Second World War and Holocaust Reception in Ireland With Aoibh Crimmins

Aoibh will discuss Irish views of WW2 and the Holocaust and how those views shaped their relationship with Jewish issues and foreign policy This talk will offer a general overview of Irish attitudes to World War II and the Holocaust, and its development over the decades. It will contextualise these attitudes in Ireland’s often misunderstood neutrality during the war, and will proceed to discuss the immediate reaction to the Allied victory and the early reports from liberated concentration camps. The development of this reception over the following decades will be explored with reference both to Ireland’s international connections in Europe and the English-speaking world, and to domestic controversies and commemorations around the events of the war. Finally it will reflect on recent developments and the relevance of Second World War and Holocaust reception in Ireland, not just for the relationship of Irish non-Jews to Jewish issues, but also for Irish foreign policy, national identity, and Ireland’s position in Europe more generally. Aoibh Crimmins (Ní Chroimín) is a doctoral candidate at Trinity College Dublin. Her thesis will explore the commemoration and promotion of the German musical and literary canon in Thuringia and Saxony between 1945 and 1961, and analyse the relationship between cultural heritage, memory, and national identity in East Germany during the transition from National Socialism to communism. More broadly her research focuses on culture and nationalism in Ireland and Germany between 1890 and 1960. Her interests include cultural nationalism; “high” culture in Germany in the long 1950s; Irish-German relations; Irish nationalism in a European context; the influence of Romantic Nationalism on modern political discourse; the relationship between nationalism, democracy and totalitarianism; the social history of classical music in Europe; perceptions of Jews in Irish society; and Holocaust reception and the perception of the Second World in Ireland. Her academic work with the LCSCA focuses on antisemitism within Irish cultural nationalism. She is also a volunteer at the Centre. She holds an MA in European Studies from the University of Amsterdam and a BA in English Literature and German from Trinity College Dublin. During her undergraduate degree she was awarded a Trinity Scholarship, completed an Erasmus…