Memorial to the Victims of the »Hodonín Gypsy Camp«

Památník romským obětem v Hodoníně u Kunštátu

Located in Hodonín u Kunštátu, not far from the former »Hodonín Gypsy Camp«, a memorial honours the camp's victims.

History

On March 15, 1939, the German Wehrmacht occupied what remained of Czechoslovakia and on the following day, it was incorporated into the German Reich as the »Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia«. Shortly afterwards, persecution of Jews and of Sinti and Roma began in the Protectorate. According to a census, there were 6,540 »Gypsies« living in the Protectorate in 1940. The Protectorate Ministry of Interior began enforcing their settlement from November 1939 on. Beginning August 1940, Protectorate authorities set up a total of six forced labour camps for »asocials«, among other places in Lety u Písku and Hodonín u Kunštátu. Among the inmates were many Roma without steady work or permanent residence - they made up about 20 per cent of the prisoners at Hodonín. After the »fight against the Gypsy plague« had been decreed on July 10, 1942, the entire Roma population of Bohemia and Moravia was persecuted on racial grounds. In August 1942, the Roma were registered by local authorities. Roma who had not settled were taken to the camps at Hodonín and Lety, which had now been converted to »Gypsy camps«. At the time, there were over 1,300 Roma held captive at the Hodonín camp, which was guarded by Czech constabulary and administered by the Protectorate Ministry of Interior. On December 7, 1942, the German criminal police (Kripo) in the Protectorate deported about 75 prisoners from Hodonín to the main camp at Auschwitz. As decreed by Heinrich Himmler on December 16, 1942, mass deportations of Roma to Auschwitz-Birkenau began and in early 1943, a »Gypsy family camp« was set up there. On August 21, 1943, almost all of the Hodonín prisoners were deported to the »Gypsy family camp« at Auschwitz-Birkenau. The deportations were planned by the German Kripo and executed by Protectorate authorities and local constabulary. The camp at Hodonín was closed in December 1943.

Hodonín, 1943, Barracks at the »Hodonín Gypsy Camp«, Archiv Muzea romské kultury

Hodonín, about 1943, Roma prisoners at the »Hodonín Gypsy Camp«, Archiv Muzea romské kultury

Victims

About 200 Roma died at the »Hodonín Gypsy camp« due to the harsh conditions, illnesses or abuse by the guard details. About 850 of the camp's prisoners were deported to Auschwitz by the Kripo in cooperation with Protectorate authorities. Of the 5,500 Roma who were deported from the Protectorate, only about 500 survived.

Until 1918, the Czech regions of Bohemia, Moravia and Czech Silesia belonged to the Austro-Hungarian Empire. After the First World War they merged with Slovakia to form Czechoslovakia. From autumn 1938 to spring 1939 the state was gradually broken up by the Third Reich. In September 1938 Germany annexed the northern and western border region, which had a majority German population. This was now known as the »Sudetengau« (Sudetenland administration district). The remaining territory, the so-called rump state, was taken by the German Wehrmacht on March 14, 1939. At the same time Slovakia declared independence. Czechoslovakia ceased to exist and the Czech regions now came under German control as the Reich Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia. The emerging civilian resistance was brutally crushed and the persecution of Jews and Roma began. Around 78,000 of the approximately 120,000 Jews of Bohemia were murdered in the Holocaust. The former fortress of Theresienstadt (Terezín) served as a central detention camp and a transit camp for those being deported to the extermination sites in Eastern Europe. Around 8,000 non-Jewish Czechs were also killed, some 1,700 during the wave of terror following the assassination of the Deputy Reich Protector Reinhard Heydrich (1904–1942) on May 27, 1942. In response to this assassination, German police forces razed the village of Lidice and the hamlet of Ležáky to the ground. Four days before the end of the war in 1945, an armed rebellion broke out in Prague and other Czech regions. It was directed above all at Czech collaborators and the German minority. Memory of the period 1938 to 1945 centres above all on the trauma of the complete dismemberment of the country. Focus was placed on National Socialist crimes and for a long time the desire for revenge. One of the consequences was the expulsion of the German-speaking population. Remembrance today however also encompasses the painful awareness of the relatively weak extent of resistance and the widespread collaboration. The re-established state of Czechoslovakia became communist in 1948. There was barely any remembrance of the Holocaust, especially as the country was overcome by a wave of anti-semitism during the peak of the Stalinist purges in the early 1950s. Along with the homage to the victorious Red Army that was standard in the »Eastern Bloc«, the Czechoslovakian culture of memory focused particularly on the massacre at Lidice. This made it possible to represent National Socialist brutality without having to remember the Holocaust. A change set in with the collapse of communism from 1989 onwards; a change that had emerged once before during the Czech reform period known as the Prague Spring in 1968, before coming to an end with the invasion of Warsaw Pact troops. Hence, parts of Czech society gradually began to also remember the co-existence of Czech, German and Jewish cultures that had been built up over centuries but has now disappeared. Traces of this multicultural past are more and more visible, not only in the capital Prague. Meanwhile, the most important site of remembrance for the victims of the holocaust is the Terezín Memorial on the site of the former Theresienstadt Ghetto. Since the 1990s there have been public disputes over the former concentration camp at Lety, where Bohemian Roma were forcibly detained prior to their deportation to Auschwitz-Birkenau. For decades, a pig farm was located on the site, making appropriate remembrance impossible. The pig farm was finally dismantled in 2022 to make place for a new memorial.

Remembrance

After the war, the Soviet Army set up a military hospital on the premises of the former camp. In 1946, a simple wooden cross was set up here in memory of the »Victims of Nazism«, it was not mentioned, however, that the victims were Roma. Between 1948 and 1950, the premises were used as a labour camp for those persecuted by the Stalinist dictatorship. Later, recreational facilities were built on the site, and guests were received here until the beginning of the 21st century. Only in 1997 was the Memorial to the Victims of the »Hodonín Gypsy Camp« unveiled, having been set up on initiative of the Museum of Romani Culture in Brno. Its establishment was supported by the municipal administration of Kunštát and the government of the Czech Republic. Sculptor Eduard Oláh designed the memorial which was erected on a site of mass graves about 150 metres from the former camp.
In 1998, a memorial plaque to the victims of the former »Hodonín Gypsy Camp« was set up on the cemetery in Černovice where 73 prisoners are buried.
In December 2009, the Czech government purchased the plot of land in order to commemorate the victims in an appropriate manner: the construction of an educational and conference centre on the topic of Roma persecution is planned on the site.

Hodonín, about 1943, Children in the sick bay at the »Hodonín Gypsy Camp«, Archiv Muzea romské kultury

Hodonín, 1960s, The wooden cross in memory of the »Victims of Nazism«, which was set up in 1946, Archiv Muzea romské kultury

Open

The memorial is accessible at all times.
Exhibition open from April to October 9 a.m. to 5 p.m.

Contact

https://hodoninpamatnik.cz/

hodonin@rommuz.cz

+420 775 403 155

Hodonín, undated, Memorial plaque next to a mass grave close to the former camp site, Archiv Muzea romské kultury

Hodonín, 1997, Artist Eduard Oláh working on his Memorial to the Victims of the »Hodonín Gypsy Camp«, Archiv Muzea romské kultury

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