Thomas (Tomi) Reichental was born in June 1935 in Piešťany (then Czechoslovakia, now Slovakia) into a Jewish family. His father was a farmer, his mother a housewife, and he had an older brother. Tomi was only able to attend school for a short time due to the persecution. His father joined the partisans.
Tomi, his mother, his brother and his grandmother were arrested and transported to the Women's Camp at Bergen-Belsen concentration camp in November 1944. His grandmother died there in March 1945.
After their liberation by British troops, the Reichentals initially returned to their homeland and then emigrated to Israel in 1949. There, Tomi served in the army from 1953. After training as an engineer, he lived in Ireland from 1959 and ran a mechanical engineering factory. He married and had three children.
For decades, Tomi Reichental remained silent about his experiences of persecution. It was only upon his retirement that he began to speak about his experiences as a child during the Holocaust. This led to several documentary films and his autobiography, “I Was A Boy In Belsen”, which he published in 2011. He received numerous honours and awards in Ireland for his commitment.
Tomi Reichental visited the Bergen-Belsen Memorial several times, including for commemorative ceremonies, film shoots and various events. In 2012, Dr Thomas Rahe conducted a more than five-hour-long audiovisual interview with him about his life story.
Our thoughts are with his long-time partner Joyce and his family.