Neubrandenburg (dpa/mv) – The escape of a family from the Nazi genocide of Sinti and Roma is the focus of a book presentation on November 28 in the Neubrandenburg regional library. As a spokeswoman for the library said on Tuesday, the opera and operetta singer Mirano Cavaljeti-Richter wrote the book together with the historian Annette Leo. It’s called “Fleeing across the Balkans. The childhood experiences of a Sinto boy during the Nazi era” and was published by Metropol-Verlag in Berlin.
The 89-year-old Cavaljeti judge grew up in a traditional extended family of comedians who used caravans to perform their variety programs in small towns and villages in the 1930s. In 1939 the family fled Germany via Italy, Yugoslavia, Romania and Bulgaria. The singer was six years old at the time and describes how the family gradually lost everything but was able to save their lives.
According to the publisher Leo, the book is one of the rare reports written by a member of his minority himself. It was published in the “Library of Remembrance” series by the Center for Research on Antisemitism at the TU Berlin. A small exhibition is currently on view in the library in Neubrandenburg, commemorating two Sinti boys from the Mecklenburg Lake District who were deported by the SS from Neustrelitz to the concentration camp in Auschwitz-Birkenau in 1943 and were killed there. The author is to be connected to the book presentation via video.