A NAZI war criminal given asylum in Ireland after the second world war lived here under an assumed name approved by Eamon de Valera’s government, according to new research.

The Nazi collaborator was advised by de Valera to continue using an alias so that if the French government asked if he was in Ireland, the taoiseach could truthfully answer no.

Célestin Lainé was leader of the Bezen Perrot, a Waffen SS unit, and responsible for the torture and murder of civilians in occupied Brittany. He joined the SS when the Germans recruited local help and took command of the region, ordering the torture and execution of resistance fighters who had once lived alongside him.

In 1944, as the allies liberated Brittany, many Nazi collaborators fled France. Some of those captured were found in possession of letters of recommendation written in English and addressed to the Irish consulate in Paris.

In 1947 word reached Lainé that the Irish government was prepared to grant him asylum. In an interview with RTE to be broadcast this week, Dan Leach of the University of Melbourne reveals that the former head of the Breton Nationalist Party met de Valera to discuss Lainé.

“De Valera advised him (that Lainé should) continue using his alias so that if the French asked him if Lainé was in the country he could truthfully answer ‘no’,” Leach said. Lainé kept a low profile in Ireland until his death in 1983.

Another Nazi to take advantage of the soft approach of the Irish government was Andrija Artukovic, who was responsible for the death of 1m people in Croatia. Cathal O’Shannon, who has researched Ireland’s treatment of the Nazis after 1945, has discovered that there is a file on Artukovic in the Department of Foreign Affairs but the government has refused to release it.

Victims in Artukovic’s camps died from a mixture of hard labour, starvation and poisoning. He had a particular penchant for poisoning children and enjoyed having his picture taken with dead bodies.

Artukovic worked for Hitler as the minister for the interior in Croatia. He arrived in Ireland in 1947 after being referred by a Franciscan church in Switzerland and lived under the assumed name Alois Annick in Rathgar, south Dublin.

After gaining an Irish identity card he left for America in 1948 and settled in California, where he worked as a book keeper.

“It is strange that a man responsible for a million deaths could live quietly here with nobody asking who he is or how he got here,” O’Shannon said. “In Rathgar he was saved from allied vengeance and prosecution.”

Yugoslavia demanded Artukovic’s extradition in the 1950s and after 30 years of legal wrangling he was sent back to his homeland and sentenced to death. He died in 1988 in prison.

Brian Girvan, a historian, says de Valera was well aware of the extermination of Jews by Nazis during the war but still identified with Hitler’s army.

“He never gave an unqualified position to the Allies. He was not going to say that we won’t allow (Nazis) into Ireland. There was an opinion in Ireland that those who were executed were in the same way as Irish nationalists had been,” Girvan said.

“He saw the Nazis as a nationalist regime that represented the German people to a certain extent. His stance doesn’t make him pro-Nazi but he was very narrow in his focus.”

In a letter to de Valera in 1944, David Gray, the then US representative in Ireland, demanded that Ireland refuse refuge to Nazi war criminals. De Valera was furious and saw the demands as America trying to tamper with Ireland’s new sovereignty.

During the 1970s it emerged that Pieter Menten, a Dutchman responsible for the deaths of hundreds of Jews in Poland, was dividing his time between Holland and Waterford, where he had a large country home at Mahon Bridge.

Locals were stunned in 1976 when Menten was arrested, tried and, in 1980, sentenced to 10 years in prison for war crimes. When he was released he believed he would live out his days in Ireland but Garret Fitz-Gerald, the then taoiseach, barred him from the country.

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