Remembrance
Wall of Remembrance
Search the names of Roma and Sinti victims recorded in our archive, and leave a candle in memory of someone.
Every name here comes from a documented record — a deportation list, a camp register, a family submission verified by our archivists. Where a name is all that survives, the name is what we hold.
25 of 25 names
Anna Maria Steinbach
known as Settela Steinbach, Settela
- Born
- 23 December 1934, Buchten, Netherlands
- Died
- Night of 2–3 August 1944
- At
- Auschwitz-Birkenau
A Dutch Sinti girl, nine years old, filmed looking out through the door of a cattle wagon as a transport left Westerbork on 19 May 1944. For decades the face was assumed to be that of a Jewish child and was used across the world as an image of the Holocaust. She was identified in 1994. She was murdered at Auschwitz-Birkenau with her mother and her brothers and sisters in the liquidation of the family camp.
Johann Wilhelm Trollmann
known as Rukeli Trollmann, Rukeli
- Born
- 27 December 1907, Wilsche, Germany
- Died
- 1943
- At
- Wittenberge, a subcamp of Neuengamme concentration camp
A German Sinto boxer. He won the German light-heavyweight title in June 1933; the boxing authority annulled the result within days on the grounds that his style was un-German. At the next fight he entered the ring with his skin whitened with flour and his hair dyed blond, and stood still to be beaten. He was later sterilised, conscripted, then imprisoned in the camps, where he was murdered in 1943.
Source: Documentation and Cultural Centre of German Sinti and Roma, Heidelberg
Sidonie Adlersburg
known as Sidi Adlersburg
- Born
- 1933, Steyr, Austria
- Died
- 1943
- At
- Auschwitz-Birkenau
An Austrian Romani child, raised from infancy by a foster family in Upper Austria who tried to keep her. In 1943 the authorities took her from them and deported her to Auschwitz-Birkenau, where she was murdered at the age of ten. Her story is recorded in Erich Hackl's account Abschied von Sidonie.
Source: Erich Hackl, Abschied von Sidonie (1989)
Erna Lauenburger
known as Unku
- Born
- 1920, Germany
- Died
- 1943
- At
- Auschwitz-Birkenau
A Sinti girl from Berlin, the friend on whom the character Unku in Alex Wedding's 1931 children's novel Ede und Unku was based — a book read by German schoolchildren while its subject was being registered, confined and deported. She was murdered at Auschwitz-Birkenau.
Source: Documentation and Cultural Centre of German Sinti and Roma, Heidelberg
Rosa Böhmer
- Born
- 22 September 1933, Gelsenkirchen
- Died
- 13 August 1943
- At
- Auschwitz-Birkenau
The third of the nine Böhmer children, taken from the family's flat on Bergmannstraße with her mother and her brothers and sisters. She was murdered at Auschwitz-Birkenau at the age of nine. In the spring of 2020, after a campaign of more than ten years by the association Gelsenzentrum e.V., a public square in the centre of Gelsenkirchen was named Rosa-Böhmer-Platz. Until then the city had no public memorial to the Sinti it had deported.
Werner Böhmer
- Born
- 1 September 1942, Gelsenkirchen
- Died
- 24 March 1943
- At
- Auschwitz-Birkenau
The youngest of the nine Böhmer children. He was six months old when the family was deported and did not live three weeks in the camp.
Albert Böhmer
- Born
- 1940, Gelsenkirchen
- Died
- 19 April 1943
- At
- Auschwitz-Birkenau
One of the nine Böhmer children. The sources give only the year of his birth, so his age at death is either two or three.
Sophie Böhmer
- Born
- 18 August 1939, Gelsenkirchen
- Died
- 3 August 1943
- At
- Auschwitz-Birkenau
One of the nine Böhmer children. She and her sister Marie both died on 3 August 1943, a fortnight before Sophie's fourth birthday.
Marie Böhmer
- Born
- 23 September 1938, Gelsenkirchen
- Died
- 3 August 1943
- At
- Auschwitz-Birkenau
One of the nine Böhmer children. She and her younger sister Sophie both died on 3 August 1943.
Karl Böhmer
- Born
- 10 April 1937
- Died
- 9 July 1943
- At
- Auschwitz-Birkenau
One of the nine Böhmer children, named for his father, the musician Karl Böhmer, who had died at Niedernhagen in December 1941. The son died at Auschwitz-Birkenau at the age of six.
Elisabeth Böhmer
- Born
- 29 August 1931, Gelsenkirchen
- Died
- 10 July 1943
- At
- Auschwitz-Birkenau
The second of the nine Böhmer children. She and her brother Karl both died on 10 July 1943.
Willy Böhmer
- Born
- 27 March 1935, Gelsenkirchen
- Died
- 10 January 1944
- At
- Auschwitz-Birkenau
One of the nine Böhmer children. He survived ten months in the family camp and died in January 1944, three weeks after his mother.
Sonia Böhmer
- Born
- 30 May 1930, Gelsenkirchen
- Died
- Fate not established
- At
- Not established
The eldest of the nine Böhmer children, deported with her mother and her brothers and sisters in March 1943. No record of her death exists, and none of her survival. She is the one member of the family whose fate the reconstruction could not establish.
Anna Böhmer
- Born
- 10 October 1909, Rossov
- Died
- 16 December 1943
- At
- Auschwitz-Birkenau
The Böhmer family had lived in Gelsenkirchen since 1930, in an ordinary flat rather than the Reginenstraße camp. On 9 March 1943 Anna Böhmer was taken from it together with her nine children and deported with the camp's internees. Her husband had already died in a concentration camp. She was murdered at Auschwitz-Birkenau in December 1943.
Karl Böhmer
- Born
- 26 September, Bochum — year not recorded
- Died
- 9 December 1941
- At
- Niedernhagen concentration camp, Wewelsburg
Husband of Anna Böhmer and father of their nine children. He was a musician by trade. He died at the Niedernhagen concentration camp at Wewelsburg fifteen months before his family was deported; the cause recorded by the camp administration was pneumonia. Causes of death in such records were assigned by the SS and routinely bear no relation to how the person died.
Harald Anton Schopper
known as Harald Gomann
- Born
- 30 March 1939, Gelsenkirchen
- Died
- 16 December 1943
- At
- Auschwitz-Birkenau
Arrested with his father Janosch Schopper on 9 March 1943 and deported to Auschwitz-Birkenau. On 18 October 1943 his mother, Gertrud Gomann, who had fled to Austria after his birth, wrote to the camp: she asked for any message at all about her child, said she had sent a letter and a parcel that went unanswered, and asked whether she was permitted to write to him. Harald was killed on 16 December 1943. Survivors later told the family he had been killed by injection. After the war Gertrud Gomann gave evidence naming the Gelsenkirchen criminal secretary who had ensured that her son was arrested alongside his father. It had no legal consequence for him.
Janosch Schopper
- Born
- 21 November 1909, Cologne-Mülheim
- Died
- 9 May 1943
- At
- Auschwitz-Birkenau
A trader. He was called up into the Wehrmacht in 1940 and served roughly a year, until all Sinti and Roma were discharged from the army. He returned to Gelsenkirchen, where he had a permanent address and a job, and was arrested at work on 9 March 1943. He was deported with his son Harald and killed at Auschwitz-Birkenau on 9 May 1943. Relatives were told by survivors that he was gassed.
Patzura Schopper
- Born
- 12 May 1880, Klucken
- Died
- 18 June 1943
- At
- Auschwitz-Birkenau
A trader, like her husband Adolf, and the mother of seven children. She lived at Wilhelminenstraße 94 until her deportation. The criminal police photographed her in 1936 and again shortly before she was deported in March 1943; the two portraits are held together in the record, and the interval between them is legible in her face. She was killed in the family camp at Auschwitz on 18 June 1943. Surviving members of her family had her formally declared dead as of 31 December 1945.
Frinka Behrens
- Born
- 19 April 1921, Zetel
- Died
- 1943 or 1944, date not recorded
- At
- Auschwitz-Birkenau
Twin sister of Johann Behrens and daughter of Dietrich Behrens of the Reginenstraße camp. Their transport reached Auschwitz on 13 March 1943. Five weeks later, on 15 April, dental models were taken from nine pairs of twins held in the family camp; the report sent the following day lists Z-2381 Behrends Frinka and Z-2383 Behrends Johann, born 19.4.21. Neither survived. No date of death is recorded for either of them.
Johann Behrens
- Born
- 19 April 1921, Zetel
- Died
- 1943 or 1944, date not recorded
- At
- Auschwitz-Birkenau
Twin brother of Frinka Behrens. Photographed by the Gelsenkirchen criminal police in 1940 and deported in March 1943. He appears on the camp dentist's list of twins of 16 April 1943 as Z-2383. Neither twin survived, and no date of death is recorded for either.
Dietrich Behrens
- Born
- 20 June 1879, Bremen
- Died
- 23 March 1943
- At
- Auschwitz-Birkenau
Father of the twins Frinka and Johann, and of Anna, Karl and Helmut. He was sent to the Cranger Straße camp in March 1939 and then compelled to move to Reginenstraße. His arrival at Auschwitz was recorded on 13 March 1943 and his death on 23 March. His wife Franziska, born in Meinerzhagen in 1884, was killed on 15 September 1943. Almost the whole family was deported and almost none of it returned.
Rigo Hellberg
- Born
- 1 April 1915, Berlin
- Died
- 13 February 1942
- At
- Niedernhagen concentration camp, Wewelsburg
Sent to the Niedernhagen concentration camp at Wewelsburg on 10 February 1940. His prisoner card records what he handed over, item by item, including his work booklet. He died there two years later. Three separate documents were generated for the one death: a notification, a certificate and a death book entry. The presumed cause given was intestinal catarrh.
Maria Müller
- Born
- 1 July 1873, Cologne
- Died
- 29 March 1943
- At
- Auschwitz-Birkenau
She came to the Cranger Straße site in March 1939 and was then made to move to Reginenstraße. She was deported to Auschwitz from Gelsenkirchen and killed there on 29 March 1943, at the age of sixty-nine. Her daughter Paprika Müller and several of her grandchildren were deported on the same transport.
Grete Müller
- Born
- 9 May 1941, in the Reginenstraße camp, Gelsenkirchen
- Died
- 1943, date not recorded
- At
- Auschwitz-Birkenau
A daughter of Paprika Müller, born in the municipal forced camp on Reginenstraße in May 1941. She never lived anywhere else. She was deported to Auschwitz-Birkenau in March 1943 and killed there before her second birthday.
Josef Schopper
- Born
- 6 September 1926, Neuss
- Died
- 27 May 1962
- At
- Gelsenkirchen — from the effects of his imprisonment
Eldest son of Mimmi Schopper. He was able to attend school until 1940 and then worked as a labourer. Arrested with his family on 9 March 1943 and deported to the family camp at Auschwitz, he was moved to the main camp, then to Buchenwald in April 1944, to the Harzungen and Ellrich details of Dora-Mittelbau, and then to Sachsenhausen. In March 1945 the SS sent him on one of the Sachsenhausen death marches, which killed more than six thousand people. He survived it and was liberated by the Red Army in early May 1945. He returned to Gelsenkirchen and worked as a textile trader. He died in 1962, in his mid-thirties, of what he had been through.
2 August
2AUGUST
On 2 August 1944 the SS murdered the remaining Roma and Sinti held in the family camp at Auschwitz-Birkenau. 2 August is Roma Holocaust Memorial Day, recognised by the European Parliament in 2015. The Centre holds a commemoration at the monument each year.
Submit a name for the archive
Every name here carries its source
If you hold documents relating to a family member who was persecuted, our archivists would like to hear from you.
That rule is what makes the wall a record rather than a guestbook. To add a name we need to be able to point at something: a deportation list, a camp register, a compensation file, a letter, a photograph with the name written on it. If what you hold is a family memory and no paper at all, tell us anyway — sometimes the paper exists in a collection abroad and we can find it.
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