Art as Memory – the Documentary Canvases of Karl Stojka, a Roma in Auschwitz-Birkenau
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‘There were many lights and stones, but no bread.’
Searchlights and towers surround Z 5742:
‘There were many lights and stones, but no bread.’
Photographs provide us with heart rending documentary evidence of the Holocaust. Everyone will be familiar with the black and white photographs of prisoners in concentration camps; the stark monochrome evidence that began to appear after the war of the atrocities committed by the Nazis against those they wished to exterminate or work to death. I studied these photographs in great detail as I was researching A Berlin Love Song, particularly the ones I could find that related to the Zigeunerlager, the Gypsy Family Camp in Auschwitz-Birkenau. They enabled me to imagine, if this leap of imagination into such a living hell is at all possible, what it might have been like to live and die in this terrible place. However, it was long after my manuscript was finished, edited and sent off in its final draft to my publisher, that I came upon the incredible paintings of Karl Stojka. Quite by accident.
I was hunting around in a second hand bookshop looking for nothing in particular and anything that might take my fancy when I suddenly came upon a small, square, rather drab looking catalogue – blue with black writing on the front. There was almost nothing about it to attract my attention and yet somehow it did. Imagine my amazement when on opening it I discovered that it was an old catalogue, published around twenty-five years ago, containing paintings of the Gypsy Family Camp in Auschwitz-Birkenau that I had already written about, by a Romani artist who had been incarcerated there between 1943 and 1945. As I carefully leafed through the pages, the Auschwitz-Birkenau of my imagination appeared before my eyes – not in monochrome, but in glowing colours – the desperate faces that I had imagined and tried to describe in my story, staring out at me from the pages of this small book that I had almost overlooked.
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Fear at Auschwitz-Birkenau – June-July 1943
Fear at Auschwitz-Birkenau, June-July 1943
Karl Stojka was a gifted amateur artist and his many canvases provide a moving contribution to the growing body of information about Nazi persecution and mass murder of both Jews and the Romani community – a valuable eye-witness account of the camps where he and his family were incarcerated. The catalogue I had happened upon in the second hand shop was from an exhibition of his paintings held at the Austrian Embassy in 1992 entitled: The Story of Karl Stojka: A Childhood in Birkenau. Born in 1931, Karl came from a poor family of itinerant horse traders who lived a traditional Romani life, his mother supplementing their income when times were hard with fortune telling and astrology, until the time came when they were arrested and deported to the newly built gypsy ‘family camp’ in Auschwitz-Birkenau in March 1943. Karl, then aged twelve, arrived in the camp along with five brothers and sisters and his mother on 31 March 1943. The camp, approximately 40 miles west of Krakow in occupied Poland, was the largest concentration camp and killing centre created by the Nazis, containing rough wooden stable barracks for basic overcrowded accommodation alongside the gas chambers and crematoria. All Roma prisoners were tattooed with a number on arrival in the camp, the number preceded by the letter Z to mark them out as Zigeuner, the German word for gypsy. From the moment Karl arrived in the camp he became Z 5742 and the mental and physical scar of this branding stayed with him all his life. His signature on his paintings, created many years after the war, bear witness to this fact; all of them signed Z 5742 Karl Stojka.
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“In Birkenau, there was no milk for the children.”
“In Birkenau, there was no milk for the children.”
The so-called Gypsy Family Camp was situated at the far end of the vast area of Auschwitz-Birkenau, close by the crematoria and the ramp where the trains carrying the deportees came to a halt to unload their cargo, so the Roma prisoners were better placed than most to witness the Nazi atrocities as they happened. Karl’s own words cannot be improved upon:
One could see the fire day and night; it stank terribly. The main street of the Gypsy camp was in front of our barracks; we named it the highway to hell. My brother and I stood at the fence and saw rows of people with yellow stars pass on their way to the gas chambers.
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I saw how they entered the crematorium at Auschwitz-Birkenau
“I saw how they entered the crematorium at Auschwitz-Birkenau.”
The conditions in the Gypsy Family camp were atrocious; as bad if not worse than any of the other camps in Auschwitz-Birkenau. Thousands died of diseases there: starvation, typhus, typhoid, cholera, dysentery. Then on 2 August 1944 the Nazis ‘liquidated’ the Gypsy Family Camp. That night, 2,897 members of the Romani community of Auschwitz-Birkenau, the old, the sick and those deemed incapable of work, were murdered in the gas chambers.
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The gassing of 2,897 Roma and Sinti at Auschwitz-Birkenau, 2 August 1944
The gassing of 2,897 Roma and Sinti at Auschwitz-Birkenau, 2 August 1944
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The Gypsy Camp BIIe at Auschwitz-Birkenau, 3 August 1944:
‘I saw how they had burned … The Gypsy camp stands empty.’
The Gypsy Camp BIIe at Auschwitz-Birkenau, 3 August 1944:
‘I saw how they had burned … The Gypsy camp stands empty.’
The remaining inhabitants of the camp, those still considered fit for work, were sent to other concentration camps such as Ravensbrück, Buchenwald and Flossenbürg. On 3 August Karl Stojka and his brother Johann were transferred from Auschwitz to Buchenwald and then in early 1945 to Flossenbürg. It was during one of the now infamous death marches from the camps, as the SS evacuated their prisoners to prevent their liberation by the Allied forces, that Karl and his brother Johann were liberated by the American army. Karl’s mother and sister, Ceija, were deported from Auschwitz to Ravensbrück and from there to Bergen-Belsen from where they too were finally liberated by British forces. They were more fortunate than many of their family. Karl’s father and youngest brother and thirty-five other relatives died during the Holocaust whilst only Karl, one brother, his three sisters and his mother survived.
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Deported to Flossenbürg
Deported to Flossenbürg
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Buchenwald: ‘Half people, half faces.’
Buchenwald: ‘Half people, half faces.’
After the war Karl Stojka settled in Vienna, opening a shop specialising in the sale and conservation of Oriental rugs and it was the rich glowing colours of these eastern carpets that inspired him to paint. And when you examine his paintings, you can easily see the influence of the wonderful exotic pigments that he loved so much in the rugs that he handled every day.
I was profoundly moved by the chance discovery of the work of this talented artist, tucked away and almost forgotten in a second hand book shop. Of course I bought the catalogue from the bookseller immediately, and I have selected a number of his paintings for readers to see. The pictures speak to me in a rather different way from the photographs I have seen of Auschwitz Birkenau. The discovery of the paintings literally sent shivers down my spine, for many of the faces that stared out into mine were the faces of people I had already imagined, even without having seen the work of this superb artist. If you have read A Berlin Love Song, or even if you haven’t, I hope they speak to you too.
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‘Hitler believed that Jews and Gypsies had the same alien blood.’
Three prisoners at Buchenwald:
‘Hitler believed that Jews and Gypsies had the same alien blood.’