The Irish Holocaust

<p>The <strong>Great Famine</strong> (<a title= "Irish language" href= "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irish_language">Irish</a>: <em lang="ga" xml:lang="ga">an Gorta Mór</em> <span class="IPA" title= "Representation in the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA)"><a title="Help:IPA/Irish" href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Help:IPA/Irish">[anˠ ˈɡɔɾˠt̪ˠə ˈmˠoːɾˠ]</a></span>), also known as the <strong>Great Hunger</strong>, the <strong>Great Starvation</strong>, the <strong>Famine</strong> (mostly within Ireland) or the <strong>Irish Potato Famine</strong> (mostly outside Ireland),<sup id="cite_ref-FOOTNOTEKinealy19945_1-0" class= "reference"><a href= "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Famine_(Ireland)#cite_note-FOOTNOTEKinealy19945-1">[1]</a></sup><sup id="cite_ref-FOOTNOTEO'Neill20091_2-0" class="reference"><a href= "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Famine_(Ireland)#cite_note-FOOTNOTEO'Neill20091-2">[2]</a></sup> was a period of mass <a title="Starvation" href= "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Starvation">starvation</a> and disease in <a title="Ireland" href= "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ireland">Ireland</a> from 1845 to 1852.<sup id="cite_ref-FOOTNOTEKinealy1994xv_3-0" class= "reference"><a href= "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Famine_(Ireland)#cite_note-FOOTNOTEKinealy1994xv-3">[3]</a></sup> With the most severely affected areas in the west and south of Ireland, where the <a title="History of the Irish language" href= "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_Irish_language#Nineteenth_and_twentieth_centuries">Irish language was dominant</a>, the period was contemporaneously known in Irish as <em lang="ga" title="Irish-language text" xml:lang="ga">An Drochshaol</em>,<sup id="cite_ref-4" class= "reference"><a href= "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Famine_(Ireland)#cite_note-4">[4]</a></sup> loosely translated as "the hard times" (or literally "the bad life"). The worst year of the period was 1847, known as "Black '47".<sup id= "cite_ref-cuiv_5-0" class="reference"><a href= "https://en.wikipedia.