The less friendly face of modern Ireland

When Sabine Wizniak fled to Ireland from the Jewish ghetto in Warsaw in 1938, she was able to enter the country on a four-week visitor's visa. When her time ran out the official who was supposed to put her on a train to Belfast took pity. He told her not to get on the train but to stay. Instead of obeying orders, he said he would pretend he had seen her leave the country.

That was 1938. How different Ireland is now. This year passengers on the same train service witnessed a Government official patrolling the carriages after it crossed the Border from Belfast, asking people if they had seen any blacks on board. At least one black Northern Ireland man was ejected from the State this year despite having every right to enter.

The growing evidence that racism is alive and well and living in Ireland is underlined this week by the publication of a booklet containing the stories of 10 refugees who have settled in Ireland. A Part of Ireland Now has been written by an Irish Times journalist, Andy Pollak, with photographs by freelance photographer Derek Speirs.

The booklet will be published shortly by the Refugee Agency and will be available, free, at libraries and citizens' information centres. An exhibition of material in the booklet will travel around the country.

Happily, Sabine, who is Jewish, found Christian love and protection with the family of a garda on Dublin's South Circular Road. While she lost her mother and sister in the Holocaust, she has enjoyed a happy life in Ireland.

Her story is one of the 10 told in A Part of Ireland Now. Here are reproduced edited versions of some of the others. They tell stories of happiness - and bad experiences, too. They sometimes portray an Ireland the rest of us don't like to see and wish wasn't there.

But it is.