On June 26th 2017, Tomi Reichental celebrated his 80th birthday, which is a great feat in itself, but this birthday celebration was more significant than most. Tomi is a Holocaust survivor and he spent his big day in a mosque in Blanchardstown at the request of Shaykh Umar al-Qadri who was touched to the core by Tomi's story of survival. Tomi had been sharing his experiences at the live storytelling event The Moth and Shaykh Umar just happened to be in the audience. Tomi was surprised. "You don't believe the holocaust even happened," he said. The Shaykh assured Tomi that not only did he believe, but that he wanted his community hear Tomi's experiences first hand, and so a lecture, accompanied by a birthday cake and a present, was arranged in the mosque.
Tomi opened up about his experiences in Bergen-Belsen live in studio with Ray D'Arcy, but he hasn't always been so forthcoming about his time in the concentration camp.
"My wife passed away 14 years ago. I never told her anything… Even my children, they found out (when) I wrote a couple of articles in some magazine about my experience… I never spoke about it to anybody. Then I realised eventually that I'm one of the last witnesses and for me not to speak would be a terrible loss."
After 55 years of silence, Tomi undertook to speak to children in schools about his time in Bergen-Belsen, and joined Ray to talk about the release of Condemned to Remember, the third documentary that he and filmmaker Gerry Gregg have made on the topic. Gerry has witnessed the effect that revisiting these painful memories has had on Tomi.
"I think in a way, Ray, Tomi has dealt with his trauma through making these films… I think he's had to confront a lot of stuff. For instance, the very first film we made was the very first occasion he went back to Bergen-Belsen. He said to me, I can't go back there. I said well Tomi, we've got to go back."
Tomi lost 35 members of his family during the Holocaust and has harrowing memories of the suffering and death he witnessed on a daily basis.
"I saw thousands and thousands of dead people… I saw skeletons walking and falling on the ground and we as children… would stop playing, waiting to see if the person would get up… they never got up. They died where they fell."
Therapeutic effects aside, Tomi is keen to make this latest film at this particular time in history as our current migrant crisis has understandably brought up a lot of emotion for him. Tomi notes that while Germany is taking in a large number of refugees, his native Slovakia, from which he was deported and then sent Bergen-Belsen, was not. Gerry describes this as "a crisis of shame."
"The places that didn't want to deal with the Holocaust didn't want to see any Syrian refugees. That's one of the reasons Tomi said we've got to go to Eastern Europe, because Tomi said, my story is not about 1945."
It is Tomi's hope that the lessons of his painful past can inform compassionate present day action and his films are a way of ensuring his story lives on.
Condemned to Remember premiers at the Galway Film Fleadh on July 14th and will be shown on RTE television in early 2018.
For the full interview click here.
Photo credit: Photo by Hulton Archive/Getty Images