The Messenger - May 2009 - The Long Awaited Showers
By - 21 May 2009
The Long Awaited Showers - Tomas Reichental
Tomas Reichental was born in 1935 in Piestany, Slovakia. He was captured and sent to Bergen-Belsen concentration camp in 1944 when he was nine years old but he survived it along with his mother, brother, aunt and cousin. He lost thirty-five members of his family in the Holocaust. Tomi has been living in Ireland since 1960 and became an Irish citizen in 1978. In his retirement, he is now lecturing to schools and colleges throughout Ireland about his experiences during the Holocaust.
The journey to Bergen-Belsen
After a gruelling seven days travel in cattle carriages under indescribable sanitary conditions, the train stopped as it had done once a day every day to re-supply with water and food, and to empty the barrel which stood in the middle of the carriage that was used for our bodily needs. But this time the door opened with a crash. It was night time and we were greeted with loud shouting ‘schnell, schnell heraus’ (quickly, quickly, out), dogs barking and beams of light shining from every direction. People were jumping down to the station platform from the carriages, everybody was panic stricken. It was raining and freezing. It was November 1944.
We were marched by the SS in a military fashion through the mud and pouring rain. My family consisted of my mother Judit, my brother Miki, my aunt Margo, my cousin Eva, my grandmother Rosaline and myself. We huddled closely together so that we wouldn’t get separated. The march lasted about two hours. We were constantly being rushed and threatened with dogs barking on each side of us.
We were absolutely drenched and exhausted when we finally passed through a large gate with tall towers on each side, and searchlights blinding us. Inside were wooden barracks with bunk beds. A couple of dim light bulbs hung from a low ceiling casting some light down the centre of the barracks. We were glad just to have a roof over our heads. Cold, wet and exhausted, we collapsed into bed and quickly fell asleep.
We seemed to have just fallen asleep when suddenly we heard a sharp whistle shrieking and the now familiar shouts ‘schnell, schnell, aufstehen’ (quickly, quickly, get up). We were still in our damp clothes but without hesitation everybody rushed out. The demoralisation process was complete. Outside, we were ordered into lines for a roll call. My aunt Margo started helping to put the children and their mothers in lines. The SS put my aunt in charge of us and she discovered we were in North Germany in Bergen-Belsen.
Life in Bergen-Belsen
This was to be our new home in hell. I have vivid memories of the cold and the sound of allied planes bombing nearby Hanover. Bergen-Belsen was a detention camp divided into five sections. Although we were in the women’s section we were unique as the children were left with their mothers and a barbed wire fence separated us from the others.
We witnessed punishment and beatings in the neighbouring barracks every day. I remember the most frequent punishment was seeing a woman, her head shaven, standing barefoot on a box, in a light striped dress and around her neck hung a board bearing the reason for her punishment, for example, ‘stole a potato’. She stood there for the whole day in the freezing cold. Some women just collapsed after a couple of hours. We did not know the fate of these women.
Basically our lives were spent waiting for something to happen. We awoke every morning to the shrieks of the whistle that my aunt used to get us out to the roll call. We struggled out in the cold, where we had to stand sometimes for up to two hours until the SS commander arrived.
After four weeks something did happen
Hygiene was never a priority as the water taps were outside in the open and in the cold weather not much washing took place. Then one morning during the roll call, we saw that the SS man was accompanied by a group of soldiers and barking dogs. He told my aunt that everybody should collect towels as they would be going for a hot shower. Now this should have been welcome news, seeing as we had not washed ourselves much. Instead the atmosphere became very tense. We were put in rows of two and three and marched along the perimeter of the camp into the forest.
It was very cold and nobody uttered a word. You could see the fear in the eyes of the mothers. We were accompanied on each side by soldiers with weapons at the ready. The atmosphere was very tense and frightening. The whole situation was puzzling to us children as we did not understand, but the mothers were convinced that we were being lead to gas chambers. I saw a woman remove her wedding rings which she threw away with the remark ‘these beasts will not get their hands on my gold’.
We marched about one and a half hours until we noticed a large square wooden building with a tall chimney in the distance. For the adults among us who really thought that these were the last moments of our lives, it was an unbelievable, terrifying reality. The chimney made it even more believable that what they were seeing must be the gas chambers.
The SS were calling ‘schnell, schnell’ (quickly, quickly) as we entered the building. They were always in a hurry. They instructed us to undress and to hang our clothes on rails. The routine was familiar at this time in 1944; the Jews knew what was happening in Auswitz. The procedure was exactly the same as we were now experiencing. Everyone was handed a piece of soap as we entered a large square room with shower roses on the ceilings in rows at equal distances in each direction creating a mesh-like pattern.
When all of us were herded in, the doors closed. There were approximately 100 of us children and our mothers. We looked upwards; my mother squeezing me and my brother tightly. We waited several moments. The anticipation was terrifying. We were all looking up.
Finally, after weeks, we had a warm shower and I survived to write about this experience.
As we know now there were no gas chambers in Bergen-Belsen.
Tomas Reichental