Kocáb: Lety boycott a failure to understand history

I consider the boycott of yesterday’s memorial ceremony at Lety by Písek, called for by the chair of the Committee for the Redress of the Roma Holocaust (Výbor pro odškodnění romského holokaustu – VPORH), Mr Čeněk Růžička, and supported by several Romani associations, to be a misunderstanding and a failure to grasp the legacy of this historical tragedy. I am personally very sorry about it.

On the other hand, I personally appreciate the fact that this year there have been not one but two dignified commemorations of the horrible fate of our Romani fellow-citizens connected with the former “gypsy camps” at Lety by Písek and Hodonín by Kunštát. The murder of almost all of the Romani people in Bohemia and Moravia during the Second World War is so alarming that even if we commemorated it more frequently, it would never be enough.

The wounds have not yet healed and the commemoration of the tragic history of our coexistence is particularly important today, when we are witnessing growing problems once more in the relations between the so-called majority society and the Romani community. I believe that on every significant date related to the Romani Holocaust it is good to realize some of the facts once again.

The persecution of the Romani people, which started in Germany’s Third Reich with unheard-of intensity in 1938, culminated during the years of 1943 – 44 in the Romani Holocaust. The lowest estimate of the number of European Romani and Sinti people who fell victim to the Holocaust is more than 200 000. The total losses to the Romani population during the course of the Second World War as a whole are estimated at a half million or more.

As Czech Prime Minister Nečas and the director of the Lidice Memorial, Milouš Červencl, recalled yesterday, today is the 70th anniversary of the undercover Protectorate (i.e., Czech) Police issuing the orders for the enactment of the “decree on abating the gypsy nuisance”. That decree was issued on 10 July 1942.

The Criminal Police Headquarters in Prague was tasked with coordinating an accounting of all “Gypsies, gypsy half-breeds and persons living in the gypsy way”. District authorities, in cooperation with the mayor of each municipality, compiled lists of about 6 500 ethnic Romani people and Romani “half-breeds” and helped with presenting them to the central authorities. Some of these people were imprisoned immediately after being accounted for at the camps in Lety by Písek and Hodonín by Kunštát, which had been transformed from disciplinary internment camps into so-called “gypsy camps” as of 1 August 1942.

During the next four months, i.e., until the start of December 1942, transports of Czech and Moravian Romani people to the concentration camp at Auschwitz were initiated. During the next two years, the transports of Romani people grew significantly larger and affected almost all of Europe. From the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia alone, a total of 4 870 Romani and Sinti people were deported. In the spring of 1943, the first mass executions of Romani people in the gas chambers of Auschwitz took place, and during that year and the following year, the work of this annihilation gained inconceivable dimensions. During the night of 2 August 1944 and in the early morning hours of 3 August, almost 3 000 Romani children, elders, men, women, and the sick were murdered en masse, including an unknown number of Czech prisoners.

After the liberation, only 583 former Romani prisoners returned to the Czech lands from the concentration camps. The persecution of the Romani people can be compared to the fate of the Jewish community. On the territory of the Protectorate alone, an estimated 90 % of the prewar Romani population was murdered by the Nazis. Unfortunately, the Protectorate authorities contributed to that murder. Even though the Protectorate government was under unbearable pressure from Hitler’s Germany, we cannot deny the Czech contribution to the tragic fate of Czech and Moravian Romani people.

Denmark, for example, which was also under Hitler’s domination, found the strength to refuse to transport its inhabitants to the death camps. Just like us, the Danes conformed to Hitler’s wishes in every possible area, but they categorically refused to participate in the murder of their own population.

Our government at the time did not manage such a refusal. Because of that, we have a great moral debt and obligation to do everything we can, and more, to achieve a dignified, friendly coexistence with our Romani people in the current democratic conditions.

Any Czech or foreign citizen or organization essentially has the unconditional right to honor the memory of the murdered Romani and Sinti people at any time. Such gestures should be unambiguously welcomed. Just like at Lidice or Terezín, where in addition to a main commemoration several other such ceremonies take place, it is undignified to prevent a similar approach at Lety by Písek. The memorial to the Romani Holocaust belongs to all of our citizens and after agreement with its administrator, a commemoration can be held there any time, be it a customary date or an unusual one.

I personally support the May commemorative ceremony at Lety by Písek organized by the VPORH. I propose that in order to iron out the ongoing disputes about the date, the Government of the Czech Republic should regularly hold its own commemorative ceremony there on 1 August.

When the camps at Lety by Písek and Hodonín by Kunštát were transformed into “gypsy camps”, the Holocaust of Romani and Sinti people in Bohemia and Moravia de facto began. 2 August is Roma and Sinti Genocide Remembrance Day, when the world traditionally shows its respect for the victims of the Romani Holocaust at Auschwitz-Birkenau.