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2009 Learning from the past ~ lessons for today The Holocaust Memorial Day Committee in association with the Department of Justice, Equality and Law Reform; Dublin City Council; Dublin Maccabi Charitable Trust and the Jewish Representative Council of Ireland The Crocus International Project The Holocaust Educational Trust of Ireland invites school children to plant yellow crocuses in memory of one and a half million Jewish children and thousands of other children who were murdered during the Holocaust. Crocuses planted in the shape of a star of David by pupils of St Martin’s Primary School, Garrison, Co Fermanagh, Northern Ireland Holocaust Memorial Day 2009 National Holocaust Memorial Day Commemoration Sunday 25 January 2009 Mansion House, Dublin Programme MC: Yanky Fachler Voice: Moya Brennan Piper: Mikey Smith • Introductory remarks: Yanky Fachler • Words of welcome: Lord Mayor of Dublin, Councillor Eibhlin Byrne • Keynote address: President of Ireland, Mary McAleese • The Stockholm Declaration: Swedish Ambassador to Ireland, Mr Claes Ljungdahl Musical interlude: Moya Brennan • The Department of Justice, Equality and Law Reform: Sean Aylward, General Secretary • HOLOCAUST SURVIVOR: TOMI REICHENTAL • The Holocaust: Conor Lenihan TD, Minister for Integration • The victims of the Holocaust: Niall Crowley, former CEO of the Equality Authority • Book burning: Professor Dermot Keogh, University College Cork • The Évian Conference: Judge Catherine McGuinness, President of the Law Reform Commission • Visa appeals on behalf of Jews in Europe: Raphael Siev, former deputy legal advisor, Department Foreign Affairs • Hubert Butler: Julia Crampton Musical interlude: Mikey Smith • HOLOCAUST SURVIVOR: SUZI DIAMOND • Einsatzgruppen: Olwyn Enright TD • Chaim Herzog’s visit to Bergen-Belsen: Mervyn Taylor • Fr Michael Morrison: Bill Morrison • Denis Johnston at Buchenwald: Jennifer Johnston • Scroll of names: Mercy College, Dublin; St Peter’s College, Dunboyne; Stratford College, Dublin; Loreto Secondary School, Fermoy Musical interlude: Moya Brennan • HOLOCAUST SURVIVOR: JAN KAMINSKI • Reflecting on the Holocaust: John Tierney, Dublin City Manager • Summons: Micheal O’Siadhail • Monsignor Hugh O’Flaherty: Catherine O’Flaherty • Clonyn Castle: Jonathan Schonfeld • A young person from Poland: Monika Kaliszewska • HOLOCAUST SURVIVOR: ZOLTAN ZINN-COLLIS • Go Home from this Place: Ruairi Quinn TD, Chairperson, Holocaust Educational Trust of Ireland • Minute’s silence • CANDLE LIGHTING • El Malay Rachamim: Prayer for the Repose of the Souls of the Departed, Rabbi Zalman Lent and Cantor Alwyn Shulman, Irish Jewish Community • Closing remarks: Yanky Fachler 1 The Nazi Holocaust – A systematic programme to annihilate the Jews of Europe • February 1933 – the first concentration camp, Dachau, is established to hold prisoners arrested after the arson attack on the Reichstag parliament building. • May 1933 – Nazi students and militiamen light huge public bonfires in which they burn books by Jews, communists and other ‘disruptive’ influences. • 1933 onwards – Jews are expelled from the army, the civil service, professional associations, sports and social clubs. • 1935 – The Nuremberg Laws strip Jews of citizenship and define them by racial criteria. • 35,000 Jewish war veterans who had won medals for bravery during WWI lose their privileges. • 9 November 1938 – Kristallnacht (Night of Broken Glass). Widespread pogroms against the Jews of Germany and German-controlled lands. • Euthanasia Programme – murder of people with disabilities. More than 200,000 men, women and children with disabilities are put to death. • 100,000 Jews die in labour camps between 1939 and 1940. • Following the Nazi invasion of the Soviet Union in 1941, SS mobile murder squads known as Einsatzgruppen murder over 2,000,000 civilians, most of them Jews in Russia and eastern Poland. • Some 500,000 Jews die in ghettos from starvation and disease. • 30,000 Jewish partisans fight the Nazis in Eastern Europe. • In the Warsaw Ghetto, more than 100,000 Jews die of starvation and disease; more than 300,000 are deported to the death camps and 7,000 are killed in the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising between 19 April and 16 May 1943. • 1,000,000 Jews, 70,000 Christian Poles, 23,000 Gypsies, 15,000 Soviet prisoners and thousands of others perish in Auschwitz. • 1,500,000 Jewish children are murdered in the Holocaust. • Of the 300,000 Jews who go into hiding, pretend to be Aryans or acquire false identity papers, 100,000 die after capture or betrayal. • Out of approximately nine and a half million Jews living in Europe before 1939 only one third survive the Holocaust. One and a half million Jewish children were murdered by the Nazis as well as thousands of other children whom they considered unfit to live. Some of them were children with physical and mental disabilities; black, mixed-race and other ethnic children; Polish, Slav and Gypsy children. Children of Jehovah’s Witnesses and other Christian denominations who resisted the Nazis were destroyed along with children of their political opponents. The Nazis particularly targeted the children in an attempt to destroy the future of all of these groups of people. 2 Holocaust Memorial Day 2009 Contents Holocaust Memorial Day ..................................................................................................................4 Summary of the Declaration of the Stockholm International Forum on the Holocaust ..............4 Messages of Goodwill ........................................................................................................................5 The Holocaust ....................................................................................................................................6 Europe – The number of Jews annihilated by the Nazis in each European country .....................7 Ireland and Neutrality during World War II ...................................................................................10 Antisemitism in Ireland ..................................................................................................................13 The Évian Conference......................................................................................................................14 Ireland and Refugees ........................................................................................................................15 The Irish Co-ordinating Committee for Refugees .........................................................................15 Visa Appeals .....................................................................................................................................16 The Hat Factories.............................................................................................................................20 Irish Places of Refuge .......................................................................................................................23 Irish Children of the Holocaust ......................................................................................................24 Irish People and the Holocaust .......................................................................................................32 Irish Men of the Cloth .....................................................................................................................43 Summons by Micheal Ó Siadhail....................................................................................................45 Nazis and Spies ................................................................................................................................48 Voices from the Third Reich ...........................................................................................................52 The Holocaust in Irish Public Life..................................................................................................53 The Irish Jewish Museum................................................................................................................53 The Holocaust and the Arts in Ireland ...........................................................................................54 The Holocaust and Newcomers to Ireland.....................................................................................60 The Crocus Project – Responses .....................................................................................................68 Students’ responses to hearing a Holocaust survivor’s testimony................................................70 Responses to teachers’ education programmes .............................................................................71 We Remember ..................................................................................................................................72 Holocaust Memorial Day Candle Lighting ....................................................................................76 The Holocaust Educational Trust of Ireland ..................................................................................77 Sources, References, Acknowledgements.......................................................................................78 3 Holocaust Memorial Day The Holocaust Memorial Day commemoration is designed to cherish the memory of all of the victims of the Nazi Holocaust. A candle-lighting ceremony is an integral part of the commemoration at which six candles are always lit for the six million Jews who perished, as well as candles for all of the other