Industrial pig farm that once stood on the site of a WWII-era concentration camp for Roma has finally been completely demolished

The demolition began at the end of July and the Museum of Romani Culture wants to open a visitors’ center there in mid-2023 or at the start of 2024. Three bids were submitted to build the center but the museum has yet to select the winner.

The museum has been counting on a cost of CZK 73.5 million [EUR 3 million] exclusive of VAT to build the center. Karolina Spielmannová, spokesperson for the museum, informed the Czech News Agency (ČTK) of the amount.

“The former pig farm facility has been demolished. For many long years it served for the large-scale farming of pigs and therefore contained a certain amount of dangerous materials. It was difficult to secure the destruction of those waste materials in an environmentally-friendly way, which is why the deadline for completion of the demolition was postponed,” Spielmannová said.

The demolition of the farm was undertaken in the immediate vicinity of the grounds of the original concentration camp (where the farm did not overlap the camp entirely), so the work had to be done gently, according to the museum spokesperson. Removal of the slurry will take place in the spring.

Irrespective of that, the grounds will be construction-ready on 15 January. The Memorial to the Holocaust of the Roma and Sinti in Bohemia will then be built on the site at a cost of more than CZK 100 million [EUR 4 million].

The museum, which is in charge of the grounds, said the first part will be the visitor’s center. The remains of two of the pig farm halls will be part of the permanent exhibition at the new memorial.

The museum is now assessing three bids received during its selection procedure for the construction of the visitor’s center and the recultivation of the unmarked mass grave site near the former concentration camp. The offering price was CZK 73.5 million [EUR 3 million] exclusive of VAT.

The cost of demolishing the industrial pig farm was originally estimated by the state at CZK 110 million [EUR 4.5 million] and that amount was allocated for it. The demolition eventually cost approximately CZK 10 million [EUR 400,000].

The cost of the demolition before taxes is CZK 8.5 million [EUR 350,000], CZK 10.2 million [EUR 420,000] with VAT. That information comes from the contract registry.

The more than CZK 90 million [EUR 3.7 million] that has been saved will be used by the state to build the memorial, Czech Culture Minister Martin Baxa (Civic Democratic Party – ODS) told ČTK in July. It will take several years to construct.

In mid-December the museum issued its commission for the construction of the permanent exhibitions at the memorial. “Right now we are looking for a contractor, the project documentation is done. The tender documentation for the indoor and outdoor exhibitions is also ready,” the museum spokesperson said.

Construction of the memorial will cost CZK 100 million [EUR 4 million] including VAT. Norway Grants is also financially contributing.

During the Second World War a concentration camp for Romani people was located at the site; during the 1970s, an industrial pig farm was built over part of what had been the camp. The Czech state bought out the farm in 2018 for CZK 372.5 million [EUR 15.4 million] exclusive of VAT from the AGPI firm, which kept 13,000 pigs there.

Three years ago, archeologists ascertained that the biggest part of the former concentration camp for Roma at Lety was located on the grounds of the farm. The grounds are more than 100,000 meters square.

According to historians, 1,308 Romani children, men and women passed through the Lety concentration camp from August 1942 to May 1943, 327 of whom died there and more than 500 of whom were forcibly deported to the Auschwitz Concentration Camp. In 1995 a memorial was installed near the unmarked mass burial grounds for the Lety camp, located about 300 meters away from the site of the former camp, and in 1998 the site became a Cultural Heritage Monument.