RECORDING: Traditional commemorative ceremony honoring the memory of the Holocaust and its Romani victims at Lety u Písku, Czech Republic

The project was prevented for decades by the industrial pig farm that had been built there during the communist regime. At 12:00 CET a commemorative ceremony was held on the grounds of the memorial to honor the memory of the Holocaust and its Romani victims.

ROMEA TV broadcast the ceremony live online. In his speech on this occasion, the President of the Czech Senate, Miloš Vystrčil (Civic Democratic Party – ODS), said people should not just live their lives focusing on the present moment.

Vystrčil said it is important to create things and values, the significance of which will become apparent in the future. He also said that the creation of the Lety memorial complex was such a project.

“We should also be able to do things that do not particularly benefit us or even our families while we are alive. Just like [former Czech politician] Karel Schwarzenberg, who gifted thousands of small trees to this memorial although he would never live to see the forest that will grow here. That is what we should do. The memorial will become a future in which we never forget, and it will create a good basis for those who come after us. Thanks to this, we will be able to learn from the past and be able to stand up to situations that could destroy our freedom,” said Vystrčil.

What was called the “Gypsy Camp” was in operation at Lety during the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia. In the 1970s, the agricultural sector under socialist rule built an industrial pig farm there.

In 2018, the Czech state bought the farm for CZK 450 million [EUR 18 million] from the company that was raising as many as 13,000 pigs there at the time. The demolition of the farm was finished in late 2022.

The Lety u Písku Memorial to the Holocaust of the Roma and Sinti in Bohemia is now there instead and was opened to the public on 12 May 2024 by the Museum of Romani Culture. The usual commemorative ceremony for the victims of the camp was also held on that occasion.

“Each of us bears personal responsibility for how he approaches how we live, for what he says and does. We should be building the foundations for a good future. It took us more than 30 years to do this with the Lety memorial,” Vystrčil reminded those assembled.

Other public figures attending the commemorative ceremony were the Czech Regional Development Minister Ivan Bartoš (Pirates) and the Slovak sociologist and former politician Fedor Gál. The idea to build a remembrance site in Lety was first discussed in 1995.

It eventually took about two years to build the memorial. Czech Prime Minister Petr Fiala (ODS) gave a speech at Lety in April in which he said the memorial should have been built long ago, but the state took too long to buy out the land.

The facility today covers more than 100,000 square meters, including the Burial Ground for some of the prisoners who died in the camp, which is where a small monument was installed in 1995. Its outdoor area is accessible year-round; the Visitors’ Centre has opening hours during the main visitors’ season of April through October on Thursday to Sunday from 10:00 to 17:00; the last admittance to the indoor exhibition will be at 16:15.

There is a permanent exhibition inside the Visitors’ Centre, while outside there is a Memory Trail featuring another permanent exhibition. Audiovisual testimonies by eyewitnesses are part of the permanent exhibition indoors.

According to historians, from August 1942 to May 1943, 1,294 Romani people passed through the camp at Lety u Písku, at least 335 of whom died there, 241 of them children under 14. Another 450 people were forcibly transported from Lety to Auschwitz.