The Czech government must ensure a worthy and peaceful place of remembrance for Roma

On the occasion of the International Holocaust Remembrance Day (January 27), the Society for Threatened Peoples (STP) has appealed to the Czech government to stick to its words and shut down a pig fattening farm on the premises of the former concentration Lety u Písku in South Bohemia. “The relatives of the people who were interned and murdered there – including many Roma – need a worthy and peaceful place of remembrance,” says the letter from the STP’s Secretary General, Tilman Zülch. “The Czech Republic could set an example for all of Europe by emphasizing that the Roma are to be treated as citizens with equal rights, and that they – just like other groups of victims – have every right to commemorate relatives who were murdered during the era of National Socialism.”

For many years, the Roma have been demanding the pig fattening farm to be shut down in order to establish a proper memorial place, and the Czech government had repeatedly announced plans to buy the premises and close the fattening farm, most recently at the beginning of November 2016. So far, however, nothing has been achieved. The company is still private property.

In 1995, under President Václav Havel, a small memorial for the victims was set up near the slaughterhouse. “However, the Roma who meet up in Lety u Písku every year on January 27 are exposed to the strong smell of the pig manure. This is a violation of the dignity of the visitors as well as of those who were interned or sent to their deaths at this place,” the STP stated.

From August 1940 to December 1943, more than 1,700 people were interned in Lety. 1,300 of them were Roma who were brought there from summer 1942 onwards. Many died in the camp, mainly children. Around 800 surviving Roma were deported, most of them to Auschwitz-Birkenau, where they were cruelly killed in the gas chambers of the Nazis. To date, nobody has been held accountable for the crimes against humanity committed in Lety.

The former STP-member Paul Polansky had come across information regarding the concentration camp in South Bohemian in a state archive and had informed the public in 1995. There had been unsuccessful protests by Czech Roma organizations as well as attempts to adopt EU resolutions demanding the slaughterhouse to be shut down in order to make room for a larger memorial center. Now, the STP has also turned to the German federal government, suggesting that Germany should co-finance the relocation of the pig fattening farm.

Header photo: © romea.cz