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June 11th, 2008 issue

Hip replacement
Tongue-in-cheek, I said U.S. President George W. Bush recommends that Czech politicians get hip replacements so they can better “shoot from the hip” when doing their jobs. (“Shooting from the hip,” Opinion, April 30–June 6.)
It took just a little more than a month for President Václav Klaus to follow this advice. Last week, he got a hip replacement.
Before he made the decision, Klaus visited with U.S. Vice President Dick Cheney in Washington to discuss how the earth’s atmosphere is not getting warmer and the fact that the United States has not signed a radar treaty with the Czech Republic yet.
For the governing coalition in Prague, getting Parliament to pass health reforms and defense arrangements will be like a road to hell — a very difficult one.
It looks like Klaus is getting ready to help.
Ivan Kalman
Germany
Come to justice
Communist “Jáchymov Hell” slave labor camp can be compared to the Nazi slave labor underground camp “Dora” (“Former prisoners revisit labor sites,” News, June 4–10).
Your story about Jáchymov Hell also opens up a debate about communist crimes during Stalin’s grip on power.
Naturally, as in Nazi Germany, dictator Stalin could not accomplish such crimes alone. There was a communist criminal apparatus of the willing and the guilty. Whereas the names of the major Nazi criminals are known, the communist regime criminals are living in quiet retirement in Russia and the Czech Republic, relatively untouched.
What is still needed is a “communist hunter/Simon Wiesenthal” type of organization/person, so justice would be served on those guilty people, once and for all.
Paul Zellman
Los Angeles
New empire?
Suggesting that Czechoslovakia should have become part of a new Central European Federation (or new Austro-Hungarian Empire) to unite Europe, is a stretch (“Saints and sinners,” Opinion, May 28–June 3).
Perhaps all of Europe should have just given up to an Austro-Hungary and German Federation during World War I for the sake of a United Europe? The logic does not follow.
Displacing Germans and Hungarians after World War II is tragic, but is not forcing subjects of the Austro-Hungarian Empire to fight over the Balkans more dastardly? Would not the emotional clinch after such a conflict make a Czech xenophobia even a little understandable?
This period should be understood fully and should be taken in context.
Bryan Moody
Las Vegas


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