Prague, Sept 21 (CTK) – The planned Bubny Memorial of Silence to be located in Prague’ former railway station building in Bubny, from where thousands of Jews were transported to concentration camps, has opened the New Layers of Memory Gallery, Pavel Stingl, director of the non-profit organisation Prague Shoah Memorial told CTK on Thursday.
According to the project’s initiators, Prague is one of the few European cities not to have a public Holocaust memorial.
The memorial, which has been prepared for several years, is estimated to cost 125 million crowns.
The ARN studio, which is to create the study for the conversion of the Bubny railway station, was selected out of 15 architectural studios by a jury.
Originally, the railway station was owned by the Czech Railways company and the plan was to borrow the building for fifty years, which is why we basically planned only its cleaning and that could be done without a tender, Stingl said.
Meanwhile, the conditions changed and the station became a property of the state-owned rail track management company SZDC, which also owns the plots surrounding the station.
“We began negotiations with SZDC to be able to expand to the other side, in front of the station, so that we could treat the building not as a railway station only, but as a cultural facility with a different meaning,” he said.
“However, the basis of the railway station as a place of memory which in itself represents an exhibit will be preserved,” Stingl added.
Because the building is a state property, the majority of funds for its conversion and restoration are to come from the state budget and negotiations on funding are under way with the Culture Ministry and the Prague City Hall.
