School urged to apologise for giving 'safe haven' to former Nazi

Nazi collaborator Louis Feutren, far right, at St Conleth's in 1970.

A man whose Jewish grandmother had to hide from the Nazis has urged St Conleth’s College in Dublin to apologise “for giving a safe haven” to a former Nazi who taught at the school for three decades.

Mark Collins was a student at the school in Ballsbridge in the 1980s, where Louis Feutren taught from the 1950s until 1985.

Feutren was a member of a nationalist group in France called the Bezen Perrot and collaborated with the Waffen SS during the German occupation of France during the Second World War.

Several former students, including Mr Collins, have sent letters to St Conleth’s school, seeking an apology for their treatment by Feutren.

Mr Collins said: “I would like St Conleth's to apologise for hiring, hiding, and the behaviour of Feutren.” 

He said the behaviour of the French teacher was enabled by former headmaster Kevin Kelleher, who has since died. 

He said there was a culture of physical punishment at the school, despite corporal punishment having been abolished in 1982. “However, the strangest discipline came from Feutren. Once, when I was aged 13, he told me to stand in front of a class of 40-plus boys and to remove every item of clothing I couldn't name in French.” 

Mr Collins said he knew the French words for pants, t-shirt, and underwear, but everything else had to be removed.

Mr Collins said his Hungarian grandmother, who was Jewish, suffered under antisemitic laws introduced in Hungary in the 1930s, laws which predated the Nazis. "In the 1940s, she successfully hid from the Nazis who occupied Budapest in the later stages of the war and were deporting Jews to death camps.” 

He recalled Feutren telling pupils at St Conleth's about his involvement with the German army during the Second World War. “He was proud of it,” said Mr Collins, explaining that he is angry that someone who had been involved with the Nazis was able to take up a teaching post in the school.

The letters sent by former students to St Conleth’s followed one by Uki Goni, an author and son of a former Argentinean ambassador, who recalled being “physically bashed” by Feutren at the school.

Other letters include one from a former student who said that Feutren’s class was ruled by a culture of fear that even then "was not acceptable”.

In a 2014 publication to mark the 75th anniversary of the founding of St Conleth’s, a former student wrote that Feutren “taught French using philosophies and methodologies which ranged from Rene Descartes to the Nazis”.

The publication included a full page dedicated to Feutren, with a full-page accompanying photo of Feutren with his wife. It referred to his years as a Breton separatist in his native Brittany, before arriving in Ireland after the war.

When Feutren died in 2009, his ashes were returned to Brittany.

In his will, he made a bequest of a collection of tapes and papers, along with a cash sum of about £300,000, to the National Library of Wales. It sparked controversy in Wales because of his Nazi connections.

In France, a bequest of €50,000 he made to the University of Brittany to help promote the Breton language was rejected because of his background with the Waffen SS.

St Conleth’s has been contacted for comment by email and phone.

A spokeswoman for the school said no comment would be made on the matter.