From the DW:
“Auschwitz
survivor Zilli Schmidt: Fearing new Nazis today”
The 96-year-old
Zilli Schmidt has made it her mission to tell the world what was done to the
Romani people by the Nazi regime. She warns of contemporary parallels — and
strikes a chord with many of her listeners. Zilli Schmidt was awarded the Order
of Merit by German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier this year. In September,
Schmidt walked into the Kulturhaus RomnoKher in the western German city of
Mannheim to attend a reading of her book about her memories as a survivor of
the Auschwitz death camp. "Your visit is a gift," said many of the
people who had turned out to greet her.
The book is
titled God Had Plans for Me: To Keep Alive the Memory of the German Sinti. It
recounts her happy childhood days — as well as her incarceration and hunger,
the guards shooting at small children and mass murder. Schmidt told DW that it is her mission to tell
what the Nazis did to Sinti, a Roma population in Europe. "They were all
gassed, my entire family, all my people," she said. She added that the
murder of Roma is often left out of stories of the Holocaust: "The Jews
were all sent to the gas chambers. And all the Sinti are still alive?" She
pauses. "Nobody was still alive," she said. The first time she spoke
in public about her life was August 2, 2018, at a service for murdered Roma at
the memorial in Berlin: "I spoke only for my own people." She was
pleased to see so many young people there. "Young people were never
told," she said. "It wasn't taught at school."
'I dream
that I am back in Auschwitz' Remembering is not easy, Schmidt said: "I
often have the urge to cry but I don't show it. I swallow my feelings."
But the memories torment her. "When I dream," she said, "I dream
that I am back in Auschwitz." Schmidt's
daughter, Gretel, would be 80 years old if she were alive today. She could have
grandchildren and great-grandchildren. But Gretel, her little girl, "did
not grow up." In the camp, the girl saw the chimneys of the crematorium:
"Mama, they are burning people over there." Zilli told her daughter
that this was not true: "No, they are just baking bread." Gretel's
life ended when she was four years and three months old. Murdered on August 2,
1944, in the gas chambers of Auschwitz-Birkenau, just like Zilli's parents, her
sister Guki and her six children, when the Nazi SS paramilitaries decided to
liquidate so-called gypsy families. On this night alone, the SS murdered about
4,300 screaming and crying people. It was one of the darkest episodes in the
Romani genocide, known as the Porajmos. Like other young concentration
camp inmates deemed "fit to work," the 20-year-old was moved to a
different camp before that night of murder. Her father wanted to protect Gretel
and kept the girl close. When her young mother tried to run toward her family,
SS doctor Josef Mengele slapped her and forced her back into the wagon.
"He saved my life but did me no favor in the process." In the
concentration camp at Ravensbrück, she was told what had been done to her
family. She collapsed, screaming.
'A happy
family'
(Schmidt, right, and her cousin Tilla were in Prague together in 1940)
Schmidt was
born Cäcilie Reichmann in 1924 in Thuringia, to a family of traveling
performers who entertained people with their mobile cinema and music. "We
were a happy family," she says in her book. The caravan that housed the
Reichmanns on their summer tours was built by her father: "A real
treasure," with the stove decorated with different images of birds and
Meissen porcelain in the cupboard. Her brother bought and sold violins, while
she and her mother went from door to door selling the finest lace. She
and her little brother Hesso went to school wherever they stopped along the
way. In the winter, they went to the same school for months on end, in
Thuringia or Bavaria. The teachers would send them to the back of the class.
Sometimes fellow pupils would chase and taunt them. "Gypsies,
gypsies," chants Schmidt 90 years later, as she recalls the jibes. As a
child, she would defend herself with her fists. When the National
Socialists seized power in 1933, her father still felt safe: "They're only
arresting criminals." He had done nothing wrong and believed he had
nothing to fear. World War II began in 1939. Schmidt's big brother, Stifto,
served in the Wehrmacht, in Russia and France. But the Nazi regime had no
interest in just rewards. It was focused on its murderous and racist ideology.
With some relatives already deported to the Buchenwald concentration camp,
the Reichmann family went on the road, traveling across Germany to France to
stay one step ahead of the authorities. But they caught up with them: Zilli and
her cousins were arrested in Strasbourg. "Crime: gypsy" read the
police file.
'God helped
me' Schmidt was sent from jail to jail but managed to escape from the camp
at Lety in the then German Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia, in what is now
the Czech Republic. But she was rearrested shortly afterward. In March
1943, she was deported to Auschwitz, where an inmate tattooed the number Z1959
on her forearm. She was the first of the Reichmann family to end up in
Auschwitz-Birkenau, in the "Gypsy family camp." Hunger, thirst,
disease, violence and death were part of everyday life there. Schmidt said she
stole to help keep the children and others alive — potatoes from the kitchen,
boots from the clothing stores. Each time, she knew she was risking her life.
Twice, her name was on the list for the gas chamber. Yet twice, she
escaped, she said. She survived three days of captivity in a cell with room
only to stand. Three days with neither food nor water, nor a toilet.
"While I was inside, I thought 'Screw you. When I get out, I'm going to
keep stealing.'" One time, she said, a sentry shot at her and only
narrowly missed. Later, she and her cousin Tilla were able to escape again,
from a satellite camp. She survived the war against all odds. "God helped
me, I would never have managed alone," Schmidt said. "I'm still here
for a reason." She is one of the last eyewitnesses.
Serving the
fatherland Many German Sinti fought for Germany not only in the First World
War but also in the Wehrmacht from 1939 on. In 1941 the German high command
ordered all "Gypsies and Gypsy half-breeds" to be dismissed from
active military service for "racial-political reasons." Alfons
Lampert and his wife Elsa were then deported to Auschwitz, where they were
killed. After the war, she suffered from depression. At first, her
medication worked and she built a new life. Then came a sense of guilt for
having survived when her loved ones were murdered. She and her husband Toni
Schmidt, also a concentration camp survivor, applied in Munich for compensation
for the time they were incarcerated in concentration camps. After years
fighting red tape and bureaucratic dead ends, Schmidt received a small amount
of money: "But I was glad to get it. We were totally impoverished after
the camps." It took until 1982 for the German government to acknowledge
the racial persecution of Romani people.
Threat of
Neo-Nazism The Mannheim reading was
attended by many young Romani women, who were visibly moved by Schmidt's story.
Christina Schumacher was born in
Siberia, Russia. She came to Germany with her parents. Verena Lehmann's
grandmother was in Auschwitz. Verena herself spoke at the memorial in Berlin on
August 2, 2020: "We children learned at an early age what a concentration
camp is and what a Nazi is. I was especially terrified of Hitler." This
was years after the war and the death of the dictator — the trauma of
persecution will go from generation to generation, she says. Many
members of Romani communities hide their identity for fear of discrimination.
Victoria Gross is a nursery school teacher. When an acquaintance took part in
protests against the accommodation of a Sinti family in their building, she
told her that she, too, belonged to the minority group. "That information
is doing the rounds now," she said. Her daughter was no longer invited to
birthday parties. "She was in tears." Her 10-year-old daughter asks:
"Why did you tell them?" Gross said hiding was not a solution.
Her recipe is to promote networking in the minority community, encouraging
mutual support and educating people. That, she said, is the reason why she does
youth work. Schmidt has lived through nearly a century of discrimination and
alienation because she belongs to the ethnic minority of the German Sinti.
"Dear children, you must stay strong," she urges. "The Hitlers
are still agitating; they cannot be silenced." The 96-year
continued: "I want to be informed about what is going on in the world. I
see it all on TV — that even the police have been infiltrated by
Nazis." Schmidt still experiences fear. She fears the new breed of Nazi.
"If they found out where I live," she said, "they would kill
me."
^ The Murders
of the Gypsies (Roman and Sinti) need to be more widely known. ^
https://www.dw.com/en/auschwitz-survivor-zilli-schmidt-fearing-new-nazis-today/a-55124766
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