Pillars

PILLAR I. LIFE BEFORE THE INTERNMENT

Who were the Roma of Bohemia and Moravia, and how did they live in the interwar period?

The Roma and Sinti have been co-creating the diversity of the Czech lands for many centuries. Some made their livings as merchants, others as musicians and performers, still others as artisans or laborers. Some families traveled to make a living, while others were settled. However, all of them had to struggle in their everyday lives with being labelled “gypsies” and with the prejudices against them which a priori considered them to be criminals, a disturbing, exotic, “foreign race” of poor vagabonds. Such attitudes significantly facilitated the persecution and imprisonment of Roma and Sinti in concentration camps during the Second World War.

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Resolving the Gypsy Question

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Roma and Sinti before internment

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“Gypsies” – Roma and Sinti

PILLAR II. LIFE IN THE CAMP

What did the people imprisoned at Lety leave behind?

From 1942 to 1943, approximately 1,300 children, men and women from the Czech lands were imprisoned in what was called the “Gypsy Camp” at Lety u Písku. The inhumane conditions prevailing in the camp under the administration of the authorities of the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia and the Czech personnel meant that more than 300 prisoners did not survive Lety. More than 500 were transported to the Auschwitz II-Birkenau Concentration and Extermination Camp, from which most of them never returned. A similar fate also awaited the thousands of Roma and Sinti from Bohemia and Moravia who were transported to Auschwitz from elsewhere. In 1943, the empty camp at Lety was set on fire and razed to the ground.

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Transport from the camp

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End of the camp – 1943

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Roma and Sinti outside the camp

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Roma and Sinti in Lety u Písku

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So-called “gypsy” camp 1942-1943

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Internment of Roma and Sinti – 1942

PILLAR III. SURVIVORS

How can Lety be remembered? How can a genocide be remembered?

Just a few hundred Roma and Sinti from the Czech lands survived their wartime persecution. Their tormentors were never punished after the war; the commander of the camp at Lety was acquitted by the courts. The survivors continued to fear persecution, and it was difficult for them to share their memories. However, some survivors never stopped insisting on the necessity of commemorating the fate of the Roma and Sinti publicly.

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Return of survivors to society

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Families of survivors

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Voices of Roma and Sinti survivors

PILLAR IV. ADVOCATES OF MEMORY

Who fought to commemorate the camp at Lety?

On 13 May 1995, President of the Czech Republic Václav Havel unveiled a memorial at the site of the unmarked burial ground for the victims of the camp at Lety. The story of the camp and the genocide of the Czech Roma and Sinti had recently become a subject of public debate. In his speech, in addition to the Holocaust of the Roma, Havel mentioned the suppression of its memory during the decades after the war, when the location of the former camp was partially covered over by the grounds of an industrial pig farm. He also spoke about the anti-Romani racism still present in society. It might have seemed that the commemoration, in a dignified way, of the Holocaust and its Romani victims had been achieved. However, just a few hours after Havel’s speech, four non-Romani youths broke into the home of a Romani family and proceeded to beat Tibor Berki, father of five, to death.