- Title: Czech pig farm to quit WW2 Roma concentration camp site
- Date: 8th August 2017
- Summary: VARIOUS OF PHOTOGRAPHS AND PAINTINGS DEPICTING LETY CONCENTRATION CAMP
- Embargoed: 22nd August 2017 13:20
- Keywords: Lety Roma Nazi Germany World War Two concentration camp
- Location: LETY, CZECH REPUBLIC
- City: LETY, CZECH REPUBLIC
- Country: Czech Republic
- Topics: Conflicts/War/Peace
- Reuters ID: LVA0026TAR86X
- Aspect Ratio: 16:9
- Story Text: The Czech government has persuaded an agricultural firm to sell a pig farm partly covering the site of a World War Two Nazi concentration camp where most of the victims were Roma.
The firm, AGPI, said on Monday (August 7) it had accepted an undisclosed financial offer from the government.
The agreement is a turning point in over two decades of attempts to close down the farm. The centre-left government of Prime Minister Bohuslav Sobotka had entered talks with AGPI in November 2016, with the Culture Ministry representing the government in the talks.
AGPI will get financial compensation from the state, the company said in a statement. The parties had agreed not to disclose the amount.
Culture Minister Daniel Herman told public Czech radio a deal could be signed by the government and AGPI in the first weeks of September.
In 1940, first prisoners arrived in Lety, then a labour camp, 80 km (50 miles) south of Prague. Two years later, the Nazi occupation authorities changed it into a concentration camp, with 1,145 inmates, mostly Roma, as of August 1942.
More than 300 people, mostly children under 14 years, died in Lety itself, mainly due to a typhus epidemic, while another 420 were sent to the Auschwitz death camp.
Late president Vaclav Havel and other officials unveiled a memorial at Lety in 1995.
The pig farm, which overlaps the concentration camp location, has remained operational although several successive governments have pledged to remove it.
Human rights organisations, such as the European Grassroots Antiracist Movement who protested the farm's location in the past, welcomed the fresh deal. - Copyright Holder: FILE REUTERS (CAN SELL)
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