Paul Polansky and the Lety Roma camp: Part 1
This is the first of a two part programme which focuses on American
genealogist and amateur historian Paul Polansky and how he brought to Czech
and worldwide attention the existence of the Czech camp for Roma at Lety
during the Second World War.
Polansky is credited as the main driving force behind the unearthing of
explosive details about the Roma camp in the early 1990s’. The story of
the camp, originally established by the Czech government during the short
lived second republic ahead of the Nazi occupation, had been largely lost,
covered up, or distorted since the Second World War.
Polansky did not set out be controversial or shed light on one of the most
shameful episodes of twentieth century Czech history. He was a genealogist
who was researching the Czech origins of families who originally founded
his hometown of Spillville, Iowa.
The research took him to the regional archives at the library of South
Bohemian Třeboň and his interest was sparked by a hint that from the
librarian there that there was more to the small village of Lety than met
the eye. In fact the library held a vast archive of documents about the
creation, operation, deaths, and transports from what became Bohemia’s
work, concentration, and death camp for the Roma population.
Once a 50 year ban on opening the files was set aside and Polansky was
allowed to consult them, Polansky was able to explode a series of myths
about the camp. A book published in Czech late last year ’Tábor Smrti
Lety’ or ‘Death Camp Lety’, subtitled the investigation begins 1992
– 1995, tells the story how he pieced together the evidence, often
against repeated local denials and official resistance. His findings
created a furor in the Czech Republic with many then, and now, still trying
to downplay his major revelation that the camp was Czech organized and
Czech run with many of the deaths due to savage treatment and hunger.
In an interview with Mr. Polansky last week, I put it to him that the near
500 page book is very much his own personal detective story about how he
battled with adversity to establish the truth.
“Yes, it is a memoir of my research, how I stumbled across by accident
this story of Lety and how it grabbed me and I could not let go of it.”
The main feature is that you helped bring this camp to public attention.
Can you explain what you found out because the whole history of this camp
had been ignore, more or less covered up, or even shrouded with lies?
“Yes, I was stunned when I started to interview the local people around
Lety and Orlík. And these old people told me how after World War Two how
they made all the Czech guards at Lety leave the village, even though they
had married local women, because of the horrible things they had done in
the camp. And that spurred me on to find out what they had done. And then I
discovered that all the guards at Lety were Czech. It was a Czech
administered camp. And, of course, the then government wanted to cover it
up because they have always wanted to portray Czechs as victims in World
War Two and never as collaborators. And so this is the real story that I
discovered.”
Included in that is the fact that what Czech accounts of the camp that did
come out, for example in the 1970s, portrayed it as a German camp, the size
of the camp appeared to be quite considerably underestimated and the number
of deaths and cause of deaths was also different…
“Even to this day, the Czech government is releasing false figures about
how many died at Lety. The burial records at Mirovice, where most of the
children who were murdered, or beaten to death, or starved to death, were
taken and buried is many times more than the official government figures
today. And there are documents that show that people died. In the Třeboň
archives I came across 800 death certificates that were signed by local
doctors. And yet the government maintains that only about 300 or 330 people
died at Lety. And so the documents, and the local archives, and the town
chronicles tell a completely different story. And yet all of this is being
ignored.”
How would it be best to describe this camp?
“I think you have to go to the oral histories of the survivors and let
them describe the camp to you. Unfortunately, in this memoir the oral
histories that I collected two years later are not included. The government
said there were no survivors and then I found more than 100 and I took down
all of their stories. And, of course, almost all of them said that Lety was
worse than Auschwitz. Those that survived Lety and were sent to Auschwitz
described Lety as worse than Auschwitz. The Czech guards were worse than
the German guards. In Auschwitz if you survived roll call, you knew that
you were going to live another day. But at Lety you could be killed at any
moment. And this is what impressed the survivors the most, that at Lety the
Czech guards could come up to you and club you to death at any time of the
day and that did not happen at Auschwitz. And so the survivors stories from
Lety are even more important than what I discovered in the archives.”
And so what has happened to these stories, they have been recorded
presumably?
“They were published in a book, in Czech and English, in 1998 in Prague
by the G plus G publishing house. In English the book is called ‘The
Black Silence.’ The book is still available today on Amazon.com. In fact
my published in 1998 published only 60 of the oral histories because he
said he did not have the money to publish them all. So the second edition
has all of the oral histories, more than 100, plus interviews with some of
the guards that I found still living and widows of the administrators of
department five, that created Lety as a concentration camp. So the
information is there.”
Part of this story seems to be about the barriers that were put up in your
way once you started getting some of the initial information. I have the
impression that perhaps the only reason that you got as far as you did was
the support of the US Embassy, which the Czechoslovak and later Czech
governments could not ignore?
“Yes, in the beginning I had a lot of support. When I finished my
research and a newspaper in the United States published a front page
article about Czechs having a gypsy concentration camp during World War
Two, the Czech Embassy in Washington DC called me and invited me to a
meeting. They wanted to cooperate. They wanted to form a team of historians
from Charles University to help research the documents and to help make
available the story. They wanted the United States Holocaust Memorial
Museum to offer architects to design a proper memorial. They really wanted
to go ahead and present this story openly to the rest of the world.
"But when they found out that I wanted to use this historical team to
interview survivors rather than spend 10 years looking at documents, they
withdrew their support and then they started to cover up all the
information. They banned me from the archives for a while. It was only
through the American embassy that I was let back in, but then under only
certain conditions that I had to sign contracts that I would not slander
the Czech government with any information that I found. It was really a
cover up, a whitewash, and they did everything they could to stop the
information coming out.”
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