Lety u Písku. Memorial to the Holocaust of the Roma and Sinti in Bohemia

Lety u Písku. Památník holokaustu Romů a Sintů v Čechách

Located near the Bohemian town of Lety near Písek is a memorial complex dedicated to the former prisoners of the forced labour camp at Lety and later the »Lety Gypsy Camp« as well as the fate of the murdered Roma and Sinti.

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 14 per cent of the prisoners at Lety. 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 1,250 Roma held captive in Lety, which was guarded by Czech constabulary and administered by the Protectorate Ministry of Interior. About a quarter of the Roma inmates died of the harsh conditions in the camp. On December 3, 1942, the German criminal police (Kripo) in the Protectorate deported about 93 prisoners from Lety 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 May 7, 1943, about 400 Lety prisoners were deported to Auschwitz-Birkenau. At the same time, about 400 prisoners were released after they were no longer deemed to be »Gypsies«. The deportations were planned by the German Kripo and executed by Protectorate authorities and local constabulary. The camp at Lety was closed in December 1943.

Lety, around 1942, The »Lety Gypsy Camp«, Výbor pro odškodnění romského holocaustu

Lety, around 1942, Roma children confined in the camp, Výbor pro odškodnění romského holocaustu

Victims

About 1,300 people were held captive at Lety u Písku. Roma prisoners constituted the large majority. Over 300 people died at the camp, over 240 of them children. More than 800 Roma were deported from Lety to Auschwitz, where almost all were murdered by the SS.

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 memory of the genocide of the Sinti and Roma was suppressed in communist Czechoslovakia. Visible traces of the former camp near Lety were eradicated shortly after the war. In 1972, a pig farm was even built on the former camp site. It was not until after 1989 that groups were able to organize themselves to campaign for a dignified memorial to the victims of the genocide. In May 1995, Czech President Václav Havel (1936–2011) inaugurated the first memorial in Lety to the victims of the camp, a granite stone created by the artist Zdeněk Hůla (1948–) at the site of the emergency burial ground. The genocide of the Sinti and Roma slowly began to enter the public consciousness. However, the pig farm, which continued to operate on the former camp grounds, remained the main obstacle to a dignified memorialization at the historic site for decades, partly because the Czech state long refused to provide the funds necessary to purchase the land and to compensate the owners of the facility. The long dispute also attracted international attention. It was not until 2022 that the pig farm was closed and the site transferred to the Museum of Romani Culture in Brno.

On 23 April 2024, the completely redesigned memorial was finally opened with a state ceremony. The site has been transformed into a natural landscape where a forest will grow over the years. The site is separated from the car park by a high wall. Visitors first enter the visitor centre, which houses a permanent exhibition on the persecution of the Roma, the history of the camp and the difficult path to establishing the memorial. From there, a path leads through the grounds, where the remains of two buildings from the former pig farm are still preserved. An open-air exhibition here displays individual biographies, among other things. The centrepiece of the memorial is the ‘memorial circle’ with a diameter of 150 metres, which is surrounded by a circular walkway. Along the route, visitors can read the names of victims engraved in the ground. There are several works of art on the grounds.

Lety, 2024, View of the permanent exhibition in the visitor center, Vladimír Kiva Novotný

Lety, 2024, Memorial »Katharsis« near the exit from the premises, Vladimír Kiva Novotný

Possibilities

Annual commemoration on May 13, on the anniversary of the last deportation from Lety to Auschwitz-Birkenau

Open

Visitors’ Center with the permanent exhibition April to October Thursday to Sunday 10 a.m. to 17 p.m. Last admission at 4.15 p.m.
The outdoor elements of the memorial site are accessible daily 8 a.m. to 8 p.m.

Contact

https://letypamatnik.cz

pamatniklety@rommuz.cz

+420 (0)778 483 310

398 04 Lety 124

Lety, 2011, Memorial from 1995 for the victims of the camp, Michal Ritter, CC BY-SA 3.0

Mirovice, 2008, The memorial close to the children's mass grave on the cemetery of nearby Mirovice, František Kostlán

Lety, 2008, Pig farm - since then demolished - on the premises of the former camp, František Kostlán

Lety, 2024, Aerial view of the memorial site, Vladimír Kiva Novotný

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