Zilli Schmidt (1924-2022)

[Hans1906]

Dame Zilli Schmidt (Cäcilie „Zilli“ Reichmann) passed away October 21, 2022 in Mannheim.

Cäcilie "Zilli" Reichmann, also Zilli Schmidt (* July 10, 1924 in Hinternah; † October 21, 2022 in Mannheim), was a German Sintezza and survivor of the genocide of the Sinti and Roma by the National Socialists. At the time of National Socialism, she was imprisoned in the "gypsy camp", as section B II e of the Auschwitz concentration camp was called by the National Socialists, in the Ravensbrück concentration camp and in a satellite camp of the Sachsenhausen concentration camp.

In February 1988, she testified before the Siegen district court as a witness against the former SS Rottenfuhrer Ernst-August König, who had been a block leader in Auschwitz. In her old age, Zilli Reichmann reported as a contemporary witness at events about exclusion and persecution, her stays in the various camps and her fight for compensation for the suffering inflicted on her.

Source and link: https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zilli_Reichmann

Article on the DW website: https://www.dw.com/de/holocaust-überleb ... a-63520505

A short article in our daily newspaper "Wiesbadener Kurier" drew my attention to the fate of Dame Schmidt.

Strong, brave, important!


Hans
P.S. I will scan the article later, and post it in this topic...

I feel ashamed very often about my ignorance, nobody is able to know everything, but sometimes you read a german newspaper, and your thoughts are wandering around the years, before you were born, when these victims were in their younger years.
It is like a time travel, often like a bad dream, without beeing involved, and never waking up again.

[Hans1906]

A face is always nice to see, my reason, to post the photo.


Hans

[Hans1906]

I feel bad about this topic,

the Sinti/Roma were treated very bad in Germany in the 1950s/1960s, they were third-class people,
living in poverty, in wagons, in tents, if at all.

Many were murdered before 1945, for not being "german", after 1945 for not being "sudetendeutsch", not czech.
Whole families were beaten to death, when they were "lucky", many germans were burned alive on open fires,
or hanged on trees, poured with gasoline, and burned alive.

These cruelties do not make a sense to all of us anymore, nobody of us would cheer to a german soldier, being burned alive
on a lambpole on a bridge in Prague...

Revenge is an instinct, nobody of us would have rejected from all this, to kill a nazi, revenge...

Civillians were murderd, the "Nazis" were already far away, on the way to the west, Bavaria, the german soldiers left the families, the relatieves, the mothers, and the children alone.
They had the weapons to protect all these rufugees, they left all these people alone.
Their own live was more important, away to Bavaria, no time for the refugees from the Sudetenland.

German soldier were cowards, like all soldiers, surviving was important, no heroes at all...

[Georg_S]

German soldier were cowards, like all soldiers, surviving was important, no heroes at all...

In my IMHO I think you are wrong about this, but then it's up to each and one to decide who makes a hero. I think it's dangerous to generalize and put each under the same umbrella .

Just my thoughts

Best regards
Georg

[LineDoggie]

German soldier were cowards, like all soldiers, surviving was important, no heroes at all...

speak for yourself, not those of us who have served honorably

[Hans1906]

Of course, this is just my personal opinion, as always in an internet forum.

Anyone who has read the books and factual reports of the Sudeten Germans fleeing their homeland will confirm this.
I've read all about it, my mother and her mother escaped this horror of revenge and retribution on one of the very last transports.

Soldiers of the Wehrmacht and the Waffen-SS were practically non-existent, they settled in the direction of Bavaria.
Children, women, and old people were left completely alone, and were often brutally murdered by the Czech mob.

It is not my intention to reopen old wounds, but my mother, as a ten-year-old girl, was traumatized for her entire life by these events, she was never able to speak about them.
Only my grandmother, in later decades, was seldom able to report on it, very sparsely.

You all know the quote: "Who sows the wind will reap the storm!"
And that is exactly what happened to the innocent refugees, and that should be enough.


Hans

[Hans1906]

Sintikinder im Nazi-Staat / Sinti children in the Nazi state



There are dozens of similar cinematic memories, they are very easy to find if you are interested.
It's hard stuff, nothing for a good evening or a good night, but it was and is German history.


Hans
I had to switch off, I can't.

[Hans1906]

This respect, this general observation of the "German soldier" probably no longer took place at that time.
Each saved his own life, regardless of other losses.

There were no more heroes, everyone wanted to survive and not be beaten to death or hanged from a tree.
The "heroes" had long since pissed off or surrendered to the Americans while the rest of the troupe sought the last way out of this chaos, often in vain.

History teaches us that the "little" people always had to pay, the "heroes" were safe for a long time.
It was always like that and it will always be like that, am I wrong..?


Hans