Lety, South Bohemia, Sept 6 (CTK) – Czech Deputy Prime Minister and ANO movement leader Andrej Babis visited the site of the wartime concentration camp for Romanies in Lety and commemorated its victims on Tuesday, and again dismissed the accusations of being a Holocaust denier.
During his visit to Varnsdorf, north Bohemia, last week, Babis reportedly said the information that Lety was a concentration camp is a lie and that it was labour camp for those who shunned work. Later he apologised for his words and promised to secure money to build a memorial in Lety.
On a visit to Lety on Tuesday, he was accompanied by Justice Minister Robert Pelikan (ANO) and Culture Minister Daniel Herman (Christian Democrats, KDU-CSL).
Babis repeated that his Varnsdorf comment on Lety was torn out of context and politicised.
“My goal [in Varnsdorf] was not to speak negatively. [Before], I expressed my position on the Holocaust unambiguously by being a friend of Arnost Lustig, dining with him and sponsoring his books,” Babis said.
Arnost Lustig (1926-2011) was a Czech Jewish author of world significance. Based on personal experience of a Nazi concentration camp inmate, he wrote a number of works describing horrors of the Holocaust.
At present, a monument to the Lety camp victims is situated next to a pig farm that stands at the site of the former camp.
Babis, Herman and Pelikan also visited the pig farm, accompanied by a representative of the Agpi company that owns and operates it.
In the past 18 years, the Czech governments’ efforts to solve the undignified situation have failed. They failed to provide money for the pig farm to be bought, pulled down and give way to a memorial.
Babis told journalists yesterday that he does not deal with the question of the pig farm’s purchase.
“This is a task for [Human Rights Minister Jiri] Dienstbier (Social Democrats, CSSD). The cabinet assigned the task to him in March 2016, so I believe he will deal with it,” Babis said.
Herman said a few weeks ago that he believes that the government will settle the problem of the pig farm by the end of its mandate in 2018.
There is a real chance of gaining money for the farm’s purchase, he indicated.
No one has ever set the farm’s estimated price.
On Monday, the cabinet of the Social Democrats (CSSD), ANO and the KDU-CSL confirmed its decision to have the pig farm closed down. Dienstbier said the cabinet prefers buying the farm, whose owner does not rule out selling it or exchanging for another suitable compound.
The camp in Lety was established as a labour camp, but during World War Two, it served as an internment camp for Romanies whom the German Nazi regime put on the same footing as Jews. Like Jews, Romanies interned in Lety were sent to the extermination camp in Oswiecim (Auschwitz).
