Ceija Stojka

Biography

Ceija Stojka started school at the age of twelve, and straight into the second grade. This was in Vienna, in the spring or summer of 1945, soon after her liberation from Bergen-Belsen.

She was born on 23 May 1933 in Kraubath an der Mur in Styria, the fifth of six children of Karl Horvath, known as Wackar, and Maria Sidonie, known at home as Sidi, née Rigo. Her name on official documents was Margarete Horvath-Stojka. The family was Catholic, Lovara Roma, and traded horses: the caravan spent the winters in Vienna and travelled the Austrian countryside in summer, and the family could trace its presence in Austria back more than two hundred years. Two of her brothers, Karl (Karli) and Johann (Mongo) Stojka, later also became writers and musicians.

Her father, Karl Horvath, was deported to Dachau in 1941 and then to Schloss Hartheim, where he was killed. For many years Ceija believed he had died at Dachau; it was later established that he was killed at Hartheim. The rest of the family was sent to Auschwitz-Birkenau. Ceija, her mother and her sister arrived there in 1943, and she worked in the sewing workshop. Her youngest brother Ossi died in 1943 in the “Gypsy family camp” at Birkenau. In 1944 the women were separated from the younger brothers and moved to the women’s camp at Ravensbrück, and before the end of the war to Bergen-Belsen, where British troops liberated them in 1945. Of some two hundred relatives, according to different accounts, five or six survived.

After the war Stojka settled in Vienna and lived there until her death. Until 1984 she earned her living as a trader, going door to door with fabrics and selling carpets at markets. She had two children, a son, Jano, a jazz musician, and a daughter.

In 1986 she met the writer and filmmaker Karin Berger, and the meeting proved decisive. Berger edited all three of Stojka’s autobiographical books. The first, “We Live in Seclusion” (Wir leben im Verborgenen, 1988), was one of the first popular books about the Nazi persecution of Austrian Roma. It drew attention for its subject, and also because by Romani tradition a woman was not expected to write a book. It was followed by “Travellers on This World” (1992), memories of postwar Austria, and “I Dream That I Am Alive” (2005), about Bergen-Belsen. In 2003 came a volume of poems, “My Choice to Write: I Cannot”, and later a CD of Lovara songs, “Me Diklem Suno” (“I dreamt”).

She began to paint at fifty-six, around 1989, after a trip to Japan. She worked with whatever came to hand: fingers and toothpicks, on cardboard, glass jars, postcards, salt dough. In her own words, it was “everything that comes between my fingers.” Her manner is rooted in German Expressionism and folk art. The 2014 exhibition “We Were Ashamed” divided her work into two cycles. The first, “Even Death Is Afraid of Auschwitz”, consists of black-and-white ink drawings and a few oil paintings about the camps. The second, the “Bright Cycle”, is made up of colourful oil paintings: nature, landscapes, painted caravans, dances, family. It seems to me that what matters in them is that life in the caravan before the war is painted by the same hands as the camp, and that she drew no border between the cycles; still, this is my reading and not her words.

Her work was exhibited in Germany, Austria, the Czech Republic, Japan and the United States. In 1992 Stojka became the Austrian spokeswoman for the movement to have the genocide of the Roma and Sinti recognised, and she spoke out against discrimination against Roma in Europe. She appeared as a lecturer and witness. Berger made two documentary films about her: “Ceija Stojka” (1999) and “Unter den Brettern hellgrünes Gras” (“The Green Green Grass Beneath”, 2005). Stojka also features in the 2013 documentary “Forget Us Not”.

Among her awards are the Bruno Kreisky Prize for a political book (1993), the Joseph Felder Prize (2000), the gold medal of merit of the federal state of Vienna (2001), the Linz Medal of Humanity (2004), the gold badge of honour of the state of Upper Austria (2005) and the Austrian adult education television prize (2006). In 2009 she was awarded the professional title of Professor.

Ceija Stojka died in Vienna on 28 January 2013. She is buried in the Groß-Jedlersdorf cemetery, in a grave of honour. She did not live to take part in “The Last Witnesses” project at the Burgtheater: the premiere took place in October of that year. In 2014 the square by the church in Altlerchenfeld was given her name, and in 2018 the Ceija Stojka International Fund was founded.