Lety Memorial to the Holocaust of the Roma and Sinti to open in February 2024, forest there will symbolize the human toll
The Memorial to the Holocaust of the Roma and Sinti in Bohemia will open on 3 February 2024 in Lety u Písku at the site of the former concentration camp where Roma and Sinti were imprisoned during the Second World War. An industrial pig farm used to occupy the site.
Representatives of the Museum of Romani Culture, which is taking care of the grounds, informed journalists of the plans today. Politicians and others planted trees at the site symbolically today.
Most of the saplings were donated by the Orlík Estate of Jan and Karel Schwarzenberg. A minute of silence was observed for the late Mr. Karel Schwarzenberg during the planting ceremony.
The late Mr. Schwarzenberg supported the building of the memorial. “Today we are planting trees which will be part of the memorial. This newly planted forest will symbolize the lost members of the Romani community. It is exactly this forest that will represent them, symbolically, and as it grows we believe the coexistence between the majority and the Romani minority will improve, this minority has been forgotten and their genocide during the Second World War has been absolutely displaced from the history of our country,” said Jana Horváthová, director of the Museum of Romani Culture.
There will be almost 14,000 trees planted. The mixed forest will be a place for contemplation and or honoring the memories of the victims of the local concentration camp for Roma and Sinti.
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The memorial is being built by the Protom Strakonice firm, which won the tender with a bid of CZK 98.6 million [EUR 4 million]. The exhibitions to be featured there will involve other costs, with the indoor one costing CZK 10.5 million [EUR 400,000].
The indoor exhibition will be covered by money from Norway Grants, while the German Embassy has promised CZK 2.6 million [EUR 106,000] for the outdoor one. The memorial will have a trial run for two months and will be open from Friday through Sunday.
“It is extremely important to commemorate what happened in these places. The victims whom we are commemorating today are frequently forgotten, and this chapter of our past remains under a sort of shadow,” said the speaker of the Chamber of Deputies, Markéta Pekarová Adamová (TOP 09).
The center for visitors at the new memorial will house a permanent exhibition, while a Memory Trail outdoors will house the outdoor exhibition. Eyewitness testimonies in audiovisual form will be part of both exhibitions.
“The outdoor exhibition will cover the entire grounds. At the top is the circle of reverence where the names of the concentration camp’s prisoners and victims will be inscribed,” said Karolina Spielmannová, spokesperson for the Museum of Romani Culture.
A wall is also installed to separate the space of the memorial from the outside world.
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Most of the saplings for the new forest were donated by the Orlík Estate. There will be 13,917 seedlings of nine different kinds of trees, with oak and pine predominating.
The late Mr. Karel Schwarzenberg supported the memorial. “He offered that his estate in particular could donate the tree seedlings. Karel Schwarzenberg was here with us in May this year, which is when we hold the traditional commemorative ceremony, and in June, in an interview, he recalled the participation of President Petr Pavel quite positively and how important it was that he came to the ceremony,” said Jana Horváthová during her remarks.
The Lety pig farm was demolished between July and December last year. The remains of one of the feed halls will be part of the exhibition.
The outdoor exhibition will discuss the history of the site after the war, including the industrial pig farm. Its demolition cost CZK 10.2 million [EUR 415,000].
More than 1300 Roma and Sinti were forcibly imprisoned in what was then called the “Gypsy Camp”, which de facto functioned as a concentration camp. At least 326 people died in the camp, most of whom were children.
After the mass transports of all the camp prisoners to the Auschwitz II-Birkenau Concentration Camp, the buildings of the camp were razed to the ground and set on fire in 1943. During the 1970s, the industrial pig farm was built over the site of the former concentration camp.
The Czech state bought out the farm in 2018 for CZK 372.5 million [EUR 15.2 million] before VAT from the AGPI firm, which had been raising 13,000 pigs there.
