Stephan Müller

With great sadness, we received information about the passing of an Auschwitz Survivor Hermann Höllenreiner, who died three days before his 93rd birthday. Hermann Höllenreiner was a German Sinto. He was born in Hagen on 19 October 1933, and he grew up in Munich. In March 1943, aged nine, he was deported with his family to the German Nazi camp Auschwitz, where he was registered under prisoner number Z-3526 and imprisoned in the section designated by the SS for Sinti and Roma families. Höllenreiner endured hunger, forced labour and daily terror. He later recalled being made to carry jars containing the organs of murdered children for SS physician Josef Mengele, while members of his family were subjected to medical abuse. He was transferred out of Auschwitz before the murder of the remaining prisoners in the Sinti and Roma family camp in August 1944. He subsequently endured imprisonment in Ravensbrück and Sachsenhausen before escaping from a death march near the end of the war. Exhausted and severely traumatised, he was taken to France by liberated French prisoners and eventually placed with a foster family in Paris. His separation from his family continued long after the war ended: only in December 1946 was he reunited in Munich with his parents and sister, who had also survived. In later life, Höllenreiner shared his experiences through talks, interviews and commemorative events, bearing witness to Nazi persecution and speaking out against the continuing discrimination faced by Sinti and Roma. His life inspired Anja Tuckermann’s documentary novel "Mano: The Boy Who Didn’t Know Where He Was." In 2013, he received Germany’s Federal Cross of Merit for his work as a witness and educator. Photo: Britta Pedersen/dpa-Zentralbild/dpa