Louis Lentin's No More Blooms was a great and shameful reminder of Ireland's dismal reaction to the Holocaust. The excuses were threadbare: we didn't know, we were poor and in any event we were neutral - as Eamon de Valera showed by signing the book of condolences on the death of Hitler. Ardheis De go raibh a anam.
Eleven years later, when church and State led popular reaction to the rising in Hungary and everyone knew what had happened, we were not so indifferent: an inter-party government proposed to accept up to 1,000 refugees.
But within months of welcoming the few hundred who came, our attitude had changed to something sadly resembling the present cant: they had better be grateful, better still invisible; and, best of all, begone.
We may have been neutral during the second World War, but when it came to the Cold War no one could be under any illusion as to whom we were neutral against.
We'd prayed regularly for the conversion of godless Russia, sympathised with those we knew to be trapped behind the Iron Curtain and generally complained about anything, from film stars to ships, that had been tainted by communism.
The Archbishop of Dublin could forbid people to attend a soccer match against Yugoslavia and hope to be obeyed: those were the days when that was what bishops - and everyone else - expected.
(It was either a mark of Dublin's deep love of sport, or the first sign of wavering support for the bishops, when several people who'd been faithful to the GAA Ban and had never seen as much as a kick of a foreign game turned up at Dalymount Park.)
The reason for the holy fuss was that, even as they kicked off in Dublin, Archbishop Stepinac was in one of Tito's jails in Belgrade. We found out later that he'd opposed the division of landlords' land, a scheme the Irish were bound to approve of. But bishops were bishops. And jail was jail. We'd seen what had happened to Oliver Plunkett, whose head was on display in a church in the town of Drogheda.
Hungary fitted our Cold War bill to a T. This was, as we thought, a Catholic country; small, struggling and under the heel of a powerful neighbour. Two leaders personified its spirit: Cardinal Josef Mindszenty and Imre Nagy.
Nagy was a reformer, who came to be highly regarded by some on the European left. He wanted to take Hungary out of the Warsaw Pact. What mattered to us, though, was that he was prepared to stand up to the Russians and for the Cardinal.
At the beginning of November 1956, the tanks of the Soviet Union rumbled in and people, who'd armed themselves with rifles, shotguns and Molotov cocktails, took to the barricades. Mindszenty made a defiant speech and sought refuge in the American legation.
Ireland, which had been a member of the United Nations for less than a year, was one of 50 countries at an emergency session of the Security Council which voted for a United States-sponsored resolution condemning the invasion.
Our ambassador, Freddy Boland, explained why, in a speech neatly summarised by Joseph Morrison Skelly in Irish Diplomacy at the United Nations 1945-1965, published this year by Irish Academic Press:
"[Boland] would return often to the concepts which imbued this speech: anti-communism; the national character of the Hungarian rebellion; Irish empathy for small nations callously invaded by powerful neighbours; the moral influence of the United Nations."
For this and later efforts Boland was excoriated by Father Dermot O'Doherty, described by Skelly as an unknown and unreasonable priest stationed in Minnesota.
His complaint had a familiar air of irritation: the ambassador was "pressing the rights of Hungary with more vigour than the rights of Ireland".
If the Irish delegation took no action to defend the minority in Northern Ireland, Father O'Doherty wrote, "suspicion will be confirmed that the present Irish government (to which we might join the Irish bishops) is as zealous a defender of British interests as the British themselves. Woe to such a government; woe to such a treason." Begob, it would put you in mind of the Fianna Fail lads in Ennis during the Presidential election. But Boland defended the government, and the bishops. Ireland's line was checked with the Vatican and not found wanting.
The Minister for External Affairs, Liam Cosgrave, weighed in with comparisons between Ireland and Hungary. Hungarians were being deported to Siberia and he told the assembly that "mass deportation - or transportation as it was called in the dark phases of my own country's history - is one of the cruellest forms of political inhumanity."
The minister might also have recalled that Arthur Griffith's interest in dual monarchy had been inspired by a Hungarian plan to reduce Austrian dominance in the Austro-Hungarian empire.
In any event Mr Cosgrave was doing no more than echoing popular sentiment. When the first groups - more than 160 - arrived at Shannon Airport on November 25th, 1956, thousands turned out to applaud them. The Mayor of Limerick, Ted Russell, and several priests were in the welcoming party.
Arthur Quinlan, who has reported on every event of any consequence in Limerick, Foynes and Shannon since the beginning of the war, remembers the eager reception and the transfer of the refugees to an Army camp at Knockalisheen in east Clare.
But, as The Irish Times noted when they arrived, the Hungarians "had absolutely no desire to settle down to the listless and enervating life" to which refugees were condemned. They were already anxious to move on, to Canada if possible.
A spokesman for the group said: "We are labouring people and we would like to labour. They ask when and where we can go to labour." But in the 1950s work was so scarce that 80,000 people were leaving the country every year.
The Hungarians were condemned to the listless life they'd hoped to avoid. Attempts to set up factories which might provide work ended in failure.
Arthur Quinlan also remembers how the mood changed as their frustration grew and in April 1957 many of the men and a few of the women among the 370 still in the camp went on hunger strike.
BY early May, up to 20 who had collapsed were being treated in hospital and senior officials from the departments of external affairs and justice were called in to negotiate. Rumours of outlandish demands spread through Limerick. In fact, the refugees simply wanted to find a way out.
People who'd gathered sympathetically at the perimeter fence when they first arrived complained that they were as bad as the tinkers. When they got drunk and appeared in court they were lectured on ingratitude. This was Frank McCourt's city.
Comments in the Dail, where Frank Aiken of Fianna Fail had now replaced Mr Cosgrave, reflected changed attitudes. Bill Murphy of Fine Gael: "They have rashers and eggs for breakfast. Many of our own people have not. I would let them strike."
Donogh O'Malley (FF): "It should be made clear to the Hungarians what Ireland has done for them . . . They received no guarantee of employment here. If they don't like it, they are free to return."
Jack McQuillan (Ind): "Why were they brought here under false pretences?" Mr de Valera: "That isn't fair."
Is the only difference between the 1950s and the 1990s that some of us are better off?