The Museum of Romani Culture in the Czech Republic is preparing an education program for students that will run at the memorial site of the former concentration camp for Romani people in Lety u Písku. The program about the Holocaust of the Roma and Sinti will run from 21-24 April 2020 and again from 16 to 19 June 2020 directly on the grounds of the Memorial to the Holocaust of Roma and Sinti. The Museum announced the program on its website. “The education program will present the history of the site where the so-called ‘Gypsy Camp’ stood from 1942-1943 and will familiarize participants with the dismal living conditions there and with the importance of the camp in the context of what was termed the ‘solution to the Gypsy question’. Those attending will have the opportunity to see the grounds of the now-defunct pig farm that formerly occupied the site where the camp had been in operation, where the building of the new memorial is planned to take place,” the announcement reads. According to the Museum, the program will work with documents and photographs from the days when the camp was in operation and with the testimonies of eyewitnesses to its operation. Together, educators and students will open up the question of how such remembrance sites, which the grounds of the former camp are now considered to be, should be dealt with. The events associated with civil society’s attempt to close the pig farm will also be discussed during the program. In addition to focusing on historical findings, the program will focus on developing participants’ civic competences, creativity, and critical thinking skills. According to historians, 1 308 Romani children, men and women passed through the camp at Lety from August 1942 to May 1943, at least 327 of whom died there and more than 500 of whom were forcibly sent to the Auschwitz death camp. About 600 of those Romani people later returned from various concentration camps after the war.
Categories: Rechtsextremismus