Funeral for Čeněk Růžička will be held this Saturday in Pardubice

“We will pay our final respects to our dear departed on Saturday, 17 December 2022 at 11 AM in the Church of St. Bartholomew in Pardubice, and after the church service he will be laid to rest in the family tomb at the local cemetery,” the family said in the obituary notice, which has been made available to news server Romea.cz.

In 1997, Mr. Růžička co-founded and also led the Committee for the Redress of the Roma Holocaust (Výbor pro odškodnění romského holocaustu), through which he strove for the dignified commemoration of the Holocaust and its Romani victims and for compensation for survivors until his last moments. He was from a family of the indigenous Czech Roma who lived in the Czech lands for several centuries and were tragically affected by racial persecution during the Second World War.

His mother, Alžběta Růžičková, was imprisoned in the concentration camp at Lety u Písku, from which she was deported to Auschwitz-Birkenau. A large part of her family perished in the Holocaust. 

Mr. Růžička fought for many long years to remove an industrial pig farm from the site of the concentration camp at Lety u Písku and to build a dignified memorial at that location. For his activity he was given the Alice Garrigue Masaryk Human Rights Award by the Embassy of the United States of America to the Czech Republic.

That same year, Mr. Růžička was given the Artis Bohemiae Amicis Prize from then-Culture Minister Daniel Herman. Herman expressed his opinion for his tireless efforts to achieve satisfaction for Holocaust victims of Romani origin, including through his cultural activities, mainly exhibitions on the subject.