Renée Winter

(Vienna)

Navigating Second Generation Memory and Auto/biography
in Home Video. A Video Collection of Hojda Stojka, Son of
Artist and Survivor of the Porajmos Ceija Stojka

abstract. This paper investigates home videos made by Hojda Stojka, the son of Ceija Stojka (1933-2013), artist and survivor of Auschwitz, Ravensbrück, and Bergen-Belsen. Based on a close reading of significant video sequences, a narrative interview with the videographer, and Ceija Stojka’s publications and films, it analyses how the auto/biographical videos relate to the persecution of the parents’ generation. The paper focuses on the importance of spaces like kitchens, cars and stages, on the value assigned to auto/biographical audiovisual recordings, and the recontextualization and integration of photographs and television recordings into the family memory.

Sociologist Gabriele Rosenthal described the consequences of the Shoah in a family context. She described the children of survivors as affected by a «starke Nähe der Zweiten Generation zur Verfolgungsvergangenheit», which manifests:

auffallend in ihren biographischen Selbstpräsentationen, in denen die eigenen Lebensgeschichten entweder regelrecht hinter den Familiengeschichten verschwinden oder aber textuell mit den Verfolgungsvergangenheiten der Eltern verknüpft sind. Entweder sprechen sie über sich selbst viel weniger als über die Familienvergangenheit oder sie relativieren ihre biographischen Erfahrungen immer wieder mit der Verfolgungsvergangenheit ihrer Eltern. (Rosenthal 1999, 82)

I was recurrently reminded of Rosenthal’s words as I was studying the home videos of Hojda Stojka. Hojda Stojka, born in 1949 into a Lovara family in Austria, is the eldest son of Ceija Stojka. Ceija Stojka (1933-2013) became a public figure in Austria following her inaugural autobiography, which relayed personal experiences of the concentration camps, published in 1988 (it was then reissued in 2013). She spoke publicly about her deportation as a Romani child along with her family, the murder of her family members, and her survival in the Auschwitz, Ravensbrück, and Bergen-Belsen concentration camps. Further publications were accompanied by exhibitions of her paintings, public readings, interviews, and other public appearances. Karin Berger’s films Ceija Stojka – Porträt einer Romni (1999) and Unter den Brettern hellgrünes Gras (2005) told the story of her life and her memories of the concentration camps.

Ceija Stojka plays a central role in the home videos made by her son Hojda. Around one third of the footage concerns her public appearances as a contemporary witness, painter, and author. The life of the videographer seems to disappear behind the representations of his mother. Hojda’s stepping back behind his mother’s life story grows particularly evident in the self-description of one of his YouTube channels, «hojdamichi»[1]. That description reads: «Hojda Sohn von Ceija Stojka; Michi Enkal Von Ceija Stojka»[sic]. Nevertheless, Hojda’s videos are also autobiographical, insofar as they have specific functions – subjectifying and generating identity – for the videographer. In the following, I will analyze how Hojda Stojka’s auto/biographical videos relate to the persecution of his parents’ generation. I draw particular attention to the importance of locations and mobility, the value assigned to the preservation of auto/biographical audio-visual recordings, and the recontextualization and integration of images into family memory.

The Home Video Collection of Hojda Stojka

In 2015, Willibald Hojda Stojka handed over 49 video cassettes (45 VHS, two Video 2000, and two Hi8) to the Österreichische Mediathek (Austria’s national audiovisual archive) for digitization and archiving. The videos contain home video recordings made by himself, copies of small-gauge films from his extended family, as well as television recordings and copies of films made by videographer friends. His own recordings were made between 1985 and 2003. The entire material spans around 122 hours. The early recordings mainly follow Hojda and his wife Nuna’s children as they grow up. Other focal points include everyday family life, celebrations with the extended family, concerts and musical performances by family members and musician friends, as well as footage from television. Family recordings are also the focus of the YouTube channels which Hojda created. A large part of the footage is dedicated to the videographer’s mother. Hojda and Nuna accompanied and filmed Ceija Stojka during her public performances and collected television reports about her and other family members. In July 2020, I conducted a narrative interview with Hojda and Nuna Stojka in their Vienna apartment. Based on narrative-generating questions about family audiovisual practices, the interview covered biographical aspects as well as questions of media use.

Starting to Film: Gathering and Collecting

In 1985, the Stojka family bought their first video camera. The Video 2000 camera was ordered from an Austrian mail-order company, Universal-Versand, and the price of about 30,000 Austrian schillings (equivalent to about 5180 € in 2023) was paid in installments (H. Stojka and N. Stojka, 00:03:59 and 01:02:01). From then on, Hojda brought the camera along to film occasions of gathering: family celebrations, birthdays, baptisms, pilgrimages, and funerals. One of the very first recordings captured such a gathering. In 1985, on Nuna’s 25th birthday, a recording was made in her parents’ house (ÖM 86b). With Nuna’s father ill and bedridden, about fifteen family members were visiting. Two months after the recording, Nuna’s father died. The videotape remained her only video recording of her father.

The entire recording in the parents’ home is just under an hour long. The first half is recorded primarily in the big kitchen, the second half in the bedroom. The footage is characterized by videographer Hojda’s concern to capture as many aspects of the encounter as possible. First, he moves the camera around the room, focusing on different people and groups as they talk and prepare for the celebration. The camera’s gaze lingers on a child playing with the tripod and joking with an elderly visitor (5:19), Nuna’s father lying on a couch in the living room talking to guests (6:40), and finally focuses its attention on food preparation in the kitchen (11:05), which we’ll discuss shortly. After this mobile tracking shot, the camera is mounted in an elevated place in the kitchen, allowing the videographer himself to enter the frame. A lamp is brought in to provide enough light for the shot (17:17), and Nuna’s mother is placed in the center of the frame. After no satisfactory position for the lamp can be found, it is taken away (20:16). Slowly, a celebratory mood arises, with toasting and singing. Finally, the camera returns to the film-maker’s hand as the group moves into the bedroom (37:01) and gathers around the bed where Nuna’s father is lying. When the father begins to sing a song for his daughter’s birthday, he is not the only one in tears: several other family members are also emotionally preoccupied. From off-screen, Nuna’s sister asks her father not to cry, but to continue singing (40:45). The camera scans the faces in the room and the photos hung behind the bed, finally focusing on Nuna’s parents’ wedding photo (40:44). Once the song is finished, the daughter kisses her father. The gravity of the situation is broken up by a shift to more cheerful songs and dancing.

By panning to the photos in the emotionally difficult situation, it is possible, on the one hand, to avoid looking directly at the faces. On the other hand, in this context, the wedding photo takes on various meanings: it is a sign of the past lifetime, of the time spent together by the couple, and refers to a point in time before the birth of most of the people present in the room. Like the video, it is a visual medium of family representation. In the video, the photograph affords a view of a father who is still young and healthy. Thus, filming the photo can be seen as a visual strategy for dealing with illness and mortality. In this situation, the video camera’s gaze is one that reckons and deals with death. The preserving function of the camera shot is taken seriously from several sides: the various visitors are actively involved in ensuring that the shot succeeds. People are arranged in the camera frame, attention is paid to the lighting situation, and everyone waits with their activities until everything is ready. Thus, the people present become co-producers of the video.

This early video recording by Hojda Stojka contains elements that are substantial for his subsequent home video practice: the importance of photographs and, with them, of the production and preservation of new visual records, the significance of places to which he and the family relate (here, Nuna’s parents’ house and kitchen) and the practice, performance and recording of singing.

Spaces: Kitchens, Cars and Stages

The spaces that figure in the videos indicate the filmmaker’s and family members’ relations to particular places, or to the movement between them. The recording sites alternate between indoor and outdoor spaces; between apartments, streets, churches, the children’s elementary school, the camp­ground, and the Vienna Prater. By contrast with a tourist’s postcolonial camera perspective of appropriation, the gaze of these videos is not primarily interested in the places and their condition, but, above all, in the filmed subjects or how they use the spaces. Three types of spaces are particularly significant: kitchens (especially the kitchen in Nuna’s parental home), cars and the environments they traverse, and stages of various sizes on which family members and friends perform. The locations are not merely settings for the videos: the filmed and filming subjects locate themselves in relation to these spaces.

Kitchens

Apart from the shot of the wedding photo, a rare close-in detail shot is of the pot on the stove (ÖM 86b, 11:05-11:18), which Nuna’s mother Hela stirs with a cooking spoon before putting the spoon away and covering the pot with a lid. Using Danièle Wecker’s notion of «e-motion», as «technological trajectory [which] visualizes a micro-perceptual expressive signification» (Wecker 2018, 221-222), this “zooming-in” on culinary activities may be interpreted as a representation of the film-maker’s emotional engagement with the object.

Food preparation in the kitchen – a gender-structured activity – is a frequent motif in this video collection. As James Moran noted, in home video, due to the cheaper material and longer recording time, certain activities, including food preparation, enter the picture which were generally absent in small-gauge film and photography (Moran 2002, 43). The focus on food in the 1985 video points not only to the close connection of food and its preparation with the coming together of family members. It also refers to the experiences and memories of Hojda’s mother. The experience of hunger and the importance of food is a recurring motif in Ceija Stojka’s narratives in writing and in film[2]. In her autobiographical account Wir leben im Verborgenen, Ceija Stojka remembers how, in Bergen-Belsen, she got hold of a potato skin and shared it with her mother (C. Stojka 2013, 63). These experiences and the possible importance of a potato skin were also passed on to successive generations. Thus, Nuna Stojka recalls in an interview with me: «wenn ich Kartoffel geschält habe, bei ihr in der Küche, hat sie immer gesagt: “Schneide nicht so viel weg!”, hat sie gesagt, “eine Kartoffelschale war im Lager Leben”» (H. Stojka and N. Stojka 1:07:21).

Along with the house and kitchen of Nuna’s parents, a place was visited right at the beginning of the video filming that plays a central role in many later shots. The house, yard, and garden of the Horvath family at Leopoldauer Straße 58 in Vienna were an important meeting place for many years, as Willi Horvath emphasizes,

für viele Romm aus ganz Europa. […] Georg «Greia» Horvath übernahm den Hof nach dem Tode seines Vaters Leitschi. Er war einer der angesehensten Romm und weit über die Grenzen Österreichs bekannt. Die Leopoldauer Straße blieb ein wichtiger und großer Romano Than. (W. Horvath 2015, 128)

The fact that this place could, one day, no longer be a family meeting place does not seem to be a topical issue for the video producers in 1985. Little attention is paid to the rooms and the place: the focus is on the house’s inhabitants and their visitors. Years later, the place lost its central function. As Willi Horvath describes: «durch den Wegfall der alten Gewerbe und das Aufspalten der Familie durch Heirat oder Tod ging auch diese Adresse mit der Zeit verloren» (128). Others also attach great importance to the place. In my interview with Nuna Stojka, she remembers the place: «das war mein … meine Heimat, also da bin ich aufgewachsen. Wir waren acht Kinder, gell. Mein Vater, meine Mutter …» she says, showing their photos, «ja, da waren sehr viele Feste und Familien» (H. Stojka and N. Stojka 13:19). As Nuna described, after the death of her father in 1985 and her mother in 2001, her youngest sister lived at Leopoldauer Straße 58. The decisive factor for the abandonment of the address and the sister’s move had been that she «auch irgendwie weg […] wollte … eine Wohnung haben und … wir haben schon alle Wohnungen gehabt» (H. Stojka and N. Stojka 17:50-18:01). The loss of the place as a family meeting place is also emphasized by Nuna’s sister, Sidonia Horvath, who happened to briefly join the interview. She summarized the significance of the place on Leopoldauer Straße with these words:

Und da sind wir alle … da sind wir in den Hof hingefahren mit den Autos. Und da sind alle Schwestern, Brüder, die Schwager, wir waren alle zusammen. Wir sind draußen gesessen. Wir haben... wir haben das können genießen. Aber … jetzt haben wir kein Haus mehr … (H. Stojka and N. Stojka 17:16-17:34)

Celebrations and family gatherings are at the center of the two sisters’ memories. The preparation of food is especially emphasized: «Da war viel Kocherei!» (H. Stojka and N. Stojka 16:30). Cooking is closely linked to the coming together of family members and, moreover, it is a female-coded activity. The video recording shows, and also briefly breaks, the gendered structuring of the spaces, as, for example, when Hojda, the videographer, enters the kitchen where four women are cooking together during a family celebration lasting several days in 2000, films the preparation, and asks the cooks to say something about the food (ÖM 6, 3:06:46-03:08:40). The camera makes it possible for him to adopt a flexible position, moving between the rooms and the gender-specific boundaries they represent.

The home is of central importance in the context of the experience of persecution and deportation. Nazis systematically destroyed, looted, and disowned the homes of Jews and Romani people. The home thus became «a political tool» (Fogg 2017, 55) of the persecution, targeting a personal and intimate sphere. «Attempting to reclaim these items after the war also had political, economic, and emotional meanings», Shannon L. Fogg argued (Fogg 2017, 55). The emotional relevance of the home – including that of the following generations – is reflected in the home videos. But also, certain public spaces, or their passage, are given great significance in the video collection of Hojda Stojka, as I will show in the following.

Cars

Videotaped car trips make up a significant portion of the recordings. The car is used to go on vacation[3], to weddings and birthday parties[4] and to make short trips[5]. The journey in the car is linked to various emotions, including anticipation, boredom, impatience, and restlessness.

The media scholar, Hilde Hoffmann, has described practices of holiday videos as follows:

Es wird, ohne Beschränkung ökonomischer Art, Unmengen Material produziert. Die Insel wird sich im Abfahren angeeignet, die Urlauber haben Kreta er-fahren. Das Auto wird zu einem “privaten” Raum aus dem heraus für einen anderen Privatraum produziert wird. Aufgenommene Bilder aus unserem “rollenden Wohnzimmer” (Auto) können in unser Wohnzimmer transferiert und dort konsumiert werden. (Hoffmann 2002, 243)

Although shots of vacations and excursions also comprise part of the recordings, the Stojka family’s videos suggest that the resulting images (and the anticipation of their eventual reception) were not crucial motivational elements underlying their production. Rather, in the foreground seems to be a preoccupation with the camera during long car journeys with small children. This becomes clear on a video of a vacation at Lake Balaton in 1985: almost no recordings of the actual stay were made, but the arrival, departure, and car trip to and from Budapest are exhaustively documented (ÖM 11). Here, the recording and camera handling abridge the protracted period of travel. The camera visually shortens distances: as Budapest’s skyscrapers appear on the horizon, the camera zooms in, signaling the approach of the intended destination (ÖM 11, 20:50).

Filming while driving also creates conflicts. When videographer Hojda is at the wheel, the camera is operated by someone else – typically his wife Nuna. Arguments about filming are hinted at in Hojda’s off-screen instructions: «Nicht so schnell hin und her. Hin und her ist nix!» (08:00), «Halt dich nicht an, halt die Kamera!» (22:03) or «Ruhig bleiben, Nuna, bitte! […] Was tust du denn? Die Bäume oder was? Wo bi – [Recording interrupts]» (25:07). These conflicts arise out of Hojda’s attempt to retain control of the shot despite the camera being passed to another videographer. In another instance, he successfully controls the steering wheel and the camera simultaneously in a traffic jam before a car ferry crossing (08:39-11:51).

The gender-specific division of labor on vacation is also clearly seen in a shot taken by Ceija Stojka. While her husband Kalman and Hojda are running some final errands and loading the cars, she takes over the camera (1:21:15-1:25:07 and 1:25:49-1:46:29). She observes and comments on the men’s activities, films a shot in which her daughter Silvia and daughter-in-law Nuna pose together on the trunk of a car (1:35:52-1:36:43), and sums up the vacation:

Die ganzen Kinder sind mit mir, meine ganze Familie. Ich finde das super, dass es einmal gelungen ist, dass ich mit meinen Kindern zusammen war. Aber ich glaube morgen, Sonntag, fahren wir wieder nach Hause. Es war wunderschön für mich, da ich wieder meine ganze Familie einmal bei mir gehabt habe. Nur einer fehlt, das ist mein Jano, aber in unseren Gedanken wird er immer bei uns sein. Ich denke auch oft an meine Brüder und an meine Schwestern, an meine Schwägerinnen, die nicht da ... nicht teilnehmen können. (ÖM 11, 1:42:55-1:43:44)

Here, while filming her family on vacation, Ceija Stojka speaks about the absent. When she speaks about the absent brothers and sisters, it remains unclear whether she means those who are deceased – as suggested by the reference to her son Jano Stojka, who died in 1979 – or those who stayed home. The family members who are not visible in the video become a sonic part of the recording by being mentioned in words.

After this scene, Hojda takes over the camera again and films his mother, who, like Silvia and Nuna before her, has sat down on her car, a Mercedes. She lies down on the rear window, Hojda says to her: «“Mein Auto” musst du sagen!» Ceija calls out «Mein Auto!» and gives the car a kiss. Next, Hojda is heard from offscreen: «Und wenn du ihn nicht mehr willst, schenkst ihn mir dann». «Ja, mein Bub», Ceija says, to which Hojda replies: «Und du nimmst dir einen Porsche». (1:47:17-1:47:35)

The stationary car also takes on a significant function in the video. It is an object used to perform, an emotionally charged object which plays a role in the relationships between the video’s protagonists. In her reflections on her collaboration and friendship with Ceija Stojka, the historian and film-maker Karin Berger mentioned a conversation about her preferred car brand, Mercedes:

Warum, frage ich einmal, fahren Roma eigentlich fast immer Mercedes? Hitler besaß ein besonders luxuriöses Modell dieser Marke, habe ich im Hinterkopf, und Daimler-Benz war schließlich mit Zwangsarbeiterinnen und Zwangsarbeitern und mit KZ-Häftlingen intensiv an der Rüstungsproduktion beteiligt. “Der ist einfach ein guter Kamerad”, sagt Ceija und klopft ihm kumpelhaft auf das Lenkrad, “der lässt einen nicht um Stich”. (Berger 2013, 261)

Considering the role of cars in Hojda Stojka’s home videos, I believe that the Mercedes had various functions here. On the one hand, cars and individual transportation were associated with promises of mobility and freedom. On the other, a Mercedes, as a high-priced consumer good and prestige object, offered opportunities for participation and recognition. Both offers are attractive, especially against the historical background of persecution and discrimination, and in particular the immobilization and the robbery of cars by the Nazis. In her memoirs, Ceija Stojka describes how traveling around was forbidden in 1939. At the time, her family’s caravan was converted into a small house, which eventually could not be found after the surviving family members returned in 1945 (C. Stojka 2013, 15, 75, 126-127). In the course of a narrative about her professional activity of driving to market, Ceija Stojka also addresses the gendered aspects of driving:

Am Anfang sind meistens die Männer mit dem Auto gefahren, sie haben die Führerscheine gehabt, da hat sich noch keine Frau darübergetraut. Schön langsam aber haben wir uns entpuppt und sind immer stärker geworden. Wir haben gespürt, wir können selber unser Geld verdienen, so sind wir natürlich selbstsicherer geworden und haben uns getraut, den Führerschein zu machen. (C. Stojka 2013, 146-147)

Driving, which Ceija is also seen doing in the Balaton vacation video described above, and owning her own car are both part of an emancipation process. The affective relation to the object that enables and represents this emancipation is expressed in her kissing the car.

Another car ride in Vienna, about half a year later, begins with the Mercedes that had been kissed in the holiday video. Hojda stands next to the car and tells the person filming that the car is an Easter gift from Kalman and Ceija. Thereupon, the drive from lunch at a restaurant at the Old Danube to the house of Hojda’s in-laws in Leopoldauer Straße is filmed (ÖM 2, 02:08:02-02:16:19). Hojda steers the car while a friend films from the back seat. Hojda begins to comment: «Da ist unsere Alte Donau. Da sind wir aufgewachsen, groß geworden, schwimmen haben wir gelernt. […] Da ist die Greti Tante, rechts» «Da ist der Bub getauft worden. […] Wie heißt die Kirche, Nuna?» Nuna: «Donaufelder Kirche». Other residences of relatives and acquaintances are mentioned, red lights are commented on, and the car passengers move along to the music of the car radio.

Wecker talks about the recurring motif of the city as emplacement in amateur films:

Filmmakers construct a version of the city that allows for a self-emplacement in the historical and the communal. Here the city itself is engaged as a physical manifestation of an affectively charged heritage. Filmmakers take the opportunity to actualize the immateriality of their relation to the past. The city as selective views transpose it as emplacement that frames the self-narration. (Wecker 2018, 224)

Hojda and his companions’ car trip through Vienna inscribes them into the urban space being traversed. Places passed are linked to autobiographical events. In addition to urban landmarks such as churches and waters, friendships and relationships also serve as points of orientation in the city. The subjects of the video locate themselves in the urban space and within an associated network of social relationships.

Stages

Stages only become an essential recording venue in Hojda Stojka’s video practice in the 1990s. After the publication of her first book in 1988, Ceija Stojka began to give public readings of her work, initially together with the historian Karin Berger. From the early 1990s, she was accompanied by her daughter-in-law Nuna Stojka (Berger 2013, 261-263). Over time, the performances were expanded to include a musical program of Ceija singing, which Hojda arranged together with other musicians and in which Ceija’s granddaughter and Nuna’s niece also took part (H. Stojka and N. Stojka 2:56-3:23). The band also performed independently of Ceija’s readings. The video collection contains recordings of seventeen different performances, eleven of which are to be found several times on different cassettes. The fact that there are up to four copies of certain recordings could indicate that they were intended to be shared with a wider circle of people. Not every recording’s date and location can be clearly reconstructed. The first filmed public appearance is the 1988 presentation of Ceija Stojka’s first book in the Kulisse, a venue in Vienna’s 17th district which hosts mainly cabaret performances and concerts (ÖM 7 00:00-01:21:33). The program included passages from the book read by Waltraud Kutschera and live music with songs by or with Ceija Stojka, accompanied by her son Hojda Stojka, her nephews Ossi and Baby Stojka and his wife Thune (Berger 2013, 258-260). Four recordings were made at the Amerlinghaus in Vienna: on September 16th, 1995[6], on September 14th, 1996⁶, on September 28th, 2002, on the occasion of a workshop with school classes[7], as well as an undated concert[8]. Other videos include performances at a benefit event for Romani people of the Slovakian municipality of Jarovnice affected by disastrous flooding on July 11th, 1998 in the Remise Amstetten[9], in a restaurant, probably in Zwettl in Lower Austria[10], at Goldegg Castle on March 4th, 1995[11], at the Hotel Wimberger in Vienna[12], in St. Gallen in Styria probably on June 14th, 1995[13], at the 1996 Romani Ball at Kursalon Hübner in Vienna[14], at a Romani Ball in the 20th district of Vienna[15], on the occasion of an exhibition of Ceija Stojka’s paintings at the Ringgalerie in Vienna[16], at an exhibition at the premises of the financial advisory firm Triangel in Vienna’s 4th district[17], at an open-air event organized by the Green Party, presumably in Stammersdorf in Vienna’s 21st district[18] and at a performance in Maria Neustift in Upper Austria[19]. Filming was done by different people, often by Nuna Stojka, but also by other family members. Sometimes, the person behind the camera changed over the course of filming an event. The focus of the recordings is usually the (musical) performance on the stage itself, and the audience and spatial surroundings come into the picture only briefly. Sometimes, the person behind the camera starts moving and interacts with others in attendance.

Nuna Stojka recalls filming the performances in an interview:

Die Kamera hatte er [Hojda] bereits und bei den Auftritten eben, nach den Lesungen, wenn ich gelesen habe … oder wir haben es aufgestellt, war ein Teil auch von der Lesung oben. Aber da haben wir dann halt, hauptsächlich habe ich halt dann aufgenommen. Ja, [incomprehen­sible] gesagt, “Nimm ein bisschen auf, dass wir uns das dann anhören tun, wie sich das anhört und ob das eh gut ankommt bei den Leuten”. (H. Stojka and N. Stojka 3:26-3:50)

The camera documents the increasingly frequent public performances and affords the possibility of retrospective viewing. In addition to witnessing the activity and recognition as a musician, artist, or author, the video medium also allows a form of control over self-representation on stage. Controlling and observing the self-representation is also achieved by means of another of Hojda’s frequent video practices. The collection contains three video recordings of Hojda playing guitar or singing at home, in front of the camera. The recordings vary in length. Once, he plays together with another musician (ÖM 8 2:09:10-2:58:09) and twice alone (ÖM 58 0:00-16:09 and 1:12:43-2:14:21). The recordings allow to document rehearsals and to check one’s own playing (H. Stojka and N. Stojka 1:00:38-1:00:55).

These sequences represent rare occasions when Hojda (who is usually behind the camera himself) is visible in the recordings. In addition to his role as a preserver and collector of family history, he becomes visible here as a musician. The public appearances of Ceija Stojka as an author, painter, survivor and witness and of Hojda Stojka as a musician are thus closely connected. To perform publicly has not been a matter of routine given the persistence of Anti-Romaism and Racism. It is the result of a process of becoming visible that Ceija Stojka, among others, has decided to undertake, significantly by giving her first publication the title Wir leben im Verborgenen («We live in secret»).

Preservation and Production of Images in the Context of Persecution: Continuities of Racism and Anti-Romaism

In her books and in several interviews, Ceija Stojka speaks about the importance of the preservation of traditions, songs, and knowledge:

Aber irgendeiner muß es machen, es muß geschichtlich etwas von uns festgehalten werden. Von jedem Volk sind Aussagen darüber da, was zum Beispiel vor zweihundert Jahren passiert ist. Aber über die Geschichte der Roma vor zweihundert Jahren, oder der Sinto, weiß man sehr wenig. Ihre alte Kultur ist fast unbekannt. Es ist in der heutigen Zeit notwendig, daß sich einer raustraut und sagt: “Ist ja egal, wie du fühlst, wichtig ist, daß du es gibst”. Es ist wichtig, daß es festgehalten wird und daß man irgendwann, vielleicht in hundert Jahren darauf zurückgreifen kann. (C. Stojka 1992, 171-172)

The preservation and transmission of history and culture, especially significant against the backdrop of historical persecution, requires that members of the Romani community take up action as historical subjects. Ceija Stojka continues:

Man soll zurückgreifen können, wann welche Roma wo gelebt haben. Es ist so viel passiert und die Roma haben soviel gelitten. Und so viele sind wir ja wirklich nicht. Und wer soll es jetzt machen? Wer soll unsere Kultur weitertragen? Ich bin bereit, ich mache es. Obwohl ich ein bißchen Hemmungen habe. Ich war noch nie auf einer Bühne, außerdem bin ich keine Sängerin, ich bin keine Schauspielerin, und ich will es auch gar nicht sein. Aber ich will eine Aussage machen, solange ich es darf und kann, auch wenn sie noch so klein ist. […] Viele Roma freuen sich, wenn sie hören, in Österreich gibt es eine Romni, die traut sich Romanes zu singen, die traut sich einfach etwas zu sagen, die traut sich in die Gefahr hinein. (C. Stojka 1992, 172-173)

Here, Ceija Stojka expresses the simultaneous difficulties and necessities of taking up a speaking position in the historical situation of discrimination and marginalization. At the time of writing, in the early 1990s, the situation of Romani people in Austria was dominated by the debate about their recognition as an ethnic group. It was not until 1993 that Roma and Sinti were officially recognized in Austria, a recognition which had been denied them by the passage of the Austrian Ethnic Groups Act (Volksgruppengesetz) in 1976. The work and public appearances of Romani associations and activists were essential for this legal victory (Thurner 2015, 40-41). Inclusion in the Ethnic Groups Act meant claims to representative organizations (an Advisory Council), a recognition and protection of the language and, last but not least, financial support (Bundesgesetz, BGBl. Nr. 396/1976). On the night of February 4th, 1995, less than two years after the recognition, four Romani men were murdered by a bomb in the Burgenland community of Oberwart. The police initially investigated the Romani settlement itself, searched the apartments of the murder victims and interrogated their relatives (S. Horvath 2015, 29-31; ORF Burgenland 2020). In 1997, Franz Fuchs was arrested as a suspect in the course of the investigation into a series of right-wing extremist (letter) bombs. The subsequent focus on Fuchs as the lone perpetrator also worked to conceal structural and societal racism and anti-Romaism in Austria.

With the video collection, Hojda Stojka conscientiously fulfills his mother’s mission of preservation. In addition to filming extensively, he also collects audiovisual material about family members or family history from other sources, either television or other film-makers. The possibility of making recordings is also a sign of economic well-being and prosperity. It is proof of the fact that «time has become better» as he makes clear in an interview: «ganz früher, das war ja eine Rarität, nicht, dass man Bilder macht. Das hat man sich nicht so leisten können» (H. Stojka and N. Stojka 02:19-02:50). The fact that the digitized videotapes are not disposed of, but, rather, stored in an old wooden chest in the bedroom – as Nuna Stojka showed and explained, «diese Kiste habe ich schon hundert Jahre» – also indicates the value attributed to them (H. Stojka and N. Stojka 39:04).

The value of audiovisual recordings is also evident in the context of a historical absence of images due to persecution. In a 2003 interview conducted in the course of a visual history project, Ceija Stojka described how, after 1945, she sought out a man who she knew had photographed her family in the 1930s, when she was a child in Vienna. By finding him, she obtained a couple of photographs which, for a long time, were the only available photographs of her relatives before their murder or arrest (C. Stojka 2003). Photographs of relatives are much more valuable than money, as an anecdote recalled by historian and film-maker Karin Berger also shows. When she once told Ceija in conversation about the loss of her handbag with a lot of cash, she heard the reply: «wegen dem Geld, das sei egal, “aber die Fotos in deinem Geldbörsl! Die kriegst du nie wieder!”» (Berger 2013, 257)

Recontextualizing Photographs of the Nazi Persecutors

In the late 1990s, Karin Berger, Ceija Stojka’s longtime collaborator, researched files from the «Rassenhygienische und bevölkerungsbiologische Forschungsstelle» for her film Ceija Stojka (Berger 2013, 269-272). With its systematic registration of Romani people, the «Forschungsstelle», founded in 1937 by psychiatrist Robert Ritter, prepared the groundwork for the National Socialist regime’s genocide of the Romani people – the Porajmos (Reuter 2014, 134-162). These files contained index cards with information on individuals’ date of birth, height, hair, and skin color, and «race», together with photographs from three perspectives, also cards of Ceija Stojka and several family members, made in September 1940 in Vienna (Berger 2013, 271). Although the photographs in the files are inscribed with the forced character of their production, in some cases they are the last or even only photographs taken before family members were deported or murdered. Ceija Stojka’s father was arrested in 1940 and murdered one year later, and, in 1943, the rest of the immediate family was deported. Berger described how Ceija Stojka’s children welcomed the newly-resurfaced photographs: «Die Aufnahmen werden behandelt wie heimgekommene Angehörige» (Berger 2013, 272). These photographs, to which the family did not have access until 1999, were integrated and edited into the family memory by the first-generation family members in different ways: Ceija Stojka worked them into a painting called Verloren (2002), her brother Mongo Stojka used them as the cover of his autobiography Papierene Kinder (2000), and her brother Karl Stojka published these and many other files in detailed catalogs (Wo sind sie geblieben …? 2000 and Mein Name im Dritten Reich. Z5742, 2003).

The photographs of the Nazi center also appeared in videos made by Hojda Stojka. One short videoclip, called 70 Jahre. Befreiung Gegen das vergessen. Mama wir haben überlebt, ja meine kleine aber viele nicht, was uploaded on YouTube on 27th January 2015 as a commemoration of the 70th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz. In the clip, Hojda assembles the family’s Nazi files with footage of Auschwitz, paintings by Ceija, photographs of her in the 1970s and 1990s, and a depiction of Jesus to an audio recording of a Lovara song, sung by Ceija Stojka. The clip remembers Ceija, who died in 2013, linking her life to the murderous system of extermination camps. The Nazi files function as a memento of murdered family members and the suffering of those who survived. The interest in the files is clearly in the photographs, but they are left in the context of the index card, directly connoting the persecution by the regime.

In her much-cited reflections on «postmemory», as «the response of the second generation to the trauma of the first» (Hirsch 2001, 218), Marianne Hirsch focuses in particular on the use of photographs and visual representations. The concept has been criticized for being extended from the direct descendants of the survivors of the Holocaust to almost everyone born after it, which Marianne Hirsch formulated in The Generation of Postmemory (Behrendt 2013). However, here, it can be a quite useful concept to describe Hojda’s approach to the files. Hirsch describes the repetitive use of photographs as an attempt to process the trauma (Hirsch 2001, 222). She emphasizes that, on the one hand, an effect of traumatic repetition is achieved through repeated exposure to the same images in the subsequent generation. But on the other hand, rearrangement, recontextualization, and new montages of the images all make it possible to work through the trauma (238).

In a video called Ceija Stojka Amenzaketane uploaded to YouTube on April 29th, 2018, Hojda Stojka again uses the Nazi file about his mother. But, this time, he has detached her photos from the card and omitted the third perspective, showing the profile of young Ceija’s face, thus removing them from their context of Nazi persecution. Their montage with family photos, a short biography, more recent photographs, and the song Amenza Ketane (meaning «We Are Together») sung by his mother, creates a short biographical clip about Ceija Stojka’s life.

By recontextualizing them, Hojda Stojka is able to appropriate the photographs of his mother as a child. Although they may have been made with the aim of persecution, they are now part of the memory of his mother. They support his appeal at the end of the video: «Ceija Stojka. Zeitzeugin und so vieles mehr. Seid nett zu einander!!!»

Integrating Television Recordings into Family Memory

In his clip for the 70th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz, Hojda Stojka used photographic footage from Auschwitz that was not directly related to his family’s persecution. Relatedly, the home video collection, alongside self-produced videos, also contains television recordings. In several cases, individual video cassettes contain both sorts of recordings. Some of the television recordings woven into the family memory deal with National Socialism. A recording of a family celebration, for example, is followed by a television recording of the film Schindler’s List (ÖM 24). After the daughter’s first day of school, there is a clip of a television documentary about Carmelite nuns in Auschwitz (ÖM 39). After a New Year’s Eve celebration, there is a television report on elite education under National Socialism (ÖM 33).

Alison Landsberg described «prosthetic memories» as those that cannot be traced back to lived experience, but nevertheless have a subjectivizing effect. «Prosthetic memories», she writes, «thus become part of one’s personal archive of experience, informing one’s subjectivity as well as one’s relationship to the present and future tenses». (Landsberg 2004, 26)

This problematizes essentialist notions of memory as well as the notion of memory as stable or authentic. Landsberg subsequently uses the concept to reflect on the significance of feature films such as Schindler’s List or other popular cultural references to history, which she sees as enabling empathy. The representations of the past in feature films, series, museums, and so on, become part of the visitors’ or viewers’ experience as prosthetic memories. However, this metaphorical use of the prosthesis has also faced sharp criticism, for example from Karin Harrasser (2016), who studied the cultural history of the prosthesis from 1850 until 1965, or film scholar Vivian Sobchack, who criticized the inadequacy of the metaphor (Sobchack 2004, 215). Not only is the idea of the prosthesis based on a notion of a previous «wholeness» that is now missing something, the idea also transfers agency from the human actors to the prosthetic artifacts (210-211). Although I am aware of this important critique of the metaphor of the prosthesis, I nevertheless find Landsberg’s concept to be useful in several ways for thinking through memory and auto/biography in home video.

Landsberg’s notion of the portability of memory and identity (Landsberg 2004, 43) may be applied to home video practices. The tapes are portable: they can be copied, shipped, passed on to others, and taken and shown anywhere on a visit. The home videos, as conduits of mobile memory, are not only auto/biographical documents of a variety of persons. They also constitute the basis for a variety of possibilities for the subjectification of the same person. The videos moreover enable several identities to be constructed for their producer: preserver of the family memory; musician; comedian; extended family member; son; father; and so on. Inscribed in all of these audiovisual elements is the knowledge of the parental generation’s past persecution, which decisively shapes the autobiographical self-representations of the second generation. Television programs and other audiovisual productions can be integrated into the video memory. Thus, films such as Schindler’s List and television documentaries on National Socialism become part of family video memory.

Conclusion

My study of Hojda Stojka’s home video collection highlights the complex relationship between personal memory and historical intergenerational trauma. The analysis of the videos shows the importance of specific spaces like kitchens, cars and stages, related practices of cooking, eating, traveling and performing as well as their interconnectedness with experiences of persecution. This paper also demonstrates how the recontextualization of photographs can play a crucial role in the construction of memory and in the processing of trauma. By taking photographs out of their original context of National Socialist persecution, Hojda Stojka is able to give them a new meaning, one that celebrates his mother Ceija Stojka’s life and legacy, while still acknowledging the suffering and persecution of Romani people under the National Socialist regime. Another strategy of re/appropriation can be observed when television recordings are integrated into the video collection and historical documentaries or feature films thus become part of the family memory.

Hojda Stojka is elusive in his own videography. His work is instead constructed around the life of his mother, Ceija Stojka. Notwithstanding this elusiveness within the audiovisual representations, Hojda Stojka remains the central actor: creating and holding together the family’s video memory in his acts of collection and assembly. He not only films the family, but carefully represents them on tape; collecting, preserving, creating a system of order and finally deciding to transfer the video collection to a public archive, thus acknowledging and contributing to their historical and political relevance.

Acknowledgements

Mein großer Dank gilt Nuna und Hojda Stojka für ihre Bereitschaft, mit mir über ihre Familienvideos zu sprechen, und Karin Berger für den wichtigen Austausch während der Arbeit an diesem Text.

This work was supported by the Austrian Science Fund FWF (project number: V633).

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