In the Czech Republic, the genocide of Roma and Sinti during the Second World War is officially recognised. The most commonly used terms include “Roma Holocaust”, “Holocaust of the Roma and Sinti”, and “Genocide of the Roma and Sinti”. The term “Porrajmos” is also used by some Roma groups and organisations, although it remains debated. The Czech Parliament and Government have repeatedly acknowledged the persecution and genocide of Roma and Sinti during the Second World War. The opening of the Memorial to the Holocaust of the Roma and Sinti in Bohemia at Lety u Písku in May 2024 represented the culmination of decades of advocacy by Roma survivors, descendants, civil society organisations and international actors, transforming one of Europe's most contested sites of Roma memory into a national institution of remembrance.
The Czech Republic is a member of the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (https://holocaustremembrance.com/countries/czech-republic, which has contributed to strengthening cooperation between state institutions and civil society actors, as well as to expanding Holocaust education and protection of sites connected with the genocide of Roma.
Although the genocide of Roma and Sinti is officially recognised in the Czech Republic, this recognition should be understood against a longer history of mnemonic marginalisation. Johana Černochová (2021) argues that the Roma Holocaust was not simply “forgotten”, but rather ignored and excluded from dominant Czech narratives of public memory. The case of Lety u Písku became a key site of contestation, where disputes concerned not only commemoration itself, but also the very interpretation of the camp and the place of Roma suffering in Czech national memory.
Czech remembrance of the Roma and Sinti genocide has moved from marginalisation, denial and contested memory towards gradual institutionalisation, especially through the Lety and Hodonín memorials, but education and public awareness remain uneven and incomplete.
Data (camps locations, Remembrance places, measures etc.)
Historical background:
The First Czechoslovak Republic (1918–1939) attempted to resolve what was then officially referred to as “the Gypsy question” by issuing the 1927 “Law on Wandering Gypsies”. Although introduced in democratic Czechoslovakia, the Act created administrative tools—including compulsory registration, fingerprinting and police surveillance—that were later exploited by Nazi authorities to facilitate the racial persecution of Roma and Sinti. In practice, the law required Roma and Sinti to obtain special identification documents and permission to stay overnight. While its stated aim was to “civilise” their way of life, it significantly restricted their civil liberties and reflected the discriminatory attitudes of the period toward Roma as a group.
A significant number of Roma settled in the Czech lands or passed through them in a semi-itinerant way of life. Those who settled worked as bricklayers, tinkers, blacksmiths, trough-makers, road-menders, musicians and in other occupations for which they could obtain local permission.
Before the Second World War, many Roma had limited access to formal education and faced discrimination in majority society. Even with education, they often encountered serious barriers to employment and social inclusion.
The first exceptional anti-Roma measure in the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia was the 1939 edict of the Ministry of the Interior ordering Roma to settle and abandon an itinerant way of life. Anyone who did not comply could be sent to labour camps. In Bohemia, the relevant camp was Lety; in Moravia, it was Hodonín. With the Decree on the Preventive Fight against Criminality in 1942, the Protectorate government introduced police detention based on the German Reich model. Detention took place in camps including Lety, Hodonín, Prague-Ruzyně and Pardubice, and in the concentration camp Auschwitz I.
According to the census of 2 August 1942, more than 6,500 Roma and Sinti from the Protectorate were registered. A smaller part of them were sent to the newly opened so-called “Gypsy camps” in Lety and Hodonín, which had previously functioned as labour or collection camps.
The Lety camp was intended for the concentration of Roma and Sinti from Bohemia labelled as “anti-social”. Historical data used in earlier CoE material recorded 1,256 prisoners, including 36 children born there to imprisoned mothers. Updated information from the Museum of Romani Culture gives the total as around 1,300 people. Debilitating work, constant hunger, overcrowded and insect-infested barracks, and the poor health of prisoners contributed to illness and death. A total of 326 men, women and children died in the camp. Transports were organised for other prisoners, many of whom did not survive the war. More than 500 Roma and Sinti were deported from Lety to Auschwitz-Birkenau.
The Hodonín camp was intended for the internment of Roma and Sinti from Moravia labelled as “anti-social”. Earlier CoE material recorded 1,396 prisoners, including 34 children born there. Of this number, 207 prisoners died and 855 were sent to Auschwitz. The first transport of 45 men and 30 women was organised on 7 December 1942 to Auschwitz. Later transports went to the so-called “Gypsy camp” at Auschwitz-Birkenau, including the large transport of 21/22 August 1943, when hundreds of prisoners were deported from Hodonín.
The commandant of the “Gypsy camp” in Lety was Captain J. Janovský. The commandant of the camp in Hodonín was S. Blahynka. Both camps were run by Czech personnel, and none of them were punished after 1945.
The majority of Roma who had permanent residence and could demonstrate steady work remained free for a time after the 1942 census. Their deportation followed two edicts issued by the Reich Ministry of the Interior at the turn of 1942–1943.
In March 1943, a substantial part of Roma from the Protectorate were deported: first from Moravia, then from Bohemia, and then from both areas together. The second stage of deportations included transports in May, August and October 1943. The final Roma were deported from the Protectorate either in smaller transports or individually.
The files of the so-called “Gypsy camp” at Auschwitz-Birkenau recorded the names of 4,493 Roma from the Protectorate. Those who had a chance of survival were mainly people transferred to work in other concentration camps, including Auschwitz I, Natzweiler, Flossenbürg, Buchenwald and Ravensbrück, and later to Dora, Dachau, Neuengamme, Bergen-Belsen, Mauthausen and other camps.
After liberation in 1945, only a small number of Roma from the Czech lands returned home. Earlier CoE material states that only 583 Roma men and women returned. The original Roma and Sinti population in the Czech lands was thus almost annihilated during the Nazi occupation. A similar fate befell Roma and Sinti in the annexed Sudetenland.
Remembrance places
Main camp sites
The two most important sites connected with the genocide of Roma and Sinti in the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia are:
Lety u Písku, the former so-called “Gypsy camp” for Roma and Sinti from Bohemia.
Hodonín u Kunštátu, the former so-called “Gypsy camp” for Roma and Sinti from Moravia.
Both camps operated in 1942–1943 and functioned as places of internment and racial persecution serving as transit camps preceding deportation to Auschwitz II–Birkenau. The Museum of Romani Culture describes them as the two locations where entire families of Roma and Sinti from Bohemia and Moravia were forcibly concentrated before being transported to Auschwitz-Birkenau.
Lety u Písku is currently the most significant site of remembrance of the Roma and Sinti Holocaust in the Czech Republic. The site is connected with the former Protectorate so-called “Gypsy camp”, which operated between August 1942 and August 1943. Approximately 1,309 Roma and Sinti prisoners passed through the camp between August 1942 and August 1943. According to the Museum of Romani Culture, 326 people died there, most of them children, and more than 500 Roma and Sinti were deported from Lety to Auschwitz II-Birkenau.
A monument dedicated to the victims of the camp, consisting of several stones with inscriptions, was unveiled on 13 May 1995 on the initiative of the Museum of Romani Culture. On that occasion, President Václav Havel delivered a speech emphasising the broader societal implications of remembrance: “If we do not face up to racist evil at the moment of its first, apparently innocent, manifestations, it will grow into a phenomenon that is truly dangerous, serious, and threatening to all of society, and we risk not being able to face up to that evil later on, or only being able to face up to it at the cost of more human victims. Even today, we sometimes hear people calling ‘Gypsies to the gas chambers’. Even today, we can observe indifference to these calls, quiet support for those who are yelling them, cowardly spectators, the renewal of divisions between people according to their ethnic origin. All of this must be faced up to again and again, because it is the tried-and-true territory of racism.”
For several decades, the site was marked by controversy because a large industrial pig farm had been built on the grounds of the former camp in the 1970s. This became a symbol of the marginalisation of Roma suffering in Czech public memory and a focal point of long-term advocacy by Roma organisations, survivors’ families, human rights actors and international institutions.
A major policy turning point came with the Czech Government resolution of 2017 to purchase the pig farm and transform the site into a dignified memorial. The farm was subsequently removed, and the site underwent archaeological research and redevelopment. Archaeological excavations conducted between 2018 and 2019 uncovered structural remains, personal belongings and traces of camp infrastructure, substantially enriching historical knowledge of the site and informing the design of the new memorial. The Museum of Romani Culture has administered both the former pig farm site and the earlier cultural monument area connected with Lety since 2018.
In 2024, the Lety u Písku Memorial to the Holocaust of the Roma and Sinti in Bohemia was opened and became a new branch of the Museum of Romani Culture. The memorial includes a visitor centre, permanent exhibitions, a memory trail, spaces for reflection, and educational facilities. The memorial serves as a central site for national and international commemorations and as an educational and public-history institution.
Recent scholarship interprets the opening of the Lety Memorial not only as the creation of a new museum branch, but also as an act of delayed reconciliation and symbolic redress. Martyna Wasiuta (2024) emphasises that the memorial was opened only in 2024, eighty-one years after the destruction of the Czech Roma and Sinti community, and that its creation came much later than major Czech memorial sites dedicated to Jewish and Czech victims of Nazi crimes. In this sense, Lety marks both an institutional breakthrough and a response to decades of unequal recognition. The transformation of Lety u Písku represents a key example of the transition from contested and neglected memory to institutionalised, state-supported remembrance and public history.
Hodonín u Kunštátu is the second key site of the Roma genocide in the Czech Republic. The camp functioned between 1942 and 1943 as the main internment site for Roma and Sinti from Moravia. Today, it is administered by the Museum of Romani Culture as the Hodonín u Kunštátu Memorial to the Holocaust of the Roma and Sinti in Moravia.
The Protectorate so-called “Gypsy camp” in Hodonín u Kunštátu opened on 2 August 1942. The establishment followed the Protectorate implementation of the Reich criminal-police directive "Bekämpfung der Zigeunerplage" ("Combating the Gypsy Menace"), which institutionalised racial persecution of Roma and Sinti. According to the wartime registration, around 6,500 persons defined as “gypsies and gypsy mixed-race persons” were recorded in the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia. Some Roma and Sinti, together with their families, were considered to be “living the Gypsy way” and were interned in the newly opened so-called “Gypsy camps” from August 1942.
The Hodonín camp was established on the site of a former punitive labour camp, opened on 10 August 1940, and a collection camp, operating from 1 January 1942. These earlier camps served to implement a distorted social policy through the temporary detention of adult men labelled as “work-shy” or “asocial” and the exploitation of their labour. Out of the total of 1,032 inmates who passed through the disciplinary labour and collection camp, 167, or 16%, were marked in the camp records with the letter “C”, meaning “Gypsies”.
A monument dedicated to the memory of the victims of the so-called “Gypsy camp” was unveiled on 17 August 1997 on the initiative of the Museum of Romani Culture. In January 2018, the Museum of Romani Culture took over the grounds of the memorial from the Office for Government Representation in Property Affairs and became responsible for operating the site for the public, including preparing exhibitions and educational activities.
The Hodonín Memorial opened to the public as a memorial site, and in 2021 an extensive permanent exhibition entitled Camp Hodonín u Kunštátu: The Intersection of Tragic Fates 1940–1950 was opened. The memorial hosts exhibitions, lectures, concerts, commemorative acts and educational programmes for schools.The memorial includes:
exhibitions (including Hodonín u Kunštátu Camp: Intersecting Tragedies 1940–1950),
commemorative spaces,
educational activities.
The so called “Gypsy Camps” in Lety and Hodonín – overview in numbers:
Lety
Total of imprisoned individuals: 1,309 people.
Died in the camp: 326 individuals;
Children born in the camp: 36 (historians debate exact survival figures)
Successful escapes: 60.
People released from the camp: 313 people.
Number of Roma transported to the “Gypsy Camp“ in Auschwitz II (Birkenau) with the mass transport from 4 May 1943: 420 individuals.
Total number of Roma transported to Auschwitz from the camp: 533 individuals.
Camp officially closed on: 9 August 1943
Hodonín
Total of imprisoned individuals: 1,396 people.
Died in the camp: 207 individuals.
Children born in the camp / Survived: 34/1 children.
Successful escapes: 53.
People released from the camp: 262 people.
Number of Roma transported to the “Gypsy Camp“ in Auschwitz II (Birkenau) with the mass transport from 21 August 1943: 748 individuals.
Total number of Roma transported to Auschwitz from the camp: 849 individuals.
Camp officially closed on: 1 December 1943.
Other remembrance sites
Mirovice – burial site of victims from Lety
Uherčice – deportation memorial (7 March 1943)
Černovice – burial site connected to Hodonín
Bohusudov – memorial to deported Roma
These sites are primarily used for local commemorations and educational activities.
Mirovice
A memorial plate at the cemetery is to commemorate buried victims from the so called “Gypsy Camp” in Lety. It was unveiled by the initiative of the Committee for the compensation of Romani Holocaust victims.
Uherčice
A memorial plate at the cemetery is to commemorate the deported Roma from this village to Auschwitz-Birkenau on the 7th of March 1943. Unveiled on the 30th of May 2000 by initiative of the municipality.
Černovice
Memorial plate at the cemetery is to commemorate buried victims from the so called “Gypsy Camp” in Hodonín. Unveiled on the 16th of May 1998 by initiative of the Museum of Romani Culture.
Bohusudov
A memorial monument is to commemorate the deported Roma from this village to Auschwitz-Birkenau. Unveiled on the 29th of September 1985 by initiative of the local Union of the Anti-Fascist Warriors from the town Telč.
Specialised institution, commission, research centre etc., dealing with this issue
Museum of Romani Culture, Brno
The Museum conducts research, publishes and provides lectures about the genocide of Roma and Sinti for elementary schools, secondary schools, university students and the wider public. In 2007, it opened the part of its permanent exhibition The Story of the Roma dedicated to the Nazi genocide of Roma. This section, Romengro murdaripen – The Holocaust, presents the persecution of Roma during the Second World War, especially in the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia, the Slovak State and Germany. It uses explanatory texts, period photographs, eyewitness memories and official documents.
The permanent exhibition serves both as a place of remembrance and as a basis for educational activities. It was developed with support from the Czech Government, the Czech-German Fund for the Future and international Holocaust education frameworks.
Since 2000, the Museum has cooperated with the Ministry of Education, the Terezín Memorial and the Jewish Museum in Prague on seminars for teachers known as “How to Teach about the Holocaust”. The Museum has also produced educational and travelling exhibitions, including the 2011 exhibition Genocide of the Roma during the Second World War, consisting of photographs, texts and a short film with interviews with Roma survivors.
The Museum currently administers the Lety u Písku Memorial to the Holocaust of the Roma and Sinti in Bohemia and the Hodonín u Kunštátu Memorial to the Holocaust of the Roma and Sinti in Moravia.
Lety u Písku Memorial to the Holocaust of the Roma and Sinti in Bohemia
The Lety Memorial is a branch of the Museum of Romani Culture. It opened to the public in May 2024. It includes a visitor centre, permanent exhibitions, a memory trail, educational facilities and spaces for commemoration. The project was supported, among others, by the EEA and Norway Grants. The memorial is one of the most important current institutions for Roma and Sinti Holocaust remembrance in Central Europe.
Hodonín u Kunštátu Memorial to the Holocaust of the Roma and Sinti in Moravia
The Hodonín Memorial is also administered by the Museum of Romani Culture. It is an authentic site of the former Protectorate so-called “Gypsy camp”. The current memorial presents the history of the site between 1940 and 1950 and offers exhibitions, lectures, commemorative events and educational programmes for schools.
Centre of Roma and Sinti in Prague
The Centre for the Roma and Sinti in Prague (CRSP) was created in 2020 as a new branch of the Museum of Romani Culture (MRK) for the implementation of a project supported by Norway Grants. The Centre focuses on the history of the indigenous Roma and Sinti in the Czech lands, with particular attention to the Holocaust period, intergenerational memory and the wishes of descendants of survivors. The initiative is linked to the legacy of Roma activists and descendants of survivors, including Čeněk Růžička.
Prague Forum / Prague Centre for Romani Histories
The Prague Forum for Romani Histories / Prague Centre for Romani Histories is an academic and public-history initiative focused on Romani histories, memory and knowledge production. It organises seminars, exhibitions, public discussions and research activities, including work connected with the Holocaust of Roma and Sinti and its intergenerational consequences. IHRA lists the Prague Forum for Romani Histories as a relevant research initiative in the Czech Republic.
According to IHRA, academic Holocaust research in the Czech Republic is conducted mainly by institutions such as the Institute of Contemporary History and the Masaryk Institute and Archives of the Czech Academy of Sciences, alongside universities, museums and non-profit organisations. IHRA also notes that outputs are increasingly available online.
Committee for the Redress of the Roma Holocaust (Výbor pro odškodnění romského holocaustu)
The Committee for the Redress of the Roma Holocaust
Všehrdova 11
118 00 Prague 1
Telephone: +420 257 327 871
The Committee for the Redress of the Roma Holocaust was established in 1998 as an association representing the interests of surviving Roma Holocaust victims and relatives of victims in the Czech Republic. It played a crucial role in the long-term struggle to make the former concentration camp sites at Lety and Hodonín dignified places of remembrance.
The Committee’s advocacy focused especially on the removal of the pig farm from Lety, public recognition of Roma victims, compensation and the dignity of survivors and descendants. Its work, together with that of other Roma organisations and international actors, contributed significantly to the eventual purchase of the pig farm and the establishment of the new memorial.
Holocaust remembrance in general is officially recognised in Act No. 245/2000 Coll. of 29 June 2000 on public holidays, other holidays, significant days and days of rest. The Czech Republic observes 27 January as the Memorial Day for the Victims of the Holocaust and Prevention of Crimes against Humanity.
The genocide of Roma and Sinti is commemorated through several important dates and practices:
27 January– International Holocaust Remembrance Day / Memorial Day for the Victims of the Holocaust and Prevention of Crimes against Humanity. Roma and Sinti victims are commemorated within broader Holocaust remembrance events. The Museum of Romani Culture regularly organises special events on this day.
7 March – commemoration of the first transport of Roma from Brno to Auschwitz-Birkenau in 1943. The Museum of Romani Culture commemorates this date through events dedicated to Roma witnesses and survivors, government and local representatives, representatives of the Jewish minority and the wider public.
May / 13 May – Lety commemoration. The annual commemoration at Lety recalls victims of the former so-called “Gypsy camp”. The original Lety monument was unveiled on 13 May 1995. In 2024, the traditional commemoration was held on 12 May, when the new Lety Memorial opened to the public.
2 August – European Roma Holocaust Memorial Day. This date marks the liquidation of the so-called “Gypsy Family Camp” in Auschwitz-Birkenau in 1944. It is increasingly recognised within European remembrance frameworks and is also reflected in Czech civil society, museum and public commemorations.
21 August – commemoration connected with the mass transport from Hodonín u Kunštátu to Auschwitz-Birkenau in 1943. The Museum of Romani Culture resumed annual commemorative gatherings at Hodonín in 1995, usually on the Sunday closest to 21 August. The commemorations take place at or near the former burial site and memorial area.
The commemoration of Roma and Sinti victims has become more institutionalised in recent years through the opening of the Lety Memorial, the operation of the Hodonín Memorial, regular public ceremonies, and the participation of state representatives, Roma organisations and international partners.
Testimonies
The Museum of Romani Culture has collected audio and video testimonies of Roma survivors since the 1990s. Earlier CoE material described the collection as including around 200 hours of video and 300 hours of audio testimonies. These testimonies have been used in research, exhibitions, educational activities and, in some cases, compensation procedures.
Some Roma survivors have cooperated with the Museum on educational activities. The story of Emilie Holomková, known as Elina, a Czech Roma survivor, has been presented in online exhibitions and publications.
In recent years, testimony work has expanded beyond institutional archives to include dedicated digital platforms, searchable databases and oral history projects.
Developed by ROMEA in cooperation with scholars and Roma researchers, the platform provides video interviews, transcripts and biographical materials documenting the life histories of Roma in the Czech Republic and Slovakia.
The project is based on in-depth life-story interviews recorded in the natural environments of the narrators, following a structured oral history methodology. The testimonies cover a wide temporal scope, including experiences of persecution during the Second World War, deportations and the genocide of Roma and Sinti, post-war developments, socialist-era marginalisation, Roma mobilisation in the late socialist period, post-1989 transformations and contemporary issues.
The archive includes testimonies of Czech Roma, Slovak Roma, Sinti and Olah Roma communities, reflecting diverse experiences and trajectories. As of recent data, the project has recorded dozens of interviews, preserved in full form in archival collections and published online in curated excerpts, accompanied by contextual information and transcripts.
Importantly, Paměť Romů represents a shift towards community-based and participatory memory work, involving Roma researchers, interviewers and narrators. The project documents not only wartime persecution but also long-term structural discrimination, social change and Roma agency.
Another important resource is the Database of Roma Victims of the Holocaust, developed in cooperation with the Terezín Initiative Institute and associated digital documentation projects. The database provides structured biographical information on Roma victims of Nazi persecution and genocide and contributes to the identification, documentation and public visibility of victims whose names and life stories were long absent from mainstream Holocaust remembrance.
The holocaust.cz portal, including its Victims Database, remains another key online resource. It contains extensive documentation on victims of Nazi persecution, including persons connected with Lety u Písku, Terezín and other ghettos, camps and persecution sites.
The Memory of Nations project by Post Bellum is also identified by IHRA as an important non-governmental initiative recording and making accessible eyewitness testimonies: https://www.memoryofnations.eu/en/about-project.
Current initiatives increasingly focus not only on survivors but also on descendants and intergenerational memory. The Centre of Roma and Sinti in Prague, the Stories of Survivors exhibition, Paměť Romů, the Database of Roma Victims of the Holocaust, holocaust.cz, and Memory of Nations together illustrate a broader shift towards family histories, descendant testimony, digital access to sources and the recognition of Roma voices as central to historical knowledge production.
Although references to the Roma Holocaust exist within framework educational programmes and museum education, there is no mandatory standalone curricular component devoted specifically to the genocide of Roma and Sinti, resulting in considerable variation between schools.
IHRA states that the Czech Republic has supported lifelong learning on the Holocaust for primary and secondary school teachers and that Czech IHRA membership has contributed to education, remembrance and research on the Holocaust and genocide of the Roma.
Recent Council of Europe information also indicates that revised Czech framework educational materials include references to Roma history, the Lety u Písku memorial and media stereotypes. The practical implementation of this content depends on schools, teachers, textbooks and available educational resources.
Empirical research by Johana Černochová (2024) shows that the presence of the Roma and Sinti genocide in Czech education remains weak. In her 2020–2021 survey of 385 students from 38 schools in 11 Czech towns, only 55% of respondents stated that they had heard about the Roma Holocaust, and many added that they knew almost nothing about it. More than 80% did not know any former concentration camp sites for Roma and Sinti, 95% had never heard a personal testimony of a Roma Holocaust survivor, and more than 80% stated that they had not learned about Romani history at school. These findings suggest that existing educational initiatives have not yet translated into consistent educational outcomes across schools.
Inclusion of the topic in the school textbooks
The genocide of Roma and Sinti is included in some school textbooks and complementary educational materials in the Czech Republic. However, its coverage remains limited and is often significantly shorter than that devoted to the Holocaust of Jews. In many cases, Roma history is addressed only briefly, and the genocide of Roma and Sinti is presented as a minor component within broader Holocaust narratives.
A key challenge is the lack of a systematic and contextualised presentation of Roma history. Important aspects are frequently underrepresented or omitted, including pre-war persecution, the functioning of camps such as Lety u Písku and Hodonín u Kunštátu, deportations to Auschwitz II-Birkenau, survivor testimonies and post-war struggles for recognition and remembrance. As a result, the genocide of Roma and Sinti is often not presented as an integral part of European history, but rather as a marginal or supplementary topic within Holocaust education. Recent analyses indicate that Roma are still more frequently presented as passive victims than as historical actors with their own agency and experiences.
Training of teachers and education professionals
The topic of the Holocaust, including the genocide of Roma and Sinti, is incorporated into the continuous professional development of teachers in the Czech Republic. Training is provided through seminars and courses organised by institutions such as the Terezín Memorial, the Ministry of Education, Youth and Sports of the Czech Republic, the Jewish Museum in Prague and the Museum of Romani Culture. These activities focus on methods of teaching about the Holocaust and its different victim groups.
The Museum of Romani Culture plays a central role in education on the genocide of Roma and Sinti. It provides lectures, seminars and methodological support for teachers, pupils, university students and the wider public, and has held the status of an accredited institution for teacher training since 2009. Its educational activities include lectures, workshops and programmes based on archival materials, testimonies and visual sources. The documentary These Are Painful Memories (2002), which combines historical analysis with testimonies of Roma survivors, is used as an educational tool.
Educational activities are also carried out at memorial sites, including Hodonín u Kunštátu Memorial and Lety u Písku Memorial, where guided visits, workshops, exhibitions and commemorative events are organised. Site-based learning at Lety u Písku and Hodonín u Kunštátu has become an increasingly important pedagogical tool following the opening of the new memorials.
Educational resources used in the Czech Republic include the Czech translation of the IHRA Recommendations for Teaching and Learning about the Holocaust, as well as digital and interactive tools such as Czechoslovakia 38–89: Assassination, HistoryLab and the multimedia set Images of War. These support critical thinking and engagement with historical sources, including the Roma experience.
Recent initiatives include the project Stories of Romani Holocaust Survivors, implemented by Slovo 21 in cooperation with the Museum of Romani Culture. The project includes educational programmes for secondary schools and activities engaging descendants of survivors.
Despite these developments, challenges remain. Teachers may lack sufficient training, confidence and appropriate materials to address the genocide of Roma and Sinti. In addition, persistent prejudices and the broader social climate may influence the extent to which schools engage with Roma history. As a result, the topic often remains marginal within Holocaust education despite the existence of institutional frameworks and educational resources.
Particular activities undertaken at the level of education institutions
The Museum of Romani Culture’s departments of education and history provide students and the wider public with lectures on Roma history, culture, traditions and the Roma genocide. These activities include historical lectures, work with documents, photographs, legal edicts, letters and contemporary press materials, as well as film screenings followed by discussion.
One historically important educational tool is the documentary These Are Painful Memories / ...to jsou těžké vzpomínky, produced in 2002 in cooperation between the Museum, Association Film and Sociology and Czech Television, with support from the Czech-German Fund for the Future, the Foundation for Holocaust Victims and the Open Society Fund Prague. The documentary uses historical facts and video testimonies of Roma survivors.
The Museum’s education department has developed special programmes focusing on the period 1939–1945. Educational activities now also take place at the Lety and Hodonín memorials. These include guided tours, exhibitions, workshops, commemorative events, school programmes and public-history activities. Hodonín offers educational programmes for schools and hosts lectures, concerts and commemorative acts.
A recent example is the Stories of Romani Holocaust Survivors project, implemented by Slovo 21 in cooperation with the Museum of Romani Culture. The project involves descendants of Romani Holocaust survivors and includes educational programmes for secondary school students as well as an exhibition at Hodonín u Kunštátu, planned to be accessible until 31 October 2025.
International educational cooperation has also developed. In 2024, an international programme for educators and museum professionals on the memory of the Holocaust of Roma and Sinti included meetings in Brno and Hodonín u Kunštátu, using the Hodonín memorial as a starting point for discussion about post-war memory and remembrance of the Roma genocide in the Czech Republic.
Initiatives of the civil society
Historical research and early memory work
After the Second World War, the existence of the so-called “Gypsy camps” in Lety u Písku and Hodonín u Kunštátu remained largely absent from Czech public memory outside the Romani community and a small circle of specialised researchers. This absence was shaped by several factors, including the almost complete annihilation of the pre-war Czech Roma and Sinti population, post-war population changes, and the marginal position of Roma experiences within dominant narratives of the Second World War.
From the 1970s onwards, Czech historian Ctibor Nečas began systematically researching and documenting the persecution of Roma during the Nazi occupation, including the functioning of the camps in Lety and Hodonín. His pioneering work was later complemented by research undertaken by the Museum of Romani Culture, archaeologists, oral historians and memory scholars, considerably broadening understanding of both persecution and post-war remembrance.. His work laid the foundations for subsequent scholarship and contributed to the gradual emergence of the topic within academic discourse. However, this knowledge remained largely confined to specialist circles and did not translate into broader public awareness or education.
A more visible shift occurred in the 1990s, when the history of Lety and Hodonín began to enter public debate. Publications such as Tíživé mlčení (Black Silence) by Paul Polansky and A nikdo vám nebude věřit (And No One Will Believe You) by Markus Pape brought survivor testimonies and archival materials into the public sphere. These works played an important role in raising awareness and initiating wider societal discussion about the persecution of Roma and the role of Czech institutions during the war.
Recent research suggests that the earlier absence of this history from public discourse should not be understood simply as “forgetting”, but rather as a form of marginalisation and exclusion. Johana Černochová shows that the Holocaust of the Roma and Sinti remained largely omitted from public narratives and education, and that debates surrounding Lety were marked by instances of denial and trivialisation. She describes these tensions as a struggle over how the past should be interpreted and remembered, in which Roma experiences were often questioned or minimised.
At the same time, more recent analyses of memorialisation processes indicate that recognition of the Roma and Sinti genocide in the Czech Republic developed unevenly and over a long period of time. The cases of Lety u Písku and Hodonín u Kunštátu illustrate different trajectories of remembrance, shaped by varying institutional, political and social dynamics. While both sites are now administered by the Museum of Romani Culture and function as memorials, their transformation into recognised places of remembrance was gradual and, particularly in the case of Lety, accompanied by public controversy and long-term advocacy by Roma activists and civil society actors.
Civil society mobilisation and the Lety u Písku site
A central focus of civil society mobilisation in the Czech Republic has been the site of the former camp at Lety u Písku. In the 1970s, a large-scale industrial pig farm was built on the site of the former camp and operated there for decades. Its presence became one of the most visible symbols of the marginalisation of Roma and Sinti suffering in Czech public memory.
Romani survivors, descendants, activists and civil society organisations campaigned for many years for the removal of the pig farm and the creation of a dignified memorial. A particularly important role was played by the Committee for the Redress of the Roma Holocaust, associated above all with Čeněk Růžička, himself the son of survivors. The Committee repeatedly drew public attention to the suffering of Czech Roma and Sinti in the camps at Lety and Hodonín and advocated both remembrance and redress.
The issue gained international visibility in the 1990s and 2000s. Public attention was strengthened by research, activism and international advocacy, including the work of Paul Polansky and Romani organisations. In 2005, the European Parliament criticised the continued existence of the pig farm and called for a dignified memorial at the site.
A major breakthrough came in 2017, when the Czech Government decided to purchase the pig farm. The last pigs were removed in March 2018, demolition began in July 2022, and the Memorial to the Holocaust of the Roma and Sinti in Bohemia was opened in 2024. The site is administered by the Museum of Romani Culture.
Contestation, denial and public discourse
Civil society initiatives have also responded to denial, distortion and minimisation of the Roma and Sinti genocide in public discourse. The Lety site repeatedly became a focal point of political controversy, including statements by public figures that questioned the nature of the camp or minimised the suffering of Roma victims.
Roma and human rights organisations, including ROMEA and other civil society actors, have countered such narratives through public statements, media work, legal complaints, advocacy and awareness-raising. These interventions have been important in maintaining public attention to the historical meaning of Lety and in challenging attempts to relativise or deny the racial persecution of Roma and Sinti. Černochová’s (2021) analysis shows that denial and trivialisation of Lety appeared not only on the margins of public debate, but also in statements by mainstream political actors. Narratives presenting Lety as “only” a labour camp rather than a concentration camp functioned as attempts to narrow, relativise or exclude Roma suffering from Czech public memory. This demonstrates that memory politics around Lety was closely connected with contemporary antigypsyism.
Educational and awareness-raising initiatives
Civil society actors have played an important role in education about the genocide of Roma and Sinti. The NGO Živá paměť / Living Memory is listed by IHRA as an organisation offering lectures on the Roma Holocaust and discussions with Roma eyewitnesses for primary and secondary school pupils and university students.
The Museum of Romani Culture has also developed educational work around Lety and Hodonín, including exhibitions, guided visits, school programmes and work with survivor testimony. The documentary These Are Painful Memories is an important educational resource based on testimonies of Roma survivors and historical materials.
A recent example is Stories of Survivors / Příběhy přeživších, implemented by Slovo 21 in cooperation with the Museum of Romani Culture. The project, running from 2024 to 2026, combines an exhibition, educational programmes, school workshops and Theatre of the Oppressed methods. According to Slovo 21, the programme is expected to reach 500 secondary school students over two years.
Contemporary civil society initiatives and digital memory
In recent years, memory work has increasingly included digital, archival and participatory approaches. ROMEA’s Paměť Romů / Memory of the Roma project, launched in 2016, documents Romani life stories and supports the transmission of historical memory through video testimonies.
Academic and research institutions have also contributed to this field. The Database of Testimonies of Roma and Sinti makes survivor testimonies available online, while the project Romani Voices for Recognition focuses on descendants of survivors and the struggle for recognition of the Roma Holocaust in the Czech Republic. The Paměť Romů (Memory of Roma) project represents one of the most important participatory oral-history initiatives in Central Europe, documenting not only wartime persecution but also post-war experiences, everyday life and intergenerational memory through filmed interviews and archival materials. By preserving the life stories of Roma witnesses and their descendants, the project makes a significant contribution to the documentation and public understanding of Roma history in the Czech Republic (https://www.pametromu.cz/). These developments point to a broader shift towards community-based memory work, digital access to testimonies and archives, intergenerational transmission of memory, and greater recognition of Roma voices in the production of historical knowledge.
Transnational and collaborative initiatives
Civil society and educational actors in the Czech Republic are also involved in international cooperation on Roma and Sinti genocide remembrance. In 2024, an international programme for educators and museum professionals on the memory of the Holocaust of Roma and Sinti included workshops in Brno and Hodonín u Kunštátu. The programme was linked to ERIAC, the Terezín Initiative Institute and other partners, and used Czech memorial sites as spaces for discussing remembrance, education and post-war memory.
Digital educational cooperation has also developed through resources such as romasintigenocide.eu, an international learning platform available in several languages, including Czech, and aimed at students, teachers and the wider public.
Together, these initiatives situate the Czech experience within a broader European framework and support the inclusion of the Roma and Sinti genocide in Holocaust education, public history and memory policies.
Factsheet on the Roma Genocide in Czechia
List of resources to download
