‘The lessons haven’t been learned’: Holocaust remembrance tapestry unveiled in Dublin

Even though she was only three at the time, Holocaust survivor Suzi Diamond can still describe the terror of the dogs that patrolled the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp.

“You remember. People couldn’t understand how much I would remember but I remember an awful lot,” she says, almost 80 years later as one of Ireland’s three surviving victims of the Nazi camps.

She describes a child’s journey from a familiar home to a place with “bodies everywhere”, constant hunger and bitter cold and endless rollcalls.

After a brief recovery in Sweden, Ms Diamond and her late brother Terry were taken to Dublin and adopted by the Samuels family.

Rats causing havoc on offshore islands, which provide an all-you-can-eat buffet for the invaders

---

Harris bullish on Coalition’s progress on housing

---

Your top stories on Thursday

---

Ciarán Murphy: Whether you’re from Waterford, Donegal or anywhere else, playing intercounty is a fairly noble ambition

---

Speaking at an event on Tuesday showcasing how art is designed to provoke memory and help ward off historic mistakes, her warnings of a potential slip backwards are stark.

“It’s still happening. Racism is happening still, there’s no doubt about it, and every so often, it shows up,” she said. “The lessons haven’t been learned from the past, by any means.”

Ms Diamond was in Dublin’s GPO to help launch a specially commissioned tapestry, El Holocausto, woven in Aubusson, France, by Atelier Pinton in 2019. It was based on the 1944 mural by Mexican artist Manuel Rodriguez Lozano.

Art for Human Rights founder, Bill Shipsey, who commissioned the work, said it evoked calls for justice and dignity for victims of human rights violations and genocide.

As well as a memorial to those murdered in the Holocaust and subsequent genocides, he said it was a vehicle against modern-day racism.

[ Holocaust survivors with Irish links highlighted in Dublin exhibition ]

“This is to be a strong artistic statement against all forms of racism in Ireland,” he said.

His organisation uses art to raise awareness of human rights violations. Several artisan weavers created the El Holocausto tapestry over a number of months. The original was an artistic protest against the Holocaust.

Dr Tom O’Dowd of Holocaust Education Ireland said such exhibits play a vital role in learning lessons from the past which are “all too relevant in the world today”.