A Million Sinti and Roma were murdered in the Holocaust. Until today, they remain the “minority among minorities” in Europe. A Berlin gallery is now their story to tell.
Gabi Jimenez: “Violon Peint” (2010), “Guitare Potence” (2010), “Carnet de Circulation” 1 and 2 (2010/2011)
Sinti and Roma are often depicted as exotic and ancient peoples, who lead a wild, free life. Stories about Roma – think of Carmen, Franz Liszt, and the paintings of the “Gypsy painters” famous expressionist Otto Mueller – tracked often with good intentions, serve, but the old enemy images. Their stories even Roma could tell rarely.
The founding of the gallery, Kai., 2011 in Berlin, is also to be understood as a response to it. She was fully committed to the Work of Sinti-and-Roma-artists – with the aim to change the perception of Europe’s largest minority (about 12 million). “The idea of the gallery is to act as a platform for the artists of this minority and make the minority represent themselves, their own issues and their own perspective,” says Moritz Pankok, artistic Director and founder of Kai..
A “place of seeing”
The name of the gallery is a Roma word that means “place of seeing”. And this is the program: The gallery will be an open platform to people interested in the often marginalized Sinti and Roma in dialogue can occur. Worldwide, it is the only gallery that is dedicated to only women artists and artists of this origin.
Delaine le Bas: “Performance Costume” (2015)
The gallery Kai., located in Berlin-Kreuzberg, is part of the advancement of the art of the Sinti and Roma, which had begun with the first Roma pavilion at the Venice Biennale 2007: The TRANS-national exhibition “Paradise Lost” attracted much international attention. It was, as curator Timea young house announced in the exhibition catalogue: “A new Generation of Roma Intellectuals and artists – and with them a new consciousness of the Roma.”
Funded by the originally Hungarian-born American Philantrophen George Soros, the pavilion, in many ways, was radical: For the first Time in the history of the Venice Biennale, a pavilion was selected transnational – he could decorate with sixteen artists, all of which came from eight countries.
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Long overlooked: the genocide of the Sinti and RomaIn use for the people and the Fatherland
Many German Sinti had not only served in the First world war for the Empire, they fought from 1939 in the Wehrmacht. In 1941, the high command ordered “from racial-political reasons”, the “discharge of Gypsies and Gypsy Mischlinge from active military service”. Alfons was Lampert afterwards, together with his wife Else deported to Auschwitz, where both died.
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Long overlooked: the genocide of the Sinti and RomaMeasured and recorded by the race researchers
The nurse Eva Justin learned the Romani language, in order to win the trust of the minority. In the Wake of the race researcher Robert knight, she moved across the country to measure people and to register fully as a “Gypsy” and “Gypsy half-breeds” – the basis for the genocide. They explored the phylogenetic relationships and evaluated the baptismal registers of the churches.
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Long overlooked: the genocide of the Sinti and RomaLocked up and disenfranchised
Like here in Ravensburg in South West Germany Sinti and Roma have been locked families at the end of the 1930s in many places in Camps on the outskirts of the city, fenced with barbed wire, controlled by Dog handlers. No one was allowed to leave his place of residence. Pets were killed, the people had to perform forced labour. Many were forcibly sterilized.
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Long overlooked: the genocide of the Sinti and RomaDeportation in Public
In may 1940, Sinti and Roma families from South – Western Germany were brought through the streets of Asperg train station and from there directly into the occupied Poland deported. In the CID report stated: “The evacuation process went smoothly.” For most of the deportees, it was a journey into death, they died in labor camps and Jewish Ghettos.
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Long overlooked: the genocide of the Sinti and RomaOf the school to Auschwitz
Karl Kling on a class photo of the people’s school in Karlsruhe at the end of the 1930s. In the spring of 1943 he was picked up during the lesson and to the “Gypsy camp” of Auschwitz-Birkenau, where he fell victim to genocide. Survivors reported that they have not been informed prior to the Deportation in the schools excluded and partially.
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Long overlooked: the genocide of the Sinti and RomaThe responsibility of a mayor
The mayor of Herbolzheim requested, 1942, the “removal” of the Sinti family Spindler. 16 members of the family were deported to Auschwitz, survived by two. 60 years later, mayor Ernst Schilling explained the events. The city reminds of the Murdered. Schilling says he became aware of how much responsibility a mayor for the lives of people.
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Long overlooked: the genocide of the Sinti and RomaMurder and persecution across Europe
Where Nazi Germany had the rule been followed, the minority. Sinti and Roma have been included in the “Gypsy camp” or with the Jews in Ghettos such as Warsaw, in “extermination camps” were deported and murdered. It is estimated that up to 500,000 people were killed in shootings, Gas, Starvation, diseases, medical experiments or any other acts of violence.
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Long overlooked: the genocide of the Sinti and RomaLie at the entrance gate
“I can work”, thought the 9-year-old Hugo to hell pure from Munich, when he came in 1943 as thousands of others with the family in a cattle car to Auschwitz. The lettering “Arbeit Macht frei” was hope, he recalled later. He wanted to help his father at Work: “Then we come back.” Only about one in Ten survived deported to Auschwitz.
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Long overlooked: the genocide of the Sinti and RomaThe Black Wall
Known by name 54 Sinti and Roma, who were executed in 1943, in front of the Black wall in the yard of the Auschwitz main camp between Block 10 and the block 11 by the SS people-including young people. In The Book “Auschwitz. The history of the extermination camp,” writes Susanne Willems: “Johann Betschker you murdered on 29. July 1943, at the age of 16. Birthday.”
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Long overlooked: the genocide of the Sinti and Roma“The camp road was littered with dead”
“In a barrack, which would have perhaps had space for 200 people, were often housed 800 and more,” recalled Elisabeth Guttenberger, “the hell was that.” 40 barracks there were in the “Gypsy camp” in the section BIIe, a Block was “the toilet for the whole camp”. Franz Rosenbach, then 15 and forced laborers, said: “The camp road from Birkenau was littered with the dead.”
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Long overlooked: the genocide of the Sinti and Roma“Head of a body (12-year-old child)”
SS doctor Josef Mengele was camp doctor in section BIIe. He and his colleagues tortured countless prisoners. You mutilated children, infected pair with diseases, conducted research on twins and killed them with injections to the heart. Eyes, organs and whole body parts sent Mengele to Berlin. In June 1944, he sent the head of a 12-year-old child. He was never before the court.
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Long overlooked: the genocide of the Sinti and RomaAshes of the Murdered
The prisoners suffered from Hunger, thirst, cold, disease, and brutal violence. Small children and old people died first. The sick were murdered in the gas chambers. The bodies were burned. In the “Gypsy camp” in Auschwitz-Birkenau, one could see the smoke of the crematoria, and smell. The ashes of the dead was also sunk in such ponds, where the members lay down flowers today.
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Long overlooked: the genocide of the Sinti and RomaLiberation – it’s too late for Sinti and Roma
As the Red army on 27. January, reached in 1945 of Auschwitz, met you there on prisoners children. For Sinti and Roma, the liberators were late. Already on the night of 3. August 1944, the camp administration drove the remaining people from the “Gypsy camp” in the gas chambers. Two children came in the Morning after the night of the murder crying from the barracks, they were “counterfeit”.
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Long overlooked: the genocide of the Sinti and RomaRacial and followed
After the liberation from the concentration camps by allied or German Authorities were Survivors of certificates of racial persecution and the concentration camp imprisonment. Later, many of the to listen to had to, you had only been as a Criminal pursued, applications for compensation were rejected. Hildegard Reinhardt has lost in Auschwitz, their three small daughters.
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Long overlooked: the genocide of the Sinti and RomaHunger strike against the criminalisation
At the beginning of the 1980s, the representatives of the Sinti and Roma knew no more advice. With a hunger strike on the site of the former concentration camp of Dachau concentration camp Survivors fought against the criminalization of minorities and the recognition of the Nazi persecution. In 1982, Chancellor Helmut Schmidt stated officially that Sinti and Roma were victims of a genocide.
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Long overlooked: the genocide of the Sinti and RomaPlace of remembrance in Berlin
In the vicinity of the Federal Parliament in 2012, was created in Berlin’s Tiergarten Park, the memorial for the in the time of the Sinti and Roma. Associations call on particularly at the world Roma day to combat anti-Gypsyism. This hostility of the majority society even today, many members of the minority in Germany and Europe.
“We were really the first place for contemporary art of Sinti and Roma in Europe,” says Pankok about the Central role of the Kai.-gallery for the further development of the artistic expression of Sinti and Roma. “Up until today, has expanded the consciousness.”
Tracking paint
In fact, in 2011 there were a further major exhibition in Berlin. “Reconsidering Roma – Aspects of Roma and Sinti Life in Contemporary Art” showed Romani artist and Holocaust Survivors: The Austrian Roma writers, Karl Stojka and his sister, the painter Ceija Stojka, have put the attention on the devastating consequences of the mass murder of the national socialists in their community (which was recognized by the German government in 1982, officially).
Delaine le Bas: “Witch Hunt” (2009-2011)
The 2013 late Ceija Stojka – known for her images of the Nazi death camps, but also for your report, as Survivors of the Holocaust “We live in Secret” – in the meantime high prices on the art market.
In may 2018 Kai. presented a Review of the Stojkas expressionist works, often the dreary, terrifying “landscapes” of the Holocaust. It is the seventh exhibition of the Stojkas had to Work in the gallery. It took place in the same time with Stojka-a retrospective of the renowned “Maison Rouge” in Paris. Your title: “Ceija Stojka Roma-artist of the 21st century. Century”.
“There are hundreds of visitors, critics and collectors were there – the whole of the Parisian art scene,” recalls Pankok. “People don’t realize that Ceija Stojka was just a victim, or anyone, of the testimony of the persecution of the Roma during the genocide. But that was just a great artist.”
Ceija Stojka: “The fear was behind the barbed wire fence in Auschwitz concentration camp” (2009)
Moritz Pankok is from Mühlheim on the Ruhr in West Germany. For the establishment of the Galerie Kai. he seems to be predestined: He is the great-nephew of the expressionist painter Otto Pankok from the Weimar Era, was for his wood-prints and charcoal drawings of German Sinti known.
The own story resonates with
“He was persecuted as an artist by the Nazis as degenerate defamed. His works were part of the exhibition ‘degenerate art’ in Munich,” says Pankok. “He dealt with the Gypsies, painted a portrait of their settlements in the surroundings of Düsseldorf, and continued the Work even during the Nazi regime.”
Peter Pichler: Ceija Stojka on a 10-Euro bill
Otto Pankok documented the persecution of Sinti by the Nazis. “With his charcoal drawings, he was the artist who painted a portrait of the persecution of the people who were killed in the Holocaust. For this, he is among the Sinti are known,” says his great-nephew. In 2010, Moritz Pankok exhibited the works of his great-uncle in Berlin, as part of the “month of Roma, Sinti and traveller people” in the British Greenwich.
“We are magicians”
From the 23. October, in the Galerie Kai. now Cabellut, a celebrated Spanish Gypsy artist, who was already at the opening exhibition in 2011, this Work of Lita. The Catalan, who lives in the Netherlands and as a Gypsy in the streets of Barcelona grew up, it was issued with her expressive oil Paintings including portraits of Frida Kahlo and Billie Holiday – international. “I’m obsessed with the idea to paint humanity,” she said once.
In an Interview with the literary magazine “Southeast Review” encouraged Lita Cabellut expectant Roma-artist: “We are exceptional, we have the Creative is in our blood, we are magicians in a ‘space in-Between’, between a star and the other.” This Esprit has fuelled her work. “Commercially speaking, it is the most successful of our artists,” says Pankok.
Lita Cabellut: oil Painting of the famous Spanish Flamenco singer Camarón de la Isla
Her large-scale figurative paintings were last in the staging of a Rossini-to see the Opera, for which she created the set design, including eight of their own Work. “These eight large-format works we will be exhibiting here in the gallery and in the documentation centre for Sinti and Roma,” says Pankok. “It is a really important exhibition. We will roll out for the artist, the red carpet, because she is the most successful artist of the Sinti and Roma.”
The gallery Kai. will again be at the forefront of an evolving art movement. She promises to tell an important and unheard of history(n) – the magic of creation in the “in-Between”.