Condemned to Remember

Cert: 15A; Now showing Slovakian Holocaust survivor Tomi Reichental has lived in Ireland for almost 60 of his 80 years. For many of those he did not want to recall the part of his childhood spent in and shattered by the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp and the Holocaust in which 35 of his family members were murdered.

But as he has got older and in the face of a Europe seemingly intent on forgetting the lessons so cruelly learnt less than a century ago, Tomi has worked to link the two, to use memory not just for its own sake and those who are gone, but for prevention and to save those who are here now.

The documentary follows up on the RTE doc Close to Evil, also made by Tomi Reichental and Gerry Gregg following a screening of which an investigation was opened in Germany. Holocaust denial is a crime in Germany but it is becoming increasingly common in other countries where it is so often linked to extreme nationalism.

From Tomi’s 80th birthday celebration in a Dublin Mosque where the topic of denial is first raised, to the current refugee crisis in Europe, the rise of extreme nationalism and how that translated to the treatment of Jews and Tomi’s family in WWII and the Bosnian Muslims in Srebrenica, it weaves a really human, affecting and compelling argument. It is not about blame, it is a warning that I hope kids get to see as part of their history learning.