Both Jonathan Shapiro (December 6) and Rebecca Hodes ("Helen's hyperbole", December 7) display embarrassing ignorance about DA leader Helen Zille and where she comes from.

Granted, it would have been wiser for Zille not to use the word "gestapo" (the Nazi secret state police). But for Zapiro to portray her as a neo-fascist smacks of mental kinship to those ANC parliamentarians who once called Tony Leon a Nazi.

Zille's parents and grandparents both suffered under Hitler.

On November 9 1938, during the infamous Kristallnacht, Zille's maternal grandparents' home in Essen was destroyed. Her Jewish grandfather, a lawyer, was incarcerated. Her mother's family fled to England and then South Africa (where Helen was born). On the paternal side, her Jewish grandmother, from Dessau, arrived in South Africa in 1934 as a refugee.

Zille describes herself as a "Christian, who is proud of her Jewish ancestry". To portray her as someone giving the Hitler salute is shameful.