Sir, – The sudden death occurred of Zoltan Zinn-Collis on December 10th, 2012, at his home in Athy, Co Kildare. Seventeen days later his sister Edith Zinn-Collis also died suddenly at the home of her late brother Zoltan.
Their remarkable life stories should be remembered because they were among a small number of Holocaust survivors living in Ireland. They were born in what is now Slovakia to a Jewish father and Christian mother. In 1944 the family were arrested and most were interned in Bergen-Belsen concentration camp. Both parents and two of their siblings died in the Holocaust. Zoltan and Edith were rescued from the death camp by an Irish doctor called Robert Collis who brought them to Ireland.
In recent years Zoltan gave talks on the Holocaust to many secondary schools in his efforts to ensure that this dreadful episode in human history was not forgotten. Zoltan attended a Holocaust seminar in Limerick in 1997 and spoke of his concern at the failure of the international community to prevent further acts of genocide, particularly the genocides in Cambodia, Bosnia and Rwanda.
May Zoltan and Edith rest in peace, and may humanity never forget the crimes of the Holocaust. – Yours, etc,