In the wake of the devastation wrought by Storm Éowyn I was reminded of a phrase often used by my late father—‘the worst in living memory’. In meteorological terms it was even worse than 1961’s Hurricane Debbie, although less lethal in human terms; Debbie killed eighteen people, Éowyn only two. Debbie was my own earliest ‘living memory’, albeit hazy and reinforced by subsequent family folklore and the damage (particularly to trees) that seemed to linger for years afterwards.
It is part of what St Augustine would term my ‘present of past things’, as quoted by Brett Bowden in this issue’s Platform (‘Past, present and future’, pp 14–15). Professor Bowden also questions the often-implicit assumption that the present is always better than the past, a point taken up by Eric Conway in Letters (‘Historical presentism’, p. 12/13).
This time of the year also marks the 80th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz by the Red Army, an anniversary now marked worldwide by Holocaust Memorial Day. Soon that will have passed from ‘living memory’, with a consequent imperative that it be properly remembered in the face of rising Holocaust denial and ignorance, particularly amongst the young.
In that context it is outrageous that President Michael D. Higgins’s very measured speech to the event organised by Holocaust Education Ireland has been used by Israel and its supporters to characterise Ireland’s principled stand on Gaza (now thankfully on ceasefire) as anti-Semitic. A narrative is being spun not only that Ireland is anti-Semitic now but that it has always been so. Ireland’s wartime neutrality (nearly every state at the time was neutral until attacked) and Taoiseach Éamon de Valera’s ill-advised visit to the German legation to express condolences on the death of Adolf Hitler in May 1945 are cited as the main evidence, without any context or explanation, just as they were at the time (See ‘Éamon de Valera, the Irish diaspora and wartime hate mail’, pp 44–7). This is deeply ironic, since de Valera himself was often baited by his opponents as a ‘half-breed Jew’ and his 1937 constitution recognised not only the special position of the Catholic Church but also ‘other religious denominations’, including, explicitly, ‘Jewish Congregations’. Historically there have been many misrepresentations of the Irish people, but this one, that we are anti-Semitic, may be the worst in living memory.
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