Clara Frost received a reminder this week that not all the citizens of France oppose the war in Iraq.

Frost, who teaches French at Linn-Benton Community College, shared a letter she received from her friends Jean-Paul and Henriette Favrais, who live in Breal, near Normandy.

Jean-Paul sponsored an organization to honor an American pilot killed in Breal during World War II. The pilot, Russell Quinn, whose plane crashed June 13, 1944, one week after the Normandy Invasion, was from Harrisburg. Quinn's sister, Pat Hayworth, still resides in Harrisburg.

Now a retired automobile executive, Favrais was 9 years old when Quinn's plane crashed.

Frost, an Albany resident, who first met the French couple when they came to Harrisburg for a ceremony in 1997, translated the Favraises' letter.

"We are thinking very much about your great nation, for your soldiers, pilots, sailors and Marines," the couple wrote. "As it was 60 years ago, we wish to assure you of our gratitude. Here, we are sad to note that our 'poor country,' which owes its liberty to your soldiers, is not at your side to give back liberty to other people. We hope that America vanquishes the terror."

Frost said she was deeply touched by the letter.

"It made me cry because so many people are against us right now. I found it extremely gratifying," she said. "Many, many French people still remember and honor Americans for their part in liberating the French in two world wars."

In addition to the French government not allying itself with the U.S. on the war in Iraq, Frost said she is troubled by a trend in France.

"Personally, I'm upset as a Jew. There's a lot of anti-Semitism in France right now," she said. "French Jews are emigrating in greater numbers to Israel."