VIDEO: Czech President says the buyout of the industrial pig farm at Lety took too long and was undignified, the state has to acknowledge its culpability for this history

Leading representatives of the Czech state assembled for the ceremony to lay flowers at the memorial. Pavel attended the ceremony as the second Czech President to ever do so; the last president to do so was the late Václav Havel 28 years ago.

“It is correct and necessary to commemorate these events as a dark chapter of history, including our own history. At the same time, it is an historical lesson to be learned,” the president said.

The need to defend freedom and human rights is, according to Pavel, the same today as it was in the past. “It seems to me that humanity has a tendence to constantly repeat its errors,” he said, referencing the current suffering of the population of Ukraine under Russian aggression.

Today there is still a need, according to the president, to defend freedom and human rights. He also said Czech coexistence with the Roma has much that needs to be improved about it today.

Pavel also said it took too long for the buyout of the industrial pig farm to happen. “It took too long and it was undignified. I’m glad it turned out as it did, I’m glad a memorial will be built here and that we will manage to shine a light on part of history which we should never forget, on the contrary, we should clearly describe it and admit our share of the blame for it,” he said.

The president said that the only way to come to terms with this history is to take responsibility for it. He also said that building the memorial to the Holocaust of the Roma is something he considers a good sign that there is a sincere effort underway to remedy the situation.

According to the President of the Czech Senate, Miloš Vystrčil (Civic Democratic Party – ODS) the opening of the memorial to the Holocaust and its Romani victims next year should be an occasion to improve relations between the majority society and Romani people. “I would be very glad if the birth of this memorial could be another impulse for dialogue. Prejudices are still here among us which, in my opinion, stem from ignorance,” he said.

Vystrčil said he regrets the fact that words recently were heard on the floor of the Senate that could have harmed Romani people. He was referencing the statement in March of this year by Czech Senator Jana Zwyrtek Hamplová that Romani schoolchildren should be segregated from others.

The leader of the upper house warned that in democratic elections, such tendencies could even be supported. As for the lower house, the President of the Czech Chamber of Deputies Markéta Pekarová Adamová (TOP 09) reminded those assembled that the prisoners in Lety were abused by Czech gendarmes, for which she believes there must be an apology.

FULL VIDEO OF THE CEREMONY

According to Adamová, it would be most honest to use this occasion to reflect on the current situation. “In today’s society here in the Czech Republic there is no small number of people who still think in racist terms and discriminate. The obligation of the rest of us is to distance ourselves from that,” she said.

Adamová said she believed the late Romani activist Čeněk Růžička, who deserves credit for the building of the new memorial, will receive state honors in memoriam from the Czech President. Human rights activist Miroslav Brož of the Konexe organization then sharply criticized the current situation of Romani men and women in the Czech Republic.

“In the Czech Republic, the situation of Romani people is very poor, they face discrimination and segregation in every area of life, in education, in housing, on the labor market, on the street, on public transportation, in shops and elsewhere. The Act on Antidiscrimination, which is a valid part of Czech legislation, is neither upheld nor enforced, it essentially does not apply. Neither the authorities nor the police take any interest in its violation. The Emperor has no clothes!” said Brož.

“Over the last two decades, several thousand projects have been realized in the Czech Republic to aid Romani people, and each of them published a final report about their glowing successes with assisting Romani people. None of that is true, most of these projects have been dysfunctional, they did not deliver any change or benefit to the communities for whom they were implemented. Projects intended to help Romani people usually are created in faraway offices by project teams and the content of those projects is never consulted with the people for whom they are drated, to say nothing of their having an opportunity to assess the benefit of those projects. The Emperor has no clothes!” Brož continued his critique.

The chair of the Committee for the Redress of the Roma Holocaust in the Czech Republic, Jana Kokyová, the niece of the late Mr. Růžička, warned that the same human traits that led to the Holocaust – belief in superiority and hate – are the reason for the current war against Ukraine. She also added that even today Romani people are not spared attacks, especially through hateful commentary on social media.

What was called the “Gypsy Camp” during the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia was de facto a concentration camp for Romani people at Lety. During the 1970s, an industrial pig farm was built over part of the former camp.

In 2018, the Czech state bought out the farm for CZK 450 million [EUR 19 million] from the firm that had raised as many as 13,000 animals there. The demolition of the farm was finished at the close of 2022.

The Lety u Písku Memorial to the Holocaust of the Roma and Sinti in Bohemia is now being built there instead and the Museum of Romani Culture will open it during the first half of 2024. The camp at Lety, according to historians, housed more than 1,300 Romani children, men and women between August 1942 and May 1943.

Due to shocking personal hygiene conditions, disease, and ill-treatment, 327 prisoners died there, while more than 500 of them ended up in Auschwitz. After the war, fewer than 600 Romani prisoners returned to the Czech lands from the concentration camps, less than 10 % of the indigenous population; the total number of Holocaust victims of Romani origin in Europe is estimated at between 300,000 and 500,000.