Micha Tomkiewicz was born in May 1939 in Warsaw, Poland. He was an only child as his parents were young when he was born. His father was an officer in the Polish Army. After they were defeated by the Germans, he returned and served in the ghetto. There was not much time then for a family. Both of his parents had finished law school but did not practice law. His mother was looking for work. Things happened in stages during the German occupation. Poland had the largest Jewish community in Europe at that time ranging from very to less, religious. They comprised ten to 15 percent of the population. The community spoke three languages: Polish, Yiddish and Hebrew. After the Germans came, the first year or so were not so bad. The Warsaw ghetto was formed where Tomkiewicz's family already lived. In 1941 and 1942, this small section of Warsaw had up to a half a million people. The Nazis started deportation of large amounts of people in stages. Many were sent to Treblinka [Annotator's Note: Nazi extermination camp, Treblinka, Masovian Voivodeship, Poland] and the gas chambers. Most of the remaining population knew about the camps but many did not. There was no food. The Germans put as many people as could fit into apartments. Tomkiewicz's family had a house and they kept putting more and more people inside the house.

Micha Tomkiewicz and his family were living in the ghetto in Warsaw, Poland. Because of his father's Polish Army background, he was assigned to be part of the Jewish police force. Tomkiewicz's mother describes what he was doing in the books she wrote. [Annotator's Note: Mina Tomkiewicz became a writer after the war.] Because of this job, his family was not touched by the Nazis at first. Things started to deteriorate and the deportations to Treblinka [Annotator's Note: Nazi extermination camp, Treblinka, Masovian Voivodeship, Poland] started increasing. The family had a very religious Catholic lady friend. She came to the ghetto regularly and brought food. At one point, she took Tomkiewicz to her house to live with her and her daughter. Tomkiewicz's mother was hiding for a short time in the Christian area while his grandfather, father, and uncles started to be active in the uprising movement that was developing. The uprising started in August 1943. By this time the population of Jews had been reduced from half a million to 50,000 people. [Annotator's Note: Tomkiewicz moves out of frame and gets a cd of a film called "The Settler", which he says is similar to his experience.] Tomkiewicz was with the Christian woman but after the uprising, the Germans destroyed the ghetto. His grandparents were then sent by train to Treblinka. His father and uncles were also on the train, but they managed to escape. His father was shot and killed on the spot. One uncle and aunt escaped but Poles later gave them up to the Nazis who killed them. His other uncle walked back to Warsaw, found Tomkiewicz's mother and told her the story of what happened.

Micha Tomkiewicz and his mother were in the Jewish ghetto in Warsaw, Poland when his father was killed after escaping and being caught. In Palestine, there was a German community that were descended from the Templars [Annotator's Note: The Knights Templar; Catholic military order from 1119 to 1312] and were somewhat afraid of what the Allies would do to them. They started giving certificates for travel to people from countries that were not part of the war like Palestine, America and South America. The man organizing this had been on the train and had escaped. Tomkiewicz's mother tried to get one but they turned her down because she had no money. His uncle spoke to him after that and they got on the Palestinian list. These people were supposed to be traveling to Switzerland but ended up in the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp in Bergen, Germany in 1943. The ones with American certificates were slaughtered by the Germans before even boarding the trains. Those with South American certificates went to Bergen-Belsen but in 1944 were taken to Auschwitz [Annotator's Note: Auschwitz; a complex of over 40 concentration camps and extermination camps in German-occupied Poland] where they were killed. For reasons no one understands, the poorest people, who had only been able to get the Palestinian certificates were able to make it through the system to the camps but of 2,500 to 3,000 people only 300 were liberated. Bergen-Belsen was not a death camp but a lot starved. As the battle lines approached the camps, prisoners were taken on trains to camps further away. Since the Russians were close to taking Auschwitz, around the end of 1944, the prisoners from Auschwitz were brought into Bergen-Belsen. They were very close to death at that point, diseases and starvation, and massive numbers died shortly after they arrived.

Micha Tomkiewicz, his mother, and one uncle, Stanislaw Tomkiewicz, were in the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp. They had been sheltered by Stania, a Catholic friend, before being moved from Warsaw. They were there for two years before the population started to swell due to the battlefront shrinking as the Allies pushed the Germans back. Anne Frank [Annotator's Note: Annelies Marie Frank, German-born, Dutch-Jewish diarist; famous for posthumous publication of "The Diary of a Young Girl"] was there in Bergen-Belsen and died from disease. Tomkiewicz and his uncle had typhoid there. Food was becoming scarce both because of lack but also due to the influx of new prisoners. Sanitary conditions started failing as well. Neither concerned the Germans. Nearing the end of the war, April 1945, as the front grew closer, the Germans started moving them to camps farther away. Theresienstadt [Annotator's Note: a transit camp and ghetto in Terezin, Czech Republic] was one of the farthest away. There were three trains used and they were mostly boarded on a voluntary basis. They did not know where they were going. Only one train made it to Theresienstadt. The fate of those on that train is not really known. One other train was intercepted by the American Army near Magdeburg, Germany. Tomkiewicz was on that one. The other train was intercepted by Russian forces.

Micha Tomkiewicz was about three years old when he was put in the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp with his mother and uncle. He was nearly six when he was liberated on 13 April 1945. He had two girlfriends with nearly the same birthday as his. They are still alive and live in Israel. They were inseparable. He shows a photograph of the train. He really does not remember the ghetto in Warsaw, Poland. He only really remembers the camps through the pictures he has seen. He remembers being called out for "appell", like a roll call, where they would have stand for an hour or more. From time to time he has nightmares about mice climbing all over his body. He calls this his "Bergen-Belsen Complex". He thinks it is from when he had typhoid and the mice actually would climb on him. He shouts out when he has them. He had been permitted to stay with his mother in the camp. There were many different nationalities and they were mostly segregated. They were not tortured. He has returned to the camp since then. Liberation was meaningless to him as this was all he had known of his life. The height of the liberation experience was when Frank Towers [Annotator's Note: US Army First Lieutenant Frank Towers (1917-2016) was a member of Company M, 3rd Battalion, 120th Infantry Regiment, 30th Infantry Division and was the individual who stopped the train traveling from Bergen-Belsen to Theresienstadt] got them to the DP [Annotator's Note: displaced persons] camp in Hillersleben near Magdeburg, Germany. He has returned there, and it is in ruins. He has a strong memory of being treated like a doll by the American soldiers. He had great fun. There was a kitchen and dining hall on the first floor. Tomkiewicz stayed on the second floor with the soldiers. He once peed from the second to the first floor. [Annotator's Note: Tomkiewicz laughs.] Freedom itself did not mean anything to him. He had not had a bad time in the camp because there was a collective of kids. The kids were essentially the first victims of the Nazis. So many adults and families had lost their children that the surviving kids were really taken care of. He did manage to get out and pick flowers but was caught and returned so he knew he was not free in that sense.

Micha Tomkiewicz was on a train from the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp to Theresienstadt [Annotator's Note: a transit camp and ghetto in Terezin, Czech Republic] when liberated by American soldiers on 13 April 1945. [Annotator's Note: Tomkiewicz picks up one of his mother's books and describes where she tells the story of a stream near the train.] The list of Palestinians they were on that had put them in the camp to begin with, ended up in that stream. There were organizations that tried to bring as many Jewish people as they could to Palestine. In August 1945, Tomkiewicz and his mother were taken there by ship. This was a few months before the British started tightening the controls on people getting in. They had a lot of luck through all of this. He never plays the lottery because he used all of his luck in his first six years of life. Tomkiewicz saw a lot of different people in his life up until being liberated so the Americans were not odd to him. They were friendly, happy to see them, and had plenty of things the Jews did not. He was pretty good at getting things from them. He does not remember being afraid other than when he had typhoid. Fear comes from understanding the situation, and they did not really know their situation fully. He was not even afraid when he got caught leaving the camp to pick flowers once. Looking back on the situation he knows he should have been afraid. Statistically, his chances at surviving were a fraction of a percent.

On 13 April 1945, Micha Tomkiewicz and his mother were liberated from a prison train by American soldiers and taken to a displaced persons camp in Hillersleben, Germany where they stayed until August. A Jewish agency then picked them up and they traveled through Belgium and France to Palestine. Tomkiewicz's uncle, who had also survived with them, had pneumonia and had to have a lung removed. He decided to stay in France. In Palestine, his mother started working immediately and also started writing books. Although written as fiction of sorts, they are very accurate. Tomkiewicz was put in a boarding school run by a youth movement dedicated to his kind of kid. Shimon Peres [Annotator's Note: Simon Peres, born Szymon Perski, ninth President of Israel (2007 to 2014); two-time Prime Minister of Israel] was also in that school. He spent eight years there in school and working in agriculture. In 1948, the state of Israel was created and the war with the Arabs began. The school was right on the border so he was moved to another school farther away. They did return and he went to high school, served in the army then attended University. He now lives in New York City, New York.

[Annotator's Note: The interviewer asks Micha Tomkiewicz how his mother coped with her experiences in the concentration camps and losing her husband .] Micha Tomkiewicz's mother worked as a secretary in Israel, even though she had a law degree from before the war started. She remarried very late. She was coping but basically just living. For Tomkiewicz, it was the reverse. He did not read his mother's books until 15 years after they were written. Germany started reparations and Tomkiewicz refused to take the money. He did not want an easy way out. After the liberation, he could not separate his own experiences from the holistic picture of the whole picture. There was a reunion of his second boarding school class when everyone was about 70 years old. There were four or five Holocaust survivors among them. The organizer asked him to say something about his history. He did so and almost immediately everyone started apologizing to him about not knowing this when they were kids. He tried to explain it was not their fault as he made the choice not to talk about it. The Holocaust is a label. Once it is applied, everything one does is defined by that.

Micha Tomkiewicz fills his time trying to informally study and understand the history of the Holocaust. For him, the question is "what lessons can we learn to prevent this in the future?" His particular issue is climate change. He feels that the world is divided between people who can understand science and people who cannot. His ambition is to find a way to put them all in the same classroom. The study of the Holocaust is an institutionalized enterprise in the United States, Israel, Europe and more. Every American kid, regardless of background, will learn about the Holocaust, but perhaps not about the genocide in Rwanda. Tomkiewicz feels it would be helpful to discuss it all, but it is very difficult. He is told he is trying to treat the Holocaust with less value. He has written a book and is trying to lecture at schools. He wants to think in terms of the future instead of the past. He is an honorary member of the 30th Infantry Division, and he has promised Frank Towers [Annotator's Note: US Army First Lieutenant Frank Towers (1917-2016) was a member of Company M, 3rd Battalion, 120th Infantry Regiment, 30th Infantry Division and was the individual who stopped the train traveling from Bergen-Belsen to Theresienstadt, saving approximately 2,500 Jews] he would help organize reunions. [Annotator's Note: The interviewer tells a story of another person doing the same thing. Then he tells a story of talking to students and asking if another world war could happen. He then relates another survivor's lessons.] Tomkiewicz points out conflicts in the other survivor's statements. There is a huge difference between generalizing and taking in the holistic picture. [Annotator's Note: The interviewer asks him if "Never Again" applies only to Jews and the Holocaust.] Tomkiewicz recommends reading "Who Will Write Our History" [Annotator's Note: Who Will Write Our History? Rediscovering a Hidden Archive from the Warsaw Ghetto, Samuel D. Kassow, Vintage Books, 2009]. Tomkiewicz calls climate change "self-inflicted genocide." "Never Again", is super important but has to be followed up.