Actual ‘over reaching’ power of the Nazis

ACCORDING to Mr Laverack (Letters 7 January) he is a dissenter “for speaking out against over reaching power of the state”.

Having practised as a solicitor for over 40 years, I have encountered the state’s ‘over reaching power’ on quite a few occasions.

No proposals I have yet seen in connection with our current Covid vaccination problems come even remotely within that description.

When Mr Laverack and others seek to compare them with actual Nazi conduct one has to wonder how much knowledge of that appalling period they actually possess.

A veritable mountain of books exist on the subject but anyone who has actually experienced it hardly needs to consult them.

My late father-in-law, a GP in rural France, was one of 30 hostages arrested in 1944 and made to stand in front of the village church for several hours to face a battery of machine guns and a flame thrower.

They were lucky – they only survived the familiar Nazi atrocity because the widow of a suspected collaborator who had just been assassinated by the local maquis, an act of dissent which had clearly displeased him, managed to persuade the German commandant to spare them.

Barely a footnote in the history of the period but nevertheless one of which my wife and I are both very conscious as we were married in that very same church in 1964, just 20 years later.

Mr Laverack might care to consider his likely fate had he chosen to voice his dissent against the actual, rather than imagined ‘over reaching power’ of the Nazis.

Tony Lawton

Skelton, York

No concentration camp for dissenter

WHILST I didn’t imagine for a minute that Matthew Laverack would modify his ‘beliefs,’ it is unbelievable that he would continue to argue that compulsory injections are the thin end of the wedge that will lead to a totalitarian state.

No-one would deny him the right to his opinion, as I am sure nobody will turn up at his door and take the ‘dissenter’ away to a concentration camp.

Exasperated .

Jim Welsman

Stamford Bridge

Their magic potions don’t work!

CHRISTIAN Vassie claims (Press, January 6) we will not escape this pandemic until we are all vaccinated.

Experience says otherwise.

As a septuagenarian with a positive PCR test I can attest that the vaccines do not do what it says on the tin.

Despite being double jabbed I have Covid. The vaccine hasn’t worked for me - or many others.

We were told the vaccines would prevent infection and allow those inoculated to return to near normal life.

But when inoculated people got the virus anyway the authorities back-pedalled saying the vaccine wouldn’t actually prevent getting Covid or passing it on but it should lessen the symptoms.

Then they said that booster jabs would solve the problem.

They sound like snake oil salesmen coming up with excuses as to why their magic potions don’t work.

Matthew Laverack

Eldon Street, York

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