A Gypsy In Auschwitz

THE SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLER

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Otto Rosenberg is 9 and living in Berlin, poor but happy, when his family are first detained. All around them, Sinti and Roma families are being torn from their homes by Nazis , leaving behind schools, jobs, friends, and businesses to live in forced encampments outside the city. One by one, families are broken up, adults and children disappear or are ‘sent East’.

Otto arrives in Auschwitz aged 15 and is later transferred to Buechenwald and Bergen-Belsen. He works, scrounges food whenever he can, witnesses and suffers horrific violence and is driven close to death by illness more than once. Unbelievably, he also joins an armed revolt of prisoners who, facing the SS and certain death, refuse to back down. Somehow, through luck, sheer human will to live, or both, he survives.

The stories of Sinti and Roma suffering in Nazi Germany are all too often lost or untold. In this haunting account, Otto shares his story with a remarkable simplicity. Deeply moving, A Gypsy in Auschwitz is the incredible story of how a young Sinti boy miraculously survived the unimaginable darkness of the Holocaust.


A Gypsy in Auschwitz is a harrowing, moving and deeply emotional true story of life in numerous concentration camps, of survival against all odds, and of the awful treatment of Romani and Sinti people in war time Germany… I have a feeling that it will stay with me for a long time. Amazon Reviewer, ★★★★★

A very powerful read and beautifully written too, full of raw emotion. Amazon Reviewer, ★★★★★

It’s an important read – one that should be taught in school and one we should be telling and retelling, so Otto and his experience never fall foul of the system that forgets. I won’t forget Otto, his family or his community. Amazon Reviewer, ★★★★★

Deeply moving… utterly heart-breaking…that Otto was able to speak about his experiences is an act of bravery. So powerful and emotional. Amazon Reviewer, ★★★★★

A brilliant book highlighting the horrors of Auschwitz. Well worth reading lest we forget. Amazon Reviewer, ★★★★★

Sunday Times bestseller in August 2022.