I am writing in regard to your article "Dunajská Streda: A basket of colorful oddities," which appeared in your March 27 - April 9, 1997, edition (Vol. 3 #6), written by Richard Lewis. In it, the author refers to a statue in a park across from the Malý Dunaj, which he describes as "adding to the weirdness..." of the park and what it represents as "...left to the beholder to decide."
Now, I am not the professional journalist that Mr. Lewis is, but even the thumb-high photo of this statue that appears in the article is obviously the Ten Commandments. This coupled with the fact that it has inscriptions in Hungarian, Slovak and Hebrew with the phrase "In my fear, am calling you God," says to me that this is probably a memorial to the nearly 4,000 Jews who were deported from Dunajská Streda during World War II.
A phone call to a colleague of mine in Dunajská Streda elicited the information that this statue is in fact a memorial to the Jews deported during WWII.
Maybe when Mr. Lewis writes another article he should employ some of his journalistic proclivities and ask questions. His remarks are insulting and insensitive to Jews who now live in the Slovak Republic, and I feel that a published apology should be forthcoming.
Gary Yungerman, Kráľovský Chlmec
