Madam, - The standing, good name and professionalism of the Wiesenthal Centre is not enhanced by its unsubstantiated allegations embroiling both the President of Ireland and the Hunt family.
The University of Limerick had not yet been formally created when, on a bleak December morning in 1974, John Hunt joined me for a cup of coffee and discussions commenced that resulted in the decision to open the Hunt collection for public display on the campus. Over the ensuing 25 years I had the honour of working closely with John and Putzel Hunt, and later with their children John and Trudy, as they implemented the pledge to give their astonishing collection of antiquities and art to the Irish people.
Every great museum in the world is open to the kind of charge levelled against the Hunt Museum and all contain some items whose provenance is in doubt. If the Hunt Museum had the problems the Wiesenthal Centre suggests, I would have expected a flood of claims from the families of the dispossessed. Yet this has not been the case, although the Hunt Museum material has been on public display for many years since it first opened on the Limerick campus in 1978.
John and Putzel Hunt dedicated their lives to gathering together the world's greatest private collection of Irish antiquities. I am aware how they saved and scrimped, even to the extent of forgoing summer holidays in order to purchase some particularly important addition. John and Putzel Hunt leave a lasting impression of selfless generosity and commitment to Ireland; their children do likewise. - Yours, etc.,
EDWARD M. WALSH,
President Emeritus,
University of Limerick.