(Reviewer: Marcia Leveson, Vol. 70, No. 1, Pesach 2015)
What distinguishes this account of a Holocaust survivor from most others is that it is a child’s eye view. Tomi Reichental was born on a 120 hectare farm in Slovakia in 1935 and was only nine when he, his mother and brother found themselves on a cattle truck to the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp.
Until recently Reichental has been silent about his experience as a “boy in Belsen”. But now he devotes most of his time talking and lecturing on his life and experiences. He spreads the message that we should never, ever forget; but also he concentrates on the importance of combating racial hatred and promoting reconciliation – the principles for which Nelson Mandela is renowned. For his work, Reichental has been awarded the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany.
With amazing recall and remarkable lack of bitterness, Reichental writes of his carefree early life – not in the Pale about which many readers are now familiar – but in an area of Europe that was relatively secure and prosperous for Jews, and above all was rural. The Reichentals were the only Jewish family in the district (the other two Jewish families had converted), and their lives were hardly distinguishable from that of the Christian neighbors, except for an invisible social barrier. The reader is drawn into the details of the life of the times – the taste of the food, the dress, the family pursuits – tobogganing, riding a motorbike, fishing, eating fruit from the trees. They were very friendly with the local Catholic priest who played cards with Tomi’s parents and who was to become instrumental in trying to help them escape the Nazis by teaching them the rudiments of Catholicism and obtaining false papers. He was later to be honored for his part in their story.
Tomi’s beloved Oumama and Oupapa ran the only decent shop in the village, and his farmer father loved opera and socializing. His relatives on both sides of the family were numerous and Tomi and his brother Miki enjoyed visits from and to their cousins who lived nearby.
And then came the war. In 1941 his grandfather‘s shop was taken from him and in 1942 deportations of Jews began. Some few escaped, mainly over the border to Hungary, others managed to secure exemption papers for a while. Gradually antisemitic incidents increased and the Reichental boys were the butt of hatred and bullying. One by one Tomi’s uncles disappeared, and their stories are woven into the narrative. Tomi and his mother and brother were hidden for a while during routine searches by peasants who scorned the notorious Hlinka raids and, after vainly trying to flee to Bratislava, Tomi, his brother and mother were sent to Belsen. His father remained behind but was also arrested and disappeared – for a while.
The middle section of the book details how they eked out a life and struggled to exist in the camp. The backdrop is all there – the corpses among which the children played, the extreme cold, the inedible and meagre food, the brutality of the guards, the constant disease and dying, the stench of the crematoria. But as well, we learn of the survival skills of Tomi’s intrepid family and the bravery of his aunt Margo who helped ensure their survival. Miraculously, although 35 member of the family were murdered or died from their suffering during this period, Tomi, his brother, mother and aunt were among those liberated by the British and were subsequently reunited with their father. They returned to their village and what was left of their life there.
Reichental then details his later life in Israel, Germany and Ireland where he built a prosperous career, married and produced children and grandchildren. I found this part of the account less enthralling but nevertheless life affirming. What is so unusual is the matter of fact way in which the story unfolds, the sense that life continues even under extreme conditions, and then apparently returns almost to normal. Instead of a tale of sufferings and horror, the focus is much more on how ordinary life goes on. I believe this is a function of the narrative being that of a young boy, who only understood as he grew older the true extent of the history in which he was involved.Therefore the social history of the time, the life of Jews in Slovakia, the particular perspective of a nine year old being sprung from his life ease into the horror of the Nazi’s Final Solution, and of his miraculous survival and complete rehabilitation, is strikingly original and readable, without mitigating the reality as we have come to know it.
Reichental has lectured in many countries, including South Africa, and his well-written book, which included photographs, is a testimony to the indomitable spirit of European Jewry.
I Was a Boy in Belsen by Tomi Reichental, O’Brien Press, Dublin, 2011.
Dr Marcia Leveson, a long-serving member of the editorial board of Jewish Affairs, is a former Professor in the English Department and currently an Honorary Research Fellow at Wits University. She has written extensively in the area of South African fiction and edited a number of anthologies of fiction and poetry.
