Commemorations have been held around the world to mark 70 years since the liberation of the Nazi-run death camp Auschwitz and to remember the millions of people killed in the Holocaust.
Pupils from integrated schools Hazelwood College and Lagan College in Partnership with the Nitty Gritty Theatre Company held their own special service at the Belfast Synagogue on Tuesday. One pupil spoke to UTV about how his grandfather was among those who managed to escape Auschwitz at the age of just seven, despite others being shot around him. “If my grandfather had been shot, I would not be here. It was just luck,” Konrad Mretek, from Hazelwood College, said. “It’s a horrible story.”
Teacher Brendan O’Loan recalled how his father-in-law, Portadown man Tommy Corden, served in the RAF and helped to look after survivors of the Holocaust. “He was one of the first volunteers into Bergen-Belsen concentration camp in 1945,” he said. “Tommy described landing in Normandy as ‘a hell on earth’, but he said it was nothing to what they saw there. “They knew there was a job to be done, but what they didn’t expect was when they saw the state of the camp – 60,000 prisoners living in filth and squalor; 13,000 bodies just lying around, left to rot.” Mr O’Loan added: “For me, he’s a hero. He was only 27 years of age. To have experienced what he experienced doesn’t bear thinking about.”
Click on the utv link below “Holocaust Remembered”
http://www.u.tv/News/NI-joins-world-in-remembering-Holocaust/2cdf6ef7-5a42-411c-ade8-f086144ab7f1
