Hitler, Mars bars, and Kilcullen

A village ‘very near’ Kilcullen is the setting for part of a book about a little-remembered episode in post-war Ireland.

The book, ‘Hitler and Mars Bars’, is a fictionalised version of ‘Operation Shamrock’, under which German children were brought to Ireland to take them out of a very difficult situation.

In many cases, when their mothers let them go, they never saw them again.

Author Dianne Ascroft, a Canadian now living in Co Fermanagh, used The Model School in Athy as one location, because one of the real children on which she based the book went to school there.

He also lived in a rural setting near a small village ‘not far’ from Kilcullen, she says.

The fictional character in the book, Erich, is really an amalgam of stories of many of the children who were brought here after the war.

‘Hitler and Mars Bars’ is the story of Erich's journey to manhood, from a Children's Home near Essen in Germany through a new life in Ireland. His brother Hans comes too, but they live with different foster families.

“The book came out of an exercise for a writing group, which I subsequently completed for ‘Ireland’s Own’ magazine,” Dianne says. “I developed it as a fiction book because it was probably a better way to show the different experiences of various people involved in ‘Shamrock’.”

The book is available in local bookshops such as the Athy Heritage Centre, Easons at the Whitewater Shopping Centre, or from Trafford Publishing.

Brian Byrne.