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Event
TILL THE TENTH GENERATION
For nearly 60 years Slovak-born Tomi Reichental remained silent about his experiences as a boy in the Bergen-Belsen death camp, "not because I didn't want to, but because I couldn't." Tomi was nine-years old in October 1944 when he and 12 other members of his family were taken to a detention camp run by Nazi Alois Brunner. Tomi, his mother Judith, brother Miki, grandmother Rosalia and two other relatives were sent by cattle car to the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp; the others were sent to Buchenwald. Miraculously, Tomi, his brother and mother survived Belsen and his father survived as a partisan. 35 members of the Reichental familygrandparents, uncles, aunts, cousinshowever, died in the Holocaust.
After the war, Tomi moved from Slovakia to Israel and then to Germany (for engineering training) and eventually to Ireland, where, in 1961, he married a Jewish woman from Dublin.
During the war, Ireland's behavior towards Jewish refugees was, in the later words of Justice Minister Michael McDowell, "antipathetic, hostile and unfeeling." By the late 1940s, the Jewish population of Ireland was 5,500. Today the number is around 1,800. One of only three Holocaust survivors left in Ireland, "Tomi realized that, as one of the last witnesses, I must speak out." And so he began speaking to middle school students throughout Ireland about his war-time experiences.
Charming and compelling, Tomi, now in his 70s, travels back to Slovakia with veteran filmmaker Gerry Gregg. Tomi recalls the history of Slovakia's Jews and wounds are reopened as Tomi recalls his torment at the hands of the Nazis and their Slovak collaborators.
With Director Gerry Gregg & Tomi Reichental in person!
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LocationSomerville Theater
55 Davis Square
Somerville, MA 02144-2908
United States
Categories
| Non-Smoking: Yes! |
| Wheelchair Accessible: Yes! |
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