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Tomi Reichental

As the world marks Holocaust Memorial Day, a survivor worries that history could repeat itself

Tomi Reichental, who lives in Dublin, is a survivor of the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp.

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TOMI REICHENTAL REMEMBERS what it was like as a young boy when he and his family were forced to leave their home in Slovakia for the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp.

“What we saw was hell on earth,” he says about his experience in the camp. “We saw these skeletons walking around… occasionally falling down, never to get up again.”

Reichental, who lives in Dublin, travels around the world telling his story of surviving the Holocaust, and will be a guest at the National Holocaust Memorial Day Commemoration at the Mansion House in Dublin today.

Watching the European migrant crisis unfold and populist politics rise, he fears history could repeat itself.

“We can’t compare it,” he says, “but when I saw the picture of Jewish people marching and being arrested… and when I looked at the picture of the refugees tramping around Europe, trying to find some place to live… the picture looks the same.”

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