How to cope with the murder of your family as a Holocaust survivor?

A night in the aunt’s trailer. The forest, his element. The little sister’s coat. These are the beautiful memories that Zoni Weisz hid inside himself for a long time, as if behind closed doors of a closet. Behind other doors were agony and sorrow: the empty house when no one came back. The deportation of his family to Auschwitz. The Dutch Sinto tried to silence the painful past with hard work. Zoni Weisz became one of the most successful florists in Europe, the flower king. But behind the facade of a happy man, he doubted his identity, his nightmares haunted him incessantly. The war did not forget him, as he says. He had to change something – and open the doors. In the animated short film »Memory Boxes«, based on his autobiography »The Forgotten Holocaust«, Zoni Weisz describes the long road of coping with the murder of his family. It led him all the way to the German Parliament, where exactly ten years ago, on 27th of January 2011, he was the first Sinto to give the commemorative speech on the occasion of the Day of Remembrance for the Victims of National Socialism. On this occasion, the short film produced by RomaTrial e. V. and the Foundation Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe celebrates its online premiere.

MEMORY BOXES
Germany 2019, 9‘
Director: Hamze Bytyçi
Script: Damian Le Bas
Drawings & storyboard: Gabi Jiménez
Narration: Zoni Weisz
Animations: Caspar Schleicher
Music: Ferenc Snétberger
Sound design & mix: Marcus Zilz & Simon Steinhorst
Sound and music editing: Caspar Schleicher
Sound recording: Veronika Patočková

Scientific advisor: Jana Mechelhoff-Herezi
Script advisor: Kristóf Horváth
Audio description: Silja Korn & Caspar Schleicher
Translation Romanes: Edis Galushi, Benjamin Dislo Harter
Production: Caspar Schleicher, RomaTrial