I am compelled to respond to George Clark’s Oct. 23. editorial, “The choice is ours: fascism or democracy?”

I am a second-generation Holocaust survivor. If you are not familiar with the term, it is someone whose parents were Jewish and lived in Nazi-occupied Europe during World War II. In my case, it was my mother. She and a distant cousin were the only ones to survive the Holocaust from an extended family of more than 100 people.

For me, any casual reference to fascism is more than rhetoric; it is personal. The mainstream media, including Clark’s editorial, has taken to making casual comparisons to fascism using oblique or direct references to Hitler and the Nazis. I recoil anytime I read or hear such a comparison. Any modern day comparison to fascism minimizes the atrocities committed by the Nazis in the name of that ideology.

This serves to disrespect the memory of the millions who were murdered in the Holocaust.

Gabor Korthy

Augusta