Letter to the Editor: Richard Sherman

Lisa Potash, who’s letter to the edited was published in the Aug. 31 issue, is correct that Jew hatred must be fought. However, her attempt to promote Fidel Castro’s Cuba as a bastion of tolerance is myopic and ahistorical.

There was no, “protection of Jews from the beginning” or ever was under Castro. Not only did Castro ethnically cleanse Cuba’s substantial Jewish middle class from Cuba shortly after taking power; he seized all their property, as Stalinists do, and were left penniless when they were forced to leave. His actions were identical to the many Muslim governments beginning in 1945 that ethnically cleansed 850,000 Mizrahi Jews from their homes with just the shirts on their backs.

Also, Ms. Potash should read the one great book written by a Cuban in 1959, “Against All Hope: The Prison Memoirs of Armando Valladares.” You will learn how Castro and his Stalinist sycophants made Cuba the Auschwitz of the Caribbean. The East Germans taught Castro torture and murder techniques that the Nazis could only dream of.

There has been no more tolerance in Cuba since 1959 than there was tolerance in Germany between 1933 – 1945. After twenty-two years of barely surviving in several of Castro’s concentration camps and watching hundreds of his fellow, “political prisoners” tortured, murdered and starved to death, world opinion forced his release.

The release was because of international prisoners’ rights groups learning of his eloquent writings. He is living in Miami. Ms. Potash could talk to him about his life in the “Auschwitz” of the Caribbean.

To quote and paraphrase Vladimir Il’ich Lenin, there will always be “useful idiots” who romanticize the terror of Stalinism – whether in Russia or in Cuba.

Richard Sherman, Margate, Fla.