslie Lay
Long Beach

What a wonderful idea! And that the library worked it out without using the tired old reason that they didn’t have the staff— because staff may be receptive and volunteers are amazing people!
I love this story and the idea of a human library. Kudos to Darla Wegener, the manager of the main branch library in Long Beach, for taking this on and helping to make it happen.
Kathleen Dixon
Huntington Beach

Seeing stars (and stripes)

On May 11, I attended the 69th Liberation Ceremony of the Mauthausen concentration camp in Austria, liberated by the 3rd U.S. Army on Cinco de Mayo, 1945. It was my 15th visit to Liberation Day ceremonies. On this day, a Russian survivor of this camp broke into tears when he saw the U.S. flag I was holding. We sat together for a while and shared stories through an interpreter. It was his second visit to the camp since his liberation.

I explained to him that I was not one of the liberators, that I had arrived a year later on occupation duty in the U.S. zone of Austria guarding food, clothing and medical supplies for concentration-camp survivors and displaced persons. To this survivor, all U.S. troops were liberators.

Alvaro (Val) Rodriguez
Signal Hill