Alfred Lessing (Author)

Alfred Lessing (* 1921 ) is the pseudonym of a German Sinto under whom his 1993 autobiography : My life in hiding - how a German Sinti survived the Holocaust appeared.

Life

Lessing worked from 1936 as a jazz - guitarist at a gas animal end in Germany until 1939. American band and then in a small circus. He volunteered for the Wehrmacht to desert abroad. In the USSR he was imprisoned as a German soldier and escaped shooting by Russian soldiers because the prisons were occupied by German troops. Lessing pretended to be Italian and was thus able to stay in Lemberg undisturbed. Here he became a contemporary witness of the pogroms against Lviv Jews, he protected a Jewish couple by having their house assigned as quarters and pretending to be his domestic staff.

His cover was blown, and a German death sentence for desertion seemed inevitable. Lessing was acquitted because as a " gypsy " he was unworthy of defense and should never have belonged to the armed forces; When he was released back home, he evaded arrest and went into hiding in a KDF music group . a. made an appearance with the guards in Buchenwald concentration camp . In Dresden , where he was sublet, he was falsely denounced as a black market trader and arrested. He was able to escape from prison after being hit by a bomb and fled to Bavaria as a bombed out man.

After 1945 he made music for the American occupation forces, was a small actor and stuntman in film. Most recently he ran a showman's business with his wife. His autobiography is used as a source in literature on the Porajmos . Günter Wallraff wrote the preface to the autobiography .

Autobiography

• Andreas Schmid (arr.): My life in hiding. How a German Sinti survived the Holocaust . Zebulon, Düsseldorf 1993, ISBN 3-928679-10-4 .

literature

• Marianne C. Zwicker (2009): Alfred Lessing In: dies: Journeys into Memory: Romani Identity and the Holocaust in Autobiographical Writing by German and Austrian Romanies . University of Edinburgh (PhD thesis) pp. 98-111 online

Individual evidence

1. ^ Siegfried Wolf: Gypsies do not have a lobby . In: Roland Schopf: Sinti, Roma and the rest of us. Contributions to problematic relationships (foreign proximity. Contributions to intercultural discussion; Vol. 5). Lit-Verlag, Hamburg 1994, p. 153, ISBN 3-89473-786-7 .
2. ↑ Examples for different uses:
   • Sybil Milton: Precursor to Annihilation. The gypsy camps after 1933 . In: Vierteljahrshefte für Zeitgeschichte , vol. 43 (1995), issue 1, p. 127, ISSN  0042-5702 (online in the publisher's archive).
   • Heike Krokowski: The burden of the past. Effects of National Socialist Persecution on German Sinti . Campus Verlag, Frankfurt / M. 2001, p. 73, ISBN 3-593-36841-2 (also dissertation, University of Hannover 2000).
   • German Bundestag: (PDF; 101 kB)
   • Stefanie Sabine Bach: The narrative and dramatic communication of "Gypsy figures" in German-language literature  ( page no longer available , search in web archives )  Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.   . Dissertation 2005.
   • Mentioned in an exhibition of the Goethe Institute in Bucharest. A history lesson of a special kind in: Siebenbürgische Zeitung, Volume 3 of February 28, 2003, p. 5.
   • Mention in the exhibition With the Guide to Victory? 2016/17 in Herford ( cell block in Herford town hall ) on the subject of persecution of Sinti and Roma as a concretization in exhibition pedagogical work with schoolchildren; see. Pedagogical material