Dedicated to my mother, Sidonie Stojka

Bergen-Belsen, my God! You were really lucky to get out of there alive! You just can”t imagine it. You just can”t describe it. You have to go there and see it. All you need to do is remove the dirt from the hills, and people are lying underneath. Torn apart. Maybe one day they’ll receive a place of honor. Maybe someday they’ll get their own separate graves. Now it”s a hodgepodge down below. Many are lying face down, not up, looking into the earth. My mother and I, Tschiwe and Burli, Ruppa, we all saw that. Sometimes when I get up in the morning I think, “Ceija, are you in Heaven and are you dreaming? Are you dreaming that you’re on earth? You can”t have gotten out of Bergen-Belsen. That”s not possible!”

Prologue

In earlier times, when we were traveling, the elders sang and told stories, and suddenly there was a rupture. Their peace and quiet were disturbed, their everyday life. Nothing was permitted, no one was allowed to make a fire anymore, and no one gave you anything anymore. You sensed from individual people that you were no longer wanted. The Gadje didn”t laugh any more. They didn”t voluntarily give us anything anymore. They were standoffish.

For that reason, we moved to Vienna, to the big city, where my father had friends, non-Gypsies. They were always good to us, before the war and after the war. It was difficult for Mama to get a jug of milk or eggs or flour.

At that time, we lived in the sixteenth district near the Kongressbad. My father turned the wagon into a wooden house so that we wouldn”t draw attention. But soon they put up a metal fence, and we weren”t allowed to go out. We lived in constant fear, and loss and change were our constant companions. We had to stay on our toes all that time so that we could quickly pack up and run away when there was a raid and hide under some tree or in a pile of leaves.