(JEWISH GROUP) Ireland's prime minister gave condolences for Hitler's death -- here's why that's a contemporary problem

The story of Irish Jews begins with journeys across the sea — from Kovno (modern-day Kaunas, Lithuania) to Cork City, where Ireland’s first modern Jewish community settled. While this community once thrived, its legacy now echoes in unexpected places — like in Cork City Council’s recent debate over the infamous condolences then-Prime Minister Éamon de Valera issued to Germany after Adolf Hitler’s death. Ireland was the only democracy in the world to offer condolences.

De Valera’s May 2, 1945 visit to Eduard Hempel, the German envoy in Ireland, after Hitler’s suicide at the end of the Battle of Berlin was made as part of Ireland’s strict policy of neutrality during World War II. But it has always been seen as a stain on both de Valera’s legacy, and Ireland’s historical approach to antisemitism.

Almost 80 years later, in January of this year, Cork City Council voted to write to the present Taoiseach, or Prime Minister, Micheál Martin, to ask for him to “recant” de Valera’s condolences. Given de Valera’s preeminent role in contemporary Irish politics — he’s seen as of of modern Ireland’s “founding fathers,” and was a key figure in the struggle for independence — the Council’s motion is not merely a question of historical record. For those of us with Jewish heritage in Ireland, it touches on deeply personal questions about identity and the lasting shadows of antisemitism.

Like most people from a Jewish background the world over, I was raised with a heightened awareness about antisemitism. When I was five years old, my mother told me, I asked whether “this was where the people who Hitler killed were buried” as we walked by a pet cemetery in Glendalough, in County Wicklow, about an hour from where I was raised.

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