As a young woman, she survived the Nazi genocide of the Sinti and Roma: In a book, the 96-year-old Zilli Schmidt recalls what happened to her in the concentration camps, how her family was murdered - and how she managed it, all the horrors to survive.
This summer Zilli Schmidt celebrated her 96th birthday. The memory of that fateful August 2nd, 1944, torments her to this day. In the book “God has planned something for me! Memories of a German Sinteza ” . A moving contemporary witness report that arose from conversations with her and was authorized by her.
Zilli - as she calls herself in the book - comes from a family of German Sinti. The parents of the 1924 born Anton and Berta Reichmann, she had an older and a younger brother and two older sisters. In the summer the Reichmanns moved their caravans mainly through Thuringia and Bavaria, and during the winter they stayed in one place. The father ran a traveling cinema and performed as a musician, the mother peddled haberdashery and fine lace. "We have had a happy, a good life", is how Zilli describes her childhood.
It was only in old age that this remarkable and, despite everything, fun-loving woman began to talk about her past. She sees telling her story as a mission. But that was not easy for her, as she emphasizes. The memories of the fate of her family, especially that of her child, are too painful. The idea of how their loved ones may have died torments them to this day.
The darkness of those terrible years has caught up with her even more since her husband is no longer alive. Especially at night, Zilli Schmidt's horrors come alive again: “I am alone and have time to think. And I do that now. And that's why I don't sleep some nights, because I'm always in Auschwitz. "
Link: https://www.focus.de/wissen/mensch/geschichte/
