TEDx was operating a tight show on Wednesday afternoon, running 10 minutes ahead of schedule by the time I arrived. Indeed, with the talk just underway and sound systems vulnerable to interference from opening doors, I was politely offered a seat on the ground directly outside the door, along with a phone with the Facebook Livestream playing. My hopes of experiencing a Holocaust survivors’ powerful story were quickly dissipating. Yet, with a moving, hair-raising account of his time at Bergen-Belsen, Tomi Reichental managed, even through the screen, to engender an overwhelming sense of horror and shock within me to suffice for the barricading door.
Reichental abruptly opened his talk with an account of his wake-up call on November 10th 1944. Jolted into consciousness by the screams of his SS supervisor, “Get up and hurry up!”, Reichental recalled how he and his fellow prisoners sluggishly peeled their unwashed bodies away from the safety of sleep. “Get out you dirty Jews”, the SS officer spat out, her menace coercing them out of the dormitory. This, he explained, was one week into his stay at the concentration camp.
Reichental remembered, vividly, the two roll-calls that were carried out daily at Bergen-Belsen, conducted so as to ensure that no one escaped. In any event, those that did attempt to flee were simply shot. Reichental remarked indifferently how those inmates were not looking to escape, but looking to bring an end to their inhumane imprisonment.
Such haunting descriptions of his experience penetrated the disturbing narrative, continually referring to the inmates as “skeletons”. He remarked how he could never distinguish between the men and women: all had shaven heads, all were malnourished and all were surviving with the ever-looming threat of death perpetually hanging over them. He described how people would fall over from weakness, malnourishment, mistreatment, only to never get up again. “A pitiful sight”, Reichental concluded, shaking his head.
Reichental fell deeper into his reverie of those torturous years, casting his mind back to one particular morning roll-call. The temperatures had dropped below zero and a thin blanket of snow coated the camp. As Reichental waited in his row, he spotted pieces of firewood poking out of the snow. Youthful, naively confident, and cold, he and his cousin snuck out after the SS guard had left their room in order to salvage what they could of the treasured firewood.
“Halt! Halt!” they heard being screamed after them as they sprinted back to Block 207, their home. “We were out of breath with panic”, Tomi affirmed to the shocked audience. The boys threw the wood under his cousin’s bed as their alarmed family stared at them in utter fear. The SS guard entered the block in pursuit of the two unidentified boys.
The guard decided to inspect Reichental’s family’s room first. Starting with under his aunt’s bed and working her way through to Reichental’s. The final bed, the guilty bed, was the last to be inspected. Reichental recollected the utter terror that trembled through his failing body as he awaited his fate. Yet, by some stroke of luck, the SS Guard simply skipped over his cousin’s bed, moving into the adjacent dormitory. “And that”, Tomi concluded, “is how we survived another day”.
The audience, having recovered from their shock, erupted into applause (albeit a minute later on the Livestream). With 10 minutes to spare, TEDx organisers were quick to leap at the chance of a brief Q&A with the holocaust survivor.
Questioned about his ability to discuss his time in Bergen-Belsen, Reichental affirmed that it is only by keeping the story alive he can ensure “that such a terrible thing never happens again”. Drawing parallels between his experience and that of refugees in the modern world, Reichental stressed the danger of indifference and denial, and the power we hold to make sure “that history does not repeat itself”. He considers the recounting of his story to be a responsibility that he holds to prevent something of its kind from ever re-establishing itself.
Remarkably assured in his presentation of his time at Bergen-Belsen, Reichental discussed how he became reconciled to his experience. He explained: “You must make peace with your past so that it doesn’t spoil your presence.” This, Reichental concluded, is a philosophy which he has lived by and has helped him to embody all that it means to be a survivor. A philosophy, no doubt, that has shaped his path to becoming a figure of inspiration, wisdom and hope.
