We realize, Herr Dunkler, you are in the grip of the bacillus Circensis, as Patty Frank called it. But, pay attention that no one will accuse you of plagiarism. We noticed during our approach to Buffalo Bill’s Wild West performance how you pencilled down many details on pages of the blueprint for your own ethno-show. So, we permitted ourselves to browse through these pages …

We meet Africa in an unusual way, full of vitality, with fascinating dancing, music and breathtaking acrobatics and artistry. Creative sensibility is not only provided by the circus event with more than one hundred and twenty musicians, dancers, artists and acrobats, but by the specially created ensemble of tents which look like Moorish palaces. Higher than any circus tents that were ever seen in Europe, stands the big top with twenty-five meters. Inside it is brightly painted and carpeted, covered passages lead to a Café Africain and to the African market and a gallery of contemporary African art as well ... More than two thousand spectators can enjoy the show at every performance.

Alright, but rarely to compare with the number of visitors of the Buffalo Bill Show in Braunschweig alone. Of course, with the Café Africain, the African market and the adjacent African gallery there is still plenty to earn …

„Please, take note that every Euro per sold ticket — the Africa-Euro — will go into a fund which will, in co-operation with UNESCO and the Goethe-Institute, support cultural enterprises in Africa.“

No reason to be riled up, Herr Dunkler. It is nice that you as an Austrian are about to paint the world a bit more colourful; we have no reason not to wish you all due success. The world knows that the colour BROWN is threatening once an amateurish painter from Austria fails …
And we continue to roll along our time-line!
It is the night from 15th to the 16th of December 1941. A train is departing from Braunschweig’s railway station. It came from the Ruhr Area via the assembly centres of Osnabrück/Bielefeld, Hannover and it will roll from this last assembly-point in Braunschweig to Riga. Other trains will follow in ever tighter succession — will roll to Warsaw, to Auschwitz, to Theresienstadt (Terezin), in general „to the East“ … until the last train on 25th February 1945.

Didn‘t I tell you? There they are again, those cattle-wagons!

They said, they could never be un-coupled!

No railway-nostalgia anymore, they said, without remembering those rusty brownish cattle wagons …

That’s what the voices said …

CONTROL! INTERNET-CONNECTION, PLEASE!

>>>PROJECT „CONNECTED MIND“!

As early as in 1933 it was visible in the Free State of Braunschweig that hate against Jewish people boiled up in a frightening dimension. The first removal of Jews from Braunschweig by train took place in October 1938. All Polish Jews who lived in the German Reich were arrested in a countrywide blitz from 27th to the 28th October in order to deport them to Poland. Sixty-nine persons were taken from Braunschweig to
Polish Zbaszyn.

Kuno Roth, one of the deported Jews, remembered:

„The next day the Gestapo took us to the railway station in Braunschweig where a lot of Gestapo-people roamed around with automatic weapons. A passenger-train was waiting fur us …“
Affected were also the parents of Herschel Grynszpan whose attempt upon Ernst von Rath, member of the German Embassy in Paris, had been used as a pretext to intensify the anti-Semitic instigation and, finally, to initiate pogroms throughout the German Reich.
As a result of the so-called Reichskristallnacht from 9th to the 10th November 1938, Braunschweig experienced a huge wave of arrests. Before the eyes of the inhabitants of Braunschweig, one hundred and forty-nine Jews were captured and moved to the concentration camp of Buchenwald. When, four weeks later, they were released on condition that they would leave the country, many followed this order.
In 1939, the Gestapo registered in Braunschweig still two hundred and twenty-six Jews. Those who were not able to leave the city in time were deported to the extermination camps in the East.
On 16th December 1924, Himmler ordered the deportation of all Sinti and Roma from German territory to the extermination camp of Auschwitz. Since 1933 they had been systematically excluded and disenfranchised, completely registered and detained as „Zigeuner“ (gipsies) in collecting camps.

On 5th July 1939, the Braunschweig Minister of Interior wrote to the President of the Police and to the Mayor of the city:
„I had occasion to inspect the campsite for gipsies in Braunschweig’s area of Veltenhof in order to convince myself that everything is suitable. However, I established that on the property of the peasant Pickert which is opposite of the newly erected training facility of the Volkswagen-Werke gipsies are still dwelling in shanties. Two of such shanties in which some twenty people live are of special concern. In view of the fact that leading representatives of party and state, even foreigners, are visiting the new facilities I am urging to remove with great speed all gipsies close to the Volkswagen-Werke and to relocate them at the campsite for gipsies at Veltenhof.“
From October 1939 onwards all Sinti and Roma were prohibited from leaving their respective place of living without permission by the police. The camp Veltenhof behind the tracks of Braunschweig’s harbour-railway was declared as the official collection point for all Sinti and Roma in Lower Saxony. In early March 1943, this camp was surrounded by police.

Mrs. T., one inhabitant of the village, recollects:

„Three days earlier the telephone was shut off. The operation must have taken place at darkness early in the morning or late in the evening.“

The Braunschweig-based Internet-project „Connected Mind“ documents also the statement of Mrs. Elvira R.. Her family lived in Berlin, she was born there as the youngest child in 1929. Several years later the family moved to Aachen where they had an apartment. Only eighteen months later Elvira R. had to leave the school there.

„We still lived there for a while, then came the time when the first food-ration cards were introduced. My brother and my sister-in-law got arrested in Kassel, and my sister had her year of duty as housekeeper of a farmer. So, my sister went to Kassel to collect the five children of our brother; the smallest was nine months old. Then my mother got an official letter which said we had to leave the city within twenty-four hours … Then we arrived in Braunschweig … with the five children of my brother. I was at that time around six years old … We had nothing, no caravan, nothing, we arrived with only one pram but with six children. Relatives helped us. My sister arrived later, she was not allowed to work there anymore because she was a Sintizza … My sister then found work at a coal merchant, my father was employed at an iron-work … I went to school, but only for a couple of days. We all had to leave school, all Sinti in Braunschweig.
Then we worked on a farm. That had been the type of work for all Sinti in Braunschweig before, pulling carrots and potatoes, behind the machine, plucking, peas, beans or cucumbers. Some worked in the harbour. We were not allowed to go to school, so we went to work … Then, I was around twelve, my mother received a letter, and I was forced to work in a laundry.“

The girl had to walk to the laundry every day, a distance of altogether some twenty kilometres because, like in many other German cities, Sinti were not permitted to use in Braunschweig public transport. In early March 1943, when police rounded up the collection camp in Braunschweig-Veltenhof, the Sinti had to abandon all valuables. They were taken to the railway station.

„And one day, it was a Saturday … the police said, ‚No one goes to work!‘. ... Then they encircled us … They went from wagon to wagon and asked whether we have gold or money. The CID-officer Wenzel stood in front of our wagon and talked to my mother. My mother had a red money-box that looked like a book, and then she gave him the money. And he took it, pocketed it simply and noticed nothing down. Then I told my mother, but in our language, ‚Mama, the man is simply pocketing the money.‘ That’s when she said I should be quiet. Because the old people, they already had a hunch, they had that feeling. When we entered the railway-wagons, the elder ones said, ‚We old people won’t come home again.‘ ... The policemen told us, we would be sent somewhere, to Poland, where everyone would get a small house, a piece of land and cattle, and we would then work on our own.“

The Sinti from Braunschweig, among them Elvira R., her parents and siblings, together with Sinti from Minden and Hannover who were already on the train were deported to Auschwitz-Birkenau where they arrived on 3rd of March.

We Sinti and Roma have been the Indians of Europe!
„FUNNY IS THE GYPSY LIFE!“ This is a German traditional song … and now everybody — in German:

www.youtube.com/watch?v=FWv6aF1RPVw&feature=related 1. Lustig ist das Zigeunerleben, Fa-ria, fa-ria, ho. Brauchen dem Kaiser kein Zins zu geben, Fa-ria, fa-ria, ho. Lustig ist's im grünen Wald, Wo des Zigeuners Aufenthalt, |: Fa-ria, fa-ri-a, fa-ria, :| ho. 2. Sollt uns einmal der Hunger plagen, Fa-ria, fa-ria, ho. Tun wir uns ein Hirschlein jagen: Fa-ria, fa-ria, ho. Hirschlein nimm dich wohl in Acht, Wenn des Jägers Büchse kracht. |: Fa-ria, fa-ri-a, fa-ria, :| ho. 3. Sollt uns einmal der Durst sehr quälen, Fa-ria, fa-ria, ho. Gehn wir hin zu Waldesquellen, Fa-ria, fa-ria, ho. Trinken das Wasser wie Moselwein, Meinen, es müßte Champagner sein. |: Fa-ria, fa-ri-a, fa-ria, :| ho. 4. Mädel, willst du Tabak rauchen, Fa-ria, fa-ria, ho. Brauchst dir keine Pfeif' zu kaufen, Fa-ria, fa-ria, ho, Pfeif' und Tabak hab' ich hier, Geb' ich gerne, gerne dir. |: Fa-ria, fa-ri-a, fa-ria, :| ho. 5. Mädchen, willst du Kaffee trinken, Fa-ria, fa-ria, ho, So mußt du die Schale schwenken, Fa-ria, fa-ria, ho. Schwenkst du dir die Schale nicht, Trinken wir auch den Kaffee nicht. |: Fa-ria, fa-ri-a, fa-ria, :| ho. 6. Wenn uns tut der Beutel hexen, Fa-ria, fa-ria, ho. Lassen wir unsre Taler wechseln, Fa-ria, fa-ria, ho. Wir treiben die Zigeunerkunst, Da kommen die Taler wieder all zu uns. |: Fa-ria, fa-ri-a, fa-ria, :| ho. 7. Wenn wir auch kein Federbett haben, Fa-ria, fa-ria, ho. Tun wir uns ein Loch ausgraben, Fa-ria, fa-ria, ho. Legen Moos und Reisig 'nein, Das soll uns ein Federbett sein. |: Fa-ria, fa-ri-a, fa-ria, :| ho.