Czech Romani Museum to take over place of former Nazi concentration camp from gov't in March

PRAGUE, Jan 9 (Xinhua) -- Czech Museum of Romani Culture will in March take over the site of Lety pig farm which is a place of a former Nazi concentration camp for the Roma, the museum's spokeswoman Kristina Kohoutova said in a press release on Tuesday.

The facility in Lety, south Bohemia, will be converted into a memorial site. The museum is to discuss the site's design with experts and the public.

The Czech government bought the farm for 450 million crowns (21.1 million U.S.dollars) in 2017 from the AGPI firm, the farm's owner. The costs of restoring the grounds and constructing a new memorial are estimated at over 100 million crowns (4.7 million U.S.dollars).

The site will be handed over to the state Museum of Romani Culture in January, including an authorisation to restore the site into a memorial. The pig stock is to be removed completely by the end of February, and the pig farm itself will be passed to the organisation in March.

The Lety camp was set up in 1938. It was a labor and concentrating camp for the Roma during World War II. About 1,300 Roma, including children and old people, were interned in it from August 1942 to August 1943. More than 300 Roma people died in the camp, others ended up in the Auschwitz camp and some were released after the camp was demolished in 1943. Enditem