41 proposals were submitted for the memorial in Lety

Brno – In the first round of the landscape-architectural competition for the design of the memorial to the Romani Holocaust in Lety near Písek, 41 proposals were submitted by creators from the Czech Republic and abroad. This was stated today by the spokesperson of the Museum of Romani Culture in Brno, Lucie Horáková, in a press release. She considers the interest unexpectedly high. The winner of the competition could be announced in May. The results of the competition should be followed by the demolition of the pig farm that currently stands on the site of the former concentration camp for Roma. The museum aims to open the memorial in 2023.

The organizers of the competition did not anticipate such a high level of interest. "We were surprised by the interest from both Czech and international architectural and landscape firms. We received 41 proposals from practically all over the world by the established deadline. Although the competition is anonymous and the envelopes with contact details will be opened only after the jury evaluates the submissions, we know from courier documentation that the proposals came from England, Scotland, Germany, Spain, Serbia, but also from Japan," said Petr Návrat, managing director of ONplan, which is organizing the competition for the Museum of Romani Culture.

The jury will select seven proposals to advance to the second round. The authors will be invited to further develop their proposals. The winner should be known in May. "We put a lot of effort into preparing the competition. In addition to the staff of the Museum of Romani Culture, representatives of the relatives of the victims of the camps in Lety and Hodonín near Kunštát, as well as a number of experts from among historians, Romani studies scholars, architects, and landscape architects participated in preparing the assignment. We are pleased that it was possible to announce a competition that has generated such a response," said museum director Jana Horváthová.

The competition will be followed by the demolition of the pig farm, for which the state allocated approximately 110 million crowns. The demolition also includes the recultivation of the environment in preparation for the subsequent construction. The actual memorial, costing several tens of millions of crowns, is expected to begin construction likely after 2021. It will also include an exhibition.

The camp was located at the site where a pig farm was established during the communist regime in the 1970s. Two years ago, the state purchased the pig farm for 450 million crowns from the company Agpi, which then had 13,000 pigs there. According to historians, from August 1942 to May 1943, 1,308 Roma, including men, women, and children, passed through the camp in Lety, 327 of whom died there, and over five hundred ended up in Auschwitz.