FOUR survivors of the Holocaust living in Ireland last night led a commemoration service remembering the six million Jews who perished under the Nazis.

The four, who managed to defy the odds and survive life in the concentration camps and ghettoes while most of those around them died in unimaginable horror, went on to start a new life in Ireland.

Last night the survivors were joined by Taoiseach Brian Cowen at Dublin’s Mansion House for the eighth annual National Holocaust Memorial Day Commemoration.

The names of 157 victims, whose descendants came to live here, were read from the Holocaust Scroll of Names.

Victim

The youngest victim was Devora Smaiovitch who was born in Czechoslovakia and died just nine months later in a Nazi death camp. The eldest was 76-year-old Rosalia Scheimovitz who met her death in Bergen-Belsen in 1945.

Their descendants began a new life in Ireland, but the memory of their loved ones was never forgotten.

Zoltan Zinn-Collins thinks he was aged just four or five when he was found in Bergen-Belsen, no one knows his exact date of birth. He was later brought to Ireland along with his sister, Edit.

Describing himself as “a final witness of the Holocaust”, he told of the devastation at losing almost all of his family.

“As I reared by own children and grandchildren, I realised there was a void in my family. There were no grandparents, aunts, uncles or cousins while I was growing up — they all perished in the Holocaust — and my children and grandchildren are missing them, too.”

Also there was Suzi Diamond who, with her mother and brother, was on the last transport to leave Hungary destined for Auschwitz. The train instead brought them to Bergen-Belsen and it was there that Suzi’s mother died just after liberation 65 years ago. She and her brother Terry were the only members of their family to survive.

Of Tomi Reichental’s family, 35 members perished in the concentration camps, a harsh environment for a nine-year-old boy. “I could not play like a normal child, we didn’t laugh and we didn’t cry. If you stepped out of line at all you could be beaten to death. I saw it with my own eyes,” he said.

The final survivor, Polish-born Jan Kaminski, was seven when he managed to escape a round-up of the Jews and fled. “My name is Jan and I am the last witness of the Holocaust,” he told those gathered last night.

RIO DE JANEIRO — “It’s impossible to deny the Holocaust,” Brazil’s president said at a ceremony held in the oldest synagogue in the Western Hemisphere.

President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva was, at his request, the main speaker at Wednesday’s Holocaust Remembrance Day ceremony at the Kahal Zur Israel synagogue in Recife.

“Nobody has the right to ignore the extermination of the Jewish people,” Lula said. “I showed Iran it’s impossible to deny the Holocaust.”

The Brazilian leader was referring to his talks with Iran’s President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad during a meeting held last November in Brasilia. A few days before, Lula had also welcomed separately Israeli President Shimon Peres and Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas.

Lula added that he will visit the Middle East in March and deliver “a message of tolerance and peace.”

Several Jewish and non-Jewish officials attended the ceremony, including Holocaust survivors. It was the fifth time that Lula had attended the annual event, which was held for the first time in a city other than the major Jewish centers of Sao Paulo and Rio de Janeiro.

Founded in 1636, Kahal Zur Israel was built in Recife during a short Dutch rule in the northeastern corner of Brazil. The synagogue was the first Jewish temple established in the New World.

Today the building hosts a cultural center that is among the most visited tourist spots in Recife. Built later, in 1732, the Mikve Israel-Emanuel synagogue in Curacao is the oldest synagogue in the Americas still in use.

Marking the 65th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz, President Obama said the death camp invokes a “sacred duty” to remember Nazi crimes.

“We have a sacred duty to remember the twisted thinking that led here, how a great society of culture and science succumbed to the worst instincts of man and rationalized mass murder and one of the most barbaric acts in history,” Obama said in a video message to be delivered at International Holocaust Remembrance Day commemorations Wednesday. “We have a sacred duty to remember the cruelty that occurred here, as told in the simple objects that speak to us even now. The suitcases that still bear their names. The wooden clogs they wore. The round bowls from which they ate. Those brick buildings from which there was no escape, where so many Jews died with Sh’ma Israel on their lips.”

Leading the U.S. delegation to the commemoration is Julius Genachowski, the chairman of the Federal Communications Commission and the child of survivors.

Others in the delegation include Lee Feinstein, the U.S. ambassador to Poland; Hannah Rosenthal, the special envoy to combat and monitor anti-Semitism; Susan Sher, First Lady Michelle Obama’s chief of staff and the liaison to the Jewish community; Roman Kent, the chairman of the American Gathering of Jewish Holocaust Survivors and a survivor of Auschwitz; and Auschwitz survivors Charlene Schiff and Edwarda Sternberg-Powidzki.

Events are taking place at Auschwitz to commemorate the 65th anniversary of the liberation of the Nazi death camp, as the world marks Holocaust Memorial Day.

Auschwitz survivors and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu are among those gathering in Poland, where the camp was built under German occupation.

In Berlin, Israeli President Shimon Peres urged Germany and other countries to pursue Holocaust perpetrators.

More than a million people were murdered by the Nazis at Auschwitz.

The great majority were Jews but they also included Poles, Roma Gypsies and Soviet prisoners of war.

The camp was liberated by the Soviet Red Army on 27 January 1945.

At least six million Jews were killed by the Nazis during World War II.

Shimon Peres was given a standing ovation by German MPs

Addressing Germany’s parliament, Israel’s president Shimon Peres said some of those who carried out the Holocaust “still live on German and European soil, and in other parts of the world”.

“My request of you is: Please do everything to bring them to justice.”

He also recalled leaving his grandfather behind in Poland, when his family moved to Palestine in 1934. His grandfather was later killed by the Nazis – herded into a synagogue with the other Jews of his village, and burned to death.

“I remember his poignant embrace. I remember the last words and the order I heard from his mouth: ‘My boy, always remain a Jew’,” he said.

Some of those who survived the Holocaust gathered at the site of the Auschwitz and neighbouring Birkenau death camps on Wednesday, despite the cold and the snow.

Many had relatives with them.

They passed beneath the notorious sign above the entrance, reading “Arbeit Macht Frei”, or “Work Makes You Free”.

The sign is a replica. The original was stolen last month. It has been recovered, in three pieces, but not yet repaired and repositioned.

Later Mr Netanyahu was to speak at a commemorative ceremony.

Poland’s President, Lech Kaczynski, was also expected and US President Barack Obama was sending a video message.

There has been some controversy over the presence of an Israeli Arab MP, Mohammed Barakeh, in Mr Netanyahu’s delegation.

Some Palestinians have criticised him for sympathising with Israel at a time when many Palestinians are suffering.

But Mr Barakeh is expected to highlight the Palestinian plight and condemn Israeli policy – drawing condemnation from some Israelis.

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