City to choose name for bridge: A brave life with relevant lessons

The importance of how we use the past to colour today and map tomorrow is underlined at this time every year when the debate, increasingly less strident thankfully, about wearing a poppy recurs. Some people see the simple symbol as a tribute to all war dead; others see it as a tribute recognising only the dead of world wars. Others still, probably a minority now, see it as a celebration of British arms. The vigour and barely-contained jingoism of some British memorial ceremonies make it hard to ignore those suggestions, especially as that mindset and Brextremism almost seem as one.

Nevertheless, wearing the poppy is, as we are at last more honest about the sacrifice of Irish people in both world wars, far more acceptable in today’s Ireland. There are even suggestions that Sinn Féin’s presidential candidate Liadh Ní Riada might wear one. Whether that is welcome evolution, political expediency or part of the project to dress the past in a new, less blood-splattered clothes remains to be seen.

How a society remembers its past says a lot about its ambitions. This dynamic is behind the purge of Confederate symbolism causing such blood-red-line division in America’s southern states. When this Republic was a religious and political theocracy those memories came from a very limited palette — the evidence is all around us in how our forefathers named or renamed infrastructure.

Cork City is to have a new bridge and its naming is an opportunity for the city to celebrate the values that inspire and move it, the values that it regards as non-negotiable and a celebration of all that is good about humanity. At this time of deepening division, resurgent autocracy and dangerous challenge to the great project of European unity and stability, the rule of law and human rights are in jeopardy too, there seems an obvious choice.

Name the bridge in honour of Mary Elmes. Born in Cork in 1908 she went on to have a brilliant academic career despite institutionalised gender discrimination. She was a fluent linguist and ardent internationalist but those are not the achievements that single her out as a symbol of goodness, moral clarity and action in the face of the last century’s greatest evil.

She began her humanitarian work with refugees from Franco’s tyranny. That was followed by her life-risking, repeated rescue of Jewish children during the Nazi occupation of France. She saved hundreds from the gas chambers. She was posthumously named as Righteous Among the Nations, Israel’s highest award for non-Jews who risked their lives to save Jews during the Holocaust. She is the only Irish person so honoured. When she was alive she declined a Légion d’honneur as it might attract too much attention.

Cork City Council will accept suggestions for a name for the bridge until November 15 and though there is a structure that anyone so honoured must be dead for at least 20 years — Elmes died in 2002 — in the context of the challenges overcome by Elmes, that red tape can hardly be binding. Elmes’ life alone deserves to be so honoured but that we live in a time where disintegration seems a real possibility sharpens her relevance. Let’s, once again, remember so we don’t repeat.