Walter Winter

Walter Stanoski Winter (born June 19, 1919 , in Wittmund ; † November 19, 2012 in Hamburg ) was a German Sinto , survivor of Porajmos and contemporary witness. The showman survived the deportation to the " Gypsy camp Auschwitz " as well as the Ravensbrück and Sachsenhausen concentration camps . Shortly before the liberation, Winter became a forced soldier in the SS Special Unit Dirlewanger .

Life

From 1926 he attended school, first in Wittmund, then in Oldenburg, where the family had bought a house.

With the beginning of the Nazi era , the terror initiated by the NSDAP became increasingly noticeable for Walter Winter and his family . In his autobiographies he describes several experiences, such as confrontations with SA people and other party members at a dance competition or playing football, from which he could only save himself through personal relationships and speed. He also reports on the arrests of communists. The mobile trade and horse trade, on which the family lived up to this point, went from bad to worse. Customers refused to buy from " Gypsies ". The family therefore bought a shooting gallery with which they earned money at annual markets such as the Stoppelmarkt in Vechta and shooting festivals . The new livelihood offered the opportunity to live more inconspicuously. The father turned down the suggestion of a Jewish friend and long-term business partner to go into exile together, presumably in 1936. Winter describes the changes in the early years of the Nazi regime:

“We were almost always the only Sinti among the showmen, and for a long time that didn't matter, but the stronger the Nazis got, the more of the showmen joined the party, the more we felt the rejection. In the markets you suddenly saw men with leather coats and hats checking everything, they kept coming to our stand, sometimes they stood on the other side for hours and watched us. These people from the Gestapo and the criminal police repeatedly asked for our ID cards and papers. Once they took my parents to the police station. They were photographed from all sides and fingerprints were taken. A few days later they took us children. We too were photographed and registered like felons. "

- Walter Winter

In 1939 the family bought a small house in the Cloppenburg district so as not to attract attention as Sinti living in the caravan. Winter describes in his memoirs that the house was taken away from his parents by the Nazis before he moved in.

In 1938 Winter was drafted into the Reich Labor Service (RAD) and, in contrast to the other young men, was not promoted as a "Gypsy". The place of use was an airfield. In 1939, the family's cars were confiscated. With the “ Decree of Fixing ” that came into force at the end of 1939 , the family and their wagons were “pinned down” in a sand pit. Other Sinti from the area around Cloppenburg living on private parking spaces were transferred to the sand pit. It is unclear whether this is the Cloppenburg camp for Sinti and Roma recognized by the “Remembrance, Responsibility and Future” foundation .

His service with the RAD ended at the beginning of the Second World War when he switched to the Wehrmacht . On January 1, 1940, he was drafted into military service. He received training on an anti-aircraft gun in Wilhelmshaven . The first air raid on Wilhelmshaven took place on September 4, 1939. In 1942 he was discharged from the Wehrmacht because he was "not to be used". He returned to Oldenburg in April 1942. Four weeks later, his brother Erich was also released from the Wehrmacht. After his discharge from the Wehrmacht, he was forced to work as a driver for the company of the local group leader of the NSDAP in Damme .

In 1943 Winter married Bluma Schubert.

The deportation train, in which Walter Winter and his family were transported to the gypsy camp Auschwitz , reached the camp in mid-March. It was registered on March 14, 1943 with the number Z 3105. The train had arrived in Hamburg via Hanover on March 11, 1943 and comprised at least 328 Roma. Winter's family was assigned to Block 18.

“In the spring of 1943, we sat in the blocked block all day for the first few weeks. And when the wind came from the direction of the crematoria , we couldn't stand it because of the stench. Flames came out of the chimneys six or seven meters high. (...) When we were let out of the blocks after four weeks, as the first work details should get out of the gypsy camp, we saw the transports. Continuously driven in, unloaded, driven out. The next transport, day and night. "

- Walter Winter 2009

He became a block clerk. In August 1944 he and his pregnant wife were taken to the Ravensbrück concentration camp and later to the Sachsenhausen concentration camp in Oranienburg. His wife died in Ravensbrück in February 1945.

Shortly before the liberation on April 13, 1945, Winter became a forced soldier near Cottbus in the SS Special Unit Dirlewanger . On May 5, 1945, he managed to leave for Berlin.

Civil rights work and award with the Federal Cross of Merit

At Easter 1980 a group of Sinti carried out a hunger strike in the Dachau concentration camp, which received worldwide attention . Winter became aware of this through the newspaper.

Winter becomes active as a contemporary witness in the following period . It can be used for the project “Working through the history of persecution of Sinti and Roma in concentration camps, camps, ghettos that were on the territory of Lower Saxony” (1991 to 1995) of the Lower Saxony Association of German Sinti e. V. in connection with the University of Hanover.

His first biography, edited by Thomas W. Neumann and Michael Zimmermann , appeared in 1999 : “WinterZeit. Memories of a German Sinto who survived Auschwitz ”. The English translation will follow in 2004. In 2009 his second biography, edited by Karin Guth, appears: “Z 3105. The Sinto Walter Winter survives the Holocaust”.

Hamburg's Senator for Social Affairs, Dietrich Wersich, presented him with the Federal Cross of Merit 1st Class on July 15, 2008 , because Walter Winter has "been consistently committed for years to ensure that the crimes of the Nazis continue to happen again today, more than 60 years after what happened Awareness. In doing so, he is committed to counteracting neo-Nazi developments ”.

biography

• Walter Stanoski Winter. Edited by Thomas W. Neumann and Michael Zimmermann: WinterZeit. Memories of a German Sinto who survived Auschwitz. Hamburg 1999 (Engl. WinterTime: memoirs of a German Sinto who survived Auschwitz. Translated and foreword by Struan Robertson. Hatfield, Hertfordshire 2004)
• Karin Guth: Z 3105. The Sinto Walter Winter survived the Holocaust (excerpt) Hamburg 2009

Web links

• Literature by and about Walter Winter in the catalog of the German National Library
• The interview with Walter Winterbottom, there as winter Stanoski for the Shoah Foundation is accessible
• Short biography in the Anne Frank Foundation

Individual evidence

1. ↑ WinterTime p. 10. Location information Oldenburg also according to the map p. 6
2. ↑ Guth / Winter p. 34ff., WinterTime p. 24ff.
3. ↑ Guth / Winter p. 38.
4. ↑ Guth / Winter p. 38.
5. ↑ Guth / Winter p. 41f., WinterTime p. 27f. According to Winter, it is the "Jewish textile wholesaler Hirschberg from Oldenburg". The memories of the Jewish businessman Heinrich Hirschberg from Oldenburg about his emigration are reproduced in the 1985 Oldenburg Yearbook. It is a report that was written shortly after the emigration in January 1939 and describes the events from October 1938. Rabbi Leo Trepp was involved in the departure .
6. ↑ Guth / Winter p. 39.
7. ↑ Guth / Winter, p. 42. In the biography this is described as expropriation and a “decree on the de-Jewification of real estate” of February 1939 is cited as the supposed legal basis; in fact, however, the “Guidelines for the Resettlement of Gypsies” of April 27, 1940 stated that there was no legal basis for Gypsies to expropriate property. Printed as a document in: Linde Apel (Ed.): In den Tod sent. Hamburg 2009, ISBN 978-3-940938-30-5 , p. 75
8. ↑ WinterTime p. 29
9. ↑ short biography on www.annefrankguide.net the Anne Frank Foundation
10. ↑ Guth / Winter p. 39.
11. ↑ Guth / Winter, p. 43.
12. ^ Camp for Sinti and Roma Cloppenburg in the foundation's directory of detention centers . For regional persecution see Hans Hesse, Jens Schreiber: From the slaughterhouse to Auschwitz: the Nazi persecution of the Sinti and Roma from Bremen, Bremerhaven and northwest Germany. Marburg 1999. Here pp. 172–179, especially p. 278, here Walter Winter is mentioned as a contemporary witness for the protective hand of the Cloppenburg authorities.
13. ↑ WinterTime p. 30
14. ↑ ^{a b c d e f g} Short biography on www.annefrankguide.net of the Anne Frank Foundation
15. ↑ WinterTime p. 32
16. ^ Source free from the article Wilhelmshaven .
17. ↑ Hans Hesse, Jens Schreiber: From the slaughterhouse to Auschwitz: the Nazi persecution of the Sinti and Roma from Bremen, Bremerhaven and Northwest Germany. Marburg 1999. Here pp. 283–285.
18. ↑ Gedenkbuch as well as Walter Winter: WinterTime: memoirs of a German Sinto who survived Auschwitz. Translated and foreword by Struan Robertson. Hatfield, Hertfordshire 2004, pp. 45f.
19. ↑ Hamburg State Archives, 314-15, Oberfinanzpräsident, 47 UA 5. According to: Linde Apel, Dr. Frank Bajohr and Ulrich Prehn: The deportations from the Hanover station 1940-1945. Historical course and traces of memory. ( PDF )
20. ↑ WinterTime p. 45f.
21. ↑ Guth / Winter, p. 18. According to: PDF
22. ↑ Report from a reading: Z 3105 The Sinto Walter Winter survived the Holocaust (PDF file; 636 kB)
23. ↑ Page about his biography at www.kz-gedenkstaette-neuengamme.de  ( 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.  
24. ↑ Sinti and Roma in the former Bergen-Belsen concentration camp on October 27, 1979. Documentation by the “Society for Threatened Peoples” and the “Association of German Sinti”, Göttingen 1980.
25. ↑ Guth / Winter p. 185.
26. ↑ Interview 62 in the collection is from him. A transcript is one of the important foundations of the book: Hans Hesse and Jens Schreiber (1999): From the slaughterhouse to Auschwitz: the Nazi persecution of the Sinti and Roma from Bremen, Bremerhaven and Northwest Germany.
27. ↑ Stadtwiki Hamburg  ( 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.