Fundación Punjab

CTK

24 August 2009

Hodonin u Kunstatu, South Moravia, Aug 23 (CTK) - Some 50 people attended a
meeting and mass in memory of the victims of Romani Holocaust on the site of
former wartime internment camp for Czech Romanies in Hodonin u Kunstatu
Sunday.

Almost 1400 Romanies went through the Hodonin internment camp during World
War Two (in operation from August 1942 to December 1943). Over 200 died
there and more than 800 were sent to the extermination camp in Oswiecim
(Auschwitz) where most of them perished, said historians from the Museum of
Romani Culture that annually organises the commemorative event.

This year it was for the first time held in the complex of the former
internment camp that now serves as a recreational facility.

The Czech state is negotiating with the private owner of the complex about
its purchase.

The Museum of Roma Culture would like to establish the Romany Holocaust
educational centre and a memorial on the premises.

However, museum director Jana Horvathova said the Culture Ministry abandoned
the talks over the lack of finances, so the museum was looking for a new
form of the planned centre's operation.

The meeting is annually staged in Hodonin u Kunstatu to commemorate the
second transport from the camp to Auschwitz on August 21, 1943.

Another Nazi interment wartime camp for Romanies in the Czech Lands was
built in Lety, south Bohemia.

At present a pig farm is on the site, which has been repeatedly criticised
by Romanies and human rights activists. The European Parliament has also
called on the Czech Republic to remove the pig farm.

The Czech state plans to purchase the surrounding plots from the
municipalities and establish a place of commemoration in Lety.

The Culture Ministry will submit an updated plan of adjustments of the
commemorative place to the government next week, ministry spokeswoman
Viktorie Plivova told CTK Sunday.

The government in May decided to increase the budget of the Culture Ministry
for 2009 by some 21.5 million crowns to cover the costs of the building of
access roads, a parking lot and pubic conveniences for visitors and
adjustments of the whole Lety memorial. The reconstruction works should be
completed by 2010.

The Lety memorial would be administered by the Memorial of Lidice, central
Bohemia, a village razed to the ground by the Nazis in 1942.

Nevertheless, the government decision does nor solve the problem of a
private pig farm on the site of the Lety camp.

Human Rights and Ethnic Minorities Kocab said previously the removal of the
pig farm from Lety would be one of his priorities. But later he said it
would not be suitable if the state bought out the pig farm as in the times
of the economic crisis the pig farm secures jobs.

Over 1300 Romanies were interned in Lety during the German Nazi occupation,
327 of whom perished in the camp and over 500 were sent to Auschwitz.