Katharina “Wisa” Kiefer, married name Freiberger (7.9.1910 Nuremberg – 17.12.1983 Cham)

Katharina Kiefer came from a family of traders and umbrella makers. In the 1930s, she lived in Cologne and Dortmund, among other places. The casual laborer and musician was already being subjected to persecution by the National Socialists during this period. In March 1938, she had to undergo a ‘racial biological examination‘ in Cologne, which the ‘Racial Hygiene Research Center’ at the Reich Ministry of Health used to try to prove the ‘inferiority’ of the Sinti and Roma . These assessments were the basis for the subsequent systematic deportation of people persecuted as ‘Gypsies’ from the Third Reich.

The mother of three moved to Munich in December 1941. The older children, Else and Theodor, lived with their father Xaver Christ in Dingolfing. On March 8, 1943, Katharina Kiefer and her twelve- and ten-year-old children Else and Theodor were arrested and deported to the Auschwitz-Birkenau ‘gypsy camp’. Xaver Christ was also persecuted as a ‘Gypsy’, but was able to escape deportation for the time being. Katharina Kiefer’s four-year-old daughter Maria was with acquaintances in Berlin at this time, but was also deported to the ‘gypsy camp’ a few weeks later. Katharina Kiefer had to work in the Auschwitz-Birkenau Concentration Camp doing construction work, among other things, and later in the kitchen. In the summer of 1944, she was taken to the Ravensbrück Concentration Camp and from there to the Graslitz satellite camp, Flossenbürg Concentration Camp, where mainly precision mechanical assembly work for the armaments industry had to be carried out. In April 1945, the concentration camp inmates were sent on so-called ‘death marches’.

Katharina Kiefer survived and returned to Munich in 1947. All three children and also Katherina Kiefer’s mother had died in the National Socialist concentration camps . In the summer of 1957, she married the mason Josef Freiberger. In the 1970s, they both moved to the Upper Palatinate region. Katharina Kiefer’s health was severely weakened as a result of her imprisonment. For many years, she only received a small pension as compensation, because the Federal Republic did not officially recognize Sinti and Roma as victims of the National Socialist “racial policy” until 1982. However, the improved reparation payments came too late for her. She died in 1983.