Sinti children from Mulfingen

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Memorial plaque under a window of the Josefspflege

The Sinti children from Mulfingen were children from Sinti families who lived in the Catholic children's home St. Josefspflege in Mulfingen until 1944 and then almost all of them were deported to Auschwitz .

From Mulfingen to Auschwitz

School-age Gypsy children from Württemberg , where home education had been ordered or those whose parents because of the gypsy decree in concentration camps had been deported were educated at St. Joseph Care in Mulfingen since 1938th As "Gypsies" or "Gypsy hybrids", they served Eva Justin in 1943 as test subjects for her doctoral thesis on the "life fate of alien raised gypsy children and their offspring". As a result, they were spared from being transported to a concentration camp until the spring of 1944. Eva Justin came to the conclusion in her dissertation that such children should be rendered sterile: “If we raise a gypsy, [...] he usually remains more or less anti-social due to his inadequate adaptability. All educational measures for Gypsies and Gypsy mongrels, including every form of welfare education, should therefore stop [...] All German-educated [sic!] Gypsies and Gypsy mongrels of the 1st degree [...] should therefore as a rule be rendered sterile. "

Entrance door of the Josefspflege

After Justin had finished and submitted her doctoral thesis, the Sinti children from the children's homes in Mulfingen, Hürbel and Baindt were recorded for admission to the " Auschwitz Gypsy Camp " in Auschwitz-Birkenau. Some children were given emergency communion before they were taken away. On May 9, 1944, most of these children were first taken to Künzelsau in a bus on the pretext that they were going on an excursion ; The pastor Volz, who was responsible for the home, had already asked the Caritas Association to quickly assign new children to his institution, which had been underutilized after the Sinti children had been transported away.

As the older girls and boys had already realized where the journey was going from the appearance of the police officers accompanying them, panic broke out as soon as they got on the bus in the Josefspflege yard, whereupon the teacher Johanna Nägele and the sister to calm the children down -Oberin Eytichia on the first part of the route. At the Künzelsau train station, the children initially had to wait a long time, guarded by the police, for the wagon into which they were then loaded. They were told to stay away from the windows of the car at the train stations. In Crailsheim the transport of Waffen SS men was taken over and the car with the children was coupled to a train to Auschwitz. There, Adolf Scheufele, the head of the "Office for Gypsy Issues" at the Stuttgart Criminal Police Headquarters, who was responsible for the "deportation" of the children, also joined them, and a criminal assistant accompanied the children together with the security team. The journey, which was often interrupted by air raids, lasted three days; In Dresden , the car was unprotected on a siding during a bombing raid.

The transport arrived on May 12, 1944, at the time the gypsy family camp Auschwitz, which had already been dissolved. This was in warehouse section B II e. There the children met other Sinti children who had also lived in Mulfingen but had been deported earlier. The children first came to block 16, stayed there for only about 14 days, then those under fourteen came to the “children's block” or “orphan's block”. In a selection in Auschwitz, only four older children were sorted out as workers, three girls and one boy (Amalie Schaich, née Reinhardt, Luise Würges, née Mai, Rosa Georges and Andreas Reinhardt). They were sent to the Buchenwald and Ravensbrück concentration camps . The remaining Sinti children from Mulfingen were in part still abused by Josef Mengele for medical experiments and then gassed on the night of August 3, 1944 .

Memorial sites and culture of remembrance

The memorial plaque in Mulfingen

Since 1984 there has been a memorial plaque at St. Josefspflege in Mulfingen, which commemorates the Sinti children from the home. It bears the text:

Memory of Anton Köhler as part of the “Denk Orts” in Nürtingen

The
39 Sinti children living here were
torn from the community of this home on May 9, 1944 and deported to the Auschwitz concentration camp - only four children survived

In memory of the victims

Rudi Delis * Maria Delis * Rudolf Eckstein * Fritz
Eckstein * Martin (Markus ) Eckstein * Amandus
Eckstein * Patrizka Georges * Wilhelm Georges *
Sofie Georges * Ferdinand Georges * Johanna
Koehler * Franz Koehler * Anton Koehler * Olga
Koehler * Anton Koehler * Elise Koehler * Johann
Koehler * Josef Koehler * Sonja Kurz * Otto Kurz *
Thomas Kurz * Martha Mai * Sofie Mai * Karl
Mai * Elisabeth Mai * Johanna Reinhard * Klara
Reinhard * Scholastika Reinhard * Adolf
Reinhard * Siegfried Schneck * Luana Schneck *
Karl Weiss * Maria Winter * Rosina Winter *
Josef Winter

Wolfram Isele created a memorial for the Mulfingen children ; it has been located in the foyer of the youth welfare office at Wilhelmstrasse 3 in Stuttgart since 2000 . The memorial shows 39 files that are supposed to symbolize the fate of the 39 deported children. For the Kurz siblings from Bad Cannstatt , stumbling blocks were laid in front of their former home in Badergasse.

Anton Köhler, Sinto, born in Nürtingen in 1932, murdered in Auschwitz-Birkenau in 1944, sculptor: Robert Koenig, Project Odyssey

In Nuertingen a wooden sculpture in memory of those born in Nuertingen Anton Kohler was unveiled on July 26, 2015. In addition, the wooden figure represents the victims and sufferers of National Socialism in Nürtingen as the “guardian of memory”. The larger-than-life wooden sculpture by the British sculptor Robert Koenig, which was created as part of the Odyssey project, shows Anton Köhler at the fictional age of 21. Anton Köhler himself was murdered in Auschwitz-Birkenau at the age of 12. The fate of Anton Köhler is also presented in Nürtingen's “Denk Ort”, alternating with short biographies of other victims and those who suffered from National Socialism in Nürtingen and the surrounding area. References there lead to broader presentations on the Nürtingen memorial initiative website. Robert Reinhardt wrote the song Miro Si rowela in Sinti Romanes and German on the fate of Anton Köhler and the other Sinti and Roma children who were murdered in Auschwitz-Birkenau and sang it. This song was presented to the public for the first time on the occasion of an honor in the town hall of Nürtingen.

Survivors

In addition to the four children who were sorted out to work in Auschwitz, some older siblings of the Mulfingen home children survived the Porajmos , such as Waltraud Köhler - an older sister of the above-mentioned Anton Köhler, Alois Winter, Emil Reinhardt and Wilhelm Eckstein. After leaving school, the farmers in the area used to choose their future maidservants from among the children of the Josefspflege. Former foster children from the children's home thus escaped the fate of deportation because they were no longer on the Josefspflege lists. Emil Reinhardt, for example, was already working as a farmhand. When he tried to bring food to his younger siblings in the Josefspflege, the police intercepted him and slapped him so brutally that he lost his hearing. Emil Reinhardt hid until the end of the Third Reich and was able to survive.

A special case was a girl named Angela, born in 1934, who was listed in the home's lists under the name of her birth mother, Schwarz, but was listed by the authorities under the name of his father, Reinhardt. As a result, it did not appear on the list of children to be evacuated in May 1944. The ten-year-old was probably also saved by the slap in the face of a nun from the St. Josefspflege who sent her upstairs and prevented the girl from getting on the bus and going on the "excursion". Angela Reinhardt later became the main character in the documentary story Auf Wiedersehen im Himmel by Michail Krausnick . A film about the Mulfingen Sinti children was also produced under the same title, in which Eva Justin's original recordings from Mulfingen and interviews with survivors can be seen.

Perpetrator

Eva Justin, Dr. Rolf Ritter and the detective Adolf Scheufele “continued their careers after the Nazi era, in some cases they were again responsible for so-called 'Gypsy questions', Adolf Scheufele even returned to the Stuttgart criminal investigation department.” In the song sung in Romanes, Miro Si rowela denounced Robert Reinhardt in a spoken text in German by name "guilty of this mass murder" and complained that they were "never brought to account".

literature

  • Michail Krausnick: Goodbye in heaven. The story of Angela Reinhardt. 2nd Edition. Arena-Verlag, Würzburg 2009, ISBN 978-3-401-02721-0 .
  • Johannes Meister: The "gypsy children" from St. Josefspflege in Mulfingen. In: 1999. Journal for Social History of the 20th and 21st Century. No. 2 (1987), pp 14-51 ( Digitalisat ( Memento of 21 February 2014 Internet Archive )).
  • Manuel Werner: Who has cried for these children? In: Nürtinger Zeitung , June 15, 2013 (report).

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Exhibition poster Frankfurt Auschwitz. Retrieved March 30, 2016 .
  2. ↑ a b c d Manuel Werner: Born in Nürtingen - murdered in Auschwitz: Anton Köhler , in: Nürtinger victims of National Socialist persecution. Website of the memorial initiative for the victims and those who suffered from National Socialism in Nürtingen, accessed on: October 6, 2013.
  3. ^ The Catholic bishops and the deportation of the Sinti and Roma to Auschwitz-Birkenau. Retrieved March 30, 2016 .
  4. ↑ Uwe Renz: "The blackest day". Historian Janker explains the deportation of Sinti children from Mulfingen . drs.de; Retrieved April 10, 2013.
  5. ↑ Contents of the program: Goodbye in Heaven - The Sinti children from St. Josefspflege. Retrieved March 30, 2016 .
  6. ↑ According to a document from the Stuttgart Criminal Police Office dated June 14, 1944, the Delis and Schneck siblings were not taken away with the other Mulfingen Sinti children on May 9, 1944, but were sent to the "gypsy camp" Auschwitz-Birkenau on April 21, 1944 been. The spelling of the name Reinhard (t) corresponds to the lists of the home.
  7. ↑ "informationen" No. 55, June 2002. Archived from the original on October 5, 2007 ; accessed on March 30, 2016 .
  8. ↑ Wolfram Isele: Memorial for the Mulfingen children. Retrieved March 30, 2016 .
  9. ↑ Four Sinti children from Cannstatt. Retrieved March 30, 2016 .
  10. ↑ Guardian of Remembrance ( Memento from February 3, 2016 in the Internet Archive ), in: Nürtinger Victims of National Socialist Persecution. Website of the memorial initiative for the victims and those who suffered from National Socialism in Nürtingen, accessed on: July 30, 2015.
  11. ↑ Odyssey ( Memento from May 29, 2016 in the Internet Archive ), in: Nürtinger Victims of National Socialist Persecution. Website of the memorial initiative for the victims and those who suffered from National Socialism in Nürtingen, accessed on: July 30, 2015.
  12. ↑ Unveiling of the "Nürtinger" Odyssey figure, in: Nürtinger Zeitung of July 30, 2015
  13. ↑ Our thinking place . Nürtingen victims of National Socialist persecution. Website of the memorial initiative for the victims and those who suffered from National Socialism in Nürtingen; accessed on July 30, 2015.
  14. ↑ Manuel Werner: Born in Nürtingen - murdered in Auschwitz: Anton Köhler . Nürtingen victims of National Socialist persecution. Website of the memorial initiative for the victims and those who suffered from National Socialism in Nürtingen; Retrieved on: February 26, 2016.
  15. ↑ Manuel Werner: The shouting fades away in the night . In: Nürtinger Zeitung , February 9, 2016
  16. ↑ Thomas Schorradt: The second life of Anton Köhler . In: Stuttgarter Zeitung , December 13, 2016
  17. ↑ Philipp Braitinger: He gives people back their dignity . In: Stuttgarter Zeitung , February 12, 2016
  18. ↑ Thomas Schorradt: The second life of Anton Köhler . In: Stuttgarter Zeitung , December 13, 2016
  19. ↑ Manuel Werner: Memory needs us, and so does the future! (PDF) In: Nürtinger STATTzeitung ; Speech at the handover of the "Egg of the Heckschnärre".
  20. ↑ Michail Krausnick: Goodbye in heaven. The story of Angela Reinhardt . 2nd Edition. Würzburg 2009, ISBN 978-3-401-02721-0 , p. 139.
  21. ↑ Biographies for the program “Goodbye in Heaven - The Sinti Children from St. Joseph's Care”. Retrieved March 30, 2016 .
  22. ^ Documentation and Cultural Center of German Sinti and Roma. Retrieved March 30, 2016 .