Czech Romany Holocaust museum may be established in South Moravia

A museum of the Romany Holocaust may be established in the future in the area of the wartime internment camp for Romanies in Hodonin near Kunstat, south Moravia, Dzamila Stehlikova, Czech minister for human rights and minorities told CTK today.

Stehlikova said the project was under preparation and negotiations on the plot on which the camp was built had started.

During World War Two, 1,375 people were interned in Hodonin near Kunstat, 207 died and more than 800 were transported to the Auschwitz camp.

The Nazis killed some 90 percent of the prewar Romany population of the country, the Museum of Roma Culture, seated in Brno, south Moravia, writes on its website. According to then official data, some 6500 Romanies had lived in the country.

Under the Nazis, two internment camps for Romanies were established, one in Hodonin and another one in Lety, south Bohemia.

In Lety, the victims of the camps were commemorated today. Some participants in the event criticised the government for not removing a pig farm from the site of the former camp.

The European Parliament, too, repeatedly called on the Czech government to remove the farm from Lety.

Stehlikova said the working group of the government council for Romany affairs wanted to deal with the issue of the Romany Holocaust in the country as a whole, while only Lety have been mentioned so far.

The working group is to submit its proposals to the government by the end of the year.

At present, a recreation centre is on the site of the Hodonin camp where two of the camp buildings have been preserved.

The removal of the pig farm could be covered from a fund to which the Czech government, foreign institutions and possibly the EU would contribute, according to one of the proposals.