Holocaust Memorial for Roma and Sinti in Lety opens to public

A Holocaust Memorial for Roma and Sinti opened to the public on Sunday at the site of a former concentration camp in Lety, south Bohemia, with a commemorative ceremony.

Over 1,300 Roma passed through the camp between 1942 and 1943 and more than 300 died there, mostly women and children. Over 500 inmates were sent to extermination camps.

The memorial includes a place of remembrance and a visitor centre with a permanent exhibition that presents testimonies of witnesses in audiovisual form.

The site originally served as a pig farm and it took close to three decades for post-communist governments to buy out the property and erect a dignified memorial in its place.

Among those attending the comemorative event. on Sunday was Senate speaker Miloš Vystrčil, who stressed the importance of creating values for the future.