PRAGUE (AP) — The Czech government will buy a pig farm now on the site of a former Nazi concentration camp and replace it with a memorial. Activists for Roma, also known as Gypsies, and rights groups have long demanded
PRAGUE (AP) — The Czech government will buy a pig farm now on the site of a former Nazi concentration camp and replace it with a memorial.
Activists for Roma, also known as Gypsies, and rights groups have long demanded the removal of the farm at Lety, 60 miles (95 kilometers) south of Prague, where some 1,300 Czech Roma were sent by the Nazis during World War II.
Some 327 people died there and many others were taken to the Nazis’ Auschwitz death camp.
Culture Minister Daniel Herman said Monday the farm’s owner will sign a deal soon and the government has approved spending 450 million koruna ($20.6 million) on the plan.
Some 10,000 Roma were living in Nazi-occupied Czechoslovakia during the war. The Czech Republic’s 250,000-strong Roma minority now faces widespread prejudice.