UTW 69

Ernst Lossa, a 14-year-old victim of the Nazi’s Aktion T-4 capital punishment – euthanasia of the Yenish, Romani and Sinti people

Art: 2018 
Media: Ink, colored pencil, gouache on paper, with pieces of a (Segan-made) 1976 woodcut print titled King David.
Paper size: 13 ¾ in. H x 16 W
Framed, 21 ¾ H x 24 ¾ W

Ernst was born in 1929 in Augsburg, Bavaria, Germany. Both of his parents were Yenish, also spelled Jenish, Jeniche. The Jenish were persecuted by the Third Reich as ”Gypsies” or “peddlers.”

Ernst’s mother Anna died when he was four. Ernst’s father, two uncles and other relatives sent to the Dachau concentration-death camp in 1939. Ernst’s father was murdered either at the Mauthausen concentration – death camp or at the Flossenburg concentration – death camp.

He was executed August 9, 1944 by lethal injection at the Kaufbeuren-Irsee hospital. It was capital punishment-of-the-disabled center. His death report record stated ‘asocial psychopath.’ Articles on the internet infer Ernst became an Aktion T-4 victim due to his being Yenish.

According to the Guidelines for Educators on Teaching the Holocaust, printed April 20, 1999 by the USHMM, Washington, DC (which I received a copy of at an International Conference on the Holocaust & Education, Yad Vashem, Jerusalem, Oct. 1999) among other Holocaust victims were “up to one-half million Gypsies [Romani & Sinti] and at least 250,000 mentally & physically disabled victims.”

More on the Nazi practice of eugenics and euthanasia: Fog in August: remembering the dangers of euthanasia and eugenics

Also see:
UTW 50: Romani (Gypsy) boy in a Nazi concentration-death camp for Gypsies, Halle, Germany (art 2003)

UTW 61: Multiple-amputee…(art 2013)

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A 2 min., 28 sec. video of the drawing before it was framed