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Lost era

A new exhibition reveals a forgotten chapter of Central European history

By Brooke Edge
For The Prague Post
September 19th, 2007 issue

Photos reproductions by VLADIMÍR WEISS/The Prague
Through photographs and drawings, the exhibition offers a rich portrait of the many Roma and Sinti lives lost in World War II.
A Vanished World

Through Sept. 29
Veletržní palác
Dukelských hrdinů 47
Prague 7–Holešovice
Open Tues.–Sun., 10 a.m.–6 p.m.

At the opening of “A Vanished World,” aged women chatted and laughed in a corner, reminiscing over times past. Every few minutes, one would get up to greet new arrivals and walk them to a series of images, pointing out family and friends. They smiled and shared, enjoying the opportunity to see cultural memories once ignored or outright condemned in these lands respectfully portrayed in a public setting.
The subject of the exhibition is considerably darker: the disastrous effects of the Holocaust upon the Czech Roma and Sinti populations. Described as “an exhibition on silence,” it is composed almost entirely of photographs. There are no lists of names and numbers killed, simply scores of personal, pre-war photos bookended by placards of historical information.
“The theme of this exhibit is a real world that has died out almost completely,” explained Čeněk Růžička in a speech delivered at the opening. Růžička is president of the Committee for the Redress of the Roma Holocaust (VPORH), the group that organized the exhibit.
“This is a very unusual exhibit about the Holocaust because it doesn’t show the documents of the murders or the places of the murders — it shows the lives,” said VPORH member Markus Pape, the author of a 1997 book about the history of Lety u Písku, one of two Czech concentration camps that housed Roma and Sinti during World War II.
“This is what vanished,” he said, motioning toward the photographs of weddings, families and military portraits, many ripped and torn, creased from repeated foldings and the wear and tear of being concealed.
Of the choice not to include Nazi documentation, Růžička said, “Their vocabulary and content continue not only to transmit the same stigma against our people that has existed for centuries, but to reinforce that stigma.”
The theme of silence running through the exhibit is reinforced by the continued reluctance of surviving members of the Roma and Sinti populations to discuss the Holocaust. VPORH organizers interviewed many individuals who did not want their family photos displayed or names mentioned in this exhibit, for fear of persecution. From dread of surviving concentration camp guards to an unwillingness to open themselves up to possible harassment by neighbors, oppression and victimization are still daily torments for Czech Roma and Sinti.
“Those who survived continue to live in fear of revealing anything about their lives,” Růžička noted. “They have good reason. They continue to encounter the ideas of Nazism and racial superiority being proclaimed in public by neo-Nazi groups.” Indeed, Růžička’s own parents kept their internment at Lety u Písku a secret from him until 1997.
The two nonphoto items on display in the exhibit are drawings made of the camps, one by a Czech Sinti at Auschwitz and the other by a Roma at Lety u Písku. The artist of the latter is still alive, but insisted on anonymity.
This lasting apprehension is based upon centuries of experience. Contrary to popular belief, Růžička said, the Roma and Sinti have lived in the Czech lands for more than 600 years and are not simply recent migrants to the region. Years of co-habitation with others, however, did not lead to acceptance.
In 1927, the exhibition informs visitors, laws requiring the registration of all Roma and Sinti were passed, creating an “ideally fertile ground in the Czech lands for the smooth introduction of Nazi racial policy by the German occupiers in 1939.”
Two concentration camps were built in Czechoslovakia especially for “gypsies” and individuals “living a gypsy lifestyle” — Lety u Písku in Bohemia and Hodonín in Moravia. Prisoners at these camps were used for hard labor and lived under harsh conditions, with food often stolen by guards and little to no medicine for the sick, resulting in a tragic loss of life during a six-month typhoid epidemic. Hundreds of deaths occurred in the camps, with many more following deportations to Auschwitz.
Approximately 14,000 Roma and Sinti were registered with the Czech government prior to the war; only a few hundred remained at its end, and many who survived emigrated. As a result, the vast majority of today’s Roma in the Czech Republic are not descended from the pre-World War II population, but from immigrants from other European countries.
“In the public consciousness, the concept of the Holocaust has become identical with the murder of 6 million Jews,” Romani Rose, chairman of the Central Council of German Sinti and Roma, said in a speech at the opening. “However, the Holocaust also meant the murder of another nation, our minority. Half a million Sinti and Roma fell victim to it.”
VPORH was founded in 1998 by surviving members of the Czech Roma and Sinti population to raise awareness about the atrocities at Lety u Písku and Hodonín, and to convince the government to remove the pig farm that today stands on the Lety site and the recreation center at Hodonín.
“A Vanished World” is the latest of those efforts. Růžička encouraged visitors to return with their children, noting that little to nothing about the Roma and Sinti populations can be found in Czech history books. “This is not just about the history of the Roma,” he said. “This is about the history of all the inhabitants of our country, our common history.”
Following the display in Prague, VPORH hopes to take the exhibition to cities throughout the Czech Republic. In Růžička’s view, it’s something to be proud of.
“To this day, the history of the Roma and Sinti is either unknown or brutally distorted,” he said. “Our people are subject to stigmatization, which means the rest of the population and its governing bodies determine how we will be viewed. This exhibit is unique in that it shows how we view ourselves.”
Brooke Edge can be reached at features@praguepost.com

Brooke Edge can be reached at tempo@praguepost.com


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