HODONÍN:
INTERSECTING TRAGEDIES
The checkered history of the site of the former “Gypsy Camp” at Hodonín in the Blansko district is commemorated by the new permanent exhibition at the Hodonín u Kunštátu Memorial to the Holocaust of the Roma and Sinti in Moravia.
The central subject of the exhibition, entitled Tábor Hodonín u Kunštátu: Průsečík tragických osudů 1940–1950. Střední Evropa [Hodonín u Kunštátu Camp: Intersecting Tragedies 1940–1950. Central Europe] is the 1942-1943 period, when the camp de facto fulfilled the function of a concentration camp. As the title indicates, the topic of the Holocaust of the Roma and Sinti is not the only one the exhibition covers. The postwar fate of the camp facility, when it became a place to temporarily house German-speaking persons intended for evacuation from Czechoslovakia, after which it became a forced labor camp for opponents of the communist regime and then served for decades as a recreation facility – all this is also covered by the exhibition. “The exhibition texts have been produced in both Czech and English,” adds Jana Horváthová, director of the Museum of Romani Culture which administers the memorial, the employees of which have contributed to creating the exhibition.
The exhibition is divided among two buildings – visitors will find the main part in the Information Center, which is a new building, where the fate of the Roma and Sinti in Czechoslovakia will be conveyed to them through information panels and photographs supplemented by audiovisual technology. It begins by introducing the context of the birth of Czechoslovakia and the position of Romani and Sinti people in a state influenced by “antigypsyist” legislation, official procedures, and public sentiment. The exhibition further presents the development of the measures targeting Romani and Sinti people during the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia. The greatest attention and the largest amount of space in the exhibition is dedicated to what was called the “Gypsy Camp” at Hodonín u Kunštátu which was, along with a parallel camp at Lety u Písku that is better known to the public, a location of imprisonment, suffering and death, and that then became a launching point for the transport of hundreds of Romani children, men and women to the Auschwitz concentration and extermination camp. The shocking everyday living conditions during their imprisonment are revealed by period photographs, documents, and especially by the memories of eyewitnesses, most of whom are former prisoners. The exhibition includes a separate room with audiovisual equipment where visitors can play audio and video recordings of selected memories as recounted by eyewitnesses, categorized by theme. The exhibition itself also covers the transports of the Hodonín prisoners to Auschwitz and their fates in other concentration camps run by the Nazis. The closing passage of the exhibition at the Information Center familiarizes visitors with the postwar fate of the camp grounds. Part of the exhibition is also dedicated to how Romani and Sinti survivors came to terms with their wartime experiences in the context of a society where the historical subject of the racially-motivated persecution and genocide of the Roma and Sinti during the Second Word war was rather suppressed – to this day the phrase “the unknown Holocaust” is still sometimes used to refer to it. The exhibition at the Information Center also includes a timeline comparing events involving the camp facility at Hodonín u Kunštátu with other events happening on the territory of the Czech lands, Czechoslovakia, and Europe from 1918 to the present.
The second part of the exhibition is located in the reconstructed Prisoners’ Barracks – the building that used to house the prisoners. “Here visitors can see a replica of the bunks for the prisoners, including listening spots where audio recordings of the eyewitnesses’ memories of the ‘Gypsy Camp’ can be heard,” Horváthová said. In addition, there are panels augmenting the information from the exhibition in the Information Center about different aspects of daily life in the camp, from the shocking hygiene conditions to the insufficient diet to the burial of the victims in mass graves near the camp.
It was far from easy to create the memorial and open a permanent exhibition at the site. “The idea to buy out what used to be a recreation facility in Hodonín and to build the memorial to the Holocaust of the Roma there was not easy to see through to the end. Later, a similar process was undertaken with the pig farm at Lety,” said Michael Kocáb, who was Czech Human Rights and National Minorities Minister when the recreation facility was purchased. In 2009, thanks to long-lasting efforts by the Museum of Romani Culture and Romani activists, the state did buy out the grounds. By Government resolution, in 2011 the National Pedagogical Museum and Library of J. A. Comenius (a contributory organization of the Ministry of Education, Youth and Sport) was entrusted with building the memorial to house an exhibition that would familiarize visitors with the checkered history of this location in the context of Czech, or rather, Czechoslovak and European history. A crucial subject covered by the exhibition was to be the 1942–1943 period when the so-called “Gypsy Camp” existed at that place. Most of the exhibition dedicated to that period and, at a more general level, to the Holocaust of the Roma and Sinti during the Second World War was, under the guidance of the director of the National Pedagogical Museum and Library of J. A. Comenius, Markéta Pánková, created by Museum of Romani Culture staffers Jana Horváthová and Michal Schuster. Others who contributed to creating the exhibition were Jiří Cajthaml, Jiří Kocian, Jiří Paděvět, Eva Semotanová and Jan Šimek, while the architectural and artistic design were provided by Jaroslav Obst. Through a 2017 Government resolution, the administration of the still-uncompleted exhibition and facility was handed over to the Museum of Romani Culture at the beginning of 2018, where Jana Horváthová, Veronika Kolaříková, Anna Míšková and Dušan Slačka began its adjustment and completion.
Visitors were able to tour the exhibition for the first time ever during its grand opening on 15 July 2021. “Many of my forebears did not live to see a memorial like this. I want to thank everybody who contributed to building it. We no longer have to sneak into this place under cover of darkness, as we once did, to light candles here,” commented Rudolf Murka, whose father survived “Hodonínek”, as eyewitnesses nicknamed the camp.
Short-term exhibitions are also shown in other spaces at the memorial. Currently there is an exhibition of drawings by Helga Weissová-Hošková, made when she was a teenager imprisoned in the Ghetto at Theresienstadt, which has been installed in the Guards’ Barracks. In that same building visitors can see an exhibition of the submissions to the second annual Karel Holomek and Emílie Machálková Competition, where the Holocaust of the Roma is the subject. The winning installation, “Head of Nemtudomka” is located in the reverential section of the memorial between the administration building of the former camp and the linden tree. It was created by Jakub Brázda, a student of the Academy of Fine Arts in Prague. “The motif of the sculpture is a hero from the fairytale about Nemtudomka. I longed to render this character in sculpture immediately after reading the fairytale. One reason is that this hero is able to wear a snakeskin, and I have been exploring the transformation of human beings into snakes for some time,” Brázda said of his piece.
The permanent exhibition, the short-term exhibits, and the entire memorial are open Wednesday through Sunday between 9:00 and 17:00.
Collective of the Museum of Romani Culture