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Holocaust survivor Zilli Schmidt died in Mannheim on 21 October 2022 at the age of 98.

Schmidt was born Cäcilie "Zilli" Reichmann on 10 July 1924 in Hinternah, Thuringia. In 1942, the family was deported.

By stealing food, clothing and medicines, as well as contacts with prisoner functionaries, Zilli Schmidt managed to keep her relatives alive. But on the night of 2 August 1944, the SS murdered her four-year-old daughter Gretel, her parents, her sister with five children and other relatives in gas chambers. On the same day, Zilli Schmidt was deported to Ravensbrück for forced labour. She also escapes from this camp. After the end of the war, she only finds her two brothers again. For decades she fights for "compensation" from the Federal German authorities. Only in the 2010s does she begin to talk about her life outside her family: "Our people should not be forgotten! I want the world to know what happened to the Sinti. I want them to know what it's like to go on when you've lost everything that was dear to you."

Schmidt was one of the few Sinti survivors whose persecution came to trial in the Federal Republic. In 1988 she testified as a witness in a trial against a block leader in the Auschwitz-Birkenau extermination camp. Until the end of her life, Zilli Schmidt was committed as a contemporary witness and campaigner for the rights of Sinti and Roma in Germany. We extend our sympathy to her family and friends.