I READ the article on the Holocaust and agreed wholeheartedly with it, but the quote that “as many as 11 million people died in the Holocaust” must be questioned (Victims of persecution in plea for global unity, The National, January 27).

The figure is probably twice that number. The number of Jews killed is always put at six million, and records show this to be fairly accurate.The term is originally from the Greek Holokaustos and translates as “burnt whole”, but was later used by the Jewish religion to denote a form of sacrifice and now seems to be generally used to refer to the extermination of Jews by the Nazis in the concentration camps.

The Holocaust figures should of course include the trade unionists, gypsies, mental defectives, political opponents, Jehovah’s Witnesses, POWs, homosexuals and even Boy Scouts – all of whom added to the monstrous toll of the millions who died in the camps.

Add to these the multitude that perished without ever reaching the camps, slaughtered by the Wermacht who were told by Hitler to show no mercy to any non-Aryan who stood in the way. Russians, Poles, Czechs, Greeks and many more nationalities were subjected to wholesale execution with no mercy. The estimates reach more than 20 million, so by all means let us remember the victims on Holocaust Day but let us please remember all of the victims.

Jim Gibson
Selkirk

------------------------------------------------------------------------------

May’s grovelling would put even Blair to shame

THERESA May’s embarrassing grovelling to Donald Trump was an act of craven submission that would put even Tony Blair to shame.

May said she wouldn’t shy away from difficult conversations with Trump on areas where they disagreed. This was a transparent lie. May stood like some gooey-eyed teenage groupie. The sycophantic grovelling was embarrassing.

May began her address to the press with a display of grotesque fawning before Trump. As she congratulated him on “a stunning victory” in the presidential election, Trump smiled smugly and preened as he acknowledged the praise to someone in the audience.

In a further attempt to ingratiate herself with Trump, who has railed against the US footing Europe’s defence bill, May stated: “I have agreed to encourage my fellow European leaders to deliver on their commitments to spend two per cent of their GDP on defence so that the burden is more fairly shared.”

One might ask, what fellow European leaders? The reality is that, following the Brexit vote, the UK’s influence in Europe has collapsed. May is routinely excluded from all high-level meetings of EU leaders.

May is banking on a trade deal with Trump to soften the inevitable blow Brexit will lead to. However, trade deals typically take seven years to negotiate and even then, as TTIP and TPP demonstrate, these aren’t always in the best interests of the general public.

May’s tactic of saying to the EU “give us what we want or we will set-up a tax haven” is extraordinarily reckless and will ultimately do irreparable harm to the economy.

Alan Hinnrichs
Dundee

WELCOME to La La Land indeed – what a brilliant front cover (Saturday, January 28).We have a President who condones the use of torture and a Prime Minister who deems Trident a necessary nuclear deterrent. It does not bode well for humankind.

Jane Bullock Lentran
Inverness

ALLAN Hinnrichs, commenting on the unsavoury spectacle of the British Prime Minister currying favour from one of the most unpleasant US Presidents in history, refers to America’s economic decline (Letters, January 28).

This is a crucial point, for it is the role of the strong dollar as the world’s global reserve currency that has effectively destroyed America’s manufacturing base and its exports, creating an economy dominated by banking and financial services. It has also allowed those banks, aided by the British government’s crass mismanagement of our economy, to buy up most of the City of London.

Anyone wanting chapter and verse on that sorry tale can do no better than refer to Simon Head’s article, The Death of British Business, in the New York Review – available online.

As those international banks now prepare to pull out of London, I wonder what May and Trump had to say to each other about how to recreate the golden days of manufacturing dominance that Britain in the 19th century and then the United States in the 20th century both enjoyed. For it is no longer possible to grab resources and markets by military conquest and it is certainly not possible to live by taking in each other’s dirty washing.

Peter Craigie
Edinburgh

AMERICA is Theresa May’s Trump card, post Brexit. It’s a get-out-of-jail raspberry to Europe and to those who didn’t want to leave. But whatever Trump is, one thing he is not – and that is stupid. He needs British trade like Mexico needs to pick up the tab for Trump’s wall. There will be a cost for this special relationship, a hidden surcharge that we poor saps won’t know about until it’s too late. Our public utilities and institutions will be ripe and easy low-hanging fruit waiting to be picked by American companies. It fits neatly with Tory ideology. Who knows, we might even become America’s 51st state.

I can’t wait for that referendum.

Mike Herd
Tain

THERESA May’s much-vaunted “Special Relationship” between the UK and US isn’t worth a hill of beans as far as Donald Trump is concerned.

He must have signed his immigration bans after their talk in the Oval Office before her chair was cold yet he hadn’t bothered to tell her.

Theresa May was then left to looking uninformed and indecisive at her news conference in Turkey.

John Jamieson
South Queensferry

IRAQ-BORN Tory MP Nadhim Zahawi stated on the Andrew Marr Show that he has never felt so isolated, degraded and humiliated as a human being as when he heard of Donald Trump’s order to ban all people born in Muslim countries from entering the US.

Well, Mr Zahawi will now know how disabled people in the UK felt when he and his rich Tory mates voted in favourite of stripping them of their benefits by using tactics to make them feel humiliated, degraded and isolated. What goes around comes around Mr Zahawi!

Diane Buick
Lanarkshire

I MIGHT just move to the USA, I hear they have an incredible president these days. Incredible.

Yuge opportunities are coming, and they’re coming big league. Believe me.

Randy Johnson via Facebook