Page 11 - bne_newspaper_August_25_2017

Central Europe
August 25, 2017 www.intellinews.com I Page 11
Czech government agrees to buy Romani Holocaust site
bne IntelliNews
The Czech cabinet approved on August 21 the pur- chase of the site of a concentration camp where Nazi Germany imprisoned Roma during the World War II, before transporting most of them to death camps.
The issue of whether to buy the pig farm that cur- rently occupies the site of the Lety camp, 80km south of Prague, has been a thorny issue since the collapse of communism. The late president Vaclav Havel and other officials unveiled a memo- rial at Lety in 1995 to the Romani genocide, or Porajmos, but the pig farm continued to operate.
Many Czechs feel no responsibility for the camp – at which some 300 died and from which 420 were transported to Auschwitz – even though it was largely guarded by Czechs.
There has been significant political opposition to spending money on buying out the pig farm. Not
Site of the Lety camp
surprisingly, the centre-left government has not publicised the conditions for the purchase of the farm from the AGPI firm.
The issue has generated bad publicity for the Czech Republic and highlighted the country’s con- tinuing problems with its treatment of the quarter of a million strong minority.
Half of the country’s Roma still live in ghettos, and they suffer discrimination in education, housing and jobs. Opinion polls show that Romanies are the most unpopular minority, and they face overt public racism, notably online.
Public racism has also been reflected in popular attitudes to Muslim migrants, and has pushed even the Social Democrat-led government to take a tough stance against the European Union's attempt to impose mandatory quotas for resettlement.
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