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The parish cemetery in Mirovice

From August 1942 to January 1943, the parish cemetery in Mirovice was used for burying prisoners who died in the Lety camp. The victims were buried by the cemetery wall in the place reserved for unbelievers and suicides. Approximately 174 of them are buried here. During the entire functioning of the camp, approximately 335 prisoners died, especially children. From January 1943, due to the epidemic of spotted and abdominal typhus and the closure of the camp under quarantine, the bodies of the victims were placed at the emergency burial site behind the Lety camp. For many years, the graves remained unmarked. Adolf Vondrášek, who moved to Mirovice in 1964 and lived in a house that had belonged to one of the former camp guards, began to take an interest in the fate of the Lety prisoners. After Adolf Vondrášek became mayor, he presented to the town council a proposal to erect a monument to the victims at the cemetery. The memorial plaque was ceremonially unveiled in the presence of the priest and local inhabitants in 1992. But it was not the first reminder at the Mirovice cemetery. Already in 1960, the relatives of the camp victims had placed here a tombstone commemorating the members of the Šmíd family who had died in the Lety camp.

A small memorial dedicated to the victims of the Lety camp and to Jaroslava Flachsová, who died in the camp in November 1942. Photo by the MRC: Adam Holubovský, 19 July 2019.
The sculpture group Romani Mother and the memorial plaques of all who died and were buried at the Mirovice cemetery. Photo by the MRC: Adam Holubovský, 13 May 2018.

In 2000, another memorial plaque was added to the cemetery, placed there by the Committee for the Compensation of the Roma Holocaust in the Czech Republic with the support of the Government of the Czech Republic. In 2007, the sculpture group Mourning Mother was unveiled, consisting of figurative sculptures and a broken Roma wheel. The author of the sculpture group is the academic sculptor Michal Moravec and the survivor of the camp’s victims Čeněk Růžička. On the memorial plaques on the cemetery wall, the Committee placed the names of all those who, according to available records, should be buried in the cemetery, i.e., approximately 150 children and 30 adult prisoners of the Lety camp.