Dunkirk

riffmongous wrote: »

That's quite the qualification :eek:

Do you know anything else about him, even his name? He is not on the list of Righteous Among the Nations (perhaps not unsurprisingly) so how do you think he was honoured?

I never said he was mentioned as Righteous among the Nations. I think there is only one Irish person so honoured, a Protestant lady who lived in France during the war and helped Jews there. My understanding is that the Righteous accolade was reserved for those who risked or sacrificed their lives during the Nazi tyranny to help Jews. As such there are very few nationals from countries outside the zone of Nazi occupation honoured as Righteous. Hardly any Americans, for example. The biggest national grouping of Righteous people are Poles.

One might have suffered some spiteful backbiting from the less tolerant sections of Irish society for championing the cause of Jewish immigration during the war but it could hardly be described as life-threatening.

I think Dillon's brother was called Theo and I remember hearing he was honoured for his efforts, although it was probably a minor one.

As regards only accepting Jews who had converted, that was not his doing but the policy of holy Catholic Ireland at the time. But then again, as far as Nazis were concerned, being a practicing Christian of any kind was no defence against being classified as a Jew in their eyes. They were real Anti-Semites; Jewishness was a matter of race to them, not religion.