State Papers: Jewish community rebuffed claim that Ireland was antisemitic 80 years ago
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Allegations that Ireland was an antisemitic country 80 years ago were rebuffed by members of Ireland’s Jewish community who described such claims as “false, irresponsible and mischievous".
State papers released by the National Archives show that just like in 2024 — following the recent announcement by the Israeli government that it was closing its embassy in Dublin because of “antisemitic rhetoric" — Ireland faced accusations of hostility to Jewish people in 1944.
The documents show the Jewish Representative Council of Éire issued a letter in 1944 which emphatically stated that neither the Irish government nor its people harboured antisemitic sentiments.
The organisation also dismissed any suggestion that there was any organised antisemitic movement in Ireland. It stated:
The letter which was contained in a file disclosed by the Department of Foreign Affairs also highlighted how Ireland’s constitution guaranteed religious freedom.
“Freedom to practice their religion is specifically guaranteed in the Irish constitution.
"No Irish government has ever discriminated between Jew and non-Jew,” it observed.
The letter was signed by more than a dozen members of the council including its president, a stockbroker, Edwin Solomons; its vice-president, consultant physician and professor of medicine in the College of Surgeons, Dublin, Leonard Abrahamson.
Other signatories included lawyers, Joshua Baker, Charles Spiro, and Herman Good, who was also the council’s honorary secretary.
In a separate letter, Fianna Fáil TD Robert Briscoe, a prominent Jewish politician who had played a key role in Ireland’s War of Independence, expressed similar sentiments to the Jewish Representative Council of Éire.
As a representative for 17 years of a Dáil constituency — Dublin South, which later became Dublin South-West — which was 97% Catholic, Mr Briscoe said he “emphatically” denied that “the people of Ireland, or the present or any government of Ireland are, or have ever been antisemitic".
Mr Briscoe, who would later serve for two terms as lord mayor of Dublin, described the accusation of Ireland being antisemitic as “a calumny” which had been promptly repudiated by the council which he claimed represented the country’s “entire Jewish community".
He also pointed out that Ireland’s Jewish community had played its full share in the country’s defence and auxiliary defence forces during the Second World War.
Mr Briscoe noted that they also “wholeheartedly” supported the Irish government’s policy of neutrality.
The statements by the Jewish Representative Council of Éire and Mr Briscoe were prompted by an inquiry from a member of the World Jewish Congress, Josef Katz, in August 1944 about the position of the Irish government on the establishment of a Jewish state in Palestine.
Other files show the Government declined a request made to its ambassador in Washington, Robert Brennan, from the Hebrew Committee of National Liberation (HCNL) to recognise a “Hebrew nation".
The HCNL suggested such recognition would allow Jewish nationals in Europe to seek protection through Irish legations.
However, the request was rejected with Mr Brennan explaining that the HCNL was not a representative body, as well as concerns that there could be potential diplomatic repercussions, particularly with Britain who had a mandate to rule Palestine.
The ambassador said he told the HCNL that "it was very unlikely that the Irish government would at this stage take any step in external affairs which would antagonize any of the big powers".
He also stated that the Jewish community themselves were divided on the issue of a "Hebrew nation" as many in the US thought that the establishment of a Jewish state would play into the hands of antisemites who felt Jews were not loyal to the country they resided in.
As the horrors of the Holocaust became more widely known, the World Jewish Congress appealed to the Irish government in 1945 to issue passport documents to surviving Jews in Europe in a similar fashion to other neutral countries like Sweden, Switzerland and Spain.
However, the request was rejected with Mr Brennan explaining that the proposal had been deemed “impractical”, while also expressing scepticism about its effectiveness.
“I doubted whether any representation from a neutral country at this time would be of any avail,” he added.