Czech Prime Minister Petr Fiala: Czechs worked as guards in the Lety concentration camp, this memorial should have existed long ago
Speaking at the ceremonial opening of The Lety u Písku Memorial to the Holocaust of the Roma in Bohemia and Moravia, Czech Prime Minister Petr Fiala (Civic Democratic Party - ODS) said that the memorial should have been created much sooner. In his view, the Czech state took too long to purchase the land from the owner of the industrial pig farm that overlapped the site of the former WWII-era concentration camp for Romani people.
“Finally we can commemorate the Romani victims of this monstrous ideology in a dignified way. However, we must acknowledge that all of this took too long. This memorial should have existed long ago,” the Czech Prime Minister said.
A dilatory approach to this issue, in the PM’s view, has been a continuous thread through several decades of the country’s history. The amount of time it took to prepare the memorial speaks to that fact.
“That is because we covered up the Holocaust of the Roma. We didn’t just cover it up metaphorically. Here in Lety there was the pig farm, and in Hodonín u Kunštátu there was a recreational facility,” the Czech Prime Minister said.
There was also a concentration camp for Romani people during the Second World War in Hodonín u Kunštátu. The building of a dignified remembrance site in Lety was first discussed in 1995.
An industrial pig farm had stood in that location since the 1970s, which the Czech state bought for CZK 450 million [EUR 17.8 million] and demolished in 2022. The building of the memorial then began.
“For our forebears, it was hard to admit what happened here. That was because Czech guards worked in the camp here, and this was, therefore, also our crime. However, unpleasant it is to come to terms with that, it is necessary,” the Czech Prime Minister said.
The Visitors’ Centre of the newly-built memorial houses a permanent exhibition, as does an outdoor Memory Trail. The exhibitions include eyewitness testimonies in audiovisual form.
The memorial will open to the public on 12 May, which is when the commemorative ceremony in Lety is regularly held. According to historians, from August 1942 to May 1943, a total of 1,294 Romani people passed through the concentration camp at Lety u Písku, at least 335 of whom died there, 241 of whom were children younger than 14.
About 540 prisoners were then forcibly transported to the Auschwitz-Birkenau Concentration and Extermination Camp. The new memorial covers more than 100,000 square meters.
Near the Burial Ground for Lety, which is about 300 meters from the site of the former concentration camp, the first memorial was installed in 1995. That site became a Cultural Heritage Memorial in 1998.
“The Holocaust of the Czech Roma and Sinti meant their genocide. The memorial in Lety is the outcome of the efforts preceding administrations which we are continuing,” the Czech Prime Minister said.
