A chara, - Having lived though the poverty, deprivation and isolation of the Thirties and Forties in this country, I am getting more and more fed up reading self-indulgent, self-opinionated and self-righteous comments from the "look back in anger" columnists of The Irish Times criticising all and sundry in this country for not doing more to accommodate Jews wishing to enter or settle here before the war.
Seamus Martin (January 27th) informs us that on October 9th, 1938, Chief Rabbi Herzog wrote to the Taoiseach requesting the admission of six or seven refugee doctors and dentists. In a flourish of his pen, in self righteous indignation, he concludes, dramatically: "The request was refused.' The predicament the Taoiseach faced at that time was that there were, most likely, six or seven Irish doctors and dentists getting out of this country on the same day, and he, no more than Chamberlain and nearly everyone else at that time, could not forecast the holocaust which was to come.
Cecil Woodham-Smith's history of the Famine states (page 241) that the first organisers of the United States aid for Ireland, on a large scale, were the Quakers. Of course Baron Lionel de Rothschild was involved in negotiations for a loan, with other merchant princes in London, the heart of the British Empire, to relieve distress in another part of the empire, not too far away.
Was it only I who felt a bit queasy last Saturday, watching a broadcast of Holocaust Remembrance Day, with the Prince of Wales, Tony Blair and the rest of the great and good in attendance, when we were treated to the once scruffy and foulmouthed Sir Bob Geldof, dressed in pinstripe suit, cravat, and Vidal Sassoon haircut, moralising and lecturing us all on how to be tolerant and compassionate, and to remember our history? The newspapers told us the Queen of England refused to attend this event. God Save the Queen. - Is mise,
Art O Laoghaire, Howth Road, Clontarf, Dublin 3.