Sir, In his autobiography, the leading German theologian J?rgen Moltmann describes how he was conscripted into the German Army as soon as he left school in 1944 and how he was captured by the British in early 1945. As a young prisoner of war he was allowed to apply to be moved to an educational camp, where he completed his Abitur and began his higher education.
I found it deeply moving that he could write of his subsequent experience in Camp 174: “We received what we had not deserved, and lived from a spiritual abundance we had not expected.”
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Living in a country that is now willing to send illegal immigrants home to die, and to leave Iraqi interpreters to take their chance, it is hard not to feel ashamed as we consider Gordon Brown’s invitation to consider what makes British culture distinctive (report, Feb 1). We and our leaders need to recapture that magnanimity which was, as Moltmann writes, a “possibility \ really did exist in the British camp culture”.
Richard Willmott
Hereford