Lagergedichte von J.S. in KLB. Collection

Johann (Mongo) Stojka was born on 20 May 1929 in Guntramsdorf, Austria, as the third of six children born to Roma parents Karl (Wackar) Horvath (born on 13 April 1908 in Graz, Austria) and Marie (Sidi) Stojka (born in 1906), members of the Lowara tribe. Johann’s family travelled with a caravan in the countryside surrounding Vienna, making a living as itinerant horse traders. After the Anschluss (12-13 March 1938) their life changed drastically. In October 1939 Roma in Austria were forbidden to travel. The Stojka family was forced to settle in Vienna, where they had to convert their caravan into a house. Johann and his younger siblings attended school, while his father Karl and eldest sister Mitzi worked in a factory. On 20 January 1941 Karl was arrested and sent to the Dachau concentration camp. After having performed forced labour in several camps including Sachsenhausen and Neuengamme, Karl Wackar Horvath was murdered in the killing station at Hartheim castle near Linz, Austria, on 28 November 1942. In March 1943 Johann, his mother Marie and his five siblings were arrested during the mourning period preceding the burial of Karl Horvath’s ashes which had been sent to them via the Dachau concentration camp. On 28 March the Stojka family was registered at Auschwitz-Birkenau where they were forced to reside in the ‘Zigeunerlager’, the part of the camp designated for Roma. The number Z5740 was tattooed on Johann’s arm. Several of the family members fell ill and Johann’s youngest brother Josef (Ossi) perished due to typhoid fever. Johann’s other brother Karl (born on 20 April 1931 in Wampersdorf, Austria) was severely beaten because of the suspicion that he had stolen some soap from the inmate’s canteen where he worked, but Karl survived. Johann himself contracted blood poisoning, but he managed to get back on his feet and was reunited with his family after having been sent to the sick bay which, in most cases, meant death. Deemed fit for work Johann was forced to perform labour. In August 1944 he and Karl were deported from Birkenau to Buchenwald where Johann crossed paths with the Belgian political prisoner Georges Hebbelinck who obtained the booklet with drawings and poems which Johann kept while detained in the camp. In 1945, Johann and Karl were sent to Flossenbürg. The brothers were able to flee during a death march to Dachau and were liberated by the American army near Rötz, Germany, on 24 April 1945. Johann and Karl were subsequently reunited with their mother Marie and their three surviving siblings. In 1947 the family returned to Vienna. Johann Stojka became a textile and tapestry dealer, and a song writer combining Lowara-Roma music with jazz. His brother Karl became a painter, a writer and an actor, and his sister Ceija (Margarete) a painter, a writer and a singer. Johann also married and built a family. Until the 1990s he never spoke about his survival of the Porajmos, but in 1998 he gave testimony to the Steven Spielberg Foundation, after which, in 2000, he published a biography. Johann Stojka passed away on 16 March 2014.

The sketchbook was found in the estate of Georges Hebbelinck, a political prisoner and a former inmate of the Buchenwald concentration camp, who obtained it from a so far unidentified Roma fellow-prisoner. The item was donated by Hebbelinck’s heirs to the Archief en Museum van de Socialistische Arbeidersbeweging (AMSAB), which kindly donated the original booklet to Kazerne Dossin in 2013. With the help of Gedenkstätte Buchenwald the original owner of the booklet was identified as Johann (Mongo) Stojka, a survivor of Birkenau, Buchenwald and Flossenburg. Translations of the poem texts are provided by the Imperial War Museum.

Archief en Museum van de Socialistische Arbeidersbeweging (AMSAB), 2013