Museum of Romani Culture to take over Lety in March

The Museum of Romani Culture will take over the former pig farm in Lety near Písek, which stands at the site of a WWII Roma concentration camp, in March, its spokesman announced in a press release on Tuesday.

After years of negotiations, the government last year finally agreed with the farm’s owner on a buyout for roughly 450 million crowns. A proper memorial to the victims of the Romany Holocaust is set to be built at the site.

More than 1,300 Roma men, women and children were held at the camp at Lety beginning in 1940: an estimated 327 of them died at the site, largely due to disease; more than 500 of those interned were transported to the Auschwitz death camp in Poland, from which they never returned.

Author: Ruth Fraňková