The Austrian writer and painter Roma Ceija Stojka, survivor of Nazi concentration camps and whose work refers to the Nazi persecution against Gypsies, died January 28 at the age of 79 years a hospital in Vienna, announced its editor Karin Berger Austrian news agency APA.
Born into a Roma family, Roma-Lovara, Ceija Stojka was deported by the Nazis and spent his childhood in three concentration camps, Auschwitz-Birkenau (southern Poland), Ravensbrück (northeast of the Germany) and Bergen-Belsen (northern Germany).
Survivor of the death camps, she told her experience and life in a work published in 1988 that became famous: “Wir leben im Verborgenen – Errinerungen einer Rom-Zigeunerin” (“We live in hiding. Recollections of a Roma-gypsy “). She then released “Reisende dieser Welt auf” (“Voyageuse of this world”) in 1992, following the first film.
“I took the pen to write, because I needed to open up, shouting,” she explained in 2004 at a conference at the Jewish Museum Vienna.
Ceija Stojka did not merely write about the fate of the Roma minority under the Nazi regime. She also made several paintings, including “Die Finsternis von Bergen-Belsen” (“Darkness Bergen-Belsen”), describing life inside the camp.
She has received several awards, including the Prix Bruno Kreisky policy for the book in 1993.
“Ceija Stojka was convinced that the peaceful community life can not exist with a constant dialogue and knowledge of history,” said the Austrian Minister of Culture Claudia Schmied.