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The Irish Centre for Human Rights and An Cumann Staire/History Society, NUI, Galway

invite you to the Holocaust Memorial Event for 2020 

Tomi Reichental

A survivor of the Bergen- Belsen concentration camp, will discuss his experience of the Holocaust with Ben Barkow, former Director of London's Wiener Library - the world's oldest institution created for the documentation of the Holocaust. 

Wednesday 29 January, 2020 at 6 pm sharp

Venue: Human Biology Building, NUI Galway (near the O'Donoghue Centre) 

Tomi Reichental was born in 1935 in Piestany Slovakia. In 1944 at age nine, he was captured by the Gestapo in Bratislava and deported to Bergen Belsen concentration camp with his mother, grandmother, brother, aunt and cousin. When he was liberated in April 1945, he discovered that 35 members of his extended family had been murdered. His grandparents, uncles, aunts and cousins all died in the Holocaust. Recounting the sights and smells at the concentration camp Tomi 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.” 

Tomi Reichental has lived in Dublin since 1959. In 2004, for the first time in 60 years, he broke his silence and began to speak about his experiences during the Holocaust. Thousands of students in schools all over Ireland have heard his story, and an RTÉ documentary film called I Was a Boy in Belsen was based on Tomi’s life. 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 from the point of view of a boy who couldn’t understand why. To mark his 80th birthday on the 26 June 2015, the Board of Trustees of HETI (Holocaust Education Trust of Ireland) established a scholarship in Tomi Reichental’s name. It will be awarded annually in perpetuity to a deserving candidate to enable her or his participation in one of the Holocaust education programs. The scholarship is in recognition of Tomi Reichental’s immense contribution to Holocaust awareness and education over many years. Tomi has received many awards, most recently the Bar Councils Human Rights Award for 2019. The discussion at NUI Galway will be followed by a Q&A session. 

Ben Barkow recently retired from London's Wiener Library - the world's oldest institution created for the documentation of the Holocaust - where he had worked for 32 years, 20 of them as its Director. Today he is chair of the Academic Advisory Board of the UK Holocaust Memorial Foundation, which is creating Britain's national Holocaust memorial next to the houses of Parliament. He is also on the advisory board of the Imperial War Museum's planned new permanent Holocaust exhibition and is a trustee of a number of a number of Holocaust-related charities.  He has written and edited several books and will this year publish with Granta a translation of two texts by the Library's founder:The Crisis of Antisemitism: Two Pamphlets by Alfred Wiener, 1919 & 1924. 

Admission is free but early arrival is advised. 

ALL WELCOME!  

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