MICHAEL McGUIRE,
Madam, - Kevin Myers asks (An Irishman's Diary, January 31st): "What if the Irish people had discovered the existence of the Final Solution in, say, 1943? Would we have acted?"
In February 1943 the Observer newspaper reported the torture and mass murder of Jews in prison camps. The report also said that this had been mentioned in the House of Commons in December 1942. The writer of the article was a man later known as Lord Beveridge (of National Health fame). He appealed to the British government to grant political asylum to anyone fleeing this persecution.
Perhaps censorship laws did not allow publication of this in neutral Ireland, but there were many Irish people in England and it is hard to believe that this news did not reach this country. - Yours, etc.,
MICHAEL McGUIRE, Bright House, Burt, Co Donegal.