Czech library to exhibit all designs submitted for the future Lety u Písku Memorial to the Holocaust of the Roma and Sinti

The Moravian Library (Moravská zemská knihovna) in Brno, Czech Republic is exhibiting all 41 designs submitted for consideration to the competition for the design of the future Lety u Písku Memorial to the Holocaust of the Roma and Sinti. Alica Sigmund Heráková, spokesperson for the Museum of Romani Culture, which is in charge of building the memorial and also prepared the exhibition, announced the news by press release on 15 September.

The exhibition opened at the Moravian Library on 15 September at 17:00. It will be on display there until 18 October.

"The exhibition presents all 41 designs submitted to the competition from all over the world," said the director of the Museum of Romani Culture, Jana Horváthová. "We have paid special attention to the top seven designs that made it into the final round of competition," the director said of the exhibition, the opening of which was attended by the authors of the winning design, Jan Sulzer and Lucie Vogelová of ateliér terra florida v.o.s. and Jan Světlík, Vojtěch Šedý and Filip Šefl of Ateliér Světlík, who presented the concept of their design to the public.

The opening also launched a new catalogue in Czech and English presenting the designs submitted to the landscape architecture competition and presenting the ideological standpoint of the contest as such. "This exhibition, called 'A New Memorial at Lety', is planned as a traveling exhibition, said Petra Svobodová, head of the museum's Department of Experts.

"From Brno it will travel in 2021 to Prague and to South Bohemia. Currently we are also negotiating with our partners about presenting it abroad," Svobodová said.

The projected cost of building the memorial at the site of the former concentration camp for Romani people in Lety u Písku is CZK 31.5 million [EUR 1.2 million]. Most of that budget will be covered by the EEA and Norway Grants.

The jury assessed 41 submissions and chose seven finalists. The design submitted by the Czech studios ateliér terra florida v.o.s. and Ateliér Světlík won.

"The new memorial and the materials that will be on display there are meant to honor the memory of the Holocaust and its Romani and Sinti victims, to commemorate that history, to inform the public of that history, to educate the public about that history and to spark discussion of both the past and the present-day situation in society, as well as to deal with the subjects of discrimination against minorities and human rights," Heráková said in the museum's press release. According to historians, 1 308 Romani adults and children passed through the former concentration camp at Lety between August 1942 and May 1943, at least 327 of whom died there, while others were forcibly deported to the Auschwitz death camp.