VIDEO: Czech President Petr Pavel says Lety memorial will remind the world of the horrible crimes committed there
Speaking during the ceremonial opening of The Lety u Písku Memorial to the Holocaust of the Roma and Sinti in Bohemia, Czech President Petr Pavel said that the memorial will remind the world of the horrible crimes that were committed there. What is more, it will be a memento for the coming generations to make sure nothing of the sort ever repeats itself.
Pavel added that the existence of Romani victims of the Second World War was long forgotten in this part of the world. The memorial stands at the site of a concentration camp for Romani people that functioned during the Second World War.
“The communist regime… built an industrial pig farm here, making its position on this issue clear. Through this memorial, we are now paying the debt that hs been owed by society for decades to the Holocaust of the Roma,” the Czech President said.
It took approximately two years to build the memorial. The discussion of how to create a dignified remembrance site began in 1995.
Since the 1970s, an industrial pig farm had overlapped the site of the former concentration camp, which was then purchased by the Czech state for CZK 450 million [EUR 17.8 million] and demolished in 2022. Construction of the memorial began soon afterward.
“It is necessary to commemorate what happened here today. It is a warning of how far people can go,” the president said.
Pavel added that the ambition of the memorial is to familiarize people with this history. “Thirty years have passed since my predecessor, Václav Havel, unveiled a modest memorial at this place. Today we continue the work of that event,” Pavel said.
The Visitors’ Centre of the newly-built memorial houses a permanent exhibition, as does an outdoor Memory Trail. The exhibitions include eyewitness testimonies in audiovisual form.
The memorial will open to the public on 12 May, which is when the commemorative ceremony in Lety is regularly held. According to historians, from August 1942 to May 1943, a total of 1,294 Romani people passed through the concentration camp at Lety u Písku, at least 335 of whom died there, 241 of whom were children younger than 14.
About 540 prisoners were then forcibly transported to the Auschwitz-Birkenau Concentration and Extermination Camp. The new memorial covers more than 100,000 square meters.
Near the Burial Ground for Lety, which is about 300 meters from the site of the former concentration camp, the first memorial was installed in 1995. That site became a Cultural Heritage Memorial in 1998.
