Joseph "Muscha" Müller



Joseph "Muscha" Müller


Joseph "Muscha" Müller was born in Bitterfeld, Germany to Sinti parents in 1932. Roma and Sinti, pejoratively called "Gypsies," had long been discriminated against by other Germans and subjected to harassment. 

After the Nazis came to power in 1933, the new regime targeted Romani people with more extreme persecution.

At one-and-a-half years old in 1933—the same year the Nazi Party rose to power—Joseph was adopted by a non-Romani family. 

As he began school, Joseph was often taunted with insults, targeted for classroom pranks, and beaten for "misbehaving."

When he was 12, Joseph was taken from his classroom by two strangers who said he had "appendicitis" and needed immediate surgery.

 He protested, but was beaten and forcefully taken into surgery, where he was sterilized.

After his recovery, Joseph's adoptive parents learned he was to be sent to the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp, but his father managed to have him smuggled from the hospital and hidden. 

Joseph survived the remainder of the war by hiding for five months in a garden shed.

Photo: USHMM, courtesy of Joseph Muscha Müller

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