Holocaust survivor Suzi Diamond says people can learn from the past and urges countries like Ireland to take in more refugees.
Born in Debrecin, near Budapest in Hungary, Suszi Molnar is now Suzi Diamond, an Irish woman by adoption.
In April 1945, two year old Suzi Molnar and her elder brother Tibor (Terry) were found in Bergen-Belsen concentration camp by the British liberators. The Nazis had murdered almost all of their Hungarian Jewish family.
Suzi, Terry and three other children were rescued by a Dublin doctor Bob Collis. He used his influence with his friend Taoiseach Éamon de Valera to put pressure on a reluctant Department of Justice to allow the children come to Ireland. The Molinar children were subsequently adopted by a Jewish couple in Dublin.
Suzi Diamond is grateful but well aware,
We were only, got in with the skin of our teeth really.
Professor of History at University College Cork Dermot Keogh explains,
The numbers that came in were very small and the resistance from within the Department of Justice to the admission of Jewish refugees in particular was consistent and persistent.
At one point Éamon de Valera promised to take ten thousand Jewish refugees but in reality only hundreds came to Ireland, many passing through on their way to better lives elsewhere.
Sixty years on, Suzi Diamond does not see much difference in how refugees are treated by the Department of Justice,
Things haven't changed very much today, they’re still not really allowing people to come in.
She considers the ethnic cleansing seen in Bosnia and Rwanda akin to the Holocaust, albeit on a much smaller scale.
An RTÉ News report broadcast on 26 January 2003. The reporter is Joe Little.
