The demolition of the pig farm in Lety should start in June and finish this year

Brno/Lety - In Lety near Písek, the demolition of the pig farm could begin this June, on the site where a concentration camp for Roma existed during the war. Lucie Horáková, spokeswoman for the Museum of Romani Culture, informed ČTK today that a memorial for the Romani Holocaust will be built at the site. The state has allocated 110 million crowns for the demolition, which is expected to be completed this year, when preparatory work on the memorial will also commence. Construction could begin next year. The museum aims to open the memorial with an exhibition in 2023.

Czech Television reported on the start of demolition this June. Currently, a landscape-architectural competition is underway for the design of the memorial. In the first round, 41 proposals were submitted. A winner is expected to be announced by May. "It will depend on which proposal wins. The demolition is tied to the winning design. We do not know if any of the buildings will remain as a reminder, or how it will be. Ideally, we would start the demolition in June," said Horáková.

According to her, the task for this year is to carry out the demolition and establish a clear design for the memorial. This will be followed by terrain modifications and preparatory work for the construction of the memorial. "A larger scale of construction work on the memorial will take place next year. We will also be working on preparing educational programs and exhibitions that will be housed in it," added Horáková. However, she noted that changes may occur depending on the winning proposal.

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