May 13- Annual Lety Bus Trip

Official memorial flowers curtosy of the Czech State- President Klaus



Charles University Student Spring 2008-
( From Left: Me,Olivia Sandoval, Johanna Neumann, Damaris Reyes )
finally a post that is not a dementia infused mindrant!

My Roma thesis is coming to an end, and unfortunately I never got to apply it to the extent that professor and I envisioned. I emailed a colleague of Dominik's who is working in a village in Slovakia to come visit, help observe for a week but my lacking of language skills both Czech and Romani really hindered anything. Calling local school, like in Smichov ( many Roma ghetto schools) to teach also failed, so my research was just that, could have been done from NY, which really made me feel shitty. But we have an interview with a special school teacher set up which will be interesting.

So the annual bus trip to Lety would be the only thing that ended this primary source to all my research and provide me with a first hand experience of almost 5 months of research,reading,writing.thinking etc.

MAY 13 ANNUAL LETY BUS TRIP

Lety was a Czech run concentration camp, in the late 1930s. At first just " workshy" males were easily arrested and brought there but.
The messed up part, adding ultimate insult to injury, the site of all the victims , instead of being made into a memorial, a place of reverence a pig farm was constructed there instead in the 1970s by the instated Communist regime.


SO i got to meet Paul Polansky, i remembered how entranced i got in his book The Storm, a historically accurate yet fictional account of Roma living in the region of Lety, by the town of Pisek, working the Hapsburg owned land, which was sold to the Czech government to begin building the concentration camp.

Official press release
On 13.5.2008 at 12:00, the Committee for the Compensation of the Romani Holocaust (VPORH) will hold a commemorative ceremony for the Romani victims of Nazism at the burial site of the former concentration camp for Roma at Lety by Písek (next to the pig farm).

_en_k R__i_ka, VPORH president, responded today to recent proposals for how to deal with the Lety issue as follows: “One fine day, a modest but dignified memorial will stand at that site. There will be not a trace of a pig farm left. No one can prevent this. It is unacceptable to the former Romani prisoners of the camp and to the relatives of the camp’s victims to propose building a museum next to the pig farm and leaving the pig farm where it is. The only correct solution is to remove the pig farm from this place of reverence. We will then provide our own monument.”

Participation at the commemorative ceremony has been confirmed by the following dignitaries, among others:

• Romani Rose, President, Central Council of German Sinti and Roma
• Felix Kolmer, Vice-Chair, International Auschwitz Committee
• A representative of the Office of the President of the Czech Republic
• Senator Petr Pithart, Vice-Chair of the Senate of the Czech Republic
• A representative of the Chamber of Deputies of the Czech Republic
• D_amila Stehlíková, Czech Human Rights and Minorities Minister
• Ond_ej Li_ka, Czech Minister for Education, Youth and Sport
• A representative of the German Embassy in Prague
• A representative of the Hungarian Embassy in Prague
• A representative of the Polish Embassy in Prague
• A representative of the Austrian Embassy in Prague
• A representative of the Slovak Embassy in Prague


Links to the press and more coverage of the eventful day ;)
http://video.respekt.cz/
http://www.romea.cz/english/index.php?id=detail&detail=2007_896
http://www.romea.cz/index.php?id=detail&detail=2007_4267

The site of the pig farm