Next week I will be interviewing Robert Wagemann. Bob is a survivor two times over. He was targeted for euthanasia in the T4 program because of his physical disability and then wound up in a concentration camp because he was a Jehovah’s Witness.
Finished transcribing Vera Young’s interview. Such a remarkable woman. I feel so privileged to have been able to interview her before she passed away. If you haven’t read her story yet, please visit our website to learn more about this courageous woman!
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Ravenbruck
The Concentration Camps
27 new photos
Young Ceija
Ceija was the fifth of six children born to Roman Catholic Gypsy parents. The Stojka’s family wagon traveled with a caravan that spent winters in the Austrian capital of Vienna and summers in the Austrian countryside. The Stojka’s belonged to a tribe of Gypsies called the Lowara Roma, who made their living as itinerant horse traders.
“I grew up used to freedom, travel and hard work. Once, my father made me a skirt out of some material from a broken sunshade. I was 5 years old and our wagon was parked for the winter in a Vienna campground, when Germany annexed Austria in March 1938. The Germans ordered us to stay put. My parents had to convert our wagon into a wooden house, and we had to learn how to cook with an oven instead of on an open fire.”
Ceija Presently
“Gypsies were forced to register as members of another “race.” Our campground was fenced off and placed under police guard. I was 8 when the Germans took my father away; a few months later, my mother received his ashes in a box. Next, the Germans took my sister, Kathi. Finally, they deported all of us to a Nazi camp for Gypsies in Auschwitz/Birkenau. We lived in the shadows of a smoking crematorium, and we called the path in front of our barracks the “highway to hell” because it led to the gas chambers.”
After the death of her youngest brother in Birkenau from Typhoid, Ceija, her mother and one of her sisters were separated from her two older brothers and another older sister and transferred to the Ravensbruck concentration camp where they endured horrific cruelties at the hands of a sadistic female guard named Dorothea Binz. In a desperate bid to escape her torments, Ceija, her mother and her sister begged their way onto trucks taking fresh workers to the Bergin Belsen concentration camp, where Ceija recalled “Here is where the real misery began”.
Ceija was subsequently freed in the Bergen-Belsen camp in 1945. She has become an artist of some renown in Austria for her vivid and moving images of the holocaust.
You can read more about Ceija in the blog entry about her interview here: http://forgetusnotmovie.com/2010/10/14/here-is-where-the-real-misery-began/
Wilhelm Heckmann was a German concert and easy listening musician. From 1937 to 1945 he was imprisoned in the Nazi concentration camps in Dachau and Mauthausen. Heckmann founded the first prisoner band In Mauthausen, and was also instrumental in the founding of the large prisoner orchestra there.
Wilhelm Heckmann
The son of innkeeper Adolf Heckmann, Willi Heckmann grew up in the public house environs of Altena (Westphalia). During World War I, he served in the Patriotic Emergency Services and the military. After the war, Heckmann studied vocals and piano with Otto Laugs at the state conservatory in Hagen (Westphalia).
During the 1920s, he was a guest performer as the “Rhineland Tenor” in Wuppertal, Altena, Rheydt, Zurich and Berlin. He was also a silent film musician in the “Zentraltheater” in Altena and the “Thalia” in Wuppertal. During the early-1930s, he was a guest performer in Stuttgart, Gotha and Düsseldorf. Beginning in 1934, the Nazi government implemented a policy of “Gleichschaltung,” which brought professional musicians into line according to race. So-called degenerate music (“Entartete Musik”) was ostracized and popular, easy listening music (“Schlager”) was promoted. The music magazine “Das Deutsche Podium, Kampfblatt für deutsche Musik” (“The German Podium, Fighting Paper of German Music”) increasingly lauded Heckmann: “… during the course of several months, he has won over a large base of friends and supporters … with his fine, well-trained tenor voice …” “… Willi Heckmann – an all-around musical talent … his volume fills the room … piano playing, a pleasant chord, well-trained vocals, Herr Heckmann has it all …”
Additional performances and engagements in Stuttgart, Gotha, Munich, Patenkirchen and Passau followed. On 29 July 1937, the Gestapo suddenly arrested Heckmann in Passau without prior warning and without a warrant. With reference to Paragraph 175 (the homosexual article), he was interrogated and sent into protective custody (“Schutzhaft”) at the Dachau concentration camp for a previous episode of homosexuality. To this day, the exact details of his confinement in the concentration camp remain unclear.
At the outbreak of World War II, Heckmann was transferred to the Mauthausen Concentration Camp in Austria, where he remained until the Allied liberation of the camp on 5 May 1945. In Mauthausen, he worked in the “Viennese Trench” quarry. Beginning around 1940, he was allowed to start up a musical trio, which had to perform a variety of musical styles for high-ranking guests in the casino.
Musikkapelle Mauthausen "Gypsy Orchestra" July 30, 1942
When the photography division of the SS photographed the “Gypsy Orchestra” on 30 July 1942 as it was led through the camp together with the recaptured prisoner Hans Bonarewitz, Willi Heckmann was in the front row, setting the tone. To his right (playing the large accordion) is the post office Kapo Georg Streitwolf. Following his visit in the autumn of 1942, Heinrich Himmler ordered the establishment of a camp orchestra, which was assembled “with the help of Heckmann, Rumbauer and a Czech doctor.” Until the liberation of the camp, this orchestra played military marches, as well as popular and serious music on a regular basis. “Willi Heckmann was the singer and accordion player.” His participation in the orchestra made Heckmann a kind of functionary among the prisoners, and spared him the harshest jobs in the concentration camp. Instead, he was dispatched to commandoes with easier tasks such as transportation and disinfection. The SS leaders clearly exploited Heckmann’s musical talents to emotionally influence life in the camp.
Following his release from the concentration camp, Heckmann struggled to regain a foothold as a professional musician. Years of heavy labour in the Mauthausen quarry left him with rheumatism and inflamed nerves in his shoulders and arms, which hampered his efforts to practice his profession. In 1954, he applied for compensation for his time spent in Dachau and Mauthausen. But his application was denied in 1960 with the remark that he was, “only imprisoned as a homosexual because of crimes against Paragraph 175 of the penal code.” This did not qualify him for any kind of restitution.
From 1945-1964, Wilhelm Heckmann worked as a professional musician and solo entertainer in various hotels and restaurants throughout Germany. He died in Wuppertal on 10 March 1995 at the age of 97.
