THE HOLOCAUST COULD “very easily””happen again, a survivor of the atrocity who lives in Dublin has said.

Suzi Diamond was speaking before a Holocaust Memorial Day event today.

She said occasions like the one at Royal Hospital Kilmainham which was attended by the Taoiseach, Tánaiste and Minister for Justice are important as people “don’t think the past could happen again, but it can happen again”.

“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.

Born near Budapest in Hungary, Diamond’s father was taken away by Nazis during the war.

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.

Her mother died of typhoid at the camp, shortly after it was liberated.

An Irish volunteer pediatrician, Bob Collis, brought two-year-old Suzi and five-year-old Terry to Ireland where they were adopted by a Jewish couple in Dublin.

Speaking today, Diamond said: “The past can actually happen again in the future, and you need events like this to bring it to people’s attention.”

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.

Almost a fifth (19%) said they believed it happened, but the number of Jews who were killed has been greatly exaggerated.

Addressing the findings at Sunday’s event, Micheaá 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.”

“There’s an obligation on all of us, first of all, to oppose antisemitism wherever it manifests itself, and also to continue to educate generations to come in terms of what happened during the Holocaust.”

He was asked if, in the light of the figures and recent controversy of the generation of AI images of sexual abuse on X, social media companies need to be held to account.

Martin replied there needs to be a “greater focus” on equipping young people better “on how we deal with social media”.

“The key is to educate, to equip young people with the tools to be able to interpret new media platforms, to have developed critical inquiry and to have those skill sets,” he said.

Asked if the focus should be on social media companies, Martin said: “Absolutely.”

“But equally, we do need a parallel track, you need more accountability.

“We need more protection for people, but we also need to work very hard to equip people to deal with it.”

Speaking at the event Ireland’s Chief Rabbi Yoni Wieder said: “The number 6 million is not just a statistic.

The Taoiseach referenced current global tensions in his speech saying: “We are living in increasingly unsettled times where post World War Two norms of behaviour and language are being constantly undermined.

“We are seeing growing incidents of people feeling comfortable expressing antisemitism, racism and intolerance.”

The Claims Conference research also found half of the Irish adults it questioned did not know that six million Jews were murdered in the Holocaust.

“It speaks to how systematic and how comprehensive the Nazi attempt to murder an entire people was,” said Martin.

“To play down that number is not just to play down the number of people that died, but it’s to play down the fact that this was a systemic attack, an attempt to systematically wipe out an entire people, and we cannot forget that.”

He said there needed to be a greater emphasis on making sure education about history is “accurate”, and not just gleaned from education.

He also said: “I think people try to avoid the topic of Holocaust education because of contemporary politics and we have to know that remembering the Holocaust is not conditional, is not contingent on anything going on in the world today.

“Regardless of one’s political ideology, the Holocaust is something that needs to be remembered, and lessons need to be learned.”

Earlier in the day Simon Harris released a statement saying it is “our great shame” that the lessons of the Holocaust still have not been learnt.

He said: “Rising antisemitism, in Ireland and around the world, is an attack on history. It is an attack on truth.

“It is an attack on democracy and our democratic values.

“It is evil personified in the way it erodes basic values of decency and respect for other people.”

Harris said: “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.”