The Lety u Písku Memorial to the Holocaust of the Roma and Sinti in Bohemia will hold a soft opening next week for relatives of the prisoners, donors and other figures and will open to the public on 12 May

The new memorial will be a branch of the Museum of Romani Culture, which informed the media of the event. The museum, headquartered in Brno, had originally planned to open the memorial in February, but that was delayed for procedural reasons due to the local proceedings for issuing a use permit.

The opening means many years of efforts to achieve dignified remembrance for Holocaust victims at the site of the former concentration camp are reaching fruition. “The Museum of Romani Culture razed the industrial pig farm to the ground that had been built on this site of suffering and built a new memorial. This is a place of recognition and reverence. The idea is to commemorate the memory of the prisoners directly at the site of their suffering and to educate and inform the public about events prior to and during the Second World War and about the impact of the Nazi genocide on communities of Romani people in the Czech lands,” said the museum’s spokesperson Karolina Spielmannová.

The memorial includes a new remembrance site and a center for visitors featuring a permanent exhibition. “With the aid of authentic eyewitness testimonies, the exhibition familiarizes visitors with the historical context and the pain of these individuals, and also presents material testimony about the Czech Roma and Sinti imprisoned in the camp,” the spokesperson said.

Thanks to its outdoor permanent exhibition, called the Memory Trail, the memorial will fulfill its educational function year-round. The building of the memorial, including the exhibitions, cost approximately CZK 110 million [EUR 4.4 million].

The project was supported by the Czech Culture Ministry, the German Embassy, and a grant from Iceland, Lichtenstein and Norway provided through Predefined Project KU-PDP01-001, which was implemented between 2022 and 2024. On 23 April 2024 at 9:30 AM a final press conference will be held on the project.

Those speaking at the press conference will be relatives of the prisoners, the management of the Museum of Romani Culture, a co-author of the permanent exhibitions, a representative of the Falstad Centre in Norway (which was a partner of the project), and the architects of the memorial, Jan Sulzer and the Terra Florida landscaping studio. Later that same day the memorial will be opened with the participation of relatives of the prisoners, donors, and other figures from cultural and political life.

During the Second World War, a concentration camp for Romani people was in operation at the site. During the 1970s, an industrial pig farm was built over the site.

In 2018, the state bought out the farm, which by that time had 13 feed halls housing 13,000 pigs, from the AGPI company for CZK 450,800,000 [EUR 17,864,803]. According to historians, 1,294 children, men and women of Romani origin passed through the camp from August 1942 to May 1943, at least 335 of whom died there and more than 500 of whom were forcibly transported to the Auschwitz Concentration and Extermination Camp.

The grounds cover an area of more than 100,000 square meters. Near the Burial Ground, which is located about 300 meters away from the site of the former camp, a memorial was installed in 1995, and that site became a Cultural Heritage Monument in 1998.

Selected events related to the building of the Lety u Písku Memorial to the Holocaust of the Roma and Sinti in Bohemia

13 May 1995 – Czech President Václav Havel unveils a memorial to the Romani victims of the Second World War at the site of the burial ground for some of the prisoners who died in the Lety concentration camp. The memorial was installed near the grounds of the industrial pig farm, which covered the site of the concentration camp for Romani people during the Second World War.

12 May 1997 – Ministers Jan Ruml and Pavel Bratinka announce during the commemorative ceremony to honor the memories of Holocaust victims of Romani origin that they will propose the Government buy out the industrial pig farm, demolish it, and then build a dignified memorial to the Holocaust and its Romani victims at the site. The AGPI company, which owned the farm, then said that they were willing to relocate in exchange for “adequate compensation”.

Solving the problem was then postponed: Those who announced they wanted to solve it were the administrations of Václav Klaus (Civic Democratic Party – ODS), Josef Tošovský (unaffiliated) and Jiří Paroubek (Czech Social Democratic Party – ČSSD), and in 1999, President Havel said removing the farm was a crucial matter, as did Czech Human Rights Minister Michael Kocáb (for the Greens) in 2009, and successive Czech Government Human Rights Commissioners also frequently raised the issue.

28 April 2005 – The European Parliament adopts a resolution condemning the discrimination of Romani people. The resolution calls on EU institutions, Member States and candidate countries to adopt appropriate measures leading to improving the position of Romani people in society. The resolution called on the Czech Republic in particular to close the industrial pig farm at Lety.

14 May 2005 – Then-President Václav Klaus says in an interview for the Lidové noviny newspaper that the camp at Lety had not been “a concentration camp in the proper sense of the word” and then mistakenly claimed that the camp had not been intended for Romani people, but “for those who refused to work”. His opinion sparked outrage among Romani organizations and some politicians.

6 April 2007 – Then-Prime Minister Mirek Topolánek (ODS) says the Government does not have the money to relocate the industrial pig farm at Lety. Similar statements were then made by PMs Petr Nečas (ODS) in 2012 and Bohuslav Sobotka (ČSSD) in May 2014, who said the “tens of millions” of crowns needed to demolish the farm and build a new one should be used instead, for example, to educate Romani children and improve conditions in the socially excluded localities.

18 June 2010 – The expanded remembrance site near the former concentration camp for Roma is officially opened. During the course of four months, an amphitheater was installed there, as were two replicas of the wooden prisoners’ quarters (housing an exhibition commemorating the Romani victims of Nazism), a parking lot, and new walkways. Czech Culture Minister Václav Riedlbauch said credit for implementing the improvements was chiefly deserved by Czech Government Human Rights Commissioner Michael Kocáb. The Government made CZK 21.4 million [EUR 848,464] available for the work.

25 July 2013 – The United Nations Human Rights Committee calls on the Czech Republic to close the industrial pig farm at Lety.

13 May 2016 – Czech Human Rights Minister Jiří Dienstbier (ČSSD) says the industrial pig farm will apparently remain in place at the site of the former concentration camp. He had held several meetings with the owner, but no concrete conclusions came of them. However, at the start of August that same year, then-Czech Culture Minister Daniel Herman (Christian Democrats – KDU-ČSL) announced that the Government was close to agreeing on buying out the farm.

6 September 2016 – Andrej Babiš, the then-Czech Finance Minister and head of the Association of Dissatisfied Citizens (ANO) movement, becomes a target of criticism for remarks he made about the former concentration camp. According to a photojournalist for news server Aktuálně.cz, Babiš claimed that it was a “lie” that Lety had been a concentration camp. He subsequently apologized and distanced himself from those remarks. He then said he wanted to find the money to build a memorial and arrange for the buyout of the farm.

7 November 2016 – The Czech Government decides to commission an appraisal of the value of the land beneath the industrial pig farm at Lety so the state can purchase it.

13 July 2017 – The AGPI company and Czech Government representatives exchange offers for the eventual purchase of the industrial pig farm. On 31 July, the company’s General Assembly expressed agreement with transferring the grounds to the state, and on 7 August the AGPI company announced it had accepted the Government’s offer to purchase the farm.

21 August 2017 – The Czech Government approves the buyout of the industrial pig farm.

23 November 2017 – The Czech state concludes a contract with the owner of the industrial pig farm at Lety to purchase it for CZK 450,800,000 [EUR [EUR 17,864,803], including taxes. The purchase agreement was co-signed in Prague by the director of the Museum of Romani Culture, Jana Horváthová, and Jan Čech, chair of the AGPI company, which owned the farm. Czech Culture Minister Herman signed the approval clause on behalf of the state.

3 April 2018 – The AGPI firm hands over the industrial pig farm to Czech state representatives. Museum of Romani Culture representatives then take possession of it. At the time it was forecast that the demolition would happen by year-end, but the work began later than that.

9 June 2020 – The winner of the competition to design the Lety u Písku Memorial to the Holocaust of the Roma and Sinti in Bohemia is the design submitted by Atelier Světlík and Atelier Terra Florida.

22 July 2022 – A ceremony is held to symbolically launch the demolition of the industrial pig farm.

20 December 2022 – The demolition of the industrial pig farm ends. The cost of its demolition had originally been estimated by the state at CZK 110 million [EUR 4.4 million], which was allocated. However, the demolition ultimately cost just CZK 10 million [EUR 400,000].

31 January 2023 – The winner of the tender to build the Lety u Písku Memorial to the Holocaust of the Roma and Sinti in Bohemia is announced as the company Protom Strakonice, which succeeds with a bid of CZK 98.6 million [EUR 3.9 million]. That included the costs of the Visitors’ Center, but the exhibitions were priced separately, with the cost of the indoor exhibition estimated at CZK 10.5 million [EUR 416,000]. The indoor exhibition was paid for by Norway Grants and the German Embassy pledged CZK 2.6 million [EUR 103,000] for the outdoor exhibition.

13 November 2023 – Representatives of the Museum of Romani Culture, the custodian of the memorial, announce it will open on 3 February 2024. Politicians and others symbolically plant trees at the site. Most of the saplings were donated by the Orlík Estate of Jan and Karel Schwarzenberg.

5 January 2024 – The Museum of Romani Culture, of which the Lety u Písku Memorial to the Holocaust of the Roma and Sinti in Bohemia is a branch, announces that the memorial will open to the public later, in April at the latest. The Brno-based museum postponed the opening for procedural reasons related to the proceedings for the use permit. Construction work had also been influenced, for example, by discovering the actual level of the bedrock and the groundwater, which was closer to the surface than expected.

April 2024 – The Museum of Romani Culture announces the memorial will open to the public on 12 May.