Karl Stojka

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Karl Stojka (born April 20, 1931 in Wampersdorf ; † April 10, 2003 in Vienna ) was an Austrian artist and Porajmos survivor from the Roma ethnic group .

Life

Karl Stojka was the fourth of six children of a Catholic Roma born family in the caravan. His parents belonged to the Lovara subgroup, a Roma group that had mostly lived as horse traders in Austria since the 19th century.

Karl Stojka's father was deported to the Dachau concentration camp in 1941 and murdered at Hartheim Castle at the end of the same year . His family was then deported to other concentration camps. At the age of eleven he was arrested by the National Socialists and taken to the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp. Stojka was stripped of his name and given the number Z5742, which was tattooed on his left forearm. His six-year-old brother Ossi died of a lack of medical help and hunger, as Karl Stojka himself reported.

After the Second World War, Karl Stojka lived in stations in Austria and the USA. In 1985 he started painting as an autodidact. In his pictures he expressed his life story as a persecuted Roma. He also gave exhibitions with over 80 pictures in Japan, the USA and Europe. Stojka was buried in Vienna at the Meidlinger Friedhof (group 1, row 7, number 129).

Karl Stojka was the brother of Ceija Stojka and Mongo Stojka and the father of the jazz musician Karl Ratzer .

Publications

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Contemporary witness Ceija Stojka. Retrieved on November 21, 2019 (German).
personal data
SURNAME Stojka, Karl
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Austrian Burgenland Roma
DATE OF BIRTH April 20, 1931
PLACE OF BIRTH Wampersdorf
DATE OF DEATH April 10, 2003
Place of death Vienna