This small patterned hooked rug was used as a shoe mat in the wagon of Rita Prigmore and her family when she was a child in Wurzberg, Germany, after World War II. Rita and her family were members of the Sinti group of Roma (Gypsies). She and her twin sister Rolanda were born in 1943. Rolanda died as a result of medical experiments on twins in the clinic where they were born. Rita was returned to her family in 1944. She and her mother survived the war and moved to the United States, before returning to Germany to run a Sinti human rights organization that sought to raise consciousness about the fate of Roma during the Holocaust.
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