Lety, South Bohemia, March 14 (CTK) – Norway has expressed interest in supporting the establishment of the Roma Holocaust memorial in Lety with one million euros from the Norway Grants, Czech Culture Ministry spokeswoman Simona Cigankova told CTK on Wednesday.
The Czech state recently purchased the Lety pig farm, situated at the site of a former wartime internment camp for Roma people, for 450 million crowns. It plans to clean-up and adjust the area and build a commemorative place there.
The original owner, the AGPI firm, drove the last 330 of 13,000 pigs from the Lety farm on Wednesday.
The pig farm will be demolished for about 110 million crowns, Cigankova said.
Moreover, an archeological exploration for 1.5 million crowns is planned at the site.
The ministry is to put up a tender for the memorial’s draft and its construction.
Norway has expressed interest in partially funding the memorial. “We really highly appreciate this initiative and interest,” Cigankova added.
The Museum of Roma Culture, seated in Brno, will administer the new Roma Holocaust memorial to be established by the Culture Ministry.
The memorial is to resemble the former WWII Roma camp. It will be connected with the existing commemorative site in Lety, comprised of replicas of three wooden huts and statues by sculptor Zdenek Hulka at the site of mass graves. An information centre with exhibition premises is to be opened there as well.
The forced labour camp in Lety was opened in 1940. A similar facility existed in Hodonin u Kunstatu, south Moravia. In 1942, both facilities turned into internment camps and in August of the same year, Roma camps were established there.
Until May 1943, 1308 Roma men, women and children were interned there, 327 of whom perished in the camp and over 500 were sent to the extermination camp in Auschwitz where most of them died. According to estimates, the Nazis murdered 90 percent of Czech Roma people.
