EJP | News | Czech gypsies urge action to stop memorial at WWII camp

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Czech gypsies urge action to stop memorial at WWII camp

Updated: 15/Jan/2006 17:01

A group of gypsies about to be gassed in Belzec extermination camp

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Representatives of the Czech Republic’s gypsy community Friday demanded the government and police stop the far right National Party from erecting its own "monument" at the site of a WWII camp where around 300 gypsies died.

"We expect politicians, and above all Prime Minister Jiri Paroubek, to
act," said Zdenek Rysavy of the organisation, Romea.

The National Party chairwoman Petra Edelmannova announced earlier this week that the party intends to build its own stone "monument" at Lety (75 km from Prague).

The monument would bear the message: "This monument to Czech patriots of WWII was erected by the National Party on January 21. This was a collection camp, not a concentration camp. History is not a question of rumours but of fact," according to local press reports.

Gypsy couple at the Belzec concentration camp

Gypsies were deported there because they could not work and died of "normal illnesses," Eldemannova told the Czech tv station, Nova.

Romea said in a statement on its Website that the comments bordered on a denial of the Holocaust and described them as a "provocation,".

Interior Minister Frantisek Bublan said he opposed the erection of such a monument calling into question the events surrounding the Holocaust.

Pisek police spokesman Michal Steno told Czech news agency CTK on Friday that they were following the issue but had taken no action so far because no criminal act had been committed.

Some 326 of the 1,300 men, women and children who passed through the camp between August 1942 and May 1943 died due to the atrocious conditions. 500 were sent on to the Auschwitz-Birkenau extermination camp.

A large pig farm was later built on the site under the communist regime. Gypsies have been trying for years to get it removed.

The governement promised them last year to find funds for the farm to be moved so that a proper memorial could be built to its victims but so far nothing has happened.

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