Theresia ‘Crasa’ Wagner was born on 17 December 1927 in Berlin, Germany, the daughter of August Wagner (biographical data unknown) and Emilie Kreutz (1890–1944). According to official records she had five siblings: Dora (1924–1945), Florentina (1930–1945), Ludovicus (1931–1944), Elisabeth (1935–1944), and Maria (1941–1944). In an interview conducted in 1970 by the research team of historian Benjamin A. Sijes (1908–1981), however, Wagner herself recalled that the family had been much larger, consisting of eight boys and four girls in total. Much remains unclear about the personal details and the biographies of her parents.
Escape to the Netherlands
In the late 1930s, facing persecution of Roma and Sinti in Germany, the Wagner family fled across the border into the Netherlands after a period living in tents in the mountains. There are conflicting accounts of the role of the father. According to family memory, August Wagner entered the Netherlands in 1937 and assumed the name Coenraad (Conrad) Adolf Bannink. Yet according to notes from the Sijes archive (1970), Theresia claimed that her father had disappeared in 1937 and that Bannink (1890–1944), a non-Romani man from Dalfsen, became the family’s foster father. At his request the family settled at the Veenkade in The Hague, then home to many Sinti and Roma families.
Arrest and Deportation
During the Nationwide Round-Up [‘Zigeunerrazzia’] of 16 May 1944, Dutch policemen arrested the family at their home in The Hague. Wagner remembered that houses were marked with stickers once residents had been removed. The family was first taken to the police station on the Mauritskade, falsely told they would soon be released, and then transported under heavy police guard to Westerbork camp.
On 19 May 1944, 245 Sinti and Roma—including the Wagners—were deported from Westerbork to Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration and extermination camp in cattle wagons. Upon arrival they were placed in Camp Section BIIe. In early August 1944, the camp section was ‘liquidated’ and the family torn apart. Theresia, her sisters Dora and Florentina as well as foster father Bannink were selected for forced labour; the remaining family members were murdered in the gas chambers on the night of 2 to 3 August 1944.
Bannink was transferred to Buchenwald concentration camp and died in December 1944 in Sangerhausen, where he was assigned to forced labour as a prisoner of the Mittelbau-Dora concentration camp. Sisters Dora and Florentina perished in Ravensbrück in April 1945. Theresia Wagner was sent with other Romani women from Ravensbrück to Wolkenburg (a Flossenbürg satellite camp since 1 September 1944) and later to Dachau, where she was liberated in 1945.
Aftermath
After liberation Wagner returned to the Netherlands and searched daily at railway stations for surviving family. In 1980, journalist Jan Beckers (born 1952) interviewed her in Spijkenisse, where she lived in a trailer camp. She described her surroundings as reminiscent of a concentration camp, with the Shell Pernis refinery chimney flame triggering traumatic memories. Beckers portrayed her as deeply scarred, affected also by the broadcast of the television series ‘Holocaust’ in 1979.
In 1994, Wagner played a decisive role in identifying Anna Maria ‘Settela’ Steinbach (1934–1944) as the girl in Rudolf Breslauer’s (1903–1945) Westerbork film. Wagner testified that she had travelled with this girl in the same cattle wagon to Auschwitz, a statement confirmed by another Romani woman from that transport. Theresia Wagner died on 16 August 2002 in Spijkenisse.
