Lety

A documentary film produced by the ROMEA organisation, Lety won a special prize at Ake Dikhea?, the Berlin festival of Romani film. This is its first public screening in Brno.

The movie takes as its topic the history of one particular place – a concentration camp for the Roma during the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia – and is dedicated to the fates of people who either perished there or for whom Lety was a stopping point, before their transport to the Auschwitz II-Birkenau extermination camp. The work documents the milestones in the 20-year-long effort by individuals and organisations to turn the site of the Romani holocaust in Lety, near Písek, into a dignified place of memorial. The film took about two years to make and the shooting was preceded by a decade of research and gathering of information, interviews and personal accounts. The authors made use of archives including the resources of Czech Television and the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, where they obtained the valuable testimonies of survivors from Lety.

The Museum of Romani Culture has been the official administrator of the memorial to the Romani holocaust in Lety since 2018, and is currently planning a new commemoration and exhibition there, following an international landscaping and architecture design competition. The new monument will honour the memory of the victims of the holocaust of the Roma and Sinti, provide information to both experts and the general public, stimulate discussion about the past and the present situation in society, and investigate the issues of minority discrimination and human rights.

Following the screening, the staff of the Museum of Romani Culture will answer questions and describe the Museum’s efforts to build the new memorial in Lety.

Lety. Screenplay and direction: Viola Tokárová, František Bikár and Renata Berkyová (2019, 58 min)

In collaboration with the Museum of Romani Culture and the Moravian Museum.

Programme will be held in czech only.
Free entry. Limited capacity. We suggest booking your place.