A Chara - With the unenviable reputation of having written the most obscene letter ever published in The Irish Times, told to lay off Bob Geldof or be censored, and then having Kevin Myers, my one time guide of the Somme battlefields, finding me disagreeable, I feel entitled to be given the opportunity to respond to such severe criticism.
I wrote that "most likely" six or seven Irish doctors and dentists were getting out of this country on a given day in October 1938, not what Kevin says I wrote. Given the high incidence of emigration among junior doctors, surely this is a reasonable assumption.
Surprisingly, he clearly states his discomfort about Holocaust Day, while I have stated that aspects of it make me uneasy. He acknowledges two historical facts, which your other contributors are ambiguous about, and often deliberately distort. 1. The Taoiseach at the time could not have foreseen the Holocaust. 2. There were grounds for the refusal of entry permits. Then he states that what "we in this newspaper feel a particular unease about" was strict censorship in 1945 and De Valera's condolences on the death of Hitler. This is a perfectly valid argument with which I fully agree. But he then states that the "we didn't have a clue" excuse for inaction won't wash because of the stark reality of Nazi deeds in 1938, widely published, and the headline in The Irish Times "Annihilation of Whole Jewish Race in Europe".
William Shirer, renowned American correspondent, who wrote the world famous history of Nazi Germany, which he loathed, wrote: "It is quite remarkable how little those of us who were stationed in Germany during the Nazi time, journalists and diplomats, really knew of what was going on behind the facade of the Third Reich" and "I found it extremely difficult and not always possible to learn the exact truth about Hitler's Germany". When I was first confronted with the horrors of the Holocaust, in the New Electric Cinema in 1945, I and my pals afterwards went to a nearby cafe. We sat in silent disbelief, asked each other if we, our parents, our politicans, or anybody in a position of power or authority was aware of what was going on. We concluded that all of us "didn't have a clue". If that won't wash, Kevin, so be it, because that was the way it was, for all of us. - Is mise,
Art O Laoghaire, Clontarf, Dublin 3.