Czech Human Rights Minister: Unambiguous attacks against certain groups cannot be ignored
On 10 May 2014, Czech Minister for Human Rights, Equal Opportunities and Legislation Jiří Dienstbier and Czech Prime Minister Bohuslav Sobotka will visit the commemorative site at Lety by Písek dedicated to the victims of the Romani Holocaust during the Second World War. Lety by Písek is a sad reminder of the Romani Holocaust, which was not discussed until the second half of the 1990s even though hundreds of thousands of Romani people perished in the concentration camps of Europe during the Second World War.
Of the more than 1 300 people who passed through the camp at Lety, 329 died there, 241 of them children, 300 prisoners escaped or fled, more than 500 were deported to the extermination camp at Auschwitz-Birkeanu, and the fate of the rest is unclear. In August 1943 the camp at Lety was closed after the outbreak of a typhus epidemic there.
The genocide of the Bohemian and Moravian Roma, which in Romanes is called the PORAJMOS because of its profound significance, was one of the most thoroughly-performed genocides of the Second World War. Less than 600 Roma were left alive when it was over.
"Recently we commemorated the sad five-year anniversary of the arson attack on a Romani family in Vítkov. Little Natálka and her family have been marked by that violence for the rest of their lives. We are witnessing marches by neo-Nazis in the streets and even the misuse of the topic of minorities, including the Romani minority, in high-level politics. Lists of Jewish people are being created and published, and Facebook pages are being established calling for the murder of Romani figures. Foreigners are being discriminated against. Those whom a previous era called ‘non-Aryans’ are today being labeled ‘inadaptables’. These unambiguous attacks against certain groups cannot be ignored. My team and I are doing are best now and will keep doing out best to take specific steps in this area," Dienstbier will emphasize in tomorrow’s speech.
