AGPI is one of the largest producers of pork in the Czech Republic. Meat from Lety is to be found on menus in some of Prague’s best restaurants as well in various items for export from the Republic.

The concentration camp for Roma near the small Czech town of Lety was in use from August 10th, 1940 in accordance with a government decision of April 28th, 1939. 80 people were to be housed in a handful of wooden barracks but the camp was overcrowded from the very beginning. More than 240 men, women and children were imprisoned in the camp in August 1940.

Lety was from the beginning purely a Czech institution, it lay under the responsibility of the Czech interior ministry. The camp commander was a Czech, Josef Janovsky, all 56 camp guards were Czech. In accordance with an order from the interior ministry from June 22nd and July 10th, 1942 all Roma in Bohemia and Moravia were registered by local police officers and sent to various camps.

Lety was classified as a concentration camp for Roma as of August 1st, 1942 and it was so full by the end of the month that more barracks had to be built. Over 600 people, mostly women and children an four times the number the camp was built to hold, were forced into Lety by the Czechs in 1942.

By the beginning of December 1942 the number of Roma imprisoned in Lety had grown to more than 1,300. More that 36 children had been born there. More than 327 people died in Lety as a result of physical abuse or illness. On December 3rd, 1942 the Czech interior ministry started closing down the camp: prisoners, again mostly women and children, were rounded up and placed in transports to Auschwitz. Along with 4,493 other Czech Roma the last prisoners at Lety were sent to their deaths at Auschwitz on May 4th,1943.

By the end of WWII Czechoslovakia was one of the few states which had no Roma living in it because of a successful politics of extermination. All but a handful of Roma had been murdered during the Holocaust.

According to cautious estimates, 327 Roma lie buried at the former concentration camp of Lety, men, women and children murdered in an act of German-Czech collaboration. Unlike Germany, post-war Czechoslovakian and subsequently Czech governments have felt no need to shoulder responsibility for this historical burden. Instead most Czechs think it is perfectly alright that pigs are bred on the graves of people murdered in a concentration camp.

For Roma, us, this is an unacceptable situation! It is intolerable that commemoration of Holocaust victims takes second place to the financial interests of pig farmers!

The Czech Republic is to-day one of the states where Roma face the worst discrimination and hostility. Discrimination, murder and deportation are as much a part of life for Roma in the Czech Republic to-day as are neglect and belittlement of Holocaust victims and survivors alike.

Coordination;

Roma National Congress

european central office

Simon von Utrecht Str. 85

D- 20359 Hamburg

Tel: ++49 40 319 42 49

Fax: ++ 49 40 31 04 75

www.Romnews.com

Signatories:

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