Note: We deliver all images in WebP format. Since September 2022, all modern browsers are supporting this format. It seems you are using an older browser that cannot display images in WebP format. Please update your browser.

Our Father – A Sinti Family Recounts

Discussion and Reading with Anita Awosusi and Her Daughter Tayo Onutor (audio recording available, in German)

In her book Vater unser – Eine Sintifamilie erzählt (Our Father. A Sinti Family Recounts), German Sintezza, civil rights activist, and author Anita Awosusi gives insights into her family biography and into the historical events and aftermath of Nazism.

Taking as her starting point conversations with her father, musician and violinmaker Hermann Weiss, Awosusi talks about his life and survival, deportation, forced labor, Soviet war imprisonment, and his return to his hometown of Karlsruhe. At the same time, she reflects on her own development from the child of the post-war period to the journalist and active civil rights campaigner for the German Sinti and Roma.

recording available

Map with all buildings that belong to the Jewish Museum Berlin. The W. M. Blumenthal Academy is marked in green

Where

W. M. Blumenthal Academy,
Klaus Mangold Auditorium
Fromet-und-Moses-Mendelssohn-Platz 1, 10969 Berlin
(Opposite the Museum)

Where, when, what?

Awosusi's book is a piece of first-hand history and movingly demonstrates the important role of survivors of National Socialism and their descendents for recounting historical events.

Anita Awosusi

Born in 1956, Anita Awosusi headed the Dialog Department at the Documentation and Cultural Center for German Sinti and Roma in Heidelberg for 20 years. She works on books, radio programs, music projects, films, and exhibitions.

The reading was originally scheduled for 9 February and unfortunately had to be postponed. For the rescheduled event, the author Anita Awosusi will now be joined by her daughter Tayo Onutor, who will take part in the discussion following the reading. The singer-songwriter is an active member of IniRomnja, a coalition of Roma and Sinti women in Berlin.

Moderation: Rosa Fava, W. Michael Blumenthal Fellow Jewish Museum Berlin

This event in our Academy program’s New German Stories series is being held as part of Rromnja* Power Month.

Book cover showing an elderly, white-haired, bearded gentleman playing the cello.

Audio recording of the reading on 23 March 2017, in German; Jewish Museum Berlin 2017

Interview Series: New German Stories (12)

Show all

  • New German Stories

    From 2014 to 2017, our colleagues from the Academy program on migration and diversity held regular events at the Jewish Museum in a series called New German Stories. The guests' lives speak to Germany, past and present, as a society of migration, and the events take these life stories as a springboard for exploring these themes. Beforehand, the guests were almost always interviewed. We have compiled these interviews for you here.

  • Karamba Diaby is sitting on a staircase, wearing a blue suit with a red check tie.

    Karamba Diaby

    “We should close this representation gap”

    Interview
    26 May 2017

  • Portrait of an elderly lady with a bun

    Anita Awosusi

    On her book Our Father – A Sinti Family Recounts

    Interview
    6 Feb 2017

  • Black and white portrait of a young man with glasses in half profile

    Ármin Langer

    “The boredom of peaceful coexistence”

    Interview
    18 Oct 2016

  • Portrait of a woman with glasses who smiles and looks directly into the camera.

    Marion Kraft

    “The part Black soldiers played in the liberation of Germany from Nazism has been largely neglected”

    Livestream
    6 Jul 2016

  • Portrait of a young woman smiling

    Çiçek Bacık

    “We’ve always been spoken and written about”

    Interview
    13 Oct 2015

  • Portrait of a woman with a blue headscarf, lipstick and eye shadow, looking upwards to the left.

    Fereshta Ludin

    “I wish more people would look in my eyes instead of at my scarf”

    Interview
    16 Sep 2015

  • Black and white portrait of a man.

    David Ranan

    “Other but not foreign”

    Interview
    6 Jul 2015

  • Detail from a book cover: it shows a fish wrapped in newspaper, with its head and tail fin visible.

    Ahmad Milad Karimi

    On his book Osama bin Laden is Sleeping with Fishes

    Interview
    9 Mar 2015

  • Portrait of a woman with glasses who smiles and looks directly into the camera

    Alina Gromova

    Generation “kosher light”. Young Jews of Russian descent in Berlin

    Interview
    8 Sep 2014

  • An older woman with glasses and headscarf (left in the picture) is talking to a younger woman who also wears glasses and is standing at the right edge of the picture.

    Canan Turan

    Kıymet or: A cinematic tribute to my grandmother

    Interview
    4 Jul 2014

  • On the cover you can see a photo of three playing children

    Urmila Goel and Nisa Punnamparambil-Wolf

    InderKinder
    Dealing creatively with ethnic classifications

    Interview
    19 Mar 2014

  • Three women in profile at a table, smilingly signing books

    Alice Bota, Khuê Pham, and Özlem Topçu

    “New German stories”

    Interview
    29 Jan 2014

Where, when, what?

  • When23 Mar 2017
  • Where W. M. Blumenthal Academy,
    Klaus Mangold Auditorium
    Fromet-und-Moses-Mendelssohn-Platz 1, 10969 Berlin
    (Opposite the Museum)
    See location on map

Event Series: New German Stories (4)

Show all

Audio Recordings: Listen to Past Museum Events (68)

Show all

Academy Programs: Past Events for You to Listen To and Watch 2011–2019 (40)

Show all

Share, Newsletter, Feedback