The organizers of the peaceful protest find it unacceptable to deny the Roma Holocaust.
Photo: Czech pig farm facility in Lety, Písek (Pohled na areál vepřína v Letech u Písku). Credit: Museum of Romani Culture, Brno (Muzeum romské kultury, Brno).
Brno, Feb 19 (BD) – Last Thursday, about 250 people walked with candles through the streets of Brno, wanting to peacefully remind people of the victims of the Roma Holocaust, Czech Television (CT) and other Czech media reported.
The organizers of the peaceful protest find it unacceptable to deny the Roma Holocaust, Brno online daily Brnenska Drbna wrote.
People condemned the recent statements of SPD representatives about the Roma camp at Lety near Písek.
“About 300 people in Brno expressed their disapproval of statements by SPD politicians Tomio Okamura and Miloslav Rozner that the concentration camp in Lety was a “non-existent pseudo-concentration camp” and people could “move freely in it,” Czech news server iDnes wrote.
The procession ended at the memorial of Jewish and Roma Holocaust victims at October 28th Square (náměstí 28 října), where the organizers read the testimony of people who experienced the camp in Lety, according to Czech Television.
The Nazi-ruled Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia set up the facility at Lety u Pisku as a penal labor prison in 1940. “It became the ‘Gypsy concentration camp’ in 1942,” the US embassy writes on its website.
The concentration camp at Lety u Pisku was almost forgotten after the war and a large pig farm was constructed near the site in the 1970s, the US embassy official statement continues.
The pig farming facility on the site of the former Nazi concentration camp for the Roma will be converted into a memorial site and passed on to the Museum of Romani Culture in Brno this spring.
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