The Memoirs of Ceija Stojka, Child Survivor of the Romani Holocaust by Ceija Stojka (review)

Abstract

Reviewed by: The Memoirs of Ceija Stojka, Child Survivor of the Romani Holocaust by Ceija Stojka Cynthia A. Klima Ceija Stojka, The Memoirs of Ceija Stojka, Child Survivor of the Romani Holocaust. Translated by Lorely E. French. Rochester, NY: Camden House, 2022. 280 pp. During Spring 2005, an Austrian colleague suggested that the author Dr. Lorely E. French meet up with Ceija Stojka, a Romani writer, artist, musician, and activist who as a young girl had survived Auschwitz-Birkenau, Ravensbrück, and Bergen-Belsen. Over a thirty-three-year period, Ceija had filled over thirty notebooks filled with memories, thoughts, and illustrations, many of which concerned her life growing up in pre-Nazi times as well as her experiences in various concentration camps. This work is the culmination of many years of collaboration with Ceija and subsequent student and colleague interest in Ceija's experiences as a Roma child imprisoned by the Nazis during World War II. As an activist herself in Romani causes, Ceija raised visibility of the Romani after World War II and wrote and sang original songs. But it was not until 1988 that Ceija wrote her first memoir, entitled We Live in Secrecy: Memories of a Romani-Gypsy. Ceija describes the settlements into which Roma were forced and the ever-growing persecution against her people in Austria. The memoir is intense and descriptive, and Dr. French has done a wonderful job of translation and has succeeded in capturing the desperation and trauma of the camps. The memoir focuses mainly on Auschwitz, Bergen-Belsen, and Ravensbrück, relating many horrific experiences up to the British liberation in 1945. As Ceija states, "I couldn't describe this a second time, because in my thoughts I am experiencing it all over again as if it had happened yesterday" (45). The descriptions of the camps, the translations of songs that originated in Auschwitz, and the forced movement from camp to camp are emotionally described. Ceija's second memoir, entitled Travelers in This World: From the Life of a Romani-Gypsy, introduces the reader to the new life Ceija led as a 14-year-old girl, living with her mother and her mother's new partner while the family traveled. It was during this time that Ceija began enjoying the company of a small book that was at first difficult for her to read. "Every free minute I took the small book out of my hiding place. I preferred to read when I was alone and unobserved" (86). Indeed, this is the point in Ceija's life when her love for learning and writing blossoms. The descriptions in this memoir give the [End Page 130] reader a sense for occupied Austria, replete with its Russian occupiers, necessary identity cards as the family moves through different occupied zones, and dislike for people like Ceija. It is in this memoir that the reader learns of Romani laws and traditions as they are explained by Ceija's mother and Aunt Gescha. Eventually, Ceija gives birth to her son Willi, wrapping him in red swaddling to protect him from the dangers of life. A second child brings Ceija to the realization that she must fend for these children and find a way to support them. This memoir is especially touching as it draws the reader into the world of young Roma women who struggled to take care of young children and protect them from a still-hostile society. One cannot help but think of Ceija's sufferings in the concentration camps and hark back to her life as a young girl freed from the grip of the Nazis, only to be once again treated as "other" and as much less than non-Romani Austrian citizens. Ceija's final memoir, Am I dreaming I'm Alive? Liberated from Bergen-Belsen, is dedicated to her mother, Sidonie Stojka. The reader is transported back into the past to the Ravensbrück concentration camp, where she and other family members marched in bitter cold weather past mounds of corpses. It was into these piles of corpses that she and her mother dove to keep warm in the bitter cold. Ceija relates harrowing stories of trying to stay warm among...