CEIJA STOJKA ( 1933-2013 ) ....TESTIMONIES // TÉMOIGNAGES // ZEUGNISSE // GETUIGENISSEN ...... ...“ I was born into a family of Vlax Roma ( LOVARA tribe ), who followed a traditional nomadic life. I was the fifth child of my parents who had six children altogether. Near a small village my mother said: The time has come ! and in half an hour I came into this world. They bathed me in the cold runnel. It was May. There was a lot of gypsies with us and they celebrated my birth for five more days. The next day I was baptized. This is something very important for the Roma.” This happy childhood ended abruptly in 1941 when Ceija’s father was deported into Dachau, whence he never returned. In 1943, the whole Stojka family was transported into the Auschwitz Birkenau II concentration camp, where most of her relatives perished. “The crematory was in front of us. The chimney was smoking day and night. But my mother kept telling me: Never talk about this Ceija, do not talk to anyone about this is crematory. Say it is a bakery, and they are baking bread for us every day.” Ceija survived the imprisonment, but the theme of witnessing has been returning in her art ever since she started to work in 1989. Like the paintings of her brother Karl, ( ►read more about KARL STOJKA, later at my page FB ◄) her own canvases also seem to reflect extreme atmospheres: now capturing bright sunny days with the feeling of freedom, now unveiling the monstrous memories of an imprisoned little girl. Some books and a film report about her life. A charismatic author, Ceija also sings and has her own album released. The works of Ceija Stojka are accepted as outstanding pieces of art in Austria, as well as abroad. Her last exhibition “Ceija Stojka, Leben !” was held in the Jewish Museum of Vienna (January – March 2005). ( credits: © Jana Horvathova ) =========================================================== Ceija Stojka, Born: 1933 in Kraubath bei Knittelfeld, Austria Ceija was the fifth of six children born to Roman Catholic Gypsy parents (LOVARA). The Stojkas family wagon traveled with a caravan that spent winters in the Austrian capital of Vienna and summers in the Austrian countryside. The Stojkas belonged to a tribe of Gypsies called the Lowara Roma, who made their living as itinerant horse traders. 1933-39: I grew up used to freedom, travel and hard work. Once, my father made me a skirt out of some material from a broken sunshade. I was 5 years old and our wagon was parked for the winter in a Vienna campground, when Germany annexed Austria in March 1938. The Germans ordered us to stay put. My parents had to convert our wagon into a wooden house, and we had to learn how to cook with an oven instead of on an open fire. 1940-44: Gypsies were forced to register as members of another race. Our campground was fenced off and placed under police guard. I was 8 when the Germans took my father away; a few months later, my mother received his ashes in a box. Next, the Germans took my sister, Kathi. Finally, they deported all of us to a Nazi camp for Gypsies in Birkenau. We lived in the shadows of a smoking crematorium, and we called the path in front of our barracks the highway to hell because it led to the gas chambers. Ceija was subsequently freed in the Bergen-Belsen camp in 1945. After the war, she documented and published Lowara Gypsy songs about the Holocaust. ( Copyright © United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, Washin gton, DC) ======================================================== Ceija was the fifth of six children born into a Catholic Roma family. She and her mother and four of her siblings survived the horror of the death camps, however, her father and her brother perished. Ceija was twelve years old when she was liberated from Bergen-Belsen, yet, for many years she could not speak about the gruesome memories and terrible nightmares that tormented her sleep. It was only after reaching her fifth decade of life that she was finally able to open up to people about her experiences during WWII. In 1988, Ceija published an autobiographical account of her life as a Holocaust survivor in the book, We Live In Seclusion..... If I could write down all my thoughts, they would surely be an endless book of suffering, Ceija said during an interview before writing her autobiography. But my thoughts race more quickly than my hands are able to put everything to paper. Ceija was also featured in the 2013 film, Forget Us Not a documentary. . ( Compilation photos & textes: FB - WoutJvan Vloten 2014 )
Posted on: Sat, 24 Jan 2015 21:31:21 +0000