A Gypsy In Auschwitz: How I Survived the Horrors of the ‘Forgotten Holocaust’

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I loved his pride throughout all of it, his commitment to help all the others who have gone through the same experience. The photographs in this were a lovely added touch allowing me the reader to fully emotionally invest in what was being told. There aren’t that many books I have come across with regards to gypsies and how they were treated during in the camps so I wanted to read it.

This is a book that will leave its readers gasping as they struggle to understand the brutality that occurred at that time. This was a very good read and I liked how it was told kind of choppy because it shows how the people who had to endure such horrors got a little rattled, as they should. Despite being born in East Prussia and brought up in Berlin, he is repeatedly congratulated for speaking German well. I don’t normally read memoirs or biographies, I mostly read fiction novels, and this book is so different to anything that I’ve ever read, yet this little book will probably have a bigger impact in how I see the world and how grateful I am for everything we have got than ten 300 page novels could ever have.The second moment and what really struck a nerve with me was when I read how after liberation, the victims still struggled to get their life on track because they were often left to figure it out on their own.

One thing I really loved about this book is that it wasn’t over complex or information overload, which meant it didn’t become over whelming. At the age of 9, Otto Rosenberg was living a simple but happy life, this is until the Nazis tore his family away from their home.Otto had a big family with his mother and father splitting up and having children with different partners. If you know how Roma and Sinti are still treated today, these often uncomfortable accounts of how they were turned away from aid will sound depressingly familiar.

Years of being denied the hygiene and honour that defined traditional Romani family life and the reversal of gender and generational conventions was obviously enduringly traumatic to the survivors. The Olympics were about to start in Berlin, Hitler didn't want anyone to see the Roma, casting them aside, ripping them off all their belongings and even their homes, and building some tragic camps that will never hold any candle to their previous homes.He experienced his share of discrimination and fought back against the children who tried to put him down.