Lety began operating as a forced labour camp in 1940 under the German-administered Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia. In August 1942, it was designated as an internment camp for Roma, with a minimum of 1,300 Roma and Sinti1 passing through the site over the course of the war. At least 320 people died as a result of appalling living conditions, mistreatment, disease and malnutrition, and at least 500 were deported to Auschwitz. The camp was abandoned in August 1943.
After the war, the camp was not preserved, and only groups of victims and descendants kept its memory alive. In the 1970s, an industrial pig farm was built on the site, provoking debates about the most appropriate use of the land. In 1995, Czech President Václav Havel commemorated what had taken place in the camp and acknowledged the responsibility of Czechoslovak society in the deportation and genocide of Roma and Sinti. After almost two decades of discussions which saw the closing of the farm in 2018, the Lety Memorial Exhibition was inaugurated in 2024, preserving the history of both the camp and the former pig farm.
In 2025, considering Recommendation CM/Rec (2022)5 on passing on remembrance of the Holocaust and preventing crimes against humanity, it is our duty to protect and highlight the places of memory of the Holocaust and of those who resisted the crimes committed by the Nazis, their accomplices and collaborators. It involves remembering the victims, examining perpetrators and reflecting on how we have succeeded or failed to embed the remembrance of these places in our collective memory for the past 80 years. Behind this question lies the very democratic foundation of our societies. To remember is inevitably to reflect on the present.
1 The term “Roma and Travellers” is used at the Council of Europe to encompass the wide diversity of the groups covered by the work of the Council of Europe in this field: on the one hand a) Roma, Sinti/Manush, Calé, Kaale, Romanichals, Boyash/Rudari; b) Balkan Egyptians (Egyptians and Ashkali); c) Eastern groups (Dom, Lom and Abdal); and, on the other hand, groups such as Travellers, Yenish, and the populations designated under the administrative term “Gens du voyage”, as well as persons who identify themselves as Gypsies. The present is an explanatory footnote, not a definition of Roma and/or Travellers.
