Meine “Zigeuner” Mutter

The making of this film enables a daughter re-establish ties with her mother. The story of these two women mirrors the entire history of the gypsy people, constantly excluded from society and persecuted by the Nazis. A survivor of the Ravensbrück and Buchenwald camps, the mother has always suffered from the discrimination against her people, and her relationship with them wavers between the need for an identity and a desire to break loose. The wall of silence she has built up around her children is the same as the barrier against either survivors or their children making any allusion to the genocide. “I was brought up under the influence of my mother’s distress and suffering. As the camp survivors’ children also feel the effects of this imprisonment, they also need to be set free” (Therese Rà ni)