The Romany Holocaust commemoration service at Lety
A bus of students and activists heads for Lety, South Bohemia, on May 13.
They are driving to the site of a former concentration camp, set up by the
Nazis to wipe out the Bohemian protectorate’s Roma population during the
Second World War. Official sources say that 326 Roma perished in the
concentration camp at Lety, while many hundreds more were transported from
Lety to Auschwitz, where they were taken to the gas chambers.
Gwendoline Albert is an American-born Romany rights activist. On the way to
Lety, she told me a bit about the commemorative service that we were about
to attend:
“Today is the annual memorial ceremony at the former concentration camp
at Lety by Písek. It’s a camp that was used for various purposes in the
course of the Second World War, but the final phase is that is was a place
were Roma families were interned and worked to death, and those who
didn’t die there were sent on to Auschwitz. It’s quite famous in this
country because there has been a lot of international criticism of the fact
that there is a large industrial-capacity pig farm located on the site
where this camp was, and the survivors’ organization, with whom I
cooperate, has been trying to get the farm moved for a very long time.”
Isn’t one of the most recent developments that a local governor (Jan
Zahradník) has come out and said ‘no, the local Romany are very happy
with the monument which has been built, and we are not planning to do
anything further. Our plan is to keep things exactly as they are’?
“I do know that the local administration is responsible for maintaining
the existing monument, which is a registered cultural monument, and they
have neglected their responsibility in that regard. And them bringing up
the quote unquote “local Roma” and mentioning them is, to me, a classic
example of confusing the issue. Lety is not about South Bohemia, Lety is
about the history of the world – World War II, the history of Europe. It
is not something that you put in the hands of a local politician to decide,
even though it is important for these people to be involved in any
decision. But this is about the Czech state taking responsibility for
commemorating the Holocaust in a dignified way. And we see this devolution
of responsibility to the lowest level in absolutely every aspect of any
issue concerning the Roma, whether it’s the past or present.”
Priests sing a mass for the dead. At the Holocaust memorial a few metres
away from the pig farm, a handful of government officials, as well as those
who lost relatives, lay wreathes and light candles.
After the service come speeches, one of the most striking is delivered by
Felix Kolber from the International Auschwitz Committee. He himself is a
Holocaust survivor, who found himself interned in the ‘gypsy family
camp’ at Auschwitz, several weeks after the camp’s last Romany
inhabitants were liquidated:
“When we were there, nothing remained from the time that the Roma and
Sinti were there. Everything had been incinerated. So the blocks were quite
empty and we slept on the ground, at the start of the winter. But that is
not so important, what happened to us. But we were living in an atmosphere
of what had happened to the Roma, and we thought that this would happen to
us too. It was only luck that some of us were sent to another concentration
camp which was much milder than Auschwitz.”
And Auschwitz was where many Roma and Sinti from here, from Lety ended
up…
“Yes, they were in exactly the same camp where I ended up two months
after. Therefore I have a close connection with what happened in Lety, and
what happened in Auschwitz to the Roma who arrived there from Lety.”
Karel Holomek is a Romany academic who was at the ceremony on Tuesday, he
was himself interned at the other Romany concentration camp to be found
today on Czech soil – Hodonín u Kunštat:
“I am a Roma originally from Moravia, I belong to the Czech Romanies,
who were almost completely eliminated in Auschwitz. There were more than
6000 of us before the war, but only 500 people returned to their homes.”
International pressure has been mounting on the Czech government to move
the pig farm from the Lety concentration camp site. He is outraged that, up
until now, nothing has been done:
“Some people used to say that it is a question of money. But it is not a
question of money. It is a question of thinking and memory and pieta –
remembrance of this situation. It is not a question of money. A lot of
money was squandered in the process of developing democracy here. It was
lost to thieves and tunnellers etc. So this is a nonsense. It is not a
question of money – it’s a question of memory.”
At this year’s ceremony, there was a high turn-out, relatively speaking,
of government officials. One of the senior officials present was Džamila
Stehlíková – the Minister for Minorities and Human Rights. She said it
was her duty to find a solution to the Lety pig farm problem:
“We are currently in very intensive discussion with all of the main
players in this situation. I mean by that that we are talking to
representatives of the firms which find themselves on this land, and with
the local government, in order to find a dignified solution. I want to
bring the results of this discussion to the Parliament by the end of the
year, so that by the time we take on the EU presidency, we have some clear
answers as to what and how the Czech government is going to move forward on
the issue of Lety.”
After the service at Lety, it was time to lay wreathes at the nearby
cemetery at Mirovice, where the bodies of many of the children who died at
the camp were buried in mass graves. Recently some name plaques and a
sculpture have been erected on the site, which is tucked away at the corner
of the cemetery. The sculpture consists of a broken wheel, which Gwendoline
Albert explains:
“A wheel is related to the earlier period of traveling and living on the
road, and it is actually the central emblem in the Roma flag, and so to
have it broken here is symbolic of what happened.”
Lasting memorials to what happened at Lety are discreet to say the least
and not that easy to come by. What’s more, May 13 is the only day on
which the Lety pig farm switches off its ventilation system, meaning that
the air only smells quite bad. Minister Stehlíková has said she wants a
solution to the problem by the end of the year, and it could well be that
the Czech cabinet is keener than ever to find one too, because, as it has
been noted, it will make it all the harder to push human rights issues
during the country’s EU presidency next year if it doesn’t clean up the
bad smell that Lety creates.
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