Genocide of an Island People

“The genocide … how did your great-grandparents survive?” I ask my mother.

She stops, weakened by the heat, and shuffles over to a nearby bench.

We sit in silence for a moment.

It is a hot summer’s day at the end of May 2003.

We are walking down Godthåbsvej in Frederiksberg, an enclave of Copenhagen.

My infant twins and their two-year-old brother are at home with their father.

She is visiting me from Ireland for the christening (into an evangelical lutheran church) of my infant twin boys.

“I asked my father the same question shortly before he died”, she says as tears roll silently down her cheeks.

“He cried as he told me. Their name was Langtry; they had a farm, you see. Once you had some land, there was always a chicken running around that you could eat.”

“Ninety-odd years later, nine family members were forced to emigrate to the US during the economic war precipitated by De Valera…