The winning design of the memorial in Lety will be presented to the public in June

Brno - The design of the memorial to the Romani Holocaust in Lety near Písek has been decided. Representatives of the Museum of Romani Culture in Brno, which intends to build the memorial, will present the winning design to the public on Tuesday, June 9, at the Nostic Palace in Prague. Alica Sigmund Heráková, the museum's spokesperson, told ČTK today. The jury selected the winner from seven finalists. The museum aims to open the memorial in 2023.

A total of 42 proposals originally participated in the international landscape-architectural competition for the design of the memorial. Seven of them advanced to the second round. The proposals were submitted and evaluated anonymously.

Currently, a pig farm stands on the site of the former concentration camp for Romani people. A tender for its demolition should take place this year. The state allocated around 110 million crowns for the demolition, while the memorial itself is expected to cost several tens of millions. It will also include an exhibition. "Construction work in the area could start next year," the spokesperson stated.

According to the museum, the new memorial and exhibition are intended to honor the memory of the victims of the Holocaust of Roma and Sinti, to inform, educate, and stimulate discussion about the past, as well as the current social situation, and to address topics of discrimination against minorities and human rights.

During the war, Lety housed a Romani concentration camp. Under the communist regime, a pig farm was established there in the 1970s. The state purchased the pig farm for 450 million crowns two years ago from the company Agpi, which at that time had 13,000 pigs there. According to historians, from August 1942 to May 1943, 1,308 Romani people, men, women, and children, passed through the camp in Lety, of whom 327 died there and over five hundred ended up in Auschwitz.