Siegfried Heilig, a Sinto, was born in Magdeburg in 1934. His family endured constant harassment by the Nazis and went into hiding in 1943. Malnourished and ill, the parents fled with their three sons from one hiding place to the next. In the end, only a few members of the family escaped being murdered in Auschwitz.
Heilig spoke at schools as a contemporary witness and campaigned for the interests of Sinti and Roma until his death in 2021.