{"id":263590,"date":"2026-01-25T18:33:08","date_gmt":"2026-01-25T18:33:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/263590\/"},"modified":"2026-01-25T18:33:08","modified_gmt":"2026-01-25T18:33:08","slug":"holocaust-can-very-easily-happen-again-says-survivor","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/263590\/","title":{"rendered":"Holocaust ‘can very easily happen again’, says survivor"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Holocaust could “very easily” happen again, a survivor of the atrocity who lives in Dublin has said.<\/p>\n

Suzi Diamond was speaking before a Holocaust Memorial Day event.<\/p>\n

She said occasions like the one at Royal Hospital Kilmainham, which was attended by Taoiseach Miche\u00e1l Martin, T\u00e1naiste Simon Harris and Minister for Justice Jim O’Callaghan, are important as people “don’t think the past could happen again, but it can happen again”.<\/p>\n

“It doesn’t take any length of time for it to happen, the simplest thing, strike of a match, and something could blow up again,” she said.<\/p>\n

\n

Born near Budapest in Hungary, Ms Diamond’s father was taken away by the Nazis during the war.<\/p>\n

In 1945, she, her mother and brother were rounded up, forced onto cattle trucks and brought on a journey that ended at Bergen-Belsen concentration camp.<\/p>\n

Her mother died of typhoid at the camp, shortly after it was liberated.<\/p>\n

An Irish volunteer paediatrician Bob Collis brought two-year-old Suzi and five-year-old Terry to Ireland, where they were adopted by a Jewish couple in Dublin.<\/p>\n

Speaking this afternoon, Ms Diamond said: “The past can actually happen again in the future, and you need events like this to bring it to people’s attention.”<\/p>\n

This week, a survey by the Claims Conference, an organisation which negotiates compensation for Holocaust survivors, found 9% of Irish 18 to 29-year-olds believe the Holocaust is a myth and did not happen<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Almost a fifth, 19%, said they believed it happened, but the number of Jews who were killed has been greatly exaggerated.<\/p>\n

Addressing the findings at the event, Mr Martin said: “I think we must be outraged and offended at that, and we must do everything we possibly can to combat that and to oppose that.”<\/p>\n

“There’s an obligation on all of us, first of all, to oppose anti-Semitism wherever it manifests itself, and also to continue to educate generations to come in terms of what happened during the Holocaust.”<\/p>\n

‘Our great shame’<\/p>\n

Earlier in the day, Mr Harris released a statement saying it is “our great shame” that the lessons of the Holocaust still have not been learnt.<\/p>\n

Rising anti-Semitism, in Ireland and around the world, is an attack on history. It is an attack on truth.<\/p>\n

“It is an attack on democracy and our democratic values.<\/p>\n

“It is evil personified in the way it erodes basic values of decency and respect for other people,” he said.<\/p>\n

“It is profoundly disturbing that there is growing evidence that increasing numbers of young people in Ireland and around the world have a basic lack of awareness and understanding of the Holocaust,” Mr Harris added.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Holocaust could “very easily” happen again, a survivor of the atrocity who lives in Dublin has said.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":263591,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[42,43,40,38,41,39],"class_list":{"0":"post-263590","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-headlines","8":"tag-headlines","9":"tag-news","10":"tag-top-news","11":"tag-top-stories","12":"tag-topnews","13":"tag-topstories"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/263590","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=263590"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/263590\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/263591"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=263590"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=263590"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=263590"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}