Stojka carried the horrors of those camps with her until she was
in her 50s, speaking out in words and pictures only decades
after she was liberated from the Bergen-Belsen camp at age 12.
Her death Monday at age 79 in a Vienna hospital was announced by
her publisher. The Budapest-based European Roma Cultural
Foundation described Stokja's concentration-camp themed
paintings to The Associated Press on Wednesday as reflecting
"entrenched sorrow in the bodies and spirit of the victims."
Austrian Education and Culture Minister Claudia Schmied lauded
Stojka's work in exposing Roma suffering under the Nazis, saying
her advocacy gave rise to "hope that the oath 'Never Again!' is
and will remain more than a historic promise." Her family's
persecution under the Nazis began in 1941 and ended four years
later with Stojka's liberation from the Bergen-Belsen camp in
Germany. While her mother and four siblings also survived,
Stojka's father and brother were killed in Auschwitz, two of the
more than 1 million Roma estimated