The 13th episode of the radio documentary series “Silent Tracks” is dedicated to the Roma Holocaust.
This episode is based on both written sources and sound recordings. First of all unfolds the story of Otto Schmidt, who was deported in the summer of 1938 to the Buchenwald concentration camp at the age of 20. Previously, he had been incarcerated with his wife Unku and their young daughter in the Magdeburg camp. The formal justification for his deportation was the same as in hundreds of thousands of other Roma cases: “Schmidt didn’t have a stable job after he finished school, and he didn’t try to find one. He always roamed like a Gypsy in the country.” Otto Schmidt’s mother, Auguste Laubinger, repeatedly tried to get Otto’s family out of the ghetto, but without success.
Testimonies of extermination camp survivors are also heard.
Historian and member of the Roma National Council in Romania, Constantin Braila, also speaks on the documentary.
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14 radio-documentaries about the Holocaust. Oral testimonies and narratives, diaries, handwritten notes. The anthropogeography of the Holocaust, through the traces of space and people.
Research-documentation-presentation: Thomas Sideris
Broadcast: Friday 8 December 2023, 13.00-14.00