Holocaust Educational Trust Blog

By Tomi Komoly

Ottó Komoly (Kohn) was my father’s older brother. He played a remarkable role in Hungarian Jewry before and during the Holocaust, but never received the international recognition his activities deserved. I would like to fill the gap with this testimony. 

He was born in Budapest in 1892.  His father David Kohn attended the first Zionist conference and founded the movement’s Hungarian branch.

Ottó fought in the Austro-Hungarian army reaching the rank of captain, wounded in action, and awarded military honours. He subsequently graduated at the Technical University of Budapest, while active in the youth Zionist movement. 

Just over a year ago I stood in Parliament Square with thousands of others from the Jewish community and all decent people and we said “enough is enough”. We were challenging what felt like a relentless tide of incidents where Jew hatred was not being taken seriously by a mainstream political party. One year on and what has changed? Nothing. If anything, it’s worse.

Regional Ambassadors from the Holocaust Educational Trust travelled to Budapest from the 27th to the 31st of March to analyse the Holocaust in Hungary. During our time in the country we visited multiple Holocaust remembrance sites, spoke to a Hungarian-Jewish survivor and engaged with the Jewish and non-Jewish community in Budapest to understand contemporary remembrance of the Holocaust.

Last week, I joined fellow Regional Ambassadors for the Holocaust Educational Trust on an educational visit to Budapest, Hungary. Our time in the city provided a unique opportunity to learn about Jewish life before, during, and after the Holocaust, to engage with diverse local communities’ remembrance of the past, and to understand Hungary’s distinctive and complex relationship with the Holocaust.

What to do when you discover your grandfather saved nearly 700 Jewish refugees from the Holocaust?

To the Holocaust Educational Trust, Harry Bibring BEM was an unstoppable combination of a tzaddik and a rockstar, by Karen Pollock MBE

In this special blog to mark the 80th anniversary of Kristallnacht, we are privileged to be able to share the memories of Holocaust survivor Freddie Knoller, who was a 17-year-old living with his family in Vienna at the time of the pogrom. The following extract, taken from Freddie's memoir Living with the Enemy, vividly highlights the terror of the night and the contrasting roles of ordinary people in the violence.

This article by Karen Pollock MBE, Chief Executive of the Holocaust Educational Trust, first appeared in The Jewish Chronicle on Friday 2nd March. 

In our latest blog, survivor Tomi Komoly offers his personal perspective on one of the most sensitive stories of the Holocaust.

This article by Karen Pollock MBE, Chief Executive of the Holocaust Educational Trust, first appeared in The Times Red Box on Wednesday 27 September.