Appendix: Notes on Names and Family Members

Summary

According to Romani customs, children often assumed the moth-er”s family name; therefore, in public records Stojka and her siblings might also appear with their mother”s last name, Rigo, (instead of Stojka, which was from the paternal side of her mother”s family) or both names, or a variation of “Stojka” (“Stoika” or “Stoyka”), or her father”s last name, Horvath. Family members have both a Romani first name, which Stojka uses in the memoirs and in conversation, and a German one, used in public records. Ceija Stojka”s German first name was Margaretha or Margarete. In public records, the spellings of the names often vary, as with her father”s last name (Horvath, Horvarth, Horwart). On some documents, she is listed as “Margaretha Horvath”; or her last name is spelled “Stoyka”; or, as on a list compiled by the British after the liberation of Bergen-Belsen, she and her mother appear as “Margarethe Stenka” and “Maria Stenka,” respectively, most likely owing to misinterpretation of the German pronunciation by an English-speaking recorder.

The Romani names of her family members as Ceija Stojka writes them and their official German names and birthdates are registered on the categorization cards of the Rassenhygienische und Kriminalbiologische Forschungsstelle des Reichsgesundheitsamtes (Racial Hygiene and Criminal Biological Research Center), now located in the Bundesarchiv in Berlin. The last name of all the children on these cards is documented as Rigo: Wackar Karl Horvath, born April 13, 1908; Sidi Maria Rigo Stoika [sic], born April 14, 1906; Mitzi (or sometimes “Miezi” or “Mizzi”) Maria Rigo, born August 3, 1926; Kathi Katharina Rigo, born February 1, 1927; Mongo Hansi Johann Rigo, born May 20, 1929; Karl Rigo, born in April 1931 (exact birthdate April 20, 1931); Ceija (Tschaia) Grete (Margarethe) Rigo, born in March 1934 (although she later clarified that her birthday was May 23, 1933); Ossi Josef Rigo, born October 16, 1935.

Owing to the dearth of written family documentation, the names of many other family members can only be discerned from oral history. I am grateful to Ceija Stojka and her daughter-in-law, Nuna Stojka, for further information on family members. Ceija Stojka states that their paternal grandmother, Wackar”s mother, Helene “Baranka” Huber, was trans-ported to the Łódź/Linzmannstadt Ghetto, which was likely.