Renata Berkyová for DVTV: Even the Czech President doesn't know how to honor the memory of Lety, the pig farm remains
A recent edition of the Apel (“Appeal”) program broadcast by the Czech Internet television station DVTV has been dedicated to the existence of the pig farm at Lety u Písku that stands at the location of a former concentration camp for Romani people. Renata Berkyová was featured and news server Romea.cz publishes her words in full translation here.
Apel DVTV – Renata Berkyová
There are events and places that Czech society has long come to terms with without discussion or polemics. It is so sad as to be shameful that the camp at Lety u Písku is not one of them.
People, Romani people, citizens, were intentionally concentrated there in order to be sent to their deaths. Hundreds of people died in the camp in catastrophic, undignified conditions because of the camp management, and 420 Romani people were transported from there to Auschwitz.
Year after year, Czech politicians have visited what was once the mass gravesite for that place to lay wreaths there. The vast majority of them do not perceive it to be a degradation of the survivors and their relatives that a pig farm stands today at the place where the survivors’ family members actually died.
Pigs today are being fed on the very same places where people’s lives were extinguished in absolutely inhumane conditions. How is it possible that Czech society is not bothered by this?
Where should the survivors and their relatives look for backing, when even the President of the Czech Republic is unable to honor the memory of the dead? While these polemics are conducted about whether the victims of the Lety camp are even worth having their own memorial, those who have waited all their lives for the places of their own humiliation and suffering to be acknowledged are now dying.
Love for one’s country and its people, patriotism, is also demonstrated by coping with the nation’s past, is that not so? To deal with the past of the camp at Lety u Písku is not just up to Romani people, it is up to all of Czech society.
Romani people have been and still are a component of that society. Do we actually want the pig farm at Lety u Písku to be a component of Czech history?
This is the responsibility of all of us. Let’s move this pig farm and honor the memory of the victims of Nazi ideology in a dignified way.
