Committee for the Redress of the Roma Holocaust holds 12th annual
commemoration
On Wednesday, 13 May, for the twelfth year in a row, the
Committee for the Redress of the Roma Holocaust organized its annual
commemoration at the site of the mass graves for the victims of the Nazi
concentration camp for Roma at Lety. Unlike commemorations in past years,
this particular gathering was not disturbed by any neo-Nazi demonstrators,
but the extremist violence of the past eight months and the political rise
of the extreme right wing in the Czech Republic were most definitely on the
minds of all those who attended. In the Moravian town of Vítkov, hundreds of
kilometers away, a two-year-old Roma girl has been fighting for her life
ever since an arson attack on her home on 19 April left her with burns over
80 % of her body. The thoughts of those gathered were definitely with her
and with all of the Roma communities that have been facing the recent
unprecedented public manifestations of hatred.
The ceremony opened beautifully with a young Roma woman singing first the
Czech and then the Roma national anthems. Czech state representatives
including President Klaus’s spokesperson, Czech Human Rights and Minorities
Minister Michael Kocáb, former Czech Foreign Minister Karel Schwarzenberg
and Czech MP Kateřina Jacques laid wreaths at the monument, as did
representatives of more than a dozen embassies, including Germany, Canada
and the US. As is customary on 13 May, the operators of the industrial pig
farm that continues to desecrate the concentration camp site made sure to
turn off its ventilation so those in attendance would not be able to smell
the pig manure that is so evident there during the other 364 days of the
year.
Committee chair Čeněk Růžička, who has been fighting to remove the farm for
more than 10 years, made it clear in his opening remarks that the ongoing
lack of political will for moving the farm is a direct reflection of the
actual attitude of most Czechs toward the Roma, which is no mystery to
anyone who follows opinion polls on the issue or current events in the
country. Anti-Gypsyism has been a hallmark of Czech democracy since 1989,
and Růžička expressed his appreciation for both former Czech Human Rights
and Minorities Minister Džamila Stehlíková, who kick-started the most recent
efforts to deal with the pig farm, and the current Minister Kocáb, who
recently saw through an agreement to put the memorial site under the same
management as the monument at Lidice. Růžička also congratulated Kocáb on
having been reappointed to his ministerial post in the new cabinet of Czech
PM Fischer.
In his own remarks, Kocáb said he wants to create a foundation for buying
out the pig farm so that the site can finally become a truly dignified
memorial to those who perished there. When the issue of the farm’s location
was first raised years ago, it was still in state hands; its subsequent
rapid privatization has created a stumbling block that seems to grow larger
every year, as the estimated costs of relocating the farm continue to rise.
The current estimate is CZK 500 million (USD 25 million).
Official records of the camp, which are regarded as incomplete, show that 1
327 Romani prisoners passed through Lety from August 1942 – May 1943. Markus
Pape’s 1997 definitive book on Lety,
Despite the fact that the Committee’s annual commemorations generate a small
rush of media attention every May, there is a general lack of awareness
about Lety’s place in the machinery of the Holocaust, if not a tendency
among the general public to belittle or deny its significance entirely. In a
recent online “chat” with Lucie Horváthová, a Roma candidate in the European
Parliamentary elections, one questioner asked whether it would be correct to
tear down the pig farm at Lety given that the prisoners “were able to leave
the camp and work, but they preferred to stay there, where they died due to
their own poor hygiene habits”. Such ignorant remarks and “blaming the
victim” would be considered shocking (if not actionable) in Western Europe,
but in the Czech Republic they are unfortunately the norm.
Czech society as a whole clearly has a great deal of work ahead of it in
terms of negotiating the meaning of what took place at Lety. Hopefully it
will not take another 10 years for the pig farm to go – and for the would-be
revivers of the “Final Solution” to go with it.
Photo: Jana Šustová
| 
On Wednesday, 13 May, for the twelfth year in a row, the
Committee for the Redress of the Roma Holocaust organized its annual
commemoration at the site of the mass graves for the victims of the Nazi
concentration camp for Roma at Lety. Unlike commemorations in past years,
this particular gathering was not disturbed by any neo-Nazi demonstrators,
but the extremist violence of the past eight months and the political rise
of the extreme right wing in the Czech Republic were most definitely on the
minds of all those who attended. In the Moravian town of Vítkov, hundreds of
kilometers away, a two-year-old Roma girl has been fighting for her life
ever since an arson attack on her home on 19 April left her with burns over
80 % of her body. The thoughts of those gathered were definitely with her
and with all of the Roma communities that have been facing the recent
unprecedented public manifestations of hatred.
The ceremony opened beautifully with a young Roma woman singing first the
Czech and then the Roma national anthems. Czech state representatives
including President Klaus’s spokesperson, Czech Human Rights and Minorities
Minister Michael Kocáb, former Czech Foreign Minister Karel Schwarzenberg
and Czech MP Kateřina Jacques laid wreaths at the monument, as did
representatives of more than a dozen embassies, including Germany, Canada
and the US. As is customary on 13 May, the operators of the industrial pig
farm that continues to desecrate the concentration camp site made sure to
turn off its ventilation so those in attendance would not be able to smell
the pig manure that is so evident there during the other 364 days of the
year.
Committee chair Čeněk Růžička, who has been fighting to remove the farm for
more than 10 years, made it clear in his opening remarks that the ongoing
lack of political will for moving the farm is a direct reflection of the
actual attitude of most Czechs toward the Roma, which is no mystery to
anyone who follows opinion polls on the issue or current events in the
country. Anti-Gypsyism has been a hallmark of Czech democracy since 1989,
and Růžička expressed his appreciation for both former Czech Human Rights
and Minorities Minister Džamila Stehlíková, who kick-started the most recent
efforts to deal with the pig farm, and the current Minister Kocáb, who
recently saw through an agreement to put the memorial site under the same
management as the monument at Lidice. Růžička also congratulated Kocáb on
having been reappointed to his ministerial post in the new cabinet of Czech
PM Fischer.
In his own remarks, Kocáb said he wants to create a foundation for buying
out the pig farm so that the site can finally become a truly dignified
memorial to those who perished there. When the issue of the farm’s location
was first raised years ago, it was still in state hands; its subsequent
rapid privatization has created a stumbling block that seems to grow larger
every year, as the estimated costs of relocating the farm continue to rise.
The current estimate is CZK 500 million (USD 25 million).
Official records of the camp, which are regarded as incomplete, show that 1
327 Romani prisoners passed through Lety from August 1942 – May 1943. Markus
Pape’s 1997 definitive book on Lety, 
Despite the fact that the Committee’s annual commemorations generate a small
rush of media attention every May, there is a general lack of awareness
about Lety’s place in the machinery of the Holocaust, if not a tendency
among the general public to belittle or deny its significance entirely. In a
recent online “chat” with Lucie Horváthová, a Roma candidate in the European
Parliamentary elections, one questioner asked whether it would be correct to
tear down the pig farm at Lety given that the prisoners “were able to leave
the camp and work, but they preferred to stay there, where they died due to
their own poor hygiene habits”. Such ignorant remarks and “blaming the
victim” would be considered shocking (if not actionable) in Western Europe,
but in the Czech Republic they are unfortunately the norm.
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