To the editor:

How easy (and mean-spirited) for the historical revisionists like Anne Applebaum to question the propriety of honoring those who died in WWII to defeat the Nazis (J-W editorial, April 29). As though the 25 million young Russians who died to defend their motherland were somehow responsible for the brutal postwar policies of Stalin! Like today’s U.S. casualties in Iraq and Afghanistan, their fathers who perished in Vietnam or Korea, or their distant relatives who died at Gettysburg, these soldiers gave the “last full measure of devotion,” and it’s proper that we honor their deaths. While history may later render a verdict as to whether the cause was just, we owe them our respect for their ultimate sacrifice.

Ray Finch,

Lawrence