Maryfield College

Tomi Reichental Visits Maryfield

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On 14th October 2014 Transition Year and Leaving Certificate History students were given the opportunity to listen to Tomi Reichental, a survivor of the World War II Nazi Bergen-Belsen concentration camp, speak about his horrific experience. By now there are very few survivors of Nazi brutality and we were therefore honoured to have Mr. Reichental visit our school.

Tomi described his childhood before the war in Slovakia, how Nazi anti-Semitic laws affected him and recalled being bullied for being a Jew. He remembered wearing a yellow star and explained how his family were arrested. Students and teachers sat in complete silence as he spoke. It was difficult to listen to his reminiscences as he recalled the appalling conditions which he experienced for seven days in a carriage with no windows or toilets during a freezing November in 1944 while travelling to the camp. He was only nine years old and alas this was only a sample of the nightmare ahead. He explained to students how the Jewish population in Slovakia dropped from approximately 90,000 to 25,000 as Nazis murdered his people in concentration camps across Germany.

In Bergen-Belsen he actually played among corpses. He also remembers watching his grandmother’s corpse being thrown on a pile of rotting bodies like an old rag doll. He lost thirty five members of his family. Luckily Tomi survived until the liberation in 1945. He recalled that despite the absence of guards the inmates were too afraid to leave. Eventually the Allies arrived and provided them with food. But this was a bad idea as their stomachs had shrunk and many people continued to die as they could not digest it.

He eventually returned to his home town in Slovakia. Despite the fact that the war was over, attitudes towards Jews had not changed. As a teenager he emigrated to Israel, later moving to Germany to become an engineer. In the late 1950s he eventually moved to Ireland and married an Irish girl and had three children.

It took fifty years before Tomi could speak about what happened to him. He now travels all around Ireland as well as different countries to speak about his experience during the Holocaust. He has written a book ‘I was a Boy in Belsen’. Students were able to buy signed copies at the end of his talk.

We would sincerely like to thank Tomi Reichental for taking the time out of his very busy schedule to come to Maryfield College and share his experience with us. We would also like to thank Nora Moore, Aoife Moore’s mother, and Rosemary from the Holocaust Education Trust Ireland, www.hetireland.org who helped organise Tomi’s visit to the school.

By Chloe Walker and Clare Brown (with the assistance of Ms.Townshend)