Not your typical Valentine’s Day fare, but well worth a look.
Romantic comedies, not surprisingly, dominate the schedule when it comes to the movie selections on offer on Valentine’s Day, but there’s something a whole lot different (and, most likely, a lot more interesting) on RTÉ One this evening.
Condemned to Remember, released in 2017, is the third in a series of documentaries featuring Tomi Reichental, who was born in Czechoslovakia in 1935, survived the Holocaust – he was a child prisoner in the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp – and has lived in Dublin since the 1960s.
In the documentary, Reichental visits Bergen-Belsen as part of a journey across Europe in which he explores the legacy of the Holocaust and speaks of his encounters with oppression that still exists.
Reichental can be seen celebrating his 80th birthday in a Dublin Mosque, while he also concludes his long quest to bring a convicted SS War Criminal to justice in Germany, confronts a “crisis of shame” in Poland and Slovakia and embraces Muslim survivors of a genocide in Bosnia.
Reichental also puts himself into the shoes of the “new Jews” and discovers a bond with refugees fleeing Syria in the present day.
The recipient of the RTÉ International Person of the Year award in 2014, Reichental has a fascinating story to tell and Condemned to Remember is well worth tuning into on RTÉ One at 9.35pm, around the same time the final whistle will be blowing in tonight’s Champions League games.
Wednesday night viewing sorted.
Clip via Gerry Gregg
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