Remembrance for the Murdered Sinti and Roma
How a Family is Still Fighting for Recognition Today
Ramona Sendlinger describes her life as “full of pain” in the film “Djelem, djelem” released in 2022. Documents from the Arolsen Archives show why. Eighty-one years ago today, SS men drove thousands of Sinti and Roma into the gas chambers of Auschwitz. Anna, Ella, Horst, and Josef Lauenburger were among those who died that night. They were Ramona Sendlinger’s grandmother, aunt, and two uncles. Over fifty of her relatives were murdered in concentration camps in the years 1943/44. “I feel as if I had been at Auschwitz myself,” says the now seventy-four-year-old in the “Djelem, djelem” film. In the documentary, ten descendants of survivors of the genocide talk about their trauma, the ongoing discrimination against them, and the resistance they put up against it. Marking European Memorial Day of the Genocide of Sinti and Roma on August 2, we reconstruct Ramona’s family history.
Ramona Sendlinger was three years of age when she saw her grandfather Karl Lauenburger for the first time. That was in 1954. From that moment on, pain dominated her life, she recounts in the film “Djelem, djelem.” And yet she describes this moment as a bright spot. Her family never stayed silent about the murder of their aunts, uncles, and grandmothers by the National Socialists. When the Second World War ended, half her family had been wiped out. “When my grandpa came to visit us, he asked my father where his wife and children were. My pa answered that they were all dead. He told me everything, although I was only three years old.”
As early as 1938, Karl Lauenburger was arrested and sent to the Buchenwald concentration camp. Hundreds of Sinti and Roma suffered the same fate, falling victim to the “Arbeitsscheu Reich” (ASR) operation. Step by step, they were exposed to systematic persecution, stigmatized as “work shy” and “antisocial” and detained as so-called ASR prisoners. Karl was also detained as a so-called ASR prisoner – as can be shown by personal effects cards preserved at the Arolsen Archives. His wife Anna, Ramona’s grandmother, was registered as his close relative. Karl was deported to Mauthausen, Dachau, and Flossenbürg.
Meanwhile, Karl’s wife Anna, née Arwei, and their ten children were hiding from the Gestapo. The family was discovered, though, and the children were sent to an orphanage, among them thirteen-year-old Max, Ramona’s father. One year later, in February 1943, the Gestapo seized him in Dresden. His siblings and his mother were arrested as well and deported to the Auschwitz-Birkenau extermination camp. They were locked up in a separate camp area together with other Sinti and Roma.
Experiments on Humans in Auschwitz
Max was subjected to medical experiments at Auschwitz conducted by the camp physician Josef Mengele – Max’s name is mentioned in the main register of the SS hygiene institute in Auschwitz within the context of bacteriological and serological experiment results. He survived the inhumane crimes committed against him, was considered “fit for work” and sent on to the Buchenwald concentration camp in April 1944. From there he was transported to Sangerhausen, a sub-camp of Mittelbau-Dora, where he had to perform forced labor. His brothers, sisters, and his mother – Ramona’s aunts, uncles, and grandmother – remained in Auschwitz. Four of his siblings and his mother were driven into the gas chambers and murdered on the night of August 2–3, 1944, along with 4,300 other Sinti and Roma.
Max would learn about the murder of his family only later. He remained at Sangerhausen until April 1945, when the Allies were advancing and the SS leadership ordered the evacuation of the Mittelbau-Dora concentration camp and its sub-camps. The plan was for Max and thousands of other forced laborers to be transported to Bergen-Belsen. Those who could not find a place on the trains were forced on death marches toward the northwest. Max survived and arrived at Bergen-Belsen where he was liberated by British troops in May 1945.
Ramona’s Mother Margarete is also survivor
At the DP Camp in Bergen-Belsen, he met Margarete (Geni) Lutz, Ramona’s future mother. Like him, she survived the Auschwitz-Birkenau extermination camp, like him, she lost her mother and five brothers and sisters there. She escaped being murdered at Auschwitz, because she was transferred to the Ravensbrück concentration camp. Max and Margarete fell in love and started a family.
Documents of the Lutz family
No Indemnification – Instead, Discrimination
Ramona’s family started submitting requests for support and indemnification as early as in the late 1940s. But instead of a recognition of the wrong they had suffered, they continued to experience discrimination and baseless suspicions. In 1951, Ramona’s parents Margarete and Max were accused of having provided erroneous information about their stay at Bergen-Belsen. Several times, evidence on the couple’s imprisonment in concentration camps was requested at and provided by the International Tracing Service (ITS), today known as Arolsen Archives.
In 1954, three-year-old Ramona met her paternal grandpa and learned about the murder of half her relatives. Albert Lutz, Ramona’s maternal grandfather on whom the Arolsen Archives preserve many documents, was also imprisoned in the Auschwitz, Buchenwald, and Mittelbau-Dora concentration camps, but lucky enough to survive. Just like the Lauenburger, he fought all his life for the recognition of his suffering and indemnification payments.
The difficult recognition as a Nazi victim
For thirty-five long years, the families had tried in vain. Persecuted Sinti and Roma were not officially considered to be Nazi victims until the early 1980s. Only a handful of them succeeded in receiving indemnification payments after fatigating legal proceedings. Instead, it was wrongly argued that their imprisonment had been due to an alleged “antisocial” way of life. It was not until April 1980, when eleven courageous Sinti and a social worker initiated a hunger strike in front of the Dachau concentration camp that public opinion came to rethink their positions. Flanked by further protest action, a civil rights movement of Sinti and Roma was built up. Its activities had the effect that Federal Chancellor Helmut Schmidt characterized the Nazi persecution of Sinti and Roma as genocide for the first time in 1982.
This does not put an end to discriminatory attitudes and racism, though: Sinti and Roma are still disadvantaged by official authorities and suffer from exclusion in their everyday lives. This ostracism is the subject Ramona Sendlinger and the nine other Sinti and Roma deal with, speaking out in the film “Djelem, djelem”. As late as 2015, the European Parliament designated August 2 to be the Europe-wide Memorial Day for the Sinti and Roma murdered by the National Socialists. “I will fight against racism until I die, no matter which people it affects. I fight for every human being. This is what I owe to the dead and to my children, that I will fight (…) for this to end finally. This hatred and racism.”
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