I am the Nuna, the daughter-in-law of Ceija Stojka. I have been her daughter-in-law since 1980. I have two children with my husband and the son of Ceija, and we have been together for 41 years now. For me, Ceija was not like a mother-in-law right from the start. Sometimes the daughter-in-law and mother-in-law do not understand each other. She was always my second mom for me. I had a very good relationship with her.
One day she asked me when she wrote in her books: “Nuna can you read?” And I said: “Yes”! “Then you will accompany me on my travels.” And that’s how it started. My first trip with her was to Ravensbrück. That was 1989. We then visited the camp and it was something quite extraordinary for me, I had never seen anything like that before. I was very, very impressed and of course very sad. I thought, what had Ceija experienced as a child? That must have been very, very cruel for them. My relationship with her was very good, I have to say, and I miss her more than ever today. Especially in this day and age I would have needed her very much. She was a loving grandmother and a very, very dear, good woman and I loved her very much, that woman.
I promised her, before she left us, that I would continue on her behalf, that this story should not be repeated, and that the youth would be attentive and attentive to knowing what happened at the time. It was a long time ago, but it must not be forgotten.
“So much has happened and the Roma have suffered so much. […] And who is going to carry on our culture? I’m ready, I’ll do it. Although I have a bit of inhibitions. […] But I want to make a statement, as long as I am allowed to and can, even if it is still so small. Because it is a good statement for our descendants, for our children’s children and for the Roma in Austria and also for those in other countries. “
(Ceija Stojka 2013).
Ceija Stojka's carefree childhood
Ceija was born as a traveling child. She was the fourth child of her family, with a total of six children. They were two brothers and four girls. She was still born as a traveler and that was a nice time for her, that she experienced then to be with her parents and grandparents, with horse and carriage on the way. She had a carefree childhood. Until, of course, 1938 started the whole thing, 1939. Ceija was born. At that time, she was 6 or 7 years old, when the whole thing had already begun.
Beginning of the persecution
In the beginning, they took her father from home and accused him of stealing a bicycle, which was obviously not true. So they have been registered before. Yes, Ceija’s mother was scared. It was not known, but it was heard from people, relatives and acquaintances that people, especially men, were being picked up and taken to the concentration camps. They did not know what a concentration camp was. At that time, of course, they had no idea. In 1941 their father was arrested and they picked him up from the place where they stored in their caravans in Vienna and brought him to Dachau.
Not long after that, the mother received a letter. He had written to her. Of course, you were not allowed to write everything down. Those letters went through the censors. Everything they didn’t like was crossed out. But the father was very clever and he had written in the letter: “Dear, Sidi How are you kat mudaren.” People are murdered here. So the mother then knew where her husband was. What kind of danger he is in. It was very, very terrible. Less than two months passed. The mother received a letter that the father had died. They had sent the letter saying that he had died of pulmonary tuberculosis. The mother could not imagine that at all. Her husband was healthy and young, he had absolutely nothing. Yes, that was always their prank. In there, they wrote that people all died of tuberculosis or some terrible disease. After that, another month passed and the suit with which the father had been arrested and an urn were sent to the mother by post. Of course, the mother was completely devastated and you can’t imagine how she felt. She was now standing there with six children and knew that the father had died. Her husband. The children have all been in a trance and have cried and screamed for their father. And on that day, when the father was to be buried, the were told better to bury the urn, they were arrested. Unfortunately it did not come more to it.
Survive the camps
They were brought in with a Green Henrich, which is the name of a large police car. They were first taken to a police station in Vienna called Roßauerlände. It still exists today. There, many, many people were crammed into a large room until it was completely full, then the transport to Auschwitz was organized. Ceija came to Auschwitz with her mother, with her siblings. Ceija was there for a year and a half with her mother, with her siblings. The little brother, Ossi, who was two years younger than Ceija, he was 7, Ceija was 9, (Ossi) died there from belly typhus. Before he died, he said goodbye to his little sister and said to her: “Dear Ceija, when you are at home, you think of me. Yes?” So her little brother died at the age of 7 in Auschwitz. The time at Auschwitz, she said, was very, very terrible for all of them. They were afraid every day that they would be put in the gas chambers with the Jews. No distinction was made whether they were Jews or Gypsies . Everyone was crammed together. They were very lucky to be able to leave Auschwitz.
They came to Ravensbrück soon after, which was a women’s camp, where there were only women and girls, children. They were also there, I think they were still in Ravensbrück for half a year. And then they came to Bergen-Belsen. Bergen-Belsen was the last camp where she was then freed with her mother. That was in April 1945.
Survival after the war
The post-war period was difficult for them. As a young woman, she actually got her son very quickly. She was 16 when she got Hojda and had to fight her way as a young woman, as a young mother. Yes, two years later, her daughter Silvia came. There she was eighteen. She was a very young woman, what can I say? And because she was very nice and likeable and a pretty woman, she always sold something. That’s how she fed her children and that’s how she got by, all those years. I think for more than 30 years, if I’m not mistaken, she lived as a market rider and in between she also peddled her wares. That was the case here in Austria, I think also in Germany. That’s actually how all the people got along.
The writing
She started writing when she was already 56! She was actually an older woman. But it always popped up in her mind what she had experienced and these horrible things. And then she said she does not want to remain silent. She just wants to get rid of the whole thing. And she kept writing something down on such small pieces of paper in her kitchen that she had. Until there was actually so much. Yes, that a book has been written. The first book she wrote: “We live in secret” has hit like a bomb. She was actually the first Romni to speak about something like this and to go public. It was well received. Not long after, she wrote the second book: “Travelers in this world”. A third book followed just about Bergen-Belsen and she also contributed to many other books that were written. She was very, very versatile, and she was eager to pass on this story to the youth. I have accompanied her for 22 years. In schools all over Austria, Germany, even more in Germany than in Austria, we were invited again and again. I was even in Japan with her. Yes, and I learned a lot, a lot from this wonderful woman. I am very grateful to her for teaching me so many things I didn’t know.
The painting
Later she started painting. Her drawings, her pictures are wonderful. They hang around the world. Even in America and Japan.
She was in Japan in 1989, I was not there with her. She flew with a Romni from Burgenland from here, from Austria to Japan, where she was invited. Ceija has also visited schools and kindergarden there. When she left Japan, children told her: “Please, dear Aunt Ceija, let us have something that reminds us of you.” And she said: “Okay, I’m going to send you a picture. But I was thinking of my daughter and her second granddaughter, Simona, who were children and already loved to paint and draw. She said to them: “Please paint me a picture, I have to send it to Japan.” The children didn’t really want to. And then she took the pen herself and the paper and said: “Ceija, you can do so much. You will be able to paint a picture for the children. That’s actually how it started. So, she sent her first picture to Japan, to the kindergarden. All of a sudden, she came up with it and felt like it. She liked to paint. Then she painted black-and-white pictures, with very, very bad terrible faces, with boots, with the barbed wire and what she just experienced there. From the perspective of a child. She was ten at the time and so she often painted it. She had never learned that.
And of course, there were also beautiful colorful pictures of the time when she was traveling with her parents and grandparents, in the countries with caravans, with flowers, with meadows. Today there are many of the pictures, including in Germany. We had large exhibitions everywhere and a lot of people have also bought their pictures, hanging everywhere at home.
Ceija Stojka's signature – a branch
This is the branch of Bergen-Belsen. In Bergen-Belsen, there was nothing to eat. No one came into the camps and all the soldiers and the Nazis were actually conducting everything from outside and they were always walking around in the camps. She and two young children were looking for food. Always something you can find, that you can put something in your mouth. And then you discovered a tree and that tree was their rescue. Little leaves grew on the tree and in the middle of the tree, it was still a small tree, a young tree, there is a resin – it was still so open, how can I explain that to you? When a tree in the middle, at the top towards the crown, bends apart like this, resin has come out and they have taken this resin out and twisted it together and then they have chewed that and the leaves of course. The leaves were then their food. And that was actually for her, yes, her tree of life. He doesn’t survive. They went there again and again and got a few leaves and branches and this resin out of the tree. And that’s why, when I was with her in Bergen-Belsen, she took a branch with her that she found. In this camp she found it. It was bad how I was there with her and she then found that, somehow on that spot where they were. She could remember where this hut was, that is, this shack where she was with her mother. The tree had died of course from the many corpses that were lying around there at the time then. Yet there was still a small stump that still existed and a few such branches all dried out of course and meaningless actually. She dug it out of the ground like this and took this branch with her. Yes, and that was her sign. This was always placed in her pictures until the end. It may be that she has not done it twice. Though, on the whole, she actually did that in all her pictures. It was like a signature a symbol of her with her signature. Sometimes she has abbreviated CS, i.e. Ceija Stojka, not the name at all, but the branch.
