Tomi Reichental
Photo: RTE youtube screenshot Tomi Reichental says his experience of the Holocaust was “hell on earth” and fears history may “repeat itself” with the migrant crisis and the rise of populist politics in Europe.
The Irish-based 85-year-old survivor drew comparisons of Jews being taken to Nazi concentration camps to refugees being displaced around the continent.
He said: “When we take the situation now with all these right-wing, nationalist parties and the situation in the late 1930s. The picture looks the same.
“I didn’t speak about my experiences for more than 50 years. But now I tell my story in order to educate young people and make sure history doesn’t repeat itself.”
Mr Reichental [pictured], who has resided in Dublin since 1959, was nine years old when he and his family were taken from their native Slovakia and brought to the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp in north Germany.
“We were put in cattle carts and taken to Bergen-Belsen,” he recalled. “What we saw was ‘hell on earth’. That’s the only way I can describe it.”
National Holocaust Memorial Day, organised by the Holocaust Education Trust Ireland (HETI), remembers those who perished in the World War II genocide and took place at the Mansion House on January 27.
The ceremony was hosted by the Lord Mayor of Dublin, attended by President Michael D. Higgins and Holocaust survivors Mr Reichental and Suzi Diamond.
Polish national Kinga Paszko, whose great grandparents risked their lives to shelter a Jewish family during the Holocaust, was also in attendance and received the honour of Righteous Among the Nations.
This year’s Holocaust Memorial Day coincided the 75th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz-Birkenau with President Higgins joining other world leaders and over 200 survivors in Poland on January 28 to mark the occasion.