LIVE BROADCAST AT 11 CET: Commemorative ceremony in the Hodonín u Kunštátu Memorial to the Holocaust of the Roma and Sinti in Moravia
On Tuesday, 20 August 2024 a commemorative ceremony is being held to honor the memory of the Holocaust and its Romani and Sinti victims from Moravia. The event is at the site of the former concentration camp, today the Hodonín u Kunštátu Memorial to the Holocaust of the Roma and Sinti in Moravia, administered by the Museum of Romani Culture.
This commemorative ceremony marks the 81st anniversary of the mass transport of the Romani families imprisoned in Hodonín to the Auschwitz II-Birkenau Concentration and Extermination Camp, and ROMEA TV will broadcast the event live online. The camp in Hodonín is one of two places where entire families of Roma and Sinti were forcibly concentrated during the Second World War, with the second such place being the camp in Lety u Písku in Bohemia.
Commemorative ceremony in the Hodonín u Kunštátu Memorial to the Holocaust of the Roma and Sinti in Moravia, 18 August 2023 (PHOTO: Petr Zewlakk Vrabec)
A memorial has been created at the authentic site and is administered by the Museum of Romani Culture. According to the most recent research, 207 prisoners, including children, perished in the camp in Hodonín during their internment there.
The commemorative ceremony starts at 11:00 CET in the atrium of the memorial and will include speeches, as is traditional, as well as a rich cultural program. Singer Tamia Richterová and her band will perform, with speeches by descendants of survivors of the Hodonín camp and others who remember what transpired there.
This year the Czech translation of the book entitled God Had Something in Store for Me by Zilli Schmidt will also be presented during the ceremony, translated by Ruben Pellar. After listening to the speeches, those attending will move to the Žalov burial ground, where a prayer will be said for the victims of the camp and flowers will be laid.
LIVE BROADCAST PART TWO
The program will close with a guided tour of the permanent exhibition “Hodonín u Kunštátu Camp: Intersecting Tragedies 1940–1950“ and the temporary exhibitions dedicated to the Czechoslovak pilots in the Royal Air Force during the Second World War and to the survivors from the camp in Lety u Písku. The ceremony will end in the nearby village of Černovice, where at the local cemetery the memory of the victims of what was called the “Gypsy Camp” at the time in Hodonín were buried after dying there, most of whom were children.
For all who are unable to attend in person, ROMEA TV is providing an opportunity to follow this important event live online.
