User:Autarch/Tomi Reichental

Tomi Reichental is an engineer, author and human rights activist.

Early life
Tomi Reichental was born in Piešťany in 1935. His father Arnold was a farmer and his grandfather a shopkeeper. They lived in Merašice.

Antisemitic persecution
Anti-Jewish laws were initially introduced in 1939, with the Jewish Code in 1941 and the Slovak parliament retroactively legalised deportations, removal of citizenship and expropriation of property in 1942.

His immediate family were not immediately deported as his fathers' role as a farmer was seen as neccessary to the Slovak economy.

When the Nazis occupied Slovakia in 1944, they began to deport the remaining Slovak Jews. The local Catholic priest helped them get false papers and taught Tomi and his brother how to pretend to be Catholics. The family left Merašice and tried to live as gentiles. His father was caught by the Nazis and put on a train to Auschwitz, but managed to escape when a Hungarian safe cracker sawed open the chain holding the door shut.

The family were in Bratislava when his grandmothers Rozalia was betrayed to the Nazis in October 1944. They tortured her, got the identity and location of her relatives, then captured them. They were taken to the local Gestapo headquarters, then sent to a detention camp run by Alois Brunner.

Belsen
After two weeks in the detention camp they were sent to Bergen-Belsen concentration camp.