Ceija Stojka

Ceija Stojka 1933, Kraubath an der Mur, Austria – 2013, Vienna. A member of the Lovara Romani community, she was arrested in March 1943 at the age of 10, along with her family, and deported to Auschwitz-Birkenau before being transferred to Ravensbrück and then Bergen-Belsen. Released with her mother in April 1945, she returned to Vienna. In 1979, following the death of her first son, she broke her silence and despite her writing deficiencies due to her lack of schooling in the war, Ceija Stojka began writing her memoirs. After the publication of her first book, she took up painting and drawing and her work was internationally acclaimed, largely thanks to the exhibition ‘Ceija Stojka, a Romani artist in the century’, presented in 2018 at La Friche de la Belle de Mai in Marseille, then in 2019 in Paris at La Maison Rouge-Fondation Antoine de Galbert.