Tensions remain high between Roma, or Gypsy, activists and the country's right-wing National Party, following a nonviolent confrontation in this small village. At the core of the dispute were differing interpretations of history.

On Jan. 21, the National Party went ahead with a ceremonial unveiling of a memorial at the site of a concentration camp where more than 300 Roma died during World War II. The village, however, had removed the memorial three days before, amid fears that it would result in a violent clash between the two groups.

The memorial, a stone weighing 4 metric tons (8,818 pounds), was designed to call history into question: The National Party says the site, now a pig farm, was merely a labor camp and that Roma perished there through their own fault due to poor hygiene. Originally, the memorial was to say all this, but in the end the party had put a stone in place that said only, "to the victims" — a message that still didn't sit well with activists.

The nationalists gathered amid fluttering Czech flags and signs like "Let the pig farm stay" — the government has promised to buy and remove the farm out of deference to Roma — and took turns at the loudspeaker. Their supporters wore white armbands and stood gathered around in the frozen, white field near a hole in the ground, where the memorial rock had stood just days earlier.

Petra Edelmannová, the party's chairman, said, "It's a sad day when the word of Gypsy provocateurs has more weight than the words of historians."

Her voice was excited and shaking when she concluded: "We are giving the stone to the Gypsy bard Čeněk Růžička, so that he may use it as the founding stone of a new pig farm."

Unrest broke out when two protesters, including Markus Pape, leader of the Committee for the Compensation of the Romany Holocaust, entered the crowd, shouting "Death to Nazism!"

The police arrested Pape for causing a disturbance.

"You are the neo-Nazis," shouted some of the National Party supporters at the protesters. "You are the ones protesting a monument for the victims of the Holocaust."

After about an hour, the nationalists and their supporters, who by far outnumbered the Romany activists, marched in procession, waving Czech flags, and departed in a bus.

Anna Polaková, one of the people protesting the action, was outraged. "It's catastrophic. They know what happened here," she said. "Today it's just a march, but what will it be next time?"

The pig farm

Roma activists and civil rights groups and, most recently, the European Parliament, have been pushing for years to have the pig farm removed as a sign of respect to the tragedy that took place there. Prime Minister Jiří Paroubek promised to resolve the matter by the general election in June. But so far, the government has failed to make any headway in buying the property and removing the farm.

In an interview with The Prague Post several days before the gathering, Edelmannová said the unveiling of her party's memorial was to be the official start of the National Party's election campaign.

"We want to let people know that 800 million Kč [$33.74 million] of taxpayers' money will be wasted," Edelmannová said, referring to the price the owners of the pig farm are asking.

"We know from historical sources that the camp there was just a labor camp," she said.

It is this claim that has earned the party accusations of racism.