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News server Romea.cz. Everything about Roma in one place

Annual commemoration of the Holocaust of the Roma at Lety u Písku, Czech Republic, is postponed due to the pandemic

25 April 2021
1 minute read

“Because of the ongoing viral pandemic, the commemorative ceremony that we annually convene on 13 May at the site of the burial ground of the victims of the concentration camp for Romani people near Lety u Písku is being postponed until a more appropriate time from the standpoint of the Government measures,” Čeněk Růžička, chair of the Committee for the Redress of the Roma Holocaust in the Czech Republic, told news server Romea.cz on 21 April. During the communist regime in the 1970s, the former location of the camp was partially built over by an industrial pig farm.    

The Czech state bought the farm in 2018 from the AGPI company for CZK 450 million [EUR 17.4 million], which had 13 000 pigs there at the time. The camp at Lety, according to historians, was used to imprison 1 308 Romani children, men and women between August 1942 and May 1943, 327 of whom died there and more than 500 of whom ended up at the Auschwitz death camp.

The administrator of the memorials to the Romani victims of the Holocaust at the sites of both Protectorate-era concentration camps for Romani people in the Czech Republic, the Museum of Romani Culture, plans to demolish the buildings of the defunct farm at Lety this year and, together with the relatives of the victims of the camp, to finalize the design for the form of the reverential arrangements at the site of the former camp. In the year 2023 the former site of the camp will be opened to the public.  

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