Remembrance day

Holocaust in general is officially recognized as an important day in 245/2000 Coll. of 29 June 2000 on public holidays, the other holidays, significant days and days of rest:

• 27th January: International Holocaust Remembrance Day. Every year the Museum of Romani Culture in Brno commemorates this day with special events.
• 7th March: at this moment there is a parliamentary initiative on-going, which attempts to recognize 7th March as an official day as the Commemoration day for victims of Roma persecution during the Second World War.

In the Czech Republic, the Holocaust was recognized and the term used is “Roma Holocaust” or “Holocaust of the Roma” or “Genocide of the Roma”; the term “Porrajmos” is also used by some Roma groups and organisations.

The commemoration of the Genocide of the Roma is observed primarily on Holocaust Remembrance Day on 27th January.

Every year the Museum of Romani Culture in Brno commemorates this day with special events. A parliamentary initiative is currently under exam, which attempts to recognize 7th March as an official day as the Commemoration day for victims of Roma persecution during the Second World War.

Every year the Museum of Romani Culture in Brno also commemorates the 7th of March, which is the date of the first transportation of the Roma people from Brno to Auschwitz-Birkenau in 1943. The museum prepares a commemorative afternoon in the museum’s exhibition hall dedicated to the history of the Genocide of the Roma for the Roma witnesses and survivors, delegates of the Czech Government and local politics, delegates of the Jewish minority and wide public.

Every year in April there is commemoration meeting in Lety, on the place of the former so-called “Gypsy Camp”, where the Roma witnesses and survivors, Roma representatives, delegates of the Czech Government and local politics, delegates of the Jewish minority and wide public met together to commemorate the Roma victims of the Genocide.

The Museum of Romani Culture in Brno also commemorates the 21st of August, which is the date of the first mass transportation of the Roma prisoners from the so-called “Gypsy Camp” in Hodonín to Auschwitz-Birkenau in 1943. The holly mess was prepared in the chapel of the village Hodonín, as well as a commemorative meeting on the former burying place with the mass graves near the camp, where the memorial site is since 1997. In the Czech Republic, there is a special Roma Holocaust working group, which works as an advisory committee of the Czech Ministry of Human Rights. This working group is trying to find and prepare data and solutions concerning the Lety and Hodonín camps – the most important Czech places of the Genocide of the Roma. There are plans to build there new information and navigation system, roads and a parking place. The Museum of Romani Culture in Brno has already initiated in the Czech Ministry of Culture the application for the declaration of the former Hodonín camp as a listed and protected building.

On 2nd August 2015, an official commemoration was held at the memorial at Lety by Písek in South Bohemia. Representatives of the Czechoslovak Hussite Church, the Education Ministry, the municipality of Lety, the Office of the Government and the Senate attended. In recent years political representatives across the spectrum there have agreed that it is not dignified for a pig farm to continue to stand on the former concentration camp site at Lety.

On 25 January 2018 the Museum of Romani Culture took over the grounds of the memorial at the Romani genocide site in Hodonín u Kunštátu from the Office for Government Representation in Property Affairs (ÚZSVM). The Museum became the administrator of the entire site and is in charge of running the memorial for the public, including building its exhibitions.

The former camp was located in the forest near Hodonín and was called Žalov (which roughly translated means "place of sadness"). First it was used as a disciplinary labor camp for the unemployed before being transformed into a so-called "Gypsy camp" in 1942.

In 2009, reconstruction began of the grounds of the former concentration camp and a plan was developed for the building of a memorial there. The construction of that memorial was entrusted to the Jan Amos Comenius National Pedagogical Museum and Library by a Czech Government resolution. The original, preserved building of the prisoner's barracks was in bad condition and therefore it apparently was necessary to demolish the original and produce a faithful replica of it. Nevertheless, the original barracks for the guards managed to be preserved as evidence of the past for future generations to recall the tragic history of this location and the Romani nation.

At the very centre of the space an Information Centre serve as a gathering place for visitors to learn more, not just about the history of the camp, but about the Holocaust and totalitarian regimes in general. The Museum is closely collaborating with many leading Czech historians, with the Museum of Romani Culture, and with the former prisoners and their surviving relatives.