Czechs commemorate wartime Romany Holocaust

Some 100 people commemorated the Romany Holocaust at the site of the wartime Nazi internment camp for Romanies from the Czech Lands in Hodonin u Kunstatu today.

Participants laid flowers to the memorial to the Romany victims.

Almost 1400 Romanies went through the Hodonin internment camp from which they were sent to concentration camps, mainly to Oswiecim (Auschwitz).

The last transport was dispatched from Hodonin on August 21, 1943.

Every August a commemorative meeting is staged at the site.

Today’s attendance has been the highest so far, Frantisek Jemelka, from the Museum of Roma Culture in Brno, told CTK.

About 6500 Romanies lived in the Protectorate Bohemia and Moravia, according to a count conducted at the onset of World War Two.

A total of 5500 of them were transported to concentration camps during the war. Only one-tenth of them survived the Holocaust, according to historians.

An international documentation and educational centre of the Romany Holocaust is to be established in Hodonin u Kunstatu.

The project is to cost some 20 million crowns.

Another interment wartime camp for Romanies was built in Lety, south Bohemia.

At present a pig farm is at the site, which has been repeatedly criticised by Romanies and human rights activists. The committee for Romany Holocaust victims compensation insists on the removal of the farm.

The European Parliament has twice called on the Czech Republic to remove the pig farm.

The government is dealing with the issue.