Archaeologists found a prisoner’s grave and burial pits in Lety

Lety - Archaeologists discovered graves of individuals in Lety near Písek, where a Romani concentration camp existed during the war. They uncovered one grave with the remains of a female prisoner under 40 years old, a grave of a newborn, whose skeletal remains were nearly unpreserved due to the shallow pit. They also found seven grave pits. According to written sources, there should be 120 prisoners buried at the site, including over 70 children, and the cemetery is expected to have an area of 400 square meters. This was stated to journalists today by archaeologists and representatives of the Museum of Romani Culture in Brno, which aims to build a memorial to the Romani Holocaust at the location where a former pig farm stands, and to open it by 2023.

The research established the locations of the victims' graves in the camp at Lety, where prisoners were buried in 1943. The team's leader, Pavel Vařeka from the University of West Bohemia, said they found that the so-called provisional cemetery is located in the area very close to the granite memorial. "It will be possible to precisely mark the location of the victims' cemetery. For the first time in Europe, graves of victims of Nazi persecution of the Roma and Sinti have been uncovered," Vařeka said.

Some remains are in deep pits, while others are buried shallowly. A few centimeters below the surface there may be children's graves. The scientists have found only individual graves in this section. "Mass graves should, according to preserved documentation, be on the other side to the northeast. We uncovered one grave in which a female prisoner under 40 years old was buried in a coffin; that grave is covered, and out of respect and at the request of the victims' relatives, we do not show the skeletal remains," Vařeka said.

He added that archaeologists uncovered a small sample; however, even that allows for an accurate reconstruction of the entire area. In the vicinity of the former pig farm, archaeologists will conduct further exploratory research, with results expected by the end of September. According to Vařeka, the discovery of the graves is of immense significance for the victims' relatives, as they finally know, after more than 70 years, where their loved ones were buried.

"For me as a relative, this is crucial, because until now we did not know where our family members were buried. Now we know where, albeit in an undignified manner, but at a dignified place. There remains the task of delineating the area where the graves are located, and since the children's grave was 20 centimeters below the surface, we will not allow anyone to walk over our graves," said Čeněk Růžička, chairman of the Committee for the Compensation of the Romani Holocaust, to ČTK. The Roma will fence the site and place a seven-meter-high Christian cross there.

The Museum of Romani Culture intends to announce an architectural competition in September for the design of the Romani Holocaust memorial at the site of the pig farm. It will evaluate the competition by the end of May, director Jana Horváthová said today. The pig farm should be demolished by the end of 2020. According to her, the demolition and archaeological survey will cost 111 million CZK. The memorial is expected to begin construction in 2021, and the museum plans to open the site in 2023. They have a promise of one million euros (approximately 25.8 million CZK) from Norwegian funds for the construction and half a million euros (nearly 13 million CZK) for exhibitions and activities.

According to historians, between August 1942 and May 1943, the camp at Lety accommodated 1,308 Roma, men, women, and children, of whom 327 died there, and over 500 ended up in Auschwitz. About 600 Roma returned from concentration camps after the war. Experts estimate that the Nazis exterminated 90 percent of Czech and Moravian Roma.

The camp was located near the site where the buildings of the pig farm currently stand, which was built starting in 1972 and covered an area of 7.1 hectares. Last year, the state purchased the pig farm for 450.8 million CZK.