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Le storie di Stanka e Maria
(The histories of Stanka and Maria)
The deportation of the Roma and Sinti
population in Friuli Venezia Giulia
during the Second World War

a production by Opera Nomadi and Radioparole (2005)

 a radio documentary divided in two parts each of them of 30 minutes

download or listen to the first part [mp3] 
If you’d like to receive a CD copy of Le storie di Stanka e Maria mail to info@radioparole.it 
     

    

A Roma community of Slovene origin lives in the Friuli Venezia Giulia region. Their families therefore hold names like Braidich, Hudorovich and Levakovich. But few of them know their history, Stanka’s history for example.
Stanka is 75 years old and was born in the Ljubljana province. In 1942, after the occupation and annexation of Slovenia by the fascist Italian government, Stanka and her family, the mother and 8 brothers and sisters, have been deported to the concentration camp of Gonars in the Italian  province of Udine.
In this camp, several thousand Slovene and Croatian civilians were imprisoned and almost 500 died due to hardship and disease.
In Stanka's memory still lye the terrible hunger, the great cold and the deaths, among them also the one of a little Roma child. At Gonars in fact some other Slovene and Croatian Roma families had been deported.
After the 8th of September 1943 the fascist guards abandoned the camp of Gonars, and Stanka and the other prisoners were free to leave the camp. But Stanka's story doesn’t end by that. With the Germans arriving, and the Nazi occupation beginning, another chapter of the deportation and prosecution of Roma and Sinti in Friuli Venezia Giulia during the Second World War was introduced.

Maria was born in Trieste in 1929, where her father lived and was also born. Her family belongs to the Italian Sinti community of musicians and fair workers.
As the German occupation of Friuli Venezia Giulia begins in 1943, Maria and her family flee from the evolving dangers of the conflict to the friulian lands.
They live on charity and find hospitality in farmer families in change of work. But they got stopped by German soldiers several times, till finally one night the SS arrest Maria’s younger brother. In the same days also Stanka’s brother and other Roma and Sinti children are arrested. All of them get deported into Nazi concentration camps. After some months even Stanka's mother gets deported from the prison in Udine to the Ravensbrück Lager.

In addition to the testimonies of Stanka and Maria in the first part you’ll be able to listen to the reconstruction of the history of the fascist concentration camp of Gonars provided by the voice of Alessandra Kersevan. Whereas in the second part the writer Boris Pahor remembers an episode of his deportation into the Natzweiler Lager, the same one where Maria’s brother had been deported to. In the second part, Partisan Rosina Cantoni, deported to Ravensbrück too, reports about her meeting Stanka’s mother there.

The radio documentary is devided in two parts, each of them of 30 minutes duration.

If you’d like to get a CD copy of Le storie di Stanka e Maria mail to info@radioparole.it

  
  [internati a Gonars]  

Le storie di Stanka e Maria
 (The histories of Stanka and Maria)

a radio documentary by Andrea Giuseppini produced by Radioparole and Opera Nomadi
under the patronage of the cultural council of the Friuli Venezia Giulia region (2005)

thanks to: Stanka and Maria, Alessandra Kersevan, Rosa Cantoni, Boris Pahor, Eva Rizzin, Lavio Rainard, Ida Braidic, Nada Braidic, Renato Grego and Leonardo Ferrero