LIVE BROADCAST 11 MAY at 12:00 CET: Commemorative ceremony honoring the memory of the Holocaust and its Romani victims at the site of the former concentration camp in Lety u Písku, Czech Republic

ROMEA TV will be broadcasting live online from the commemorative ceremony this year as well. The remembrance gathering is organized by the Committee for the Redress of the Roma Holocaust in the Czech Republic (Výbor pro odškodnění romského holocaustu – VPORH) with a contribution from the Czech Culture Ministry.

The commemorative ceremony has also been supported by the Foundation for Holocaust Victims through the Museum of Romani Culture, which administers the facility. The event marks the 82nd anniversary of the May transport of 420 Romani and Sinti children, men, and women who had been imprisoned in the de facto concentration camp in Lety, called a “Gypsy Camp” at the time, to the Auschwitz II-Birkenau Concentration and Extermination Camp.

A total of 853 Romani people from the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia were sent to Auschwitz on that transport, as more Romani prisoners were added to it in Brno. Heinrich Himmler ordered that such transports be undertaken and they were organized by police in the Protectorate.

The transport arrived in Auschwitz II-Birkenau on 7 May 1943. The commemorative ceremony honoring the victims will include a musical performance by Ivan Herák’s family ensemble, invited speakers, and the laying of floral offerings.

The ceremony will start at 12:00, when Jana Kokyová of the VPORH will speak. After 15:00 there will be an opportunity to visit the grounds of the Lety u Písku Memorial to the Holocaust of the Roma and Sinti in Bohemia, and at 15:45 the charter buses will depart for the parish cemetery in Mirovice, where some of the child prisoners who died in the camp are buried.

The President of the Senate of the Parliament of the Czech Republic, Miloš Vystrčil; Czech Foreign Minister Jan Lipavský; and member of the lower house Ivan Bartoš have confirmed their attendance. Guests from abroad include Kristian Ødegaard, Chargé d’affaires of the Embassy of the Kingdom of Norway, and the Ambassador of France to the Czech Republic, Stéphane Crouzat.

Czech Government Commissioner for Roma Minority Affairs Lucie Fuková has given her auspices to the commemorative ceremony. Descendants of survivors from the Daniel, Hauer, Murka, Nový, Růžička, and Šubrt families will attend.

The ceremony will end with a visit to the cemetery in Mirovice, where some of the child prisoners who died in the camp were buried. The program is open to the public and its schedule is subject to change.

Starting at 10:00, visitors to the memorial can tour the indoor permanent exhibition, “Memory of a Place, Place of Memory”, and walk the outdoor Memory Trail, which maps the history of the site. No admission fee will be charged on the day of the commemorative ceremony.

The memorial is open to the public from Thursday through Sunday from 10:00 to 17:00 through the end of October. Those are the opening hours of the Visitors’ Center and the permanent indoor exhibition.

The grounds of the memorial are open to the public on a daily basis year-round without restriction. More information about the memorial is available at letypamatnik.cz.

History of the Lety concentration camp: Tragedy and struggle

According to historians, from August 1942 to August 1943 a total of 1,294 Romani and Sinti people passed through the camp in Lety u Písku, of whom at least 335 died there, 241 of them children younger than 14. About 540 of them were transported to Auschwitz. 

In 1973, an industrial pig farm that remained in operation for 45 years was built over the site of the former camp. Although the descendants of the survivors tried, during socialism, to commemorate the fates of the Roma and Sinti who passed through the camp, they did not start to do so more publicly until after the fall of the communist regime in 1989.

In 1995, when Czech President Václav Havel unveiled the first monument to the victims of the camp (today the Lety Cultural Heritage Monument), the building of a dignified remembrance site here started to be discussed. Two years later, ministers Jan Ruml (Civic Democratic Party – ODS) and Pavel Bratinka (Civic Democratic Alliance – ODA) announced they would be proposing the Government buy out the industrial pig farm, demolish it, and have a dignified memorial to the Holocaust and its Romani victims built on the site.

The buyout of the farm took 20 years to realize. Its purchase was not approved until 2017.

The Czech state paid CZK 372.5 million [EUR 15 million] before VAT to the owners and handed the facility over to the Museum of Romani Culture in 2018. After an international architecture competition and two years of demolition and construction work, the new memorial was ceremonially opened to the public in April 2024.

The museum runs the memorial, part of which is an outdoor place of reverence as well as a Visitors’ Center housing the permanent exhibition.