Rebuilding & remembrance · Ireland · After 1945

Survivors, elected representatives and community volunteers shape lives beyond the history of persecution.

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After 1945

Rebuilding & remembrance · New lives become part of Irish history

Survivors, elected representatives and community volunteers shape lives beyond the history of persecution.

Zoltan and Edith rebuild their lives

Zoltan and Edith Zinn survived Ravensbrück and Bergen-Belsen concentration camps. After recuperation in Sweden, they came to Ireland in 1946 with the doctor Bob Collis, who raised them in his family. Zoltan later worked as a chef, married and had children. His later life belongs beside the losses and illness he endured.

Dublin elects a Jewish lord mayor

Briscoe became Dublin's first Jewish lord mayor in 1956 and served again in 1961. His public career joined Jewish identity with decades of Irish electoral politics. That achievement demonstrates civic participation, while leaving room to examine prejudice and the earlier failure to offer sufficient refuge to Jews facing persecution.

A synagogue becomes a place of memory

The Walworth Road synagogue ceased operating in the early 1970s as families moved and the community changed. Volunteers reopened the building as the Irish Jewish Museum in 1985. Its collections preserve everyday lives across the island, including Belfast and Dublin. An all-Ireland collection should not be confused with one present-day state jurisdiction.