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December 5th, 2008
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Defending the dead

As Lety concentration camp victims are remembered, the fight to remove an onsite pig farm continues

By Markéta Hulpachová
Staff Writer, The Prague Post
May 21st, 2008 issue

JAN PŘEROVSKÝ/THE PRAGUE POST
Activists, politicians and Roma honored labor camp victims May 13.
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JAN PŘEROVSKÝ/THE PRAGUE POST
Education Minister Ondřej Liška and member of Parliament Jan Špika lay a wreath May 13 at the existing small memorial next to the pig farm.
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JAN PŘEROVSKÝ/THE PRAGUE POST
The pig farm's director would consider relocating if officially asked.
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Lety, south Bohemia
Sixty-five years after the Nazis closed a Roma concentration camp in the tiny south Bohemian municipality of Lety, the grass-covered mass graves in the neighboring woods are nearly indistinguishable.
Conversely, the gleaming white structures of the 34-year-old pig farm that occupies the adjacent former campground are hard to miss.
On May 13, a handful of activists, politicians and Roma clustered near the mass graves, laying wreaths and lighting candles in the pig farm’s shadow to commemorate the hundreds of prisoners who died here during World War II.
For years, removing the pig farm from the former location of the Lety concentration camp has been a recurrent item on the government’s agenda.
Despite the constant criticism of Roma groups and international organizations, however, few things have changed since former President Václav Havel inaugurated a memorial site near the mass graves in 1995.
“Our people consider the pig farm’s existence insulting and abominable,” said Čeněk Růžička, president of the Committee for the Redress of the Roma Holocaust (VPROH). “The political will to remove it does not exist in this country.”
The son of Lety survivors, Růžička has been lobbying for the pig farm’s removal since 1998, shortly after discovering his family’s tragic history.
“Until the 1990s, my mother didn’t talk about it,” he said.
Before coming to the camp during a Nazi-ordered roundup of Bohemian Roma in 1942, Růžička’s parents did not know each other. “My father came to the camp with his wife and two children,” Růžička said. “My mother had a 6-month-old baby.”
During their time in Lety and subsequent transfer to Auschwitz in 1943, both of Růžička’s parents lost their families. After the camp’s liberalization, the two met in the tiny municipality of Luka, a meeting place for Romany survivors, said Růžička.
According to archives, 1,307 Romany men, women and children passed through the Lety camp, which was constructed by the Czech Protectorate government and overseen by local guards. A total of 327 died there, and more than 500 were sent to Auschwitz after the camp’s shutdown. Historians estimate about 90 percent of the Bohemian Roma population was wiped out during World War II.
“You won’t find a single member of the original Bohemian Roma community whose family members did not die in concentration camps,” Růžička said. “We called every elder in our community Grandma or Grandpa, because most of us didn’t really have grandparents.”
Optimal solution
Despite what he calls a cold-shoulder attitude from the locals and the government, Růžička says the pig farm removal issue has been “taken to a higher level.”
One year after Růžička gave a speech before the United Nations on the issue in 2007, the European Parliament urged the Czech government to “abolish the pig-fattening industry on the former concentration camp in Lety and to create a memorial to honor the victims of persecution” during a January session.
In February, south Bohemian Governor Jan Zahradník offered to build a holocaust memorial for 50 million Kč ($3.1 million), but refused to remove the pig farm.
“This is unacceptable for us,” Růžička said. “Now that the European Parliament has gotten involved, the government is going to try to do something to appease them, like build a memorial. But the pig farm will stay where it is, because the anti-Roma sentiments are too strong in this country.”
Meanwhile, Human Rights and Minorities Minister Džamila Stehlíková said she considered the pig farm’s removal one of her “midterm goals.”
A “work group” comprising Roma rights leaders and the pig farm’s owners expects to present the government with an optimal solution by the end of the year, she added.
Today, some 20,000 pigs reside in the industrial pig farm, owned by the agricultural company Agpi. Jan Čech, the company’s director, says he is open to negotiations about moving the compound.
“It’s essential to resolve the matter, because it is a bad situation for us. We’ve been contacted by our banks and our suppliers, who want to know if they can count on us being there in the long term,” said Čech.
While Agpi is willing to remove the pig farm for a reasonable compensation, the government has yet to approach the company with an offer, he added.
“It has been much discussed in the media, but no official sum has been named by us or the government,” said Čech. “The only thing that has changed is the politicians.”

Markéta Hulpachová can be reached at mhulpachova@praguepost.com


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Reader's comments:

add your comment
[05:50 23/05/2008] : When Jan Masaryk convinced President Roosevelt to end the unequal treatment of the Czechoslovak government-in-exile by removing the damning word "provisional" from its title, he succeeded with the argument: "Mr. President. We have in England about one thousand pilots. Many of them fly over Germany on bombing missions. Some of them never return. They are shot down by enemy fire and they are killed. They are dead--not provisionally dead."
Does the current Czech government regard these Roma victims as only being "provisionally dead" because they weren't Jews? They're certainly acting like it.
Earl Divoky
Houston, Texas
[21:06 03/10/2008] : In trying to learn of my own heritage and in doing a lot of reading I discovered a lot of sickening facts. To further my astonishment I discovered it is still going on today. It should never be referred to "as the Romani problem" but rather the
the "problem of the Czech mentality". If any knows where to obtain a list of victims of Lety / Aushwitz please let me know. I wish to see if any family members were on that list.
Laura Slifka
Calgary, Alberta, Canada
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