School responds after former students taught by Nazi collaborator demand apology

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

The board of a Dublin school which employed a former Nazi collaborator said it only became aware of research which “may have implicated him in the possible carrying out of atrocities” after his death in 2009.

The board of St Conleth’s College in Ballsbridge issued a statement on Wednesday night in response to a series of letters received by the board from former students of French teacher Louis Feutren. 

Feutren taught at the school from 1957 until 1985. Before coming to Ireland, 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.

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

Other letters include one from a former student who said 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 also included a full page dedicated to Feutren, with a full-page 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.

Wednesday night’s statement, signed by board chairman Vincent Sheridan, said the board understood Feutren left France in 1947and was granted refugee status by the Irish government. He studied for an MA in University College Galway (now University of Galway) before teaching in Belfast and subsequently at St Conleth’s.

The statement said: “There was no restriction on his entitlement to live in Ireland, become a citizen and take up employment.” 

It said other members of the Bezen Perot group also “became well established in Irish society”.

However, the statement acknowledged: “Research undertaken in more recent times has uncovered not only the identities of the members of Bezen Perot [pseudonyms were used by the members] but also the involvement of some of their members in atrocities carried out towards the end of the war. 

"The school has always been aware that Mr Feutren was an ardent Breton nationalist but was most shocked and concerned to learn of the research that may have implicated him in the possible carrying out of atrocities. It was only after the death of Mr Feutren that the school became aware of these allegations.” 

It said the conduct as outlined by Mr Goni in correspondence to the school “should not be overlooked or forgotten”. The statement continued that the board accepted such conduct “has no place in St Conleth’s College, whether that be in the past, the present or the future”.

It added: “The board has expressed the school’s profound regret for any conduct by Mr Feutren (and any other person employed by the school) which failed to meet the standards of conduct and education which we have espoused since the school’s foundation.” 

One former student, Mark Collins, whose Hungarian grandmother hid from the Nazis in Budapest during the Second World War, recalled earlier this week: “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.” 

He saidhe knew the French words for pants, t-shirt and underwear, but everything else had to be removed.

After Feutren’s death in 2009, his ashes were returned to Brittany.

In his will, he had 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 to University of Brittany to help promote the Breton language was rejected because of his background with the Waffen SS.