Roma Memoirs : the Other Genocide

Roma Memoirs : the Other Genocide A documentary by Henriette Asséo, Idit Bloch, and Juliette Jourdan Roma witnesses and image archives found in Europe.

Roma Memoirs, the other genocide, a film written by Henriette Asséo, Idit Bloch, and Juliette Jourdan, directed by Juliette Jourdan and Idit Bloch, Kuiv Productions, 2011, 75 min.

Documentary “Roma Memoirs”, Fata Dedic, Antoine Lagrené, Milka Goman, Willi Horwath, Ceija Stojka, André Pierdon

In this documentary about the persecution of Sinti and Roma people under Nazi rule in various Nazi-occupied European countries, witnesses are interviewed within a historical framework illustrated by archival footage.

With the frustrations of the November 1918 defeat [1], the search for a scapegoat began with the Roma. Their heritage was forgotten, and they were seen as separate, dangerous citizens. Obsessively concerned with the “decline of the German people”, the Nazis declared 90% of them to be “undesirable racial mongrels”, due to their numerous mixed marriages with people of “low value”, according to Robert Ritter’s classification [2]. They were victims of forced sterilization. Mayors “threw” them into camps (Zigeunerlagern) [3], whether they were settled or nomadic.

The fact that they were Catholic or Protestant didn’t help, the churches did little to help them. In 1938 and 1939, men and adolescent boys were sent to Sachsenhausen, Buchenwald, Dachau, and Mauthausen, and women were sent to Ravensbrück for forced labor.

Arthur Nebe, head of the Kripo [4] and commander of the Einsatzgruppe B [5], was responsible for their extermination.

The Roma shared the same fate as the Jews. The small “Jewish” girl in the film Night and Fog [6] was, actually Roma child Settela Steinbach, who was deported with her family from Westerbork [7] to Auschwitz on May 19, 1944.

In the film shot by prisoner Rudolf Breslauer, Steinback is commanded by Gemmeker [8], the camp leader. http://www.auschwitz.nl/en-exposition/deportation/westerbork-1942-1944/breslauer

Ceija Stojka, Willi Horwath, Hugo-Adolf Höllenreiner, Milka Goman, Antoine Lagrené, André Pierdon, Fata Dedic, Jan Istvan, and Bairam Ibragimova, who were children at the time, recount how their lives took a drastic turn.

This film combats the idea of “a nomadic people without a homeland”. These witnesses were settled people. They had a house for the winter, they went to school, and some, in the summer, took to the road to go to fairs and markets.

Ceija Stojka was born in Austria in 1933. She expresses the pain of deportation through a very vivid and violent painting. She claims to overcome her anger through painting. Her father and grandfather were horse traders, called Lovara. They spoke řomanes. Due to persecution, the family moved to Vienna in 1939.

The Gestapo first took his father to the Dachau camp. He sent a card with a coded message : “Here, they kill everyone.”. He died in Mauthausen. One day, in the early morning, the Gestapo came to round them up : her mother, brothers, and sisters. They were sent first to prison, to Elisabeth Promenade [9]. Then, in April 1943, they were deported in cattle cars to Auschwitz-Birkenau to “the family camp”, where they were given a red blanket full of lice. She became Z-6399. “We were numbers”. Ceija’s younger brother Ossi did not survive long. They were very hungry. She remembers that one day, her mother found a leather belt which she softened with her teeth to feed Ossi. She was transferred to Ravensbrück, then to Bergen-Belsen.

Past present, five former Ravensbrück prisoners are interviewed : Ceija Stojka (Austria), Lidia Rolfi (Italy), Aat Breur (Netherlands), Stella Kugelman Griez (Russia), and Antonina Nikiforova (Russia). The film was written and directed by Anet van Barneveld and Annemarie Strijbosch in 1996.
Ceija Stojka, Wir leben im Verborgenen - Erinnerungen einer Rom-Zigeunerin ( We lived in hiding. Memories of a Roma, Picus Verlag, 1988, 154 p.
Documentary by Karin Berger about Ceija Stojka, 85 min.
Ceija Stojka & Unter den Brettern hellgrünes Gras, Der Österreichische Film / Edition Der Standard (Darsteller), Karin Berger (Regisseur)

Ceija Stojka, Roma artist, Exhibition at the Salle des Machines gallery at La Friche from 03/11/2017 to 04/16/2017, La Friche de la belle de mai, Marseille. “I dream that I live” http://www.lafriche.org/fr/agenda/ceija-stojka-artiste-rom-620

Antoine Lagrené comes from a French family of musicians, spanning many generations. While they were in Germany, Antoine’s father felt the danger and they returned to France near Valenciennes, where they had family. They had a house in Pont-de-la-Deule and traveled with three or four families for work. There was no problem finding places to rest, but they always had to show the “big” anthropometric notebook [10] with their photographs and fingerprints, as ordered by Bertillon [11]. Even the 15-month-old baby had its fingerprints in the book. The Rom, already under house arrest, were imprisoned. Antoine’s family was “collected” in Douaisis during the roundup of November 23, 1943, and sent to Mechelen. He was 13 years old. Then the Roma were deported by convoy Z. “We are being taken to a camp,” the Jews said. At Auschwitz-Birkenau, there was no selection [12] on arrival. His mother gave birth at the family camp in Birkenau, but the baby only lived a month. They were in a “windowless swamp stable.” Mengele ran experiments on him : he received injections in the chest for several days, but he did not know what was in the injections. After the Romani Uprising of May 16, 1944 [13], he was sent to the Little Camp in Buchenwald, where a schoolmaster taught him to read. They had no time to be afraid, work was killing them. His mother was sent to Ravensbrück.

Hugo Höllenreiner, from Munich, went to school where he was called “Zigeuner” [14]. His father, a horse trader, asked his children to be quiet. At home, they spoke řomanes. One day, their horses were confiscated. Their father was drafted for the French campaign [15]. He got his pilot’s license and the two boys played with his badges when he came home on leave. He brought them chocolate.

On March 16, 1943, they were deported to the family camp in Birkenau. Considered “war material”, along with his brother, Hugo was a victim of Mengele’s experiments. One day, Gypsies in soldiers’ uniforms arrived at Auschwitz. They believed they were all going to die from being gassed. Panic reigned at the family camp. Their mother reassured them.

Polish inmate and camp secretary Tadeusz Joachimowski warned them of the upcoming extermination. Hugo saw his father with a pickaxe on his shoulder. There were around fifty men with pieces of scrap metal, glass, stones, and knives. It was the Romani Uprising of May 16, 1943 [16]. The SS retreated. Those who were able to work were transferred to other camps. He was transferred to Ravensbrück, Mauthausen, and then to Bergen-Belsen where he stepped over corpses. He was freed by the English. He was 11 years old.

André Pierdon, from a Roma fairground family from Ille-et-Vilaine, who had a carousel, joined the Resistance. He transported weapons, then he entered a maquis [17] in Poitou. He participated in the liberation of Niort.

Bernard Ageneau, the Montreuil-Bellay camp guard, confirms that the Montreuil-Bellay camp was immense, it was 2 kilometers long and the Roma at the camp lacked everything. He speaks about the electrified wire fence through which Roma people tried to escape. As for the other witnesses, they also experienced very harsh conditions. Austrian Willi Horwath was taken to the Lackenbach camp, Czech Jan Istvan to the Letti camp, Italian Milka Goman remembers being thrown into a train and especially, lice swarming everywhere. In the USSR, where the Einsatzgruppen [18] and the Wehrmacht [19] operated, Bairam Ibragimova saw the graves and the earth that “breathed”. Fata Decic from Croatia remembers the bodies of children thrown into the water that prisoners were drinking. The fascists cut off women’s fingers and ears to take their jewelry. They killed them one after the other. There was blood everywhere.

Through these testimonies, we clearly see a difference in treatment between Gypsies coming from the West and those coming from the East.

Film clips show the work of Ritter and his assistant Eva Justin, who, speaking Romani, gained the trust of the Roma people. The filmmaker Leni Riefenstahlworked on the film Tiefland from 1940 to 1941. The film is based on Eugen d’Albert’s opera, in which she herself plays the role of a Roma woman. While filming, she involved around sixty Sinti and Roma people, including many children, to evoke a “Spanish” atmosphere. The Roma, who played extras, were then deported to Auschwitz where they were murdered, but “she didn’t know that”.

They had difficulty having their nationality recognized, and were not compensated because they could not prove racial persecution because they had been rounded up as “asocial” [20], says Hugo.

Ritter Robert Dr., Rassenforscher, Leiter des Reichsgesundheitsamtes (RHKF), Rassehygienische und Kriminalbiologische Forschungsstelle des Reichsgesundheitsamtes
Justin Eva, Rassenbiologische Forschungsstelle des RHKF
At the Nuremberg Trial, SS-Einsatzgruppenleiter [21] Otto Ohlendorf declared that there was no difference in treatment between Jews and Roma. Ritter was acquitted, Eva Justin was able to continue her research. Arthur Nebe and the Kripo were not convicted at Nuremberg.

As witnesses to extreme violence, some of these adults, who were once children, do not wish to harbor feelings of hatred. Even as fear lingers, they remain dignified in the face of the misfortunethat has befallen them.

Nicole Mullier

https://www.cercleshoah.org/spip.php?article289

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