Holocaust survivor to give talk at NUIG

Holocaust survivor Tomi Reichental is to give a talk about his experiences at the Irish Centre for Human Rights at NUI Galway.

Captured by the Gestapo at the age of nine in Bratislava, Mr Reichental along with his mother, grandmother, brother, aunt and cousin, was deported to Bergen Belsen concentration camp.

He was also held in Sered detention camp in Slovakia which was under the control of notorious Austrian SS officer Aloïs Brunner.

Brunner, who is believed to have died Syria in 2010 after escaping capture at the end of the war, was a protégé of Adolf Eichmann. He was behind the mass deportation of tens of thousands of Jews from Paris, Vienna and Salonika. He is held responsible for sending up to 140,000 European Jews to the gas chambers.

When the camp was liberated in April 1945, Mr Reichental learned that 35 members of his extended family had been murdered. His grandparents, uncles, aunts and cousins all died in the Holocaust.

Mr Reichental has lived in Dublin since 1959. He has visited schools across Ireland and was the subject of an RTÉ documentary film  I Was a Boy in Belsen.

The film was directed by the Emmy award-winning producer Gerry Gregg and retraces the events that swept away the Jewish presence in Central Europe.

Speaking ahead of this weekend’s lecture, Tomi Reichental said: “Typhoid and diphtheria were the biggest killers, but people were dying of starvation and cold in their hundreds. First the bodies were removed and burned, but later they were just piling up in front of our barracks, there were piles of decomposing bodies.

“The soldiers who liberated Belsen in April 1945 said they could smell the stench for two miles before they reached the camp. In the camp I could not play like a normal child, we didn’t laugh and we didn’t cry. If you stepped out of line, you could be beaten up even beaten to death. I saw it all with my own eyes.”

Professor Ray Murphy from the Irish Centre for Human Rights at NUI Galway, said: “Tomi is one of the last surviving witnesses to the Holocaust. As such, he feels compelled to speak out so that the victims are not forgotten and we do not repeat the mistakes of the past.

“For most of his life Tomi did not speak of the atrocities he bore witness to, but in recent years he has become an advocate for tolerance and compassion. His story is a story of the past. It is also a story for our times.

"The Holocaust reminds us of the dangers of racism and intolerance, providing lessons from the past that are relevant today. One of the lessons we must learn is to respect difference and reject all forms of racism and discrimination.”

The talk at NUI Galway will be followed by a Q&A session and Mr Reichental will sign copies of his book I Was a Boy in Belsen. Admission is free but early arrival is advised.