Roma artist, writer on Nazi atrocities, dies at 79

The Associated Press, Wednesday, January 30, 2013, 3:48am (PST)

VIENNA (AP) — Ceija Stojka, who survived three Nazi death camps and went on to raise the awareness of the Nazi persecution of the Roma in her art and writings, has died. She was 79.

Stojka carried the horrors of the camps with her for decades, speaking out in words and pictures only decades after she was liberated from the Bergen-Belsen camp at age 12. While her mother and four siblings also survived, her father and one brother were killed in Auschwitz.

Her death in a Vienna hospital Monday was announced by her publisher Tuesday.

The Budapest-based European Roma Cultural Foundation describes Stojka's death-camp-themed paintings as reflecting "the entrenched sorrow in the bodies and spirit of the victims."