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Ireland's Antisemitic Subculture
(Slugger O'Toole) Andy Pollak - Former deputy prime minister of Ireland, Senator Michael McDowell, wrote in the Irish Times on Dec. 3: "Ireland has unfortunately a history of antisemitic subculture at social and, at one time, political levels." He pointed to the past record of the Sinn Fein political party. President of Sinn Fein Mary Lou McDonald delivered orations at the statue to Sean Russell, who in 1940 traveled to Nazi Germany to seek help for the IRA in its campaign of violence in Britain and Northern Ireland. In the same year, the IRA issued a statement hailing the Nazis as "friends and liberators of the Irish people" and the IRA publication, War News, welcomed the "cleansing fire" of the Wehrmacht driving Jews from Europe. In 1946, the head of the Department of Justice, Thomas Coyne, issued a memorandum arguing against allowing 10 Jewish refugee families (around 40 people) into the country. Later that year, after Chief Rabbi Isaac Herzog had interceded with him, Prime Minister Eamon De Valera allowed 100 orphaned Jewish children, survivors of the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp, to come to Ireland. The writer, a former journalist with the Irish Times, served as founding director of Ireland's Centre for Cross Border Studies.