During the Second World War, around 1,300 Roma were interned by the Nazis in the Lety camp, located 80 km south of Prague.

327 Roma died there, including 241 children under the age of 14, and more than 500 were deported to the Auschwitz-Birkenau death camp in Nazi-occupied southern Poland.

In the 1970s, the Czechoslovak Republic, a communist bloc country, built a pig farm on the former site of the camp.

An aerial photo taken on July 22, 2022 shows the industrial pig farm on the site of a former Roma concentration camp in Lety, Czech Republic Tomas Novak AFP

After the fall of the communist regime in 1989, Czechoslovakia was divided into two states four years later.

But it will have taken decades for the government to authorize the dismantling of breeding.

The impoverished Roma still live on the margins of Czech society.

"Today we close a shameful chapter in our modern history," Czech parliament speaker Marketa Pekarova Adamova said at a ceremony in Lety.

Officials present at the ceremony carried out a symbolic destruction of the building by dismantling the bricks of a miniature model of the building.

Cenek Ruzicka, son of a survivor of the Lety camp, for his part attacked, pickaxe in hand, one of the walls of the farm which had sheltered in time up to 13,000 pigs.

Cenek Ruzicka 2nd from the left), son of a survivor of the Lety camp, attacked, pickaxe in hand, one of the walls of the farm which had once housed up to 13,000 pigs in Lety, July 22, 2022 in the Czech Republic Tomas NOVAK AFP

His brother attacked a window with a hammer.

"As you can see, everything ends well, although I didn't think it would take so long," Ruzicka told AFP.

Guided by my culture

In 1995, Czech President Vaclav Havel inaugurated a memorial near the farm, but the authorities did not touch the farm, which belonged to a private manager.

It took until 2018 for the Czech government to buy the site and begin building a Roma Holocaust memorial, under pressure from the Roma minority and international bodies, including the United Nations and the European Union.

A public reception area will be inaugurated at the beginning of next year, and will be the first building of a future memorial estimated at at least 100 million Czech crowns (4 M USD).

Mr. Ruzicka, whose grandmother and younger sister lost their lives in Lety, was the backbone of the project.

Cenek Ruzicka, descendant of Roma prisoners, symbolically holds a pickaxe during the official start of the demolition of the industrial pig farm located on the site of a former Roma concentration camp in Lety, Czech Republic, on July 22, 2022 Tomas Novak AFP

"I was guided by my culture. Members of the Czech Roma community are incredibly proud and never give up," said Ruzicka, born in 1946.

The Czech Republic, an EU member country of 10.5 million inhabitants, has a Roma community estimated at between 250,000 and 300,000 people.

Of the 9,500 Czech Roma counted before World War II, less than 600 survived the Holocaust.

According to historians, the Nazis exterminated more than half of the million Roma who lived in Europe before World War II.

According to the European Union, 10 to 12 million Roma currently live in Europe, including six million in EU member countries.

© 2022 AFP