Lost Earrings – The Story of Pauline Eckstein

In this episode, podcast host Lovro Kralj talks with Théophile Leroy about an object gone missing; a beautiful pair of earrings. This piece of jewellery can be seen on photographs of a Sinti woman called Pauline Eckstein, wearing them in her ears. During her wartime plight, the earrings went missing, lost or stolen.Pauline Steinberger was born on 13 October 1886 in Seebronn, Germany, to parents who were of Sinti background. Her father was an itinerant musician. When she was 21, she was married to Christian Eckstein and had her first child. Together with Christian she would have seven children, most of whom were adults when the war started. Christian died in 1938.Pauline was evacuated, with some of her children, in 1939 during the demarcation of the western border, but in the spring of 1940, she returned to Karlsruhe.There, she and five of her children were taken by police forces in May 1940 to the Hohenasperg fortress. After some time, they were deported by train along with other Roma and Sinti to occupied Poland, where they were interned in various camps and performed forced labor.Three of Pauline’s daughters died in the camps, she herself survived the Sinti and Roma genocide and returned, with her son, to Karlsruhe. During the process of applying for reparations claim (Wiedergutmachung), she died in 1949.Featured guest:Théophile Leroy is an historian who recently defended his doctoral dissertation on the persecution of Sinti in the Rhineland area during the Second World War. He is currently a lecturer at the Strasbourg University, and he has also worked as a researcher collecting oral and written testimonies in France. Podcast host is Lovro Kralj.Théophile tells the story of Pauline Eckstein and the lost earrings. Music accreditation: Blue Dot Sessions. Tracks – Opening and closing: Stillness. Incidental, Gathering Stasis, Pencil Marks, Uncertain Ground, Marble Transit and Snowmelt. License Creative Commons Atttribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International (BB BY-NC 4.0). Andy Clark, Podcastmaker, Studio Lijn 14