`My father was caught in an IRA ambush going to Bantry with my brother. The rebels attacked the train because there were soldiers on it and they wanted the soldiers' guns. When the shooting started, my father put his leg over my brother to protect him. His leg was riddled with bullets and the woman beside him was shot and killed. Those were terrible times." Esther Hesselberg, who was born in 1896, is now a resident of the Jewish Home of Ireland in Rathmines, Dublin, and grew up in Cork in the early years of this century. Her family fled to Ireland from the Tsar's regime in Russia: "There used to be persecution in Russia. The Jews had a hard time."
Her father, a herring exporter, suffered a nervous breakdown during the second World War when 11 of his relations in Poland perished in concentration camps. He never worked again. "Sometimes I think I've seen too much," says Esther. "Oh, Hitler. He deserved what he got."
There are an incredible 157 people in the Republic who are aged 100 years or more, according to the Department of Social Welfare (and there may be even more as this figure applies only to those in receipt of social welfare payments). These people have lived through two world wars, the Easter Rising, the Civil War: they have seen their world evolve from the predominantly rural, insular, impoverished, slow-moving Irish society of their youth, marked by emigration, deaths from TB and hard work. Along with new-found wealth, urbanisation and cosmopolitanism, they have seen the rise of crime, violence and drug use, representing a complete transition from the old, safe, unlocked doors life of the past.
They are frail with the sheer effort of staying alive and prefer the company of somebody who is patient enough to speak loudly and distinctly, someone who will not rush the pace of conversation. They prefer not to reminisce about the great events of the century, nor be asked for words of wisdom from a youngster who is one third their age ("mind your own business" I'm told). They live to some extent in memories of the past, but it is a personal past marked by family events.
The strong spirit which has kept them vital means that they are also interested in the present. They want to talk about practical details that affect them now - like whether it's worth having an operation to remove a cataract; or why their grandchildren don't believe in marriage - rather than pontificating about the fact that they've lived through 100 years. One remembers her 100th birthday with some irritation: "Everyone wanted to know how old I was. I got fed up telling them."
Most poignantly some of them are carrying the recent incomprehensible grief of having seen their own adult children die while they themselves are on the verge of living into yet another century: "I had a lovely son, Jessel, my only child," says Esther. "He was a doctor in Reading. He had a heart attack and died. It broke my heart. I did nothing but weep for a year."
Esther had a happy childhood growing up in Cork and remembers when the family's first telephone was installed: "It was such a novelty. I nearly fainted when I heard the voice at the other end of the line."
She married a man from Dublin and the two ran a furniture shop on Aungier Street. Her husband founded the Jewish Cricket Club and played on the team. Esther was the club's mascot and made the teas: "It was lovely fun." She was good at tennis, an acceptable sport for a woman, but her real desire was to play alongside her husband: "I would have made a good cricketer." Aida Fox (103) is also a resident of the Jewish Home of Ireland. She grew up on the South Circular Road in Dublin and She remembers the Easter Rising: "They confiscated Stephen's Green and there were boys walking around with guns ready to shoot an English soldier if they saw one." She was living in Dolphin's Barn during the second World War and remembers the snowy winter night when her house and more than 100 others were flattened by a bomb: "Thank God nobody was hurt."
In spite of these terrors she looks back with fondness on the past as a time when people felt safer in their homes: "We had a free life then. We weren't afraid
of someone knocking on the door or of meeting somebody out walking at night. We won't see that life again. Now it's breaking into people's houses and if they don't find any money in the place, they kill them. That's life today and I don't like it." Aida has been a fan of opera and theatre all her life: "I used to live in the Abbey. Lady Gregory's plays were marvellous." Nowadays she spends her evenings watching snooker on TV: "I stay up every night until after midnight watching the snooker. I love it." She is still very mobile and when she was 99 travelled alone to Glasgow to attend her grandson's wedding.