Ireland's Jewish community

Tony EH

odyssey06 wrote: »

Of course we do. We know the IRA collaborated with the Nazis. We know they wanted to hand over Ireland to the Nazis as the price for a united Ireland. We know what that would have meant for Ireland's Jewish population. The IRA was a morally bankrupt organisation.

This is absolute nonsense.

If you want to discuss the history of the period, I'm all ears.

If it's fantasy you're looking for, I'm not.

Tony EH

Tony EH wrote: »

This is absolute nonsense.

If you want to discuss the history of the period, I'm all ears.

If it's fantasy you're looking for, I'm not.

Didn't Patrick Pearse want to create a throne in Ireland for King Wilhelm?

And wasn't Arthur Griffith's big idea that of a dual monarchy, like in the Austro Hungarian empire?

All of this was long before the Nazis, but there certainly was a willingness there to collaborate with the Germans. Anyway that's just a minor footnote, and not really relevant (but almost as interesting, I think, as Irish Jewish history)

Peregrinus

odyssey06 wrote: »

Of course we do. We know the IRA collaborated with the Nazis. We know they wanted to hand over Ireland to the Nazis as the price for a united Ireland. We know what that would have meant for Ireland's Jewish population. The IRA was a morally bankrupt organisation.

We don't know this; it's a historical what-if.

We can easily come up with a plausible alternative. E.g. while the Germans were happy to encourage/work with the IRA, they were equally happy to encourage/work with elements that were fundamentally opposed to the IRA - like the British Union of Fascists, who harboured many unreconstructed British imperialists who would certainly not have favoured a united Ireland separate from Britain and, given their druthers, would have wanted to re-take the Irish Free State. And even as the some in the German government were channelling practical support to the IRA, we now know that others were drawing up quite detailed plans for a British puppet state whose regional centres of government were to be London, Birmingham, Liverpool, Edinburgh, Cardiff . . . and Dublin.

If the IRA were opportunistic in collaborating with Germany, Germany was equally opportunistic in collaborating with the IRA. And if, following a successful invasion of, um, these islands, the Germans felt that the BUF were going to be more useful collaborators than the IRA - and they almost certainly would have felt that - then I wouldn't put much money on the prospects of the IRA's fond expectations of a united Ireland, separate from Britain, being delivered.

So, in our historical what-if fantasy novel, we can quite plausibly depict the IRA as feeling thoroughly abandoned and betrayed by the Germans, and as taking up arms (probably not very effectively) against a German puppet state that embraces Ireland, while it's some other group - let's say, unionists and/or socially conservative Catholics - who provide those who will run the puppet state.

ironingbored

A Tyrant Named Miltiades! wrote: »

Your summary of the situation might be too kind. Corbyn has praised a book about Jews being in charge of international finance as "brilliant".

Maybe Corbyn didn't really read the book whose foreword he wrote, but when you add it to all of the other genuine concerns about his stance on anti-semitism, there are legitimate concerns about him.

This is a bigger issue in the UK than it is in Ireland, because we have almost no Jewish population.

But the only Jewish people I know live in London, this is a real issue for them and their families. It's not nice to reflect on the fact that your next leader might object to your existence. I'm on the left, maybe further to the left than Corbyn says he is, but even I couldn't tolerate him.

I follow loads of leftist/left leaning Jews on Twitter who will possibly change your mind.

@jewdas
@shaunjlawson (Thread on the Panorama program: https://twitter.com/shaunjlawson/status/1149144957598539777)
@arryTuttle (who has since deleted his account due to doxxing)

Tony EH

Peregrinus wrote: »

I know, but so what? By the same reason, none of the four countries you list did as much as Italy. Does that make any difference?

We can only judge the morality of what people actually did. It doesn't help to observe that, if their circumstances were different, they might have been able to do a lot more.

I think the matter of degree makes a difference yes. Being a full on ally, like Hungary, is very different to accepting some arms.

I wouldn't mistake that for absolution though.

Peregrinus

A Tyrant Named Miltiades! wrote: »

Didn't Patrick Pearse want to create a throne in Ireland for King Wilhelm?

Not for King Wilhelm, but for a German prince. This, after all, is how Greece, Belgium, Romania, Bulgaria and other countries acheived independence; by becoming independent kingdoms and importing a German prince to be king. (Germany had an awful lot of spare princes.)

And it's not something Pearse wanted to do; he was a Republican by conviction. But it's something he was willing to contemplate as a tested-and-effective model of establishing a newly-independent country.

A Tyrant Named Miltiades! wrote: »

And wasn't Arthur Griffith's big idea that of a dual monarchy, like in the Austro Hungarian empire?

Yes though, again, he wasn't actually a fan of it. He too would have preferred a republican model of government, and in fact he identified with a Hungarian nationalist figure who held out against the dual monarchy. But he thought the dual monarchy model might have value as a compromise that could secure broader assent than a pure republican model.

A Tyrant Named Miltiades! wrote: »

All of this was long before the Nazis, but there certainly was a willingness there to collaborate with the Germans. Anyway that's just a minor footnote, and not really relevant (but almost as interesting, I think, as Irish Jewish history)

Griffith's dual monarchy idea didn't involve collaborating with the Germans; he was suggesting a dual monarchy with Britain.

blackwhite

Tony EH wrote: »

As a matter fact, Sean Russell said in 1938 that he had no more interest in Germany being in Ireland than the British.

His actions from 1938-40 tell quite a different tale though.




It must get exhausting jumping from thread to thread trying to minimise antisemitism wherever it arises.

Wibbs

blackwhite wrote: »

Their continued veneration of Sean Russell - despite knowing the full extent of what the Nazis were doing - gives some very strong hints as to how willing they've have been to collaborate to the fullest extent.

Actually them knowing the full extent of what the Nazis were doing is extremely debatable. Of course the nazis were antisemitic and they weren't the only ones. They were also anticommunist, anti trade unions, anti lots of things. Specific information was hard to come by and even ignored by some in the Allied power base when information did come in. How many air raids were aimed at concentration camps? The German barracks were easy enough to distinguish within them. The Auschwitz complex was also an industrial target, yet never attacked. Churchill apparently considered the option but didn't go through with it. Neither did the Americans.

Nowadays we know the true extent of what they were doing, but before and during the war not nearly so much beyond rumour and whispers. When witnesses did come forward it was scarcely to be believed. Hell, even in the post war period the Holocaust was almost a sideline. The world had seen the photos and film and reports from Belsen, but the true and wider extent was not nearly so well known and with the new Cold War going on and the need for Germany as a buffer it was sidelined even further. It was a US based chap by the name of Dr Raul Hilberg who kicked off research into this period and crime against humanity. Even then he had to fight to get his research published in the US and it only found a publisher in 1961. It didn't get into the general public consciousness until later again.

Even among Germans it was an odd and chilling mix of avoidance of the subject or complete ignorance of the details or a refusal to believe what details did get through. It was a scarily "invisible" machine at work and unless you were directly involved in its implementation it was a very nebulous business and one kept apart from the "normal" war effort. Even among Hitler's staff, bodyguards, secretaries etc, those who worked within the belly of that beast day after day for years, all of them declared they never saw or heard any specific or even vague details of the Final Solution. Even the Soviet interrogators that questioned some of them and tortured many believed their story. Many of them concluded that it was almost entirely left to people like Himmler to implement this horror and kept separate as much as possible. If you were one of his staff you would have known damn well what was going on. Outside that circle, if you noticed anything you kept your mouth shut. I remember an interview with a German railway office type who scheduled trains throughout the reich. Among the everyday rail traffic he saw trains going out of the main German areas into the east packed to capacity, but coming back empty, but didn't want to think about what this actually meant and consoled himself with the idea that people were being simply relocated...

A quote on the matter from Hitler's bodyguard and one of the last people to see him in the bunker where he killed himself:
“I heard nothing of the Wannsee Conference on 20 January 1942 in Berlin, which was to organise in detail the extermination of the Jews which had already begun. As already mentioned, the subject of Jews and concentration camps never came up among us. Neither did anything ever filter through to us which might have led to a discussion, nor did we have any motive to talk about these things. We knew of the existence of concentration camps as work camps, but we knew nothing of what had been decided and brought into effect for the inmates of the concentration camps in the eastern territories. If Hitler had ever gone to one of those places, then we would have known, because the bodyguard was at his side around the clock. Wherever he went, we went too: from where he came, we came from there too. Our colleagues might have told me had I not been there myself. How could crimes of such enormity have remained such a well-kept secret?”

Excerpt From: Rochus Misch. “Hitler's Last Witness.”

That's among the more chilling aspects of this crime.

Tony EH

blackwhite wrote: »

His actions from 1938-40 tell quite a different tale though.

Here's another Russell quote for you:

"I am not a Nazi. I am not even Pro German. I am an Irishman fighting for the independence of Ireland. The British have been our Enemies for hundreds of years. They are the enemy of Germany today. If it suits Germany to give us help to achieve independence, I am willing to accept it, but no more, and there must be no strings attached."

blackwhite wrote: »

It must get exhausting jumping from thread to thread trying to minimise antisemitism wherever it arises.

I'm not interested in minimising anything. Be careful where you're going with this.

topper75

keano_afc wrote: »

My sister in law put 2 of her kids in Stratford NS in Ranelagh because she could afford to and its a good school. Her youngest mixes well with the kids there.

She had her birthday party a couple of weeks back and my SIL ordered one of those mobile petting zoos to come to the house. They set up out the back garden and all was going well. I arrived after work to collect my wife and kids and noticed a lot of the kids from the Jewish school were at the party. You can imagine my surprise when I went out the back garden to see a small pig being passed around the kids as part of the petting zoo. My SIL had completely forgotten that she'd invited a lot of Jewish kids to the party and never told the petting zoo to leave Porky at home.

Funny story one way or another. What is the deal with that though technically? It it that cooked pig flesh in not kosher food, or are pigs to be shunned in entirety alive or dead.

blackwhite

Wibbs wrote: »

Actually them knowing the full extent of what the Nazis were doing is extremely debatable. Of course the nazis were antisemitic and they weren't the only ones. They were also anticommunist, anti trade unions, anti lots of things. Specific information was hard to come by and even ignored by some in the Allied power base when information did come in. ............

Sorry there Wibbs - I think you've misunderstood the point.

Sinn Féin, Republican Sinn Féin and the PIRA have all continued to venerate Russell, long after the full scale of Nazi barbarism and atrocities were fully known.
The current leader of Sinn Féin has delivered orations at a statue of Russell FFS.

The continued veneration of a nazi-collaborator provide a very strong indication that they've have held their noses and tolerated most anything if they thought it might further "the cause"

blackwhite

Tony EH wrote: »

Here's another Russell quote for you:

"I am not a Nazi. I am not even Pro German. I am an Irishman fighting for the independence of Ireland. The British have been our Enemies for hundreds of years. They are the enemy of Germany today. If it suits Germany to give us help to achieve independence, I am willing to accept it, but no more, and there must be no strings attached."




I'm not interested in minimising anything. Be careful where you're going with this.

Just commenting on a pattern in your posting - but thanks for the not-so-thinly-veiled threats :rolleyes:

Peregrinus

Wibbs wrote: »

Actually them knowing the full extent of what the Nazis were doing is extremely debatable . . .

The "Final Solution" - the attempt at a systematic extermination of the Jewish people - had not begun when Russell died. So far as we know it hadn't even been thought of. So we can't judge Russell, or anyone in the IRA at the time, on the basis that they would countenance working with people who would do such a thing.

But were the Nazis known to be viciously, systematically antisemitic? Hell, yes. Antisemitic laws started to be enacted in 1933; the Nuremberg race laws (stripping jews of citizenship and imposing severe disablities on them) in 1935; Kristallnacht happened in 1938. Where they could, Jews were fleeing Germany in large numbers from the mid-1930s onwards.

This was all widely-known, and much-discussed. Yes, IRA figures who collaborated with the Nazis knew who they were collaborating with.

cameramonkey

ILoveYourVibes wrote: »

‘

The following action led to a fear of a pogram in Dublin at the time.


In October 1923, Commandant James Conroy was implicated in the murder of two Jewish men, Bernard Goldberg and Emmanuel 'Ernest' Kah[a]n. A later application for an army pension was rejected. The killings were the subject of a 2010 investigative documentary by RTÉ; CSÍ: Murder in Little Jerusalem

You are really showing your colours here. Those murders had nothing to do with the IRA, they were carried out by free state army officers avowed enemies of the IRA.. Your grasp of history is not great..

Tony EH

Wibbs wrote: »

Actually them knowing the full extent of what the Nazis were doing is extremely debatable. Of course the nazis were antisemitic and they weren't the only ones. They were also anticommunist, anti trade unions, anti lots of things. Specific information was hard to come by and even ignored by some in the Allied power base when information did come in. How many air raids were aimed at concentration camps? The German barracks were easy enough to distinguish within them. The Auschwitz complex was also an industrial target, yet never attacked. Churchill apparently considered the option but didn't go through with it. Neither did the Americans.

Nowadays we know the true extent of what they were doing, but before and during the war not nearly so much beyond rumour and whispers. When witnesses did come forward it was scarcely to be believed. Hell, even in the post war period the Holocaust was almost a sideline. The world had seen the photos and film and reports from Belsen, but the true and wider extent was not nearly so well known and with the new Cold War going on and the need for Germany as a buffer it was sidelined even further. It was a US based chap by the name of Dr Raul Hilberg who kicked off research into this period and crime against humanity. Even then he had to fight to get his research published in the US and it only found a publisher in 1961. It didn't get into the general public consciousness until later again.

Even among Germans it was an odd and chilling mix of avoidance of the subject or complete ignorance of the details or a refusal to believe what details did get through. It was a scarily "invisible" machine at work and unless you were directly involved in its implementation it was a very nebulous business and one kept apart from the "normal" war effort. Even among Hitler's staff, bodyguards, secretaries etc, those who worked within the belly of that beast day after day for years, all of them declared they never saw or heard any specific or even vague details of the Final Solution. Even the Soviet interrogators that questioned some of them and tortured many believed their story. Many of them concluded that it was almost entirely left to people like Himmler to implement this horror and kept separate as much as possible. If you were one of his staff you would have known damn well what was going on. Outside that circle, if you noticed anything you kept your mouth shut. I remember an interview with a German railway office type who scheduled trains throughout the reich. Among the everyday rail traffic he saw trains going out of the main German areas into the east packed to capacity, but coming back empty, but didn't want to think about what this actually meant and consoled himself with the idea that people were being simply relocated...

A quote on the matter from Hitler's bodyguard and one of the last people to see him in the bunker where he killed himself:
“I heard nothing of the Wannsee Conference on 20 January 1942 in Berlin, which was to organise in detail the extermination of the Jews which had already begun. As already mentioned, the subject of Jews and concentration camps never came up among us. Neither did anything ever filter through to us which might have led to a discussion, nor did we have any motive to talk about these things. We knew of the existence of concentration camps as work camps, but we knew nothing of what had been decided and brought into effect for the inmates of the concentration camps in the eastern territories. If Hitler had ever gone to one of those places, then we would have known, because the bodyguard was at his side around the clock. Wherever he went, we went too: from where he came, we came from there too. Our colleagues might have told me had I not been there myself. How could crimes of such enormity have remained such a well-kept secret?”

Excerpt From: Rochus Misch. “Hitler's Last Witness.”

That's among the more chilling aspects of this crime.

This is the problem with a lot of folk today when discussing anything historical. They assume that historical figures know what WE know today and it's a complete fallacy, especially in a period where the only portal of information was the wireless or what some bloke told you.

It would have been nigh on impossible for ANYONE to have have had actual knowledge that was bona fide, if they were not involved in a major capacity. A best, one would have to rely on rumour and hearsay which, during wartime, would have been wholly unreliable.

It didn't surprise me at all that Rochus Misch would have been completely ignorant of anything to do at Wannsee. Why wouldn't he? The vast majority of Nazi party members wouldn't have had a clue about Wannsee, or even Auschwitz, Chelmno or Sobibor for that matter. Those camps were built in Poland for a reason and anyone knowing anything did so because they needed to know.

And, as you say, the capacity for people to deliberately "not know" something becomes enormous during a war. Especially a war as devastating as WWII, where ordinary people, including Germans, are carried along by events just as much as anyone else.

The simple fact is, even if Germans had known about the true extent of Nazi crime, they would have been powerless to have done anything about it.

Tony EH

blackwhite wrote: »

Just commenting on a pattern in your posting - but thanks for the not-so-thinly-veiled threats :rolleyes:

Don't become the first poster I hit the Report on. Is that clear enough for you.

ILoveYourVibes

Lol as if the IRA were lovely lads apart from the antisemitism.


You can hardly defend their character.

blackwhite

Tony EH wrote: »

Don't become the first poster I hit the Report on. Is that clear enough for you.

I guess that's one way to try and bully anyone away from debating :rolleyes:

Tony EH

blackwhite wrote: »

I guess that's one way to try and bully anyone away from debating :rolleyes:

Saying someone is trying to "minimise anti Semitism" isn't debating.

ILoveYourVibes

It might be useful if we decide to focus on the Irish Jewish community.

I think the other subject is emotive for some people and while it might seem like cowardice to back away from debate it might be a good idea.

Some people obviously have very different perceptions and ideas based probably on their upbringing and exposure to different versions of history. I don't think we will change minds.

But its just more likely the topic will be either closed or at least derailed.

I think enough posts have been devoted to it already.

steddyeddy

A Tyrant Named Miltiades! wrote: »

Didn't Patrick Pearse want to create a throne in Ireland for King Wilhelm?

And wasn't Arthur Griffith's big idea that of a dual monarchy, like in the Austro Hungarian empire?

All of this was long before the Nazis, but there certainly was a willingness there to collaborate with the Germans. Anyway that's just a minor footnote, and not really relevant (but almost as interesting, I think, as Irish Jewish history)

These are individuals who would have traded one empire for another. Edward Simpson, former king of England had also similar goals. There was far more British collaboration with the Nazis with high up individuals than with Irish.

blackwhite

Tony EH wrote: »

Saying someone is trying to "minimise anti Semitism" isn't debating.

If you make posts on a public forum, then don't be shocked if someone comments on them.

IMO, your posting on this and the thread in CA are falling into the same mistakes that Corbyn is making - ignoring or dismissing any concerns about antisemitism because you share other positions/beliefs with the accused.

blackwhite

steddyeddy wrote: »

These are individuals who would have traded one empire for another. Edward Simpson, former king of England had also similar goals. There was far more British collaboration with the Nazis with high up individuals than with Irish.

The BUF in the mid 1930s were replete with members from "noble" families - and were pretty overtly anti-semetic.

If Hitler hadn't decided to turn west, I'd question whether the scale of support for facism in England would have declined as quickly as it did. If Germany had kept its focus Eastward only, I think there could have been considerable pressure on the British Govt to withdraw from hostilities by 1941/2

Tony EH

blackwhite wrote: »

If you make posts on a public forum, then don't be shocked if someone comments on them.

IMO, your posting on this and the thread in CA are falling into the same mistakes that Corbyn is making - ignoring or dismissing any concerns about antisemitism because you share other positions/beliefs with the accused.

You have no idea what I "share" with anyone.

ILoveYourVibes

DID YOU KNOW

That James Connolly gave out election pamphlets in Yiddish for the Jewish community?

And further more did you know that Dublin had its own specific dialect of Yiddish?



https://comeheretome.com/2010/03/01/james-connolly-yiddish-election-leaflet-1902/

steddyeddy

The Switzers of Dublin who owned shops around Ireland were a Jewish family I think. I used to live in the lovely Terenure in Dublin and I knew a few Jewish people there. Terenure might seem rich now but decades ago it was full of tenements. The Jewish immigrants who came into Ireland came into extreme poverty a lot of the time and worked their way up from nothing.

Mad_maxx

ILoveYourVibes wrote: »

Did they have to be antisemitic? Did that help the founding of the state in anyway? No.

I don't believe the IRA were anti semetic

Mad_maxx

ILoveYourVibes wrote: »

Scratch the surface of the IRA and SF they are deeply ethno nationalist.

Everyone knows this. The multi cultural image is just a facade.

So are the DUP

Edgware

Mad_maxx wrote: »

I don't believe the IRA were anti semetic

Of course

ILoveYourVibes