LIVE AT 13:00 CET MONDAY - Trees, not pigs! Symbolic start of the planting of the mixed forest in Lety u Písku, Czech Republic as part of the new memorial to Holocaust victims of Romani origin
On Monday, 13 November 2023, the symbolic planting of trees will begin at the site of the former concentration camp for Roma and Sinti in Lety u Písku, Czech Republic, where after the war the authorities allowed an industrial pig farm to be built. The event is part of the installation of a new Memorial to the Holocaust of the Roma and Sinti in Bohemia to pay tribute to the suffering and the deaths of the hundreds of Romani people imprisoned there during the Second World War.
The Museum of Romani Culture, which manages the site, informed news server Romea.cz of the ceremony. ROMEA TV, the Czech Republic’s first online broadcaster of Romani-related content, will broadcast the ceremonial start of the planting live.
Above is an image of the industrial pig farm at Lety u Písku taken on 24 June 2017.
(PHOTO: František Bikár)
The seedlings were donated by the Orlík Estate of Jan and the late Karel Schwarzenberg. The planting will start at 13:00 on Monday and will be held in the presence of the descendants of survivors of the camp, figures from the Romani community, activists and other eminent guests.
The site of the former “Gypsy Camp” and the high-capacity pig farm that was then built there has taken on an absolutely different shape since August 2022. A basic milestone, the purchase and demolition of the industrial pig farm, was marked in July 2022 and the building of the Memorial, which features both indoor and outdoor exhibitions, is currently intensively underway.
“The mixed forest will be an important symbol, replacing the area on which the pig farm stood and becoming an important part of the Memorial’s outdoor exhibition, part of the space intended for quietly contemplating and paying respects to the memories of the victims of what was called the ‘Gypsy Camp’ and was a de facto concentration camp,” the Museum of Romani Culture said in its invitation to the event. The industrial pig farm at Lety u Písku, according to representatives of the Museum of Romani Culture, was a symbol of the majority society’s dismissive attitude toward Romani people.
The presence of the farm at a place of so much suffering contravened crucial values of Romani and Sinti communities, such as dignity, justice, respect for the elderly and family, and the duty to defend such values in one’s life and in relation to others. To resist this, the late Mr. Čeněk Růžička, a descendant of survivors of the camp, held an annual commemorative ceremony at Lety u Písku starting in 1998.
For 20 years, Mr. Růžička fought non-stop for a remembrance site that would correspond to the importance of what transpired at Lety in terms of its dignity.
