'I still think I ought to have a suitcase packed ready to run. My family never got the chance'

For many, this year’s Holocaust Memorial Day is more significant than ever.

In recent months, following the October 7 massacre of Israeli citizens by Hamas, and Israel’s subsequent war on Gaza, there has been an alarming rise in antisemitism.

For the survivors of the Holocaust, the need to remind people what the Jewish community has been through and where hatred can lead has taken on a new sense of urgency.

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Ahead of this year’s Holocaust Memorial Day, which marks the 79th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz on 27 January, the Manchester Evening News spoke to one man who will not let his and his family’s story of persecution be forgotten.

Holocaust survivor Tomi Komoly, 87, said that amid the current conflict in the Middle East, the urge to have a suitcase packed incase he needs to run has resurfaced.

Born in Budapest, Hungary in 1936, Tomi spent his early childhood hiding from German soldiers, living in a one-bedroom flat with a curfew and later a Nazi ghetto with his mother.

Speaking to the M.E.N previously Tom, who now lives in Wilmslow, said: “In 1944, it became compulsory for everybody Jewish to wear the yellow star on your lapel.

"By the middle of summer, having got rid of some half a million provincial Jews to Auschwitz, the regime wanted to get the Budapest population concentrated.

"They nominated apartment blocks, on which they again, put up big yellow stars, the main entrance, and we all had to move in there, we were given an apartment. Exactly five square metres allowed per person. We were also under a curfew, only allowed outside