Anti-Semitism was rife when Ireland shut the door to Jews seeking refuge

[Behind the Aegis]

4. Our man in Berlin who went native as a Nazi

Jews hoping to flee ­Germany to Ireland in the 1930s faced an almost insurmountable obstacle. Charles Bewley, Ireland's envoy to Berlin from 1933 to 1939, was an unashamed supporter of Nazi rule, and did not conceal his anti-Semitic views. He made strenuous efforts to stop Jews getting into Ireland.

Bewley was from a Quaker family in Dublin linked to the famous cafés. He converted to Catholicism while he was being educated at Oxford, and as a young lawyer became a Sinn Féin sympathiser.

Early on in his career, as an Irish trade representative in Berlin, his anti-Jewish feelings became obvious when he got into a row with Dublin Jew Robert Briscoe. Bewley insulted Briscoe over his Jewish faith with a string of insults, and this was reported to his superiors.

Soon after the Nazis took power, Bewley was appointed as the Irish envoy to Berlin. Presenting his credentials to President Hindenburg, he spoke gushingly of the "national rebirth" of Germany.

After Kristallnacht in 1938, when Jews were murdered by the Nazis in large number, he was asked to compile a report on anti-Semitism for his superiors in Dublin.

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