19.03.2014 Commemorating the Rroma-Holocaust

The Giessener-Allgemeine (2014) reports on an event to commemorate the Rroma of Giessen murdered by the Nazis. The historian Engbring-Romang talked about the persisting prejudice against the minority and the poor recognition of the exclusion and persecution of the Rroma. As a particular concern, the historian sees social acceptance of pejorative stereotypes: “More than 40 percent of Germans do not want to live in the neighborhood of Sinti and Roma. According to a survey by the Allensbach Institute – in 2011. “And those are only the ones that adhere to their prejudices”, Engbring-Romang the reviews the result.” It is therefore the task of the present society to break with deadlocked prejudices and replace them with independent, critical thinking and empathy. The fate of the fourteen Sinti, who were deported to the extermination camp of Auschwitz-Birkenau on the 16th of March 1943, remains unknown to this day, the newspaper states.

Helwig replaces this lack of clarity with a detailed analysis of the history of Johanna Klein and her family. On March 16th 1943, the parents and six siblings of Klein were deported to Auschwitz-Birkenau. Klein herself could stay in Giessen because she suffered from diphtheria at the time. After her recovery, she was also deported. It is thanks to the “atypical racial characteristics” in eugenic terms that Klein was not murdered like the rest of her family in the concentration camp: “My blonde hair and blue eyes saved me”, says Johanna Klein. […] “Otherwise, I too would have gone through the oven”, the statement bursts out of the 84-year-old, while tears run down her cheeks. “I have to think about it every day.” Because then, her younger siblings Anna and Friedrich remained behind. “This plagues me to this day.” Both were murdered in Auschwitz-Birkenau as were previously the parents and the three siblings Karl, Mathilde, and Wilhelmine.” (Helwig 2014).

Several German newspapers report about the death of 91-year-old Rrom and Holocaust survivor Reinhard Florian. Florian was interned into the concentration camp Mauthausen in 1941. This was followed by forced labour in the camps Auschwitz, Monowitz, Rydultau and Blechhammer. Florian was present as a contemporary witness in the post-war years and “a living example that [the] memory of the crimes of the Nazis is an obligation for the present.” With the exception of a brother and the father, all eighteen members of his family were murdered. In October 2012, he was guest of honour at the inauguration of the monument to the Rroma murdered under the Nazis in Berlin (compare Bild 2014, Focus online 2014, Main-Netz 2014, Merkur online 2014).