News

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.

Czechs also won their second game at the Ice Hockey World Championship, coming up from two goals deficit to beat Norway 6-3 in Prague on Saturday. Two goals were scored by captain Roman Červenka, who played his 200th national team game.

The 38-year-old Červenka opened the scoring in the seventh minute, but Norway tied the game after 31 seconds and quickly took a 3-1 lead. By the break, Červenka managed to reduce the deficit. Ondřej Beránek equalised in the second period, with Matěj Stránský, Libor Hájek and Ondřej Palát adding the last three goals.

The Czech ice hockey team will next face Switzerland on Monday.

The introduction of postal voting for Czechs living abroad is awaiting final approval in the lower house. The voting could take place later this month. The second reading of the bill lasted for two days due to filibustering by the opposition, taking approximately 20 hours.

The coalition government wants the bill passed before the next parliamentary elections in autumn 2025, saying it would strengthen Czech citizens' right to vote by providing them with more options. However, the opposition fears that votes could be manipulated or interfered with if sent by mail.

The Prague Zoo has announced that the baby gorilla born in its care roughly a month ago is a female. She was given the name Gaia, which means Mother Earth.

The name of the baby cub was chosen by the British primatologist and anthropologist Jane Goodall, who spent decades studying chimpanzees. Dr. Goodall baptised the gorilla at a ceremony in Prague Zoo on Saturday in front of hundreds of visitors.

A day earlier, the world-famous ethologist delivered a lecture at the Czech University of Life Sciences.