Despite all the suffering he endured, the Holocaust survivor chose compassion over hate
Nachruf von Alexandra Senfft, PAKH-Vorstand und Co-Sprecherin, für den Holocaust-Überlebenden Tomi Reichental in der Irish Times, 2. Juni 2026
I was deeply anxious during the train journey from Vienna to Bratislava, the Slovak capital, in 2014. Holocaust survivor Tomi Reichental was expecting me there, together with Gerry Gregg’s film crew. They were shooting the documentary Close to Evil.
Tomi was born in Czechoslovakia but moved to Ireland in 1959. He had been a young boy when he and his family were deported by the Nazis to the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp in Germany in 1944. Tomi survived, but 35 of his relatives were murdered in the Holocaust; his grandmother died before his eyes in the camp.
My grandfather, however, was Hanns E Ludin, the “envoy of the Third Reich to Slovakia”, and it was he who signed the deportation orders. Ludin was convicted as a war criminal and executed in Bratislava in 1947.
Tomi’s and my family histories were thus tragically intertwined.
>> weiterlesen, Irish Times, 1.6.2026
Foto: Tomi Reichental mit Alexandra Senfft und ihrer Tochter Magdalena bei den Dreharbeiten für Close to Evil, Bratislava 2014
