‘They will not forget and they will know what to say to the next person’

Hello

Today is Holocaust Memorial Day. It marks the 80th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz.

In today’s Mancunian Way we’ll hear from survivors Tomi Kolomy and Mala Tribich about why the horrors of the Holocaust should never be forgotten, and take a look back at how the discovery of the Nazi concentration camps was reported at the time.

It took Tomi Kolomy almost 80 years to start speaking about his experiences of the Holocaust. He considered himself one of the ‘lucky ones’ and for decades felt like it ‘wasn’t his place’ to share his story.

But a chance meeting with a German Jewish woman changed all that. "This lady asked me if I spoke about my experiences and I said 'No, I had never been to a camp. Relatively speaking I was lucky. It's not my place'.

"She said 'Rubbish. You had the experience. You are a survivor. Unfortunately there are not many of you left'."

Tomi grew up an only child in the suburbs of Budapest. He recalls watching from his cousin’s balcony as the German army invaded the city.

Days before Tomi’s eighth birthday his father was taken away by the Hungarian Fascists. To this day he has never found out what happened to him.

As a series of increasingly repressive anti-Jewish laws came into force, Tomi and his mother were forcibly moved into ‘Yellow Star Housing’ where food was scarce and conditions during the freezing winter of 1944 were atrocious.

Fearing for their lives they fled into a number of safe houses and were hiding out in a basement when the Red Army liberated the city. Under the care of his resourceful and remarkable mother, somehow Tomi survived the war, and following the Hungarian Uprising of 1956 fled to the UK as a refugee, where he built a life himself in Wilmslow, raising a family with his wife Gill and forging a successful career as an engineer.

Now the father-of-two and grandfather of seven regularly visits schools to speak about the Holocaust. Last year the 88-year-old published his life story as part of the My Voices series of Holocaust survivor stories published by Manchester-based Jewish charity The Fed.

Asked why he thinks it's important Holocaust survivors share their stories, he says the answer is 'very simple'.

"It's a very different thing giving someone a book or a picture. They can be very easily ignored, especially nowadays with fake news. But if they hear someone talk from their personal experience they will not forget and they will know what to say to the next person."

Mala Tribich was the only British holocaust survivor to attend a ceremony commemorating the liberation of Auchwitz today. As a young girl, she was separated from her mother and sister who were marched to their deaths in a forest with communal graves before she was taken to the Ravensbrück camp in crowded 'cattle trucks' and later to Bergen-Belsen.

On BBC Radio 4 this morning, she spoke of the importance of remembering those who didn't survive and urged people to make the world a better place. She said: "Unfortunately, they haven't learnt the lessons and wars are still going on and people getting killed. What can I say? We're all hoping for a better world but we need to contribute to it and make sure that our young people get the right education."

Manchester headlines

Traffic problems: Villagers on the outskirts of Wigan are being ‘driven to despair’ by choked-up roads, too much new-build housing and a GP surgery struggling to handle the influx of new patients. That was the unanimous verdict of people in Standish as the Local Democracy Reporting Service watched the roads fill up in the village centre at school ‘going home time’.

Name change: Commuters at Stockport railway station were seemingly left baffled this morning when they noticed the sign had been changed to 'Scottport'. It was in fact a stunt to mark a new host taking Radio 2’s flagship breakfast show. Read more

Closure: The founder of hit Manchester burger spot Almost Famous has announced the closure of all its sites. In an update issued this morning, owner Beau Myers confirmed the closure of its sites across Manchester, Liverpool and Leeds. Explaining the reason for the closure of the brand, he cited the current economic climate and 'lingering debt'.

How the Holocaust was reported

The first accounts of the horrors of the concentration camps came in the Russian press. Soviet war correspondent Roman Karmen wrote of Madjanek: "This was not a concentration camp; it was a gigantic murder plant."

Describing the barbaric method of extermination he was exposing, Karmen said: “The gas chambers contained some 250 persons at one time. They were closely packed... so that after they suffocated they remained standing... The human cargoes were dumped into a roaring furnace heated to 1,500 degrees Centigrade."

More evidence of the atrocity of Hitler's Final Solution was found as more camps were liberated: Belsen, Buchenwald, Dachau, and Auschwitz. In May 1945, The Guardian newspaper told the story of how 14-year-old Abraham Cykiert managed to escape the gas chamber at Auschwitz.

"Here I saw the crematorium before my eyes,” he wrote. “I stopped breathing, and I felt like losing consciousness. Suddenly, the order was given to undress. Together with the others, I obeyed automatically.

"There was no will and no realisation of what I was doing. We all stood completely naked in the corridor leading to the gas chamber and waiting for the order to march in, when suddenly what looked like a high-ranking SS officer of the crematorium personnel arrived.

"He appeared in my eyes as the chief emissary of death, and, strangely, on looking at him I regained my consciousness: 'I am going to die, I am going to die’.”

Abraham describes how the SS officer made a ‘last-minute’ inspection as his ‘naked victims’ were marched past him. The Nazi officer would then choose some to push out of the line.

"My turn came; he looked at me and pushed me out as well," he wrote. Abraham was now among around 50 people pushed from the line being led to the gas chamber. They were told to get dressed quickly and return to the camp.

Abraham added: "Three hours later the furnaces of the crematorium were already burning. We watched its thick smoke and knew its terrible meaning." Lee Grimsditch has more here...

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