They were targeted with a similar frenzy as the Jews were, because of their alleged racial impurity. Everyone should learn and know more about the Sinti and Roma people they’re a remarkable part of history that can be so easily forgotten about due to how many lives were lost. I think what really rattled my cage about Otto's account was recognising the bureaucracy of the German nation, which is still a foundation of their structure today.

You get a real sense of what Otto was like as a person and in the main, many seemed to like him and whilst he fell on his feet in getting certain jobs in the camps, he far from had it easy. He learned that the entire Birkenau Gypsy camp has been liquidated Including his grandmother and cousins and grandchildren were wiped out who had remained in Auschwitz. He also considers the difficulties of having so many people of different nationalities and languages crammed in together.If you are moved by stories about Auschwitz, seek to better understand history, want a real confession from someone who was actually there, this is the book for you. Somehow he is able to redirect that rage and turn it into activism, addressing the "second wave of suffering on the Sinti and the Roma" including seeking the official recognition of their genocide in 1982, their racial prosecution at Berlin-Marzahn Rastplatz in 1987 and having a memorial erected in Berlin in 2012. The photographs in this were a lovely added touch allowing me the reader to fully emotionally invest in what was being told. While I have read many books about the Holocaust over the years I have never read anything like this one before.

I knew about the horrors that all the Jewish people faced but I never realised that the Gypsys' took on their plights as well.Thank you to Monoray Publishers for allowing me to read A Gypsy In Auschwitz: How I Survived the Horrors of the “Forgotten Holocaust “ through Netgalley in exchange for an honest review. The author, who was just a child when imprisoned in a camp, learned quickly how to do what he had to, to survive. I have read a lot of stories about World War II; both military and personal, many of these exploring the plight of Jewish people during the Holocaust, so reading a book that recounts the suffering that Sinti and Roma Gypsies experienced in Nazi Germany was fairly new to me. Post-war Holocaust generations are aware of this and the impact, despite often never being privy to the real details and finer details of said trauma.

It is a hard-hitting story through the eyes of Otto and one that needs to be learned from if we ever want to live in peace. My sincere thank you to Octopus Publishing US and NetGalley for the honour of reading this deeply touching and important true story.For example, "Once the train had been going for a while, the children began to ask the Red Cross sister who was accompanying them why I was locked up. It's like something from Grimms' Fairy Tales, with this monstrous woman offering a food, drinks and a "heavenly bed. If you know how Roma and Sinti are still treated today, these often uncomfortable accounts of how they were turned away from aid will sound depressingly familiar. In the first chapters, Otto provides vivid descriptions of his schooling, his Catholic faith and everyday life in his community. Whilst overall Otto’s story is simplistic in it’s telling, I did find parts confusing as he would be talking about his mother where she would be dead and then literally not much further on he would mention her again but she would be alive.

The way he relays his experiences is conversational in nature which makes it so much more emotional to read. All around them, Sinti and Roma families are being torn from their homes by Nazis, leaving behind schools, jobs, friends, and businesses to live in forced encampments outside the city. Otto Rosenberg’s ability to be honest and raw not only about what he was subjected to but also about his own behaviour really captures the best and worst of humanity during a time where every decision was life and death.I loved following Ottos journey and getting a true reflection of everything before and during his time in Auschwitz. In fact it makes it all the more horrifying, because we know, that having endured unimaginable suffering, he would have as many did, found it difficult to talk about his experiences. The only thing I didn't like was the ending I feel that the end was a little disjointed and it almost felt like I was missing a huge chunk of the story.