The leaves of red, gold and orange sway gently in the warm autumn breeze as I sit on the porch sipping my wisniak, the burgundy liquid warming my insides as it slides smoothly over my tongue. I'm watching my grandchildren playing hopscotch in the front yard. They are gaily jumping on one leg, shouting one, two, three, as they maneuver the small pebble from one chalked box to another, laughing at each attempt they make in trying to kick the pebble towards the next square. Both girls are so very, very young and innocent and as I sit silently watching their antics my evening is brightened. The children's mother calls them into the house at bedtime. They both stop on the porch to give me a hug and kiss good night. As the quiet stillness of the evening envelops me, I reminisce, smiling at the memory of playing hopscotch as a child myself. I would laugh at my sisters, Zoya and Mara, as they attempted to throw the pebble into the correct chalked box. I always had a good aim and therefore, found it hard to appreciate the difficulty they had in making the pebble land on the appropriate number. Mara always insisted that I was more accurate because I was a boy. I would love to be able to talk to either of them now, but like many of my family and tribe they were sent to their death in the German concentration camp in Auschwitz. Remembering hurts; however, forgetting is impossible.

My name is Dymitry Mular and I am a member of a tribe of people called Sinti. My ancestors came to Europe from India many years ago. The reason they left Sind is not clear, even though many different stories have been told which suggest reasons for our situation on European soil. By the time my forefathers arrived in Europe, earlier settlers had taken the land and there was nothing to spare for the Sinti. This encouraged our nomadic lifestyle of traveling from town to town, trying to survive. The citizens of Europe gave the Sinti people different names, but most know us as Gypsies.

My father taught me to be wary of non-gypsies and his teaching turned out to be prophetic. In 1899 an information service was set up in Munich, Germany, called "Zigeunemachrichtsdienst" (Gypsy information service). This office was opened to study the "gypsy question." Then, in 1905, the Bavarian government published a book of acts and edicts covering the Gypsies from 1816 to 1903 that served as a guideline for the continuing battle against, "Zigeunerplage" or the Gypsy plague. We were continually treated as lower class people and watched closely by the police. Outsiders considered us to be liars, thieves and cutthroats. In Germany, Gypsies were used as subjects for experiments regarding crime. These tests led scientists to believe that we all had criminal tendencies and for this reason, all Gypsies over the age of six years had to be fingerprinted and photographed.

In 1932 there was much news about changes taking place in Germany and there were laws being put into place to get rid of undesirable aliens. The first of these laws related to mental patients and as a result, people who were diagnosed as having a mental disorder were sterilized. My mother explained to us that people who were supposedly mentally incapable of looking after themselves would have an operation that would prevent them from having babies. Little did we know that soon we would be included in this category of the mentally ill.

Hitler became Fuhrer of Germany in 1934 and this event precipitated our worst nightmare. The Nuremberg Race laws were passed in 1935 and the Jews and Gypsies became second class citizens. The year 1936 saw the opening of the International Center for the Fight Against the Gypsy Menace. Sinti and Romi (a separate tribe) gypsies were now openly considered outcasts of society in every town they entered. Himmler, a German officer, declared that we were "inner" enemies and in 1937 the "asocial" act was passed. This act allowed police officers to arrest us when we went into town since we were considered to be the foremost asocial element in society. In 1938, Himmler decreed that biological evaluation of gypsies going back for three generations proved that gypsy families who were of mixed blood were born prone to crime. Things were slowly but surely deteriorating for the Gypsy. I remember the start of the war in 1939 because of the mounting tension; fear and anxiety were everywhere. The men who came to dad's workshop talked about Jewish people being rounded up and deported from Germany to work camps. Some had even heard that the gypsies were being treated in the same way. We knew that there was a debate going on as to the status of the gypsy. A few Germans thought that we were descendants of the "Aryan" race that Hitler wanted to create, but others denied it and lumped us in a category beside the Jews. In the end, it was determined that even if we did speak the "Aryan" language, we were from the lowest classes of that race and not worth saving.

Life at home continually got worse. My young sisters would come home from school in tears because their teachers had picked on them. The teacher made them go and sit in the back of the classroom, sometimes facing the wall. Often times, the girls would be sworn at and be called names by the staff in the school. Mara and Zoya were devastated. But the day that Mara came home with a bruised face, my father went into the school and demanded to know what was going on. That night, a couple of police officers came to the house and took my father away. It would be four years before I would see him again. The family was lost; how would we survive without him?

We continued though each day in a semi-normal manner, until the evening the officers came to our home. We were told to get into the canvas-covered trucks. I sat beside Koro Dombrowski, my friend's younger brother. He was crying quietly into his mother's handkerchief. This was the first time I had ever experienced real fear. A terrible apprehension gripped me and I thought my heart would stop. I found it difficult to breathe all the way to the train station. We were herded like cattle into the different compartments. For the moment, we were not split up and our family huddled together, desperately seeking solace from one another. The train was suffocating; there were bodies everywhere. There was a small opening that let in the light, allowing us to look out. Each person, in turn, could stand there for what seemed like an instant and then had to give up the space for the next guest. We had no toilet facilities and by the second day the stench of body odor, urine and feces was unbearable. People were already getting sick and one man even died on the joumey. He was pushed to the back of the car and ignored; if we wanted to survive, we had to suppress our emotions.

By the time we reached Auschwitz our hope of reaching another town had been dashed. We knew that Auschwitz was a concentration camp, but as yet had no idea of the total depravity that awaited us. We left the train and were broken into three different lines. Two of these lines consisted of Jews. I remember seeing stars sewn onto their clothing and wondered why the two lines seemed split by gender and age. The Jews were taken in one direction towards a gate, and the Gypsy line moved towards another gate. I learned later that we were in Birkenau (family camp), a separate camp erected especially for gypsy families. Life was not easy there. The officers told us to take off our clothing and sent us through showers making us brush our bodies clean, after which they  proceeded to shave off all of our hair. They shaved me from head to foot, shaving off any sense of pride that I had held on to. The German officers issued me a number, 92735, and for the next few years this was who I became. I had to wear a thin-stripped uniform that had a brown triangle and my number sewn on it. The days ran into one another; they were repetitive and painful. Each person in my family had different work assignments but the fact that we saw each other every day helped us to survive. I had to rise before light and join a line of men who were digging pits. The pits were being filled with dead bodies as quickly as we could dig. Sometimes the bodies were thrown in before we were finished. I often wondered if I would be added to one of these open graves?

I often saw prisoners being chased into buildings throughout the complex. The fact that they were running seemed unusual to me. Later, I found out that they were being led into the gas chamber; the running initiated exhaustion, which quickened their death. After having any valuables and gold teeth removed, these innocent people were cremated. The smoke coming from the crematorium chimney's hung heavily in the air, choking us as we worked.

Different experimenters came through the camp looking for suitable subjects to study and many of these researchers were monstrous. For example, Joseph Mengele, a German doctor who came into our camp quite often, at first, seemed to be a nice person and he always had candy for the children. But this turned out to be a wrong evaluation. He would take subjects to study from our camp. His main interest was twins. When he found a set he would take them to his laboratory to do tests on them. They never returned to camp. One little boy, in particular, would follow the doctor around the camp and Dr. Mengele seemed to treat him like a pet dog. I heard years later that the good doctor took this child to the gas chambers himself.

Just before I was shipped out to another work camp, I was walking from my room to the eating area when I heard someone call my name. At first I did not recognize the individual calling me, but when realization hit I was brought to my knees in tears. The man calling my name was my father. He was no longer the strong, burly dark haired man I remembered. It was like looking at a remnant of the person he once was. I touched and hugged him as he filed past. I never saw him again. Later that week I was put on a truck with some other male gypsies and we were shipped to Treblinka, a work camp that needed more men to move boulders and build roads. I was in the camp about a year when I heard that all the gypsies that were left in Birenau had been herded into the gas chambers in June of 1942. The physical distress and mental anguish I had experienced up until this time was inconsequential when compared to the crushing pain and emotional torment I experienced after hearing that terrible news.

Death became an ever-present companion and each new day brought new torment. We would take the corpse's shoes and wear them to try and keep our feet warm in the winter and cool in the summer. Also, if someone had a fairly good uniform we would take it before the body was removed. Each night we would try and get most of the lice off of one another and bang the mattress to try and get rid of some of the bed bugs. One thing I never got used to was somebody dying beside me in the night. I would occasionally wake up beside a cold, stiff body in the morning. You could tell who would die next by the attitude of the people; some men just gave up and waited to die. Often, when I felt like that, I would meet somebody who would encourage me. At other times my mother, Mara or Pollo would visit me in my dreams and we would dance around the campfire. Their presence reminded me of the joy there can be in life and I would survive one more day.

The summer was much more bearable than the winter. Winter was a time of giving up. It was harder to hold on when our feet were frozen and our needs for food and clothing became greater. During one winter I lost two toes because of frostbite. The death rate was always higher during this season and many of my comrades passed away in these months.

On May 8, 1945 we were liberated. The German officers had left the camp and the gate stood unguarded. We all stood in disbelief and were unsure of what to do. Was this a trick? We only knew how to dream about freedom; we did not know what to do with it. American soldiers came into the camp and assured us that we were indeed free and would be transported back to our homeland and family.

Many Gypsies and Jews never put their lives back together. The memories of home and families that had kept them alive in the camp came crashing down when they went home and found out that their loved ones had not survived. World War II left many people alone and broken. It took many years for me to gain some sanity and be able to enjoy a family once more. I married another Sinti survivor and we had two boys. My wife died last year and I now live with my oldest boy and his family. I am one of the lucky ones, because I survived. However, as of today, no retribution has been offered to any of my clan or tribe for the pain and loss that we suffered during those years of torment in the concentration camps.

As the memories fade and I return to the autumn evening, my heart continues to be saddened. I survived the horror of the concentration camps to return to a world that was largely unchanged for the Gypsy. We are still considered criminals and underclass citizens and people continue to fear our gifts and abilities.

References

Alt, Betty and Silvia Folts. Weeping Violins. Kirksville, MO: Thomas Jefferson University Press, 1996.

Frankl, Victor E. Man's Search for Meaning. New York: Simon and Schuster Inc., 1984.

Fraser, Angus. The Gypsies Oxford, UK: Blackwell Publishers, 1992.

Friedman, Ina R. The Other Victims. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1990.

Ramati, Alexander. And the Violins stopped Playing. Danbury, CT: Franklin Watts, 1986.

Reilly, Kevin. The West and the World, A Histo!y of Civilization, Volume Two Second Edition. New York: Harper Collins Publishers, 1989.

Tomasevic, Nebojsa Bato and Rajko Djuric. Gypsies of the World. New York: Flint River Press, 1986.

Tryauer, Gabrielle. Gypsies and the Holocaust, a bibliogrLaphy and introductory essay. Montreal: Interuniversity Centre for European Studies (and) Montreal Institute for Genocide Studies, 1989.