Czech President Vaclav Klaus praised the mapping out of the Czech Romany history and pointed to the importance of the effort to return to the historical roots of Romanies at today's opening of an exhibition of photographs reflecting the Romany Holocaust.
"It is necessary to gather historical materials about the Romany minority," Klaus said.
He said it is important that after Prague, the exhibition of the pre-war photos of the original Czech Romanies and Sints will tour all Czech regions.
Cenek Ruzicka, head of the Committee for the Compensation of the Romany Holocaust, said a large part of the majority Czech population views Romanies as an alien element though the roots of Romanies in the Czech Lands date back as many as 600 years ago.
The exhibition should help the majority society realise that Romanies and Sints have always been part of the Czech Lands, said Ruzicka.
This is another exhibition on Romanies held in Prague's Veletrzni palace. A year ago, the palace hosted an exhibition documenting the Romany Holocaust victims' stories.
The exhibits include family photos and also a unique drawing a Czech Sint made in the Oswiecim (Auschwitz) extermination camp.
Under the First Republic (Czechoslovakia in 1918-38), Moravian Romanies mostly lived in settlements while Bohemian Romanies led a nomadic life. Sints inhabited the Sudetenland in north Bohemia.
In 1940, the authorities of the German-controlled Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia banned nomadic migration. In 1942 they worked out a list of all Gypsies. It featured 6,500 names. A part of them ended up in internment camps in Lety, south Bohemia, and Hodonin u Kunstatu, south Moravia. Almost 5,000 Czech Romanies were transported to Auschwitz, from where only 583 returned.
As a result, only a few thousand original Czech Romanies and their offspring live in the 10-million Czech Republic now. The rest of the current Romany minority, comprising up to 250,000 people, according to some estimates, are Romanies of Slovak origin.
