Operation Shamrock was a scheme bringing refugee children from mainland Europe to Ireland in the aftermath of the Second World War. It was organised by the Irish Red Cross, and involved about 500 children, mostly from Germany, who stayed for three years before returning home.
The Save the German Children Society (SGCS) was founded on 16 October 1945 at a meeting in Shelbourne Hall, Dublin, to find foster homes for German children in Ireland. [1] [2] A number of pro axis activists in Ireland joined together, along with some well-meaning people, to set up the society. Many of its leading members were longstanding Pro-Axis supporters like Maurice O’Connor, Dr. Liam Gogan, P.S. O’Sullivan and Sean O’Bradaigh. People were aware of the Nazi influence within the group with Irish Times columnist Vincent Brittain describing it as ‘merely a thinly veiled excuse for the dissemination of Fascist propaganda’.[The president was Kathleen Farrell (née Murphy), a paediatrician at whose house Charlie Kerins had been arrested in 1944. [1] [3] [4] [5] [6] Dan Breen was treasurer. [1] [3] A Garda Special Branch attendee reported some speakers favoured assisting Germany from anti-British sentiment. [1] [3] Hermann Görtz, a convicted German spy, became secretary of the SGCS on his release from prison. [3] [7] The SGCS proposed to house Catholic and Protestant children with families of the same denomination, and not to take Jewish children, who it feared would not integrate. [1] Kathleen Lynn became vice president of SGCS in 1948 but was dissatisfied with its preference for Catholic children. [8] Sidney Czira [9] and Eamon Kelly [10] were also members.
The SGCS secured hundreds of volunteer families, 90% Catholic. [1] It had contact with religious charities in the British Zone and approached the Irish government about transporting children from there via Great Britain. [1] The centenary of the Great Irish Famine was a motivator for the Fianna Fáil government to assist Europe in general in the post-war hardship, [1] but it agreed with the British government that the SGCS was an unsuitable organisation and refused to permit immigration under its auspices. [1] The SGCS applied to the Allied Control Council and the United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration but was advised to use the Irish Red Cross to arrange for migration. [1]
The Irish Red Cross had by 14 February 1946 received 100 French children as refugees, and government efforts were ongoing to secure Polish refugee children. [11]
In Spring 1946, the British authorities agreed to allow children to leave Germany. The Irish government agreed to host some for three years, after which they would be sent back to relatives in Germany. [1] German Catholic charity Caritas had by May selected 100 children aged between 5 and 14, predominantly from the Ruhr area of North Rhine Westphalia. [2] [3] They were put in the care of the Irish Red Cross. [1] The first 88 children arrived in Dún Laoghaire on 27 July 1946. [2] [1] [3] The initial reception centre was St. Kevin's Hostel at Glencree, County Wicklow, a former reformatory school owned by the Minister for Supplies. [12] [13] There Daughters of Charity of Saint Vincent de Paul nuns provided treatment for transmissible diseases and malnutrition. [1] [2] [14] The Red Cross then liaised with the SGCS to place the children in the homes found by the SGCS. [1] Some children were removed from abusive homes, while most adapted quickly, learning English and sometimes forgetting their German. [1]
Between 1 January 1946 and 25 June 1947, 1000 aliens were registered under the Aliens Act 1935 as having immigrated to Ireland, of whom 462 were children; 421 of those were German, all but 18 of whom came via the Red Cross. [15] Some were orphans but others had parents incapable of caring for them, for reasons such as internment as POWs, homelessness, or illness. [2] In 1949, when the time came to return to Germany, many children did not wish to do so. [1] Where host and German families were both willing, the SGCS applied to the government to allow the children to stay in Ireland. [1] Against the wishes of the Red Cross, about fifty did so. [1]
Irish assistance to Germany reinforced in Britain the perception, fostered by wartime neutrality, that Ireland was pro-Nazi. [3] Conversely, West Germany in the 1950s had gratitude for Ireland's postwar relief aid, and ties grew between the countries. [3] In January 1956 a memorial fountain sculpted by Joseph Wackerle and commissioned by the German Gratitude Fund was unveiled in St Stephen's Green, Dublin, by the West German ambassador. [3] [16]
In 1961, the German war cemetery was opened near St Kevin's Hostel, Glencree, for graves of German aviators killed in Ireland during the war. In 1974, the hostel became the Glencree Centre for Peace and Reconciliation, which played a role in the Northern Ireland peace process in the 1990s. [2]
German-language courses provided for refugees in Dublin led to the foundation of St Kilian's German School. [1] [3] [17]
In March 1997, a reunion of over 300 foster-children and families was held at the German embassy in Dublin, attended by Presidents Mary Robinson of Ireland and Roman Herzog of Germany. [1] [2]
As part of The Gathering Ireland 2013, 21 refugee children from Germany, France and Austria returned to Glencree. [18]
A shamrock is a type of clover, used as a symbol of Ireland. Saint Patrick, one of Ireland's patron saints, is said to have used it as a metaphor for the Christian Holy Trinity. The name shamrock comes from Irish seamróg, which is the diminutive of the Irish word seamair and simply means "young clover".
Saint Patrick's Day, or the Feast of Saint Patrick, is a religious and cultural holiday held on 17 March, the traditional death date of Saint Patrick, the foremost patron saint of Ireland.
The Irish Guards (IG) is one of the Foot Guards regiments of the British Army and is part of the Guards Division. Together with the Royal Irish Regiment, it is one of the two Irish infantry regiments in the British Army. The regiment has participated in campaigns in the First World War, the Second World War, the Iraq War and the War in Afghanistan as well as numerous other operations throughout its history. The Irish Guards claim six Victoria Cross recipients, four from the First World War and two from the Second World War.
The Emergency was a state of emergency in the independent state of Ireland in the Second World War, throughout which the state remained neutral. It was proclaimed by Dáil Éireann on 2 September 1939, allowing the passage of the Emergency Powers Act 1939 by the Oireachtas the following day. This gave sweeping powers to the government, including internment, censorship of the press and correspondence, and control of the economy. The Emergency Powers Act lapsed on 2 September 1946, although the Emergency was not formally ended until 1976.
Irish Quebecers are residents of the Canadian province of Quebec who have Irish ancestry. In 2016, there were 446,215 Quebecers who identified themselves as having partial or exclusive Irish descent in Quebec, representing 5.46% of the population.
Events from the year 1946 in Ireland.
Events from the year 1939 in Ireland.
The history of the Jews in Ireland extends more than a millennium. The Jewish community in Ireland has always been small in numbers in modern history, not exceeding 5,500 since at least 1891, but Jews in Ireland have historically enjoyed a relative tolerance compared to elsewhere in Europe.
Charles Henry Bewley, GCSG was an Irish diplomat.
Hermann Görtz was a German spy in Britain and Ireland before and during World War II, liaising with the Irish Republican Army (IRA). After the war, he committed suicide rather than be deported from Ireland to Germany.
Glencree is a valley in the Wicklow Mountains in eastern Ireland. It is the third-closest valley in the mountains to Dublin city, the first being Glencullen and the second Glenasmole. The River Dargle flows down the valley, which rises to a height of about 400 metres. The foot of the valley is the site of the village of Enniskerry.
Kathleen Clarke was a founder member of Cumann na mBan, a women's paramilitary organisation formed in Ireland in 1914, and one of very few privy to the plans of the Easter Rising in 1916. She was the wife of Tom Clarke and sister of Ned Daly, both of whom were executed for their part in the Rising. She was subsequently a Teachta Dála (TD) and Senator with both Sinn Féin and Fianna Fáil, and the first female Lord Mayor of Dublin (1939–1941).
St Kilian's German School is an independent German international school in Dublin, Ireland.
Kathleen Florence Lynn was an Irish Sinn Féin politician, activist and medical doctor.
Aghavannagh is a small village and townland in south County Wicklow, Ireland. It is located in the barony of Ballinacor South on the Military Road originally constructed between 1804 and 1809, in the wake of the 1798 rebellion. It is so remote that inhabitants say that "Aghavannagh is the last place God made".
Anti-British sentiment is prejudice, persecution, discrimination, fear or hatred against the British Government, British people, or the culture of the United Kingdom.
Industrial schools were established in Ireland under the Industrial Schools (Ireland) Act 1868 to care for "neglected, orphaned and abandoned children". By 1884, there were 5,049 children in such institutions throughout the country. The Act was superseded by the Children Act 1908.
The Statue of Queen Victoria, currently in Sydney, New South Wales, Australia, was made by John Hughes in 1908 and was originally located in Dublin. Made of bronze, it is situated on the corner of Druitt and George Street in front of the Queen Victoria Building. It was the last royal statue to have been erected in Ireland.
Leslie Mary de Barra was an Irish nationalist and republican active during the Easter Rising of 1916, the War of Independence and the Civil War, becoming Director of Cumann na mBan. She went on to be chairman and President of the Irish Red Cross.
Kathleen, who was head of Cumann na mBan in University College Dublin, became a medical doctor and was famous in her own right for setting up a campaign to save German children who were orphaned during the Second World War.