Lily Ebert, one of the last remaining survivors from Auschwitz-Birkenau, told Sky News that she believes the Holocaust could happen again.
The 100-year-old was 20 years old when she was deported from her hometown in Hungary to the concentration camp.
Her mother, and younger sister and brother, were killed by Nazis in gas chambers.
Speaking to Sky News’ Trevor Phillips along with her great-grandson Dov Forman, Ms Ebert was asked whether she fears that the Holocaust could happen again 78 years later.
“That is a very difficult question to answer for me,” she said. “But we see it can, because it happened.
“It’s happened to me the second time as well. Luckily they did not kill me, only nearly.
“They behaved to me not to human beings you should talk to, they talk to somebody who is not a normal human being.
“Why should anybody speak like that to me? When I have done nothing wrong for the whole world.”
Mr Forman then added that antisemitism “is still ever present in today’s world,” saying: “That’s why it’s important to remember, because we need ordinary people like you and I who stood idly by during the time of the Holocaust to realise that if we leave hatred to go unchecked, that leads to place like the gas chambers.
“Auschwitz-Birkenau did not fall from the sky. The Holocaust was not something that was created overnight. This was indoctrination over years of an ideology of hatred.”
Ms Ebert, when describing her time in Auschwitz, also told Mr Phillips: “When I survived the worst thing in life, being in Auschwitz, you could say that was in life for anybody, the worst thing.
“To survive that – I don’t think a lot of people can survive that. I survived that, and that was terrible.”
Saturday saw the UK and the world mark Holocaust Memorial Day, commemorating 79 years since the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp was liberated.
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Dov Forman, great-grandson of Lily Ebert
In a statement marking the Holocaust on Wednesday, Rishi Sunak said: “I want to address very directly the despicable resurgence of antisemitism. Because it is not enough to come together today and faithfully remember the Holocaust.
“We must also act on what that memory teaches us. It is sickening that Jewish people are once again facing the most abhorrent antisemitism in this country.”
It comes as Sky News learned antisemitic incidents referencing the Holocaust have increased by 104% across the UK in 2023.
The Community Security Trust (CST), a charity that protects British Jews from antisemitism, last year received 955 reports of Holocaust-related antisemitism, defined as incidents containing some kind of reference to the Holocaust, Nazis, Hitler or swastikas.
That number is more than double the 469 incidents reported in 2022.
