Ceija Stojka (1933–2013)

Ceija Stojka nació en 1933 en Kraubath, Estiria, un pueblo al sudeste de Austria. Pertenecía al grupo gitano lovara, nómadas mercaderes de caballos. Ceija recuerda una infancia alegre en medio de la naturaleza, desplazándose con su familia por los campos de Austria. El nomadismo fue prohibido después de que Hitler anexionara Austria a Alemania, y en 1939 los Stojka dejaron el carromato a las afueras de Viena y levantaron una chabola de madera. En 1941 los hombres de la Gestapo se llevaron a su padre y lo asesinaron en el campo de concentración de Dachau. Meses más tarde volvieron y deportaron al resto de la familia. Los vagones del tren que los transportaban a Auschwitz iban repletos, como si fueran cargamentos de ganado. Tras la II Guerra Mundial, después de haber padecido los horrores de los campos de concentración de Auschwitz, Ravensbrück y Bergen-Belsen, supo que su madre y cuatro de sus cinco hermanos fueron los únicos supervivientes de un clan familiar de doscientas personas.

Karin Berger recoge el relato de Ceija Stojka sobre su paso por Bergen-Belsen, a donde fue trasladada cuando tenía 11 años, después de pasar por Auschwitz y Ravensbrück. Allí permanecerá, con su madre y otros familiares, desde principios de 1945 hasta la liberación del campo de concentración, en abril de ese mismo año. Después de más de medio siglo, una anciana Ceija Stojka recuerda los meses pasados en Bergen-Belsen. Describe la espantosa cotidianidad de la muerte, del hambre, de la violencia y también la voluntad de supervivencia. Las palabras de Ceija Stojka no transmiten odio ni amargura. ¿Cómo han podido tantas personas seguir ciegamente las consignas alucinadas de un hombre? Esta es su pregunta y su perplejidad ante lo vivido. «¿Estoy viva o es un sueño?», se pregunta. Memoria para combatir el olvido.

Ceija Stojka (Kraubath, Austria, 1933?Viena, Austria, 2013). Escritora, pintora y música gitana.Testigo romaní del Holocausto, su obra refleja la devastación nazi del pueblo gitano. ¿Sueño que vivo? [Una niña gitana en Bergen-Belsen] («Träume ich, dass ich lebe? Befreit aus Bergen-Belsen», Picus, 2005), es la primera obra de la autora traducida al castellano. Otras de sus obras son «Wir leben im Verborgenen. Erinnerungen einer-Rom Zigeuneriin» (Picus, 1988) y «Reisende auf dieser Welt» (Picus, 1992), entre otras. Como artista, con dibujos y pinturas vinculadas a su experiencia en los campos de concentración, se le han dedicado exposiciones antológicas. (https://www.traficantes.net/libros/%C2%BFsue%C3%B1o-que-vivo)… (meer)

The Wienmuseum, the city museum of Vienna, currently hosts a great exhibition about the Austrian Romani and Sinti who had suffered greatly from deprivation in earlier times and were almost all exterminated by the Nazis. Of 12000 Austrian Romani only 2000 survived the Second World War. In the 1970s, Austria finally started efforts to integrate the remaining Romani into Austrian society, a task made easier by the low number of Romani left and the ability of them to "pass" as Yugoslav or Hungarian "foreigners". The exhibition includes a drastic testimony from the early 1980s of an Austrian Romani who said that she would have been fired by her company if they knew that she was Romani because no Romani could be trusted to perform accounting work. Fortunately, such attitudes are dying out, one funeral at a time.

This ghost-written autobiography presents the story of Ceija Stojka who as a young girl survived three concentration camps. She and most of her family (except for the men) had managed to escape arrest up until 1943. The hard life they had endured before the Nazi era equipped them with some of the skills to survive in the harsh world of the various concentration camps. The many skills of the Stojka family members and their internal teamwork of sharing resources and looking out for the others allowed them to hang on among the ghastly murders going on all around them. She recalls that the shouts and cries in different languages would indicate the region of the people being murdered by the Nazis on that day. She noted the declining fortune of the Nazis by the change from tall and beautiful camp guards to small and fat ones. It is truly amazing that she seemed to have preserved a positive acceptance of life (similar to Viktor Frankl) despite the incredible horrors she had to witness as a child/teenager.

The liberation in Bergen-Belsen by British troops is a moving tribute to the humanity and care. Unfortunately the wonderful care given by the British and some Austrians at the start of the liberation soon reverted to the usual neglect. Her family was evicted from the flat they had been assigned and she lost her place in a good school in Vienna she had gained access to. An early pregnancy further restricted her ability to enter into "regular" society. She and her family resumed peddling and selling horses to peasants. After the motorization of agriculture made this obsolete, she sold other goods, mostly clothes. Her son died early after a failed career as an artist. Thus the well deserved happy end in the post war era did not happen. Nevertheless, as a true survivor, she kept her cheerful belief in a better future. Perhaps for someone who has survived three concentration camps, all vagaries of life look small in comparison.… (meer)