Recognition is too late

RTÉ’s programme, Witnesses to War, was overdue. Why did it take so long to be made?

Was it to appease the IRA, while they murdered people for a ‘united Ireland’? For the many Irish who saw beyond the nation state and defended European democracy, this belated recognition is too late. A friend told me that when he returned from World War II, he went to the Savoy Cinema in Dublin, where a newsreel showed the horrors of a concentration camp. He heard cinema-goers say it was British propaganda. That was unsurprising, as Éamon de Valera had just signed a book of condolence for Adolf Hitler.

Tony Moriarty