Otto Rosenberg – "A Gypsy in Auschwitz"
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| Free admission |
| Duration: 90 min |
| 14 years and older |
| English, German |
| Accessible for wheelchairs |
| Berlin Exhibition, 1st floor |
| Belongs to: BERLIN GLOBAL |
Surviving Auschwitz meant both duty and responsibility to the Berlin Sinto and civil rights activist Otto Rosenberg. More than 50 years after the Second World War, he completed his autobiography Das Brennglas (published in English as A Gypsy in Auschwitz). Harrowing, memorable and laconic, he describes his childhood in Berlin, the horrors of the concentration camps as a youth, and the continuation of life in Germany after the war.
In BERLIN GLOBAL, Petra Rosenberg, chairwoman of the Association of German Sinti and Roma Berlin-Brandenburg e.V. and the Berlin-Marzahn Concentration Camp Memorial, will read from her father’s memoirs. A subsequent conversation will focus on the aftermath of the Nazi crimes on a family and societal level, as well as civil rights work in Berlin and Germany since the Holocaust.
Host: Jana Mechelhoff-Herezi, Head of Remembrance of Sinti and Roma, Foundation Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe
Otto Rosenberg was born in 1927 and grew up in Berlin. At the age of nine, he was deported with his family to the Marzahn concentration camp. There, he was forced to work in armaments production starting in 1940, before being deported to Auschwitz in 1943. He was the only one of eleven siblings to survive.
After the Second World War, he worked tirelessly in fighting for social equality for Sinti and Roma – especially for the fair compensation of Nazi victims. He was co-founder and chairman of the Association of German Sinti and Roma Berlin-Brandenburg e.V., and was involved in many areas of youth and adult education. In 2001 he died of causes related to his imprisonment in the concentration camps.
Petra Rosenberg is chairwoman of the Berlin-Marzahn Concentration Camp Memorial and the Association of German Sinti and Roma Berlin-Brandenburg e.V. She holds a degree in education and regularly gives lectures, guest talks and readings at schools, universities, memorial sites and other educational institutions, focusing on the history and persecution of Sinti and Roma.