Shameful Irish stood silent while the Holocaust happened says Irish Justice Minister

Dan: WeYes I am. If Churchill wanted Ireland in the Allied war effort, then yes. Are you really suggesting that Ireland should have joined the war effort, with nothing in return accept some vague promise to encourage unity. If Churchill really needed Ireland, than he would have offered something. If not Fermanagh, south Armagh, west Derry?

CurtisJ ignores the facts - although no nation did anything like enough, if the UK took 10,000, Ireland in ratio could have managed more than 1,000...they took virtually zero...more accomodating to ex-Nazis after the war though

The bombing campaign got us the GFA and a slight improvement in the living standards of the nationalist population which you treat with contempt.

The anglo-sphere denied far more Jewish refugees than Ireland, a tiny and, for all intents and purposes, defenceless nation.

ancavker – Turn over County Fermanagh in the middle of a world war?…it contained key RAF bases that provided air cover for US Troops and munitions en route to the UK…a ‘good will gesture’ that endangered the lives of thousands of US servicemen would rightly have led to an outcry in the US…are you really claiming that would have been a good idea?

ancavker – Portugal and Spain were dictatorships…so little was expected of them; Switzerland bordered Germany so was at immediate risk; Sweden was bordered by Nazi-occupied Norway so ditto. Maybe given the location of Ireland, and the professed self-righteousness of its leader, a little more might have been expected, at least before the war started?

Dan: The Free State may have been indifferent to the plight of Jews during WW II, but so were many other neutral countries in Europe. Why is Ireland held to a different standard?

cahahfinbarr: Sorry to correct you my friend, but the off of a united Ireland to De Valera is a myth. One of more than a few of the revisionsits myths making the rounds these last years. The truth is Churchill told De Valera that AFTER the end of the war he would encourage the government in the six counties to reunify with the south, but would not force them. De Valera knew is was an empty statement. Had Churchill been sincere, as a sign of good will he would have at least turned over Fermanagh and Tyrone to Free State jurisdication as they never should have been included in the 6 counties any how.

Hi, I do not wish to rake over coals. We remained neutral even after America made up its mind what side it would support. We rejected the British promise of a United Ireland if we abandoned our neutrality. Palestine trusted Perfidious Albion and went to war against Germany. Their reward - 65 of persecution and incarceration. To use the holocaust as an excuse is an obscenity. While we were inexcusable ignorant of what was actually happening, Mr Shatter has no such excuse, and using the holocaust to justify himself and pejorative language to denigrate persons seeking justice and peace is totally unworthy of any proper human being.

these b can't stop with the whine - in every land they happen upon its like a cancer that spreads and now envelops the world. shame - is a word they don't understand - sick muthers.

Minister Shatter does not claim that Ireland could have prevented the holocaust…but it could have facilitated some of the Jewish refugees who were escaping Germany in 1938/39, just as the British did with the ‘Kindertransport’ of 10,000 mainly Jewish children…instead they did nothing ….Irish neutrality was a judicious response to political realities, Irish indifference to what was happening in Europe is the issue here…

I believe bunkerhill makes a fine point: why after 67 years is this subject bring brought up now? However, I have many Jewish relatives as well and there is a segment of that culture that has made an industry out of the Shoah. In fact, it's the title of a book written by a Jew. But again, this isn't about WW II, it's about something else.

I find the comments made by the minister outrages. Does he seriously believe that a nation still trying to find its own way in the world could have made even the tiniest difference in respect of the horrors of the holocaust, whilst the rest of Europe and America which by the way had an enormous Jewish citizenship sat and did nothing and as I have recently discovered that the Jewish community in America were as silent as everyone else whilst eye witnesses were reporting of their fellow Jews being massacred.I also find it typical of Jewish politicians when they make comments about anti semitism it seems to me that every disagreement made regarding Jewish state policy amounts to anti semitism. It is time they took their collective heads out of the sand stopped blaming all their ills on the holocaust, they as a nation do not have a monopoly on holocausts some nations were there long before the Jewish nation and started looking seriously at their conduct towards the Nation of Palistine

German historians are not as mealy mouthed as Seano on the causes of WW1. Volker Berghahn cites decisions made by “the small circles around the monarchies of Vienna and Berlin... and to a LESSER EXTENT, London, Paris and Saint Petersburg,"…This clearly places most of the responsibility where it really lies…Seano also believes that Northern Ireland’s discriminatory practices somehow ‘Forced’ PIRA into its bombing campaign…NO IT DID NOT…in both cases decisions were made to try and force neighbours into their arms…both failed…and long after those involved have ceased justifying their positions, Seano still wants to be an apologist for them… I wonder why?

The notion that Ireland as a tiny country barely clinging to its own sovereignty could have stopped or materially altered the holocaust is equally absurd. Of course, the british terror state was more interested in killing unarmed civilians in Dresden than stopping the holocaust. Moreover, hundreds of thousands (and probably millions) of Jewish victims were denied refuge by the anglo-sphere which had knowledge of the holocaust through intelligence agencies long before the Irish.