Initiatives of the civil society

The work of historians:After the war, the existence of Romani camps was practically forgotten outside the Romani community, except by specialized historians. The whole community of Czech Romani was annihilated and the new ones, who came from Slovakia and Romania, had no knowledge of this tragedy. During the 1970s, a large factory pig farm was constructed near the site of the Lety camp. A tourist hotel has been built on the site of the Hodonín camp. In the 1970s and 1980s, Czech historians, notably Prof. Ctibor Nečas, researched and described the persecution of Roma during the Nazi occupation, including the camps in Lety and Hodonín. In 1992 the book Black Silence by Paul Polansky compiled historical records and testimonials of survivors. The book started heated discussions in the Czech Republic about Czech relations to the Romani and their history. The most recent book on Lety is 1997's And No One Will Believe You by Markus Pape.
 

Lety's pig farm:

Romani activists picked the pig farm as a symbol of the Czech stance toward the Romani, insisting it is a source of shame for the country internationally. They have repeatedly asked the government to relocate the farm. Their efforts gained further attention by a resolution of the European Parliament in 2005 asking the Czech Government to remove the farm. Opponents have criticized the massive cost of the farm's relocation, and insisted it has no impact on the actual life of the Romani people. They claim that the real intention of the activists is to extort money from the state and that the farm's removal would lead to a worsening of already tense relations between ethnic Czechs and Roma. In both 2005 and 2006, the Czech government announced its intention to buy and liquidate the farm, but has recently decided against it.On 10 Feburary 2015, right after the commemoration of the 70th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz on 27 January 1945, the ERTF together with the Czech NGO Slovo 21 and other European NGOs called for the removal of the pig farm on the Roma Genocide site in Lety u Pisku. More recently, organizations in the Czech Republic such as the Committee for the Redress of the Romani Holocaust, Dzeno Association, and Romea are working to keep the issue alive and defend the site from right-wing extremist political demonstrations.
In August 2014, Senator Okamura, member of the populist party Usvit (Dawn of Direct Democracy), insulted the Romani victims of the Holocaust, saying that the camp in Lety was not a Romani concentration camp as no one was ever killed there. These were not the first statements of this kind. Petra Edelmannova, chair of the defunct xenophobic National Party, held a similar discourse in 2006. In 2005, member of European Parliament Miloslav Randsdorf of the Communist Party also said that Lety was not a concentration camp: the Human Rights commissioner filed a criminal complaint against him but no prosecution followed. And finally, Vaclav Klaus, former President of the Czech Republic agreed with Randsdorf. The permissiveness in the public discourse, verging on the historical denial of the Roma genocide, is a transversal feature of the political spectrum. On 6 August 2014, first criminal charges were filed against Okamura by Simon Heller, a member of the Christian Democratic party (KDS). On 8 August, the ERTF together with other NGOs such as Konexe, Romea and Slovo 21 sent a letter to the Czech Prime Minister demanding Okamura’s waiver of parliamentary immunity, his resignation and the removal of the pig farm (currently standing on the former Lety camp). On 13 November 2014, after more criminal charges were filed against him, the police of the Czech Republic said that Okamura did not commit a crime, because his statement was partly based on “historically attested truths”.
 

Project "Living Memory": There is a project of the non-governmental organisation Živá paměť (Living Memory), which provides in cooperation with the Museum of Romani Culture in Brno, lectures about the Genocide of the Roma for elementary schools, high schools and also for university students. These lectures are held in the Museum or in the schools. The lectures about the Genocide of the Roma have two parts. The first part is the historical lecture about the Genocide of the Roma, and the second one consists of a screening of the documentary film called “...to jsou těžké vzpomínky” (These are painful memories). After the screening of this documentary there is a discussion about the topic. During the lecture some contemporary documents (official documents, edicts, regulations, personal letters, photographs, etc.) and contemporary articles from the newspapers are shown to the students and afterwards there is a debate about the nature of these documents and what they mean in practice. The documentary “...to jsou těžké vzpomínky” (These are painful memories) was made in 2002 in cooperation between the Museum, the Association Film and Sociology and the Czech television and thanks to the financial support of the Česko-německý fond budoucnosti (Czech-German Fund for the Future), Foundation for Holocaust Victims and Open Society Fund Prague. The Director is Mrs. Monika Rychlíková. This documentary uses beneath the historical facts also the videotestimonies of the Roma survivors saved in the Museum and in the Association Film and Sociology. The documentary lasts about 30 minutes.

Creative association for arts and culture drom's project “the Forgotten Genocide”:
In the spring of 2010 the Finnish NGO Drom Association organized in Helsinki an international series of events entitled "The Forgotten Genocide" dedicated to the Roma Holocaust. The president of Finland Tarja Halonen served as the patron of the project. In addition to the Goethe-Institut, the project involved the embassies of the Czech Republic, Austria and Sweden. The Embassy of Sweden provided support for the participation of the Anne Frank Foundation. The main event of was international scholarly seminar "The Roma and the Holocaust" on the history and present situation of the Roma held at the House of Science and Letters in Helsinki on 8 - 9 April 2010. As a neutral country Finland had the worthy opportunity to host these events focusing on the Roma Holocaust. Although the Roma Holocaust has been officially recognized, it isstill far from being processed historically and it is a subject that has remained completely unknown to many people. Other events in this connection consisted of the Barvalo Drom (Rich Road) exhibition at the Caisa Cultural Centre, presenting Roma history, culture and art in broad perspective, and the concert series Barvalo Drom with its main concert at the Savoy Theatre on 9 April. "The Forgotten Genocide" was the first series of events devoted to this theme in Finland and it gained significant visibility both nationally and internationally.

In November 2012 and November 2013, the Museum of Romani Culture organised with Erinnern.at (Austria) and Anne Frank House (The Netherlands), the International Conference on teaching material on the Roma Genocide. There were three target groups represented at the meetings: educational experts working at institutes related to the history of the Holocaust and/or the Roma genocide, teacher trainers that are working at universities or teacher training colleges, and educational authorities. The expertise of these different groups of experts contributed significantly to the development of the teaching material and of the implementation process. The project aimed to create a network of educators and policy makers from across Europe to generally support teaching about the genocide of the Roma in the institutions and countries that are part of the project, and in particular to further the implementation of the teaching materials "The Fate of the European Roma and Sinti during the Holocaust".