In the Czech Republic, work has begun on the demolition of a pig farm, which was built on the site of a Nazi concentration camp for Gypsies in the village of Lety.
This is reported by the BBC.
The start of the buildingʼs demolition ended decades of bitter disputes between the farmʼs owners, the government and Roma rights groups. Historians say that during the Lety War, 1,309 Roma were held in Southern Bohemia. 326 people died there from malnutrition, ill-treatment and diseases.
Holocaust.cz
In the 1970s, an industrial pig farm was built in Lety, "which became a source of suffering" for Czech Gypsies because of its location. Not a trace remained of the camp, only a modest stone memorial to the dead was built on the lawn near it. However, the annual commemoration ceremony is often interrupted by the stench of manure.
Critics of the demolition, including former Prime Minister Andriy Babish, claim that Lety was not a concentration camp, but a labor camp. They also indicate that the farm was built right next to the campsite, not on it. The dispute ended when the government bought the pig farm from its owners and closed it, handing over the site to the Museum of Roma Culture.
The Czechoslovak government established the Lety camp two weeks before the Nazi occupation in March 1939, but as a labor camp. In July 1942, the authorities of the Nazi protectorate turned it into a "gypsy camp", and the first gypsies arrived there in the fall. Most of the dead were affected by the typhoid epidemic. Unable to cope with the epidemic, the Nazi authorities closed the camp in May 1943. Those who survived were sent to a similar institution in Moravia or to Auschwitz. The Gypsy population of Bohemia and Moravia was almost completely destroyed. Because the camp was staffed by Czech guards and not Nazi SS men, none of them were convicted after the war. Czech historians and politicians have long disagreed about Letyʼs history and exact role in the Holocaust.
Roma are the largest ethnic minority in Europe, about six million of them live in the EU. The largest Roma minority in the EU is in Romania — more than a million. Many Roma in Europe are hampered by poverty, low literacy and discrimination.