The Limerick Pogrom

o one lost his life, but for the Jews who had just escaped the Cossacks it was terrifying….

See also, Terry Glavin last year.

But there’s something else in the Irish psyche that’s impolite to mention in the comfy Dublin pubs and bistros of Portobello, Ranelagh and Rathmines. Not a few of Ireland’s gallant and celebrated champions of the underdog, its heroes of Irish freedom, were vulgar antisemites and Nazi collaborators….

Just one awkward thing buried in the Irish psyche is the Limerick Pogrom of 1904, a series of incitements led by a renegade Redemptorist priest that resulted in mob assaults on Jewish businesses and the beatings of several Limerick Jews. The republican pamphleteer Arthur Griffith approved, calling Jews “usurers and parasites.” Griffiths was one of the founders of Sinn Féin, in 1905, and he served as Sinn Féin’s president in 1911….