MAY I use your pages to congratulate the organisers of the recent Anne Frank exhibition and the accompanying fringe events which took place throughout the city and county during the month of October.

The range and quality of the events were excellent and certainly achieved their aim to stimulate interest, argument and discussion of our attitudes to prejudice and racism.

It was good to see so many schoolchildren being involved by their teachers. The inclusion of topics of current cases of racism and prejudice, notably the Stephen Lawrence affair, problems encountered by black footballers and also the local traveller community encouraged close consideration of our present attitudes to persecution of minorities.

However, I was most concerned to find that an important exhibit was missing, namely a copy of the letter from Otto Frank to the British government, sometime in the late 1930s, requesting asylum for him and his family and alongside it, a copy of our government's refusal. To me these letters had been most disturbing when I visited the Anne Frank house in Amsterdam.

These two items should surely be on display if the aim of the exhibition is to 'challenge racism, prejudice and persecution of minorities' in our country today.

We must constantly be vigilant and never cease questioning our own and our government's responses to asylum seekers.

I would like to know whether political sensitivity was the reason for this omission or was some external coercion exercised in the decision to leave out these letters from an otherwise excellent exhibition?

KATH CARD,

Moreton-on-Lugg,

Hereford.