Durkan defends President in Holocaust row

SDLP Leader Mark Durkan sprang to the defence of President Mary McAleese today after she compared the Nazis’ hatred of Jews to those who taught children in Northern Ireland to despise Catholics.

President McAleese stirred unionist anger during a visit to Auschwitz yesterday when she compared the decades of anti-semitism which led to the Nazi atrocities to prejudice against Catholics in Northern Ireland.

During the 60th anniversary celebrations of the liberation of Auschwitz, she said: “They gave to their children an irrational hatred of Jews in the same way that people in Northern Ireland transmitted to their children an irrational hatred of Catholics, in the same way that people give to their children an outrageous and irrational hatred of those who are of different colour and all of those things.”

However her comments, which were broadcast on radio in the Republic, incensed the Rev Ian Paisley’s Democratic Unionists and David Trimble’s Ulster Unionists.

DUP Assembly member Ian Paisley Junior described her remarks as irrational while former Stormont Culture Minister Michael McGimpsey of the Ulster Unionists said they would also damage her outreach work with unionist communities in the North.

UP Assembly member Danny Kennedy also today said the President should be ashamed of herself and demanded a public apology.

“Political leaders from the Irish Republic would be better to say nothing about the Second World War given the record of Irish governments and the role played by senior politicians during and after the conflict ,” the Newry and Armagh MLA said, recalling the condolences offered by former Taoiseach Eamon De Valera to the German Embassy following the death of Hitler.

“As a Fianna Fáil President, Mrs McAleese should question the role and actions of her predecessors, rather than criticise the Protestants of Northern Ireland who at least fought against Nazism.”

Mark Durkan defended President McAleese, saying the Holocaust was a terrible event which had lessons for all countries.

“The Holocaust memorial event in the North has always referred to the lessons for our own society, which has its own prejudices around difference.

“We believe that it was this that the President was saying, as she will be able to show from her own record of bridge-building.

“We do not believe that she was attempting to equate directly any of the prejudices which exist in the North with the systematic policies of deadly hatred of the Nazi regime.”

He also accused Mr McGimpsey and Mr Paisley Junior of rushing to condemn the President while failing to address intolerance on their own doorstep.

“In response to the prejudice of Whitehall Square, Michael McGimpsey offered only explanation and excuse,” Mr Durkan said.

“Ian Paisley Junior refused to condemn the sectarianism of Harryville and too many unionist politicians were slow to condemn Holy Cross.

“Of course, no community in the North has a monopoly on prejudice. We must all confront it. That is what we should all be doing to learn the lesson of the Holocaust instead of having a party political squabble.”