As a Maltese who lived through the dark years of WW II when this small island was being bombed, battered and besieged by the surrounding forces of Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy, I also look back in sadness at all the suffering inflicted on the inhabitants of Malta at that time.

So it is with due human comprehension that I read of the feelings of people like Anna Marie Navarro whose father suffered the pain and indignity of deportation in 1942. Certainly the hurried manner in which the deportees were made to leave the island while their case was under due process is deplorable.

On the other hand, one must concede that those were very exceptional times when the military might of the Nazi-Fascist Axis was bringing Malta to its knees with the threat of imminent invasion becoming very real.

The 43 deportees were perceived by British Intelligence at that time to constitute a danger as potential quislings. Some were cultured people, but they were removed not because they were devotees of Dante Alighieri (which they might well have been) but because their sympathies for Fascist Italy led by Benito Mussolini made them a serious risk to our security.

Better pens than mine have spelt out the pity of war, its cruelty and senseless destruction. We all suffered in WW II, some more than others. Enough to say that none of the deportees died in detention and some later found employment under British rule.

So let us keep a sense of proportion about this whole sorry business.

Joseph A. Muscat

TA’ XBIEX