05.29.08
Jews in Ireland
Frank McNally does a nice job today on the history of Jewish immigration.
” The inconvenient truth is that Ireland refused numerous visa applications from European Jews in the 1930s, something for which John Bruton, when Taoiseach, apologised. As Alan Shatter told the assembly in Tailors Lane, official Ireland’s stance before the war was heavily influenced by De Valera’s envoy in Berlin, Charles Bewley, a notorious anti-Semite who was eventually recalled in disgrace, but not until 1939.
Had attitudes been different, many more would have survived the death camps, and the Irish Jewish community might be much larger today. …..
The experience of those who did make it here was mostly positive. There was relatively little discrimination. As Joe Briscoe, brother of Ben and son of a former Dublin lord mayor, Robert, told the gathering, Ireland is “the only country in Europe where not one Jewish person has been killed because of his religion”.
Unfortunately, this had echoes of the passage in Ulysses where the schoolmaster Mr Deasy asked Stephen Dedalus if he knew that Ireland is the only country never to persecute Jews: “And do you know why? – Because she never let them in.”
Deasy’s claim was not quite true when Joyce wrote it, nor even perhaps in the year Ulysses was set: 1904. But the comment was accidentally prescient, and it became true when it mattered most.”
City Dweller said,
May 30, 2008 at 12:23 am
I hope Archbishop McQuaid is rotting in hell for turning his back on the Jews in World War Two. His bigotry and the fear that the Jews would dilute the flock of the One True Church blinded him to the pogram agains the Jews.
We should be deeply ashamed of the actions of our leaders. When people came to us in their hour of need we turned away.
Gordon said,
May 30, 2008 at 11:13 am
Wasnt the Archbishop “only obeying orders”? After all the Church of Rome did have an agreement with that nice Mr Hitler.
Maybe one day an economic historian will study the visa applications. I suspect that the newly independent State refused entry to a good number of highly qualified people who might have had a considerable impact ont he development of the country.
Gordon
europhile said,
May 30, 2008 at 3:59 pm
I don’t suppose this is the appropriate place to rehash the old joke about Labour, Fine Gael and Fianna Fail each having one Jewish TD and the PDs having none.
cearta.ie » Blawg Review #164 said,
June 16, 2008 at 6:49 am
[...] the many themes explored in the book. Sarah Carey on GUBU a few weeks ago had excellent piece on Jews in Ireland tied in to the Irish anti-semitism unflatteringly depicted in Ulysses. Moreover, a century later, [...]