St Louis tragedy a reminder to us all
Sir — Barry Egan’s reflection, while playing with his children, on the death of young Joachim Hirsch, was thought-provoking (Sunday Independent, October 13).
Like so many children from a Jewish or Gypsy background, Hirsch met with a terrible end in the Nazi concentration camps of World War II. Shamefully, the St Louis and its cargo of Jewish refugees was turned away at many ports apart from the United States at this time.
Ireland also denied entry to these desperate people fleeing from war and persecution. Some years ago, the Sunday Independent wrote about our own Irish Ambassador in Berlin who refused visas to these desperate people.
Two years ago, I attended the funeral of a friend, Albert Sutton, at Kilternan Parish Church. In the war, Sutton was a young soldier with the Allied Forces and helped liberate BergenBelsen. What he witnessed stayed with him for the rest of his life.
With the rise today of the Far Right in modern Europe, we should be forever vigilant to the threat to society which they represent. Thomas Blake Rathfarnham, Dublin 16 our lives, without always an accompanying quality of life.
Surely living does not merely mean a heart ticking. Living is not just breathing or existing. To be alive is characterised by our experiences and our connection with family, friends, neighbours and our pets. Being alive suggests self-determination, deciding when I get up, when and what I eat, how I’ll spend my day, etc.
I have no fear of dying but I have a great fear of a “living death”, where I exist but life as I know and want it is greatly diminished and offers me no quality of life.
I urge people to support Orla Ni hAonigh’s Assisted Dying Bill petition on Uplift https:// myuplift.ie/petition/assisted dying bill. Moreover, I hope John Halligan reintroduces a Dying with Dignity Bill into the Dail and that our legislators will sincerely and respectfully discuss this sensitive and serious issue and not use it to score political points. Of course, all such legislation requires safeguards to protect vulnerable people.
I hope that as a mature and compassionate society, we can respect individual choice. Helen Forde, The Lough, Cork