'Six million Jews died but I survived, it was a miracle'

Today is sure to be a poignant day for Holocaust survivor Tomi Reichental who was one of those who experienced life in one of the most notorious concentration camps run by the Nazis and lived to tell the tale.

Reichental, who first lived in Ireland in the late 1950s, is a now a familiar figure to many people in country, including many in Meath, after devoting much of his time over the past 16 years or so speaking out about the horrors of the camps in an effort to try and ensure nothing like that happens again.

"It's very important I speak to as many people as possible," he has been quoted as saying. "Six million Jews died but I survived, it was a miracle," he said in an interview he conducted with Noelle O'Connell CEO of European Movement Ireland (EM Ireland).

Today is Holocaust Memorial Day and Reichental is believed to be one of only two people currently living in Ireland who survived the savage concentration camp system run by the Nazis during World War Two.

Tomi Reichental was born in 1935 and grew up in what is now western Slovakia but he ended up in Bergen-Belsen concentration camp in 1944.

Originally the plan was that he and his mother and brother would be brought to the death camp in Auschwitz and they were on the way and certain death when they were sent instead to Bergen-Belsen, a concentration camp in Poland.

The Russians were advancing and the Germans had just destroyed the gas chambers in Auschwitz. Earlier Tomi's father had escaped from a train headed for the death camps.

Tomi Reichental somehow survived in the camp even though he was often starving - but he made it through when the camp was liberated by the British in the spring of 1945. His mother and brother also survived the terrible conditions.

He moved to live in Ireland and became a citizen in the 1960s involved in projects such as the setting up of a zip factory.

Since 2004 Reichental has made it his life's mission to let people know what it was like in Bergen-Belsen. He has, he estimates spoken to 120,000 students in Ireland including many from Meath.

For decades Reichental says he couldn't talk about what he had witnessed but then decided to speak out.

Over the years he spoken to school students in places like Dunboyne and Dunshaughlin. His message is always to watch out for the bully.

"I talk to people and say if you see bullying to try and stop it because that's how the Holocaust started."