Lety u Písku, site of activism: Debate in Prague
"Lety u Písku, site of activism" is the name of a discussion being held today at 16:00 at the National Memorial on Prague's Vítkov Hill by the Centre for the Roma and Sinti in Prague, a specialized workplace of the Museum of Romani Culture. In 2017, the industrial pig farm that had been built over the location of the former WWII-era concentration camp for Roma and Sinti at Lety was purchased by the Czech state in order to build a new Lety u Písku Memorial to the Holocaust of the Roma and Sinti in Bohemia.
According to those convening the discussion, the journey toward that historical moment was not easy. The first documented efforts to turn the site into a place of reverence date to the 1960s.
How difficult was it for those voices and all the other subsequent voices to face the lack of interest or unwillingness of Czech society to deal with the Holocaust of the Roma and Sinti? Does the future Lety memorial symbolize Czech society coming to terms with the Nazi persecution of the Roma and Sinti during the Second World War?
These are the questions that the three invited panelists will attempt to answer. Čeněk Růžička, chair of the Committee for the Redress of the Roma Holocaust in the Czech Republic and a descendant of the Czech Roma who survived the Holocaust; Jamen Gabriela Hrabaňová, director of the European Roma Grassroots Organizations Network (ERGO) and the former head of the Office of the Czech Government Council for Roma Minority Affairs; and Miroslav Brož, chair of the Konexe association, will speak.
Renata Berkyová, a Romani Studies Scholar, will moderate the debate. The discussion is the second of three such events organized by the Centre for the Roma and Sinti in Prague.
Each event covers a different subject framing the memory of the Roma. The three programs contextualize Romani people in the the anti-Nazi resistance movement, the anti-communist resistance movement, and the activist struggle for the recognition of the Holocaust of the Roma and Sinti, including the demolition of the industrial pig farm at Lety u Písku.
The events dedicated to Romani memory are free of charge. They are an auxiliary program to the exhibition at the National Memorial on the Genocide of the Roma during the Second World War.
