Philomena Franz, a German Sinti woman who was one of the last living Holocaust survivors, has passed away
The author Philomena Franz, one of the last living Holocaust survivors, passed away peacefully on 28 December in Rösrath at the age of 100. For her tireless efforts to transfer her experiences to younger generations and contribute to conserving the memory of wartime events and suffering she was given a high honor from the German state, the Cross of the Federal Republic for Merit, in 1995; the Women of Europe-Germany Prize (Preis Frauen Europas-Deutschland) in 2001; and the North Rhine-Westphalia Order of Merit in 2013.
Last year she was given honorary citizenship by the town of Bergisch Gladbach, where she lived for many long years. She was born Philomena Köhler on 21 July 1922 in Biberach, Germany into the recognized musical traveling family of the Haags, who performed all over Austria and Germany before the Nazis came to power.
Her happy, harmonious childhood came to an end on 27 March 1943 when the family was deported to a concentration camp. Her father, five of her siblings, and most of her friends and relatives did not survive the war.
Philomena Franz passed through the concentration camps of Auschwitz II-Birkenau, Ravensbrück, Oranienburg and then Auschwitz again, completely alone. She attempted two escapes, and the second one towards the end of the war was successful.
A member of the Volkssturm, the German people’s militia that was formed by an edict from Adolf Hitler, found her with hypothermia. Defying expectations, he brought her to his home and he and his daughter took care of her.
After the war she started her own family as well as dedicating herself to singing, but she also had to fight for the compensation that Germany did not award to the Sinti and Romani victims of the Holocaust until the 1980s. She grappled with the mental repercussions of the Nazi torment even at an advanced age.
As part of undergoing therapy, she wrote a memoir that was published in 1985 as Zwischen Liebe und Hass [Between Love and Hate] (the Kher publishing house released it in Czech translation under the title Žít bez hořkosti [To Live Without Bitterness] in 2021). Her mentor and her very first reader was the Nobel laureate for literature, Heinrich Böll, who highlighted her talent as an observer, her feeling for detail and her ability to build tension in her narrative.
She also authored a book of fairy tales, a collection of poetry, and two volumes of brief reflections and sketches. When she learned that the youngest generation was losing awareness of the suffering that the victims of Nazism had undergone, she began visiting schools, universities and associations to read from her works and discuss hate, prejudice and tolerance with them, showing German society how to come to terms with its past.
During these interactions she did not want the children to cry after she told her story, but for them to take away the knowledge with which she had been inculcated as a child, strongly influenced by being raised in the spirit of both Christian and Sinti values: That the greatest evil must not be responded to with bitterness and hatred, but with forgiveness and love, the way to combat it must be through respect and a warm approach towards one’s fellow human beings and towards nature. Philomena Franz passed away after experiencing a satisfying Christmas in the circle of her loved ones.
Honor to her memory!
