The winning design of the memorial in Lety resembles a forest

Prague - The winner of the competition for the design of the memorial at Lety - Memorial to the Holocaust of the Roma and Sinti in Bohemia is the proposal by Atelier Terra Florida and Atelier Světlík. Their design has a symbolic form of a forest. Representatives of the Museum of Romani Culture in Brno, which aims to build the memorial, today presented the winning design to the public in the packed Kitchen of the Nostitz Palace in Prague. The jury selected the winner from seven finalists. The museum aims to open the memorial in 2023.

"Today is for us the culmination of at least two years of intensive work, as we began organizing round tables with various segments of the public in the spring of 2018, which were meant to express their views on the future form of the memorial," said Jana Horváthová, director of the Museum of Romani Culture, to ČTK. "The main mission of the memorial is to honor the memory of those who suffered, to inform, educate, and stimulate a societal discussion on the topic of coexistence. This is what society urgently needs," she added.

According to Horváthová, the costs of building the memorial in Lety amount to 31.5 million crowns, with 25.5 million crowns of that being provided by the so-called Norwegian funds. An additional 13.5 million crowns from foreign funds will be used for indoor equipment and exhibitions.

The international landscape-architectural competition for the design of the memorial originally attracted 41 proposals from 12 countries. Seven advanced to the second round. The proposals were submitted and evaluated anonymously.

On the site of the former concentration camp for Roma, there is now a pig farm. The tender for its demolition is expected to take place this year. The state allocated about 110 million crowns for the demolition. The memorial will also include an exhibition. "Construction work on the site could start next year," the spokesperson stated.

According to the museum, the new memorial and exhibition aims not only to honor the memory of the Holocaust victims among the Roma and Sinti but also to address issues of minority discrimination and human rights.

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