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 Jewish community live and have always lived on terms of closest friendship with their fellow Irish citizens. 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.
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