City of Brno honors the late Karel Holomek, founder of the Museum of Romani Culture
The winners of the City of Brno Prize for 2023 were honored on 30 January in the Assembly Room of the New Town Hall. Among the 13 selected winners was the late Romani activist, politician and founder of the Museum of Roma Culture, Mr. Karel Holomek, who passed away last August and was given the award in memoriam; it was accepted by his daughter Jana Horváthová, director of the Museum of Romani Culture.
“Dad really deserved the City of Brno Prize and would have been very happy, it’s just a shame that he didn’t live to see it,” Horváthová told news server Romea.cz, adding that she has been thinking about what else would be appropriate to do to commemorate him. “For example, we could think about naming one of the nice streets after him, either in Brno or in Prague, where he regularly went to do his work until the age of 80,” she said.
Mr. Holomek was born in 1937 in Brno and passed away on 27 August 2023. His father Tomáš Holomek was probably the first university-educated Romani person in Czechoslovakia.
The Holomek family was persecuted during the Second World War and many were murdered in the concentration camps. Karel and his sister Marcela were also scheduled for transport to the concentration camps because the Nazis categorized them as “mixed race”.
However, thanks to the bravery of their mother, the aid of a Czech gendarme and assistance by their neighbors in Milotice, Nazi officials never discovered them. Their father hid out in the Slovak State during the war.
Karel Holomek studied mechanical engineering at the Military Academy in Brno, where he also worked as an assistant for several years. He was forced to leave the Military Academy because of his political stance in opposition to the occupation of Czechoslovakia by Warsaw Pact troops in 1968.
From the 1970s, Karel Holomek was involved with Brno-based dissidents and disseminated samizdat literature. He spent a short time in prison in 1981.
Karel Holomek became involved in politics after the 1989 Velvet Revolution. From 1990 to 1992 he was elected to the Czech National Assembly for the Civic Forum and, after its division, for the Civic Movement.
The Roma Civic Initiative was also established by Karel Holomek in 1989.
Mayor Vaňková to the prize winners: “We are grateful to you”
The City of Brno Prize has been awarded by the city management every year since 1993. “We are entering another decade and I am very proud to be able to welcome more names to the gallery of Brno’s eminent figures. We are grateful to you, you have influenced the shape of public spaces, of people’s thinking and feelings, and the direction of the city,” said Mayor Markéta Vaňková (ODS).
Another awardee was, for example, the architect Marek Jan Štěpán, who, as a native of North Moravia, was surprised by the award. Štěpán focuses on sacred buildings. He is the author of, for example, the church of the Blessed Mary Restituta on Lesná Street in Brno, he is also famous for the sculpture called “Cloud” on the terrace of the Museum of Arts and Design. He has been working in Brno since 1993. Now he is working there on the restoration of a funeral hall in the Židenice quarter.
The poet and publisher Martin Reiner received an award for his literary work. “I don’t think authors write in order to win the City of Brno Prize, but when it comes, it’s nice,” he remarked. Reiner has published nine collections of poetry, each of which features poems dedicated to Brno. “I was born in Brno, I stayed here and since the late 1980s I have been active publicly. I never stopped, it just takes different forms. Mostly it revolves around literature, although now most of my time and energy is taken up by building the Moravian Jewish Museum. However, I miss writing and I want to get back to it,” he said.
The award in the field of sports was given to Olympic champion Jiří Lipták, who won the gold medal in trap shooting at the Summer Olympics in Tokyo; he has repeatedly won the championship of the Czech Republic and a number of medals in other championships as well. In technical science, the city honored Ilona Müllerová. Among her discoveries, the method of scanning electron microscopy with slow and very slow electrons stands out. Josef Diblík received the award in natural science for his significant contribution to connecting applied mathematics with technically oriented areas, such as automatic control systems.
Other awardees include cardiologist Tomáš Kára, literary theorist Jiří Trávníček, sculptor Jiří Netík, musicologist Jiří Sehnal, journalist Jana Čipáková, former director of the Czech Center in Vienna Mojmír Jeřábek and Karel Ellinger, who was imprisoned in several concentration camps and tells his life story to pupils and students in the Czech Republic. Ellinger was in the hospital, so his granddaughter accepted the award in his place; he passed away on 31 January 2024.
