Irish-born Jews have been confirmed as victims of the Holocaust for the first time by researchers.
David Jackson, a statistician, has discovered that three people born in Dublin who returned to mainland Europe before the rise of the Nazis were among the six million Jews who died.
It was believed that Esther Steinberg, a woman born in Czechoslovakia who moved to Ireland when she was 11, was the only Irish citizen murdered in the Holocaust.
Dr Jackson’s research, the results of which were announced yesterday on Holocaust memorial day, has found that Isaac Shishi, Ephraim Saks and Lena Saks were born in Ireland. He said that it was important that Ireland’s connection to the Holocaust was fully known.
“Online records now available from a wide variety of sources including the Holocaust Centre in Jerusalem have allowed me to piece together these lost and forgotten stories. I believe there may be more and I will continue to research,” Dr Jackson said.
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He said that a small number of Jewish families fleeing Tsarist Russia and other antisemitic regimes arrived in Ireland before returning to mainland Europe ahead of the outbreak of the Second World War and the number of Irish citizens who died in the Holocaust may be higher.
He said that he had connected other victims of the Holocaust to Ireland but could not confirm if they were Irish because he had not found their birth certificates. He said that in some cases it may be that their names had been given English spellings that they did not use when they left Ireland so more records would be needed.
The deaths of the three victims that Dr Jackson has confirmed as Irish were all recorded by their family members as part of Holocaust memorial projects so their histories have been verified.
Isaac Shishi’s family moved from Vieksniai in Lithuania to Dublin in 1890. He was born on January 29, 1891. His sister, Rose (or Rachel), was born in Dublin on April 22, 1892. The family lived on St Alban’s Road, off the South Circular Road. After the death of Isaac’s grandfather in 1893 the family returned to Vieksniai.
In 1920, Rose emigrated to the US but Isaac stayed in Lithuania and started a family. In 1941 he, his wife, Chana, and their child Sheine were murdered by the Nazis in Vieksniai.
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The parents of Ephraim and Lena Saks moved from Lithuania to Dublin in 1914 via Leeds and Antwerp. Ephraim was born in Dublin on April 19, 1915 and his sister, Lena (or Jeanne), on February 2, 1918.
After the end of the First World War, the Saks returned to Antwerp were it was recorded that there were five children in the family. Ephraim Saks was living in Paris and working as a furrier in 1939. He was arrested and taken from Drancy transit camp in Paris to Auschwitz on August 24, 1942, where he was murdered.
Lena Saks had been working as a salesperson in Antwerp when she was deported to Auschwitz and murdered in 1942-43. Ephraim Saks’ name is inscribed in the Mémorial des Martyrs de la Déportation.