‘When did you realise that there was a genocide happening?’

During the Second World War, the word ‘genocide’ did not exist, neither in my own nor in anyone else’s vocabulary. It only became clear to me that widespread killing was taking place when I found myself in Auschwitz. Before that, not many understood that this was not just the killing of certain individuals, that it encompassed an entire people who were to be wiped off the face of the earth.