Čeněk
Růžička,
Přeceda of VPORH
ruzicka.vporh@seznam.cz
Curriculum
vitae
I
am a descendant of traditional Czech traveling Romani people, and I was
born after the end of the Second World War in the year 1946. Both my
parents were imprisoned in Nazi concentration camps for four years.
My parents met each other after the war ended,
and I was born in 1946. Both of them, along with the families they had
at the time – Czech indigenous travelling Romani people
– were imprisoned for four years in Nazi concentration camps
where almost all of their family members perished. From infancy I grew
up in an environment where there was discussion of my
parents’ suffering and that of other Romani families during
the Nazi era, and I subconsciously developed a sensitivity to
totalitarian regimes in any form.
Until the age of approximately eight I would
go to primary school from our caravan. In those days my parents lived
the traveling way of life. However, my parents decided that being
educated in this itinerant way was not appropriate for me –
they wanted me, after completing primary school, to educate myself
further, and therefore for some time I lived in the family of my
father’s brother, who was settled in Liberec. I attended
primary school there until 1958, when the law banning
“migration” began to take effect and made it
impossible for my parents to live in the traveling way anymore. Since
then my family and the families of my three siblings have lived in the
town of Hořice in the Podkrkonoší area. I
completed my primary education there and then apprenticed in
stonemasonry in Lipnice nad Sázavou. From 1965 until 1967 I
did my basic military service. The craft of stonemasonry amused me and
I performed it until 1990, when I began to have health problems. I
began to make a living for my family through trade - I am the father of
four children.
In 1991 my father learned that the surviving
prisoners of Nazi concentration camps were able to apply to the Czech
Defense Ministry and be awarded
the status of political prisoners,
which guaranteed them certain social advantages ameliorating their
suffering and facilitating improvements for the rest of their lives.
Neither my father nor my mother could either read or write, just like
the rest of the survivors, so I took up the task of handling their
claims. It was logical and felt it was my obligation to negotiate
redress in these matters, and therefore I aided almost all of the Czech
traditional Romani and Sinti people who had survived Nazism, and I
still aid them with acquiring the compensation to which they are
justifiably entitled. Over time I began to perceive providing this
assistance as my calling. I am now retired and basically I have more
time for these activities than if I were working.
In 1997 I was entrusted by the Czech Traditional Roma and
Sinti Council of Elders (Rada starších z řad
tradičních českých Romů a Sintů)
with advocating for the justified claims of the former Romani prisoners
of concentration camps and the surviving relatives of the victims. We
established a civic association, the Committee for the Redress of the
Roma Holocaust in the Czech Republic (Výbor pro
odškodnění romského holocaustu v ČR -
VPORH), of which I am still the head to this day. We bring together
former concentration camp prisoners and the surviving relatives of the
victims and continue, in an organized fashion, my previous activities,
such as initiating conferences and seminars, organizing information
campaigns, and settling the property claims of the Roma and Sinti and
the undignified state of the site of the former concentration camp at
Lety u Písku and its burial sites. One of the important aims
of our association is to inform the public, including Romani people
themselves, about the suffering of Roma and Sinti during the Nazi era
and to point out what kinds of behavior are acceptable in the socially
excluded localities. The aim of our work is to contribute toward settling the
relations between non-Roma and Roma so that they become acceptable to
all.
Since 1994, I have organized aid to the Romani victims of
Nazism when defending their justiifed claims for compensation.
VPORH
was established in 1998 and remains the contact office for Romani and
Sinti victims of Nazism and the surviving relatives of the victims in
the area of compensation.
From 1998 until 2002 I also worked as an
external advisor to the European Roma Rights Centre (ERRC), on
organizing, among other matters, a project mapping Romani children
enrolled in the so-called “special schools”.
In 1999 I organized a conference in the Chamber of
Deputies of the Parliament of the Czech Republic focusing
on the Romani Holocaust and on the situation of the memorial at Lety u
Písku. It was atended by 400 people – legislators
across the political spectrum, some ministers, cultural figures,
representatives of churches and other organizations, historians, former
prisoners of the Nazi concentration camps, and the surviving relatives
of the victims.
In 1998 we began our activity with support
from the Government of
the Czech Republic and the Good Will Committee of Olga
Havlová by looking for the surviving Romani
prisoners of the Nazi concentration camps and organizing a
Meeting of the Children of Lety. (We have been creating a
list of the prisoners from that concentration camp who are still alive
today).
In 1998 our association led communications
with representiatves of banks in Switzerland and organized the delivery
of humanitarian aid from those banks to the needy Romani victims of
Nazism.
In collaboration with the European Union, the
Foreign Ministry of the Federal Republic of Germany, the Government of
the Czech Republic, and other organizations, we have successfully
implemented several projects in recent years. These have primarily been
educational
projects supporting the preservation of the historical
memory of Romani and Sinti people living in the Czech Republic.
We organize seminars about current topics in Romani
minority life in the Czech Republic. These are usually connected with our
commemorative ceremonies, which we have annually organized
since 1998 at the site of the burial ground for the victims at Lety. On
that occasion we urgently call on the Czech Government to remove the
controversial pig farm from this place of Romani suffering and to
restore the reverent nature of this site
Beginning in 1999 we co-organized and
initiated in the Chamber of Deputies a public hearing about the past
and present of the sites of the former camps at Hodonín u
Kunštátu and Lety u Písku.
The hearing was attended by more than 400 persons (MPs and Senators,
cultural figures, Romani figures, former prisoners and the surviving
relatives of the victims).
In that same year the representatives of our
Committee became members of the
mixed historical and societal commission at the Office of the
Government of the Czech Republic. That commission prepared
the material that became the starting point for the
Government’s decisions on how to proceed in the matter of the
desecration of the sites of these former concentration camps.
In 2001, with the financial support of the
Government of the Czech Republic, we implemented a project to
artistically design
memorial plaques with the names of the 180 victims who died of racial
violence at the Lety concentration camp. They are buried
along the cemetery walls in Mirovice u Písku, where some of
the victims of the camp are laid to rest.
In 2002, based on the ideas of the Romani
victims of Nazism and their surviving relatives, we created, with the
financial support of the German Foreign Ministry, another memorial. The
sculptures of three larger-than-life female figures at the cemetery
augment the memorial plaques with the names primarily of the children
who are buried there.
In the year 2005 we created and presented at
the European Parliament in Brussels an exhibition entitled “Lety:
Story of a Silenced Genocide”. The presentation of
the exhibition there was co-organized by MEP Milan
Horáček. Thanks to a call by Members of the
European Parliament on 28 April 2005 to close the operations of the pig
farm on the site of the former concentration camp and to establish an
appropriate memorial there, there was an extensive discussion of the
issue in the Czech media and the broader public could become more
informed about what happened in the camp.
In June 2005, under the auspices of the
chair of the Chamber of Deputies, Czech MP Lubomír
Zaorálek, we presented that same exhibition at the
Chamber of Deputies of the Parliament of the Czech Republic.
Czech Prime Minister Jiří Paroubek spoke at the
opening. Among the approximately 200 guests was former Czech
President Václav Havel, as well as other
politicians, several representatives of the diplomatic corps in Prague,
the Romani concentration camp prisoners and the victims’
surviving relatives. After that we also presented the exhibition in the
Czech Senate, where it was opened by the vice-chair of the
Senate, Petr Pithart, and attended by 80 people.
In 2006 I co-organized and initiated a public
hearing in the Senate of the Parliament of the Czech Republic that was
thematically focused on the issue of the education of Romani children.
The matters of redressing these wrongs against
the victims of Nazism have, of course, an international character. In
2006, with the support of the City of Prague, the Czech Culture
Ministry, the Czech-German Fund for the Future and other institutions,
we presented an extensive travelling exhibition entited “The
Romani Holocaust – Genocide of the Sinti and Roma and Racism
in Europe Today”. The exhibition was created by the
Documentation Centre of the German Sinti and Roma, headquartered in
Heidelberg, Germany (the director of which is Romani Rose,
a Sinto). The Committee contributed unique vintage photographs from the
private archives of the Czech Roma and Sinti to create the exhibition.
In 2007, in collaboration with the surviving
relatives of the victims, we created a traveling exhibition entitled “A
Vanished World”.
The exhibition became the
historically first attempt to present the public with the actual lives
of the indigenous Czech Roma and Sinti and their imprisonment in the
Nazi concentration camps. The first presentation of the exhibition was
launched on 5 September at the National Gallery in Prague
(Veletržní palác) by Czech President
Václav Klaus. The opening was attended by up to
300 guests.
Because of the surprisingly big interest in the exhibition, we reprised
it in Prague at the Portheimka Gallery. After that it was presented to
the public over the next two years in the cities of Brno, Chomutov,
Karlovy Vary, Mladá Boleslav, Opava, Ostrava, Plzeň and
Ústí nad Labem. The exhibition serves to provide
information about what happened to Romani people during Nazism.
In 2007 the Documentation Centre of the German
Sinti and Roma, along with our organization and other Romani
organizations abroad representing the victims of Nazism accompanied the
extensive travelling exhibition entited “The Romani
Holocaust
– Genocide of the Sinti and Roma and Racism in Europe
Today” when it was exhibited at the headquarters of
the
United Nations in New York.
After that our organization convened
discussions with non-Romani and Romani citizens in the towns of
České Budějovice, Hořice, Jičín, Mimoň, Rotava
and Sokolov that were thematically focused on the broken relations
between the majority society and Romani people and possible ways to
address them. These talks were attended by approximately 300 people.
In June 2012, Czech Prime Minister
Petr Nečas visited the remembrance site at Lety and public
summarized the consequences of the order issued by the General Command
of the Protectorate Police about Romani people, emphasizing that: “That
date can be considered the
beginning of the genocide
against Roma and Sinti, which led as a consequence to the liquidation,
in practice, of this minority on the territory of the Protectorate.
Romani people, therefore, in terms of the percentage of their
population affected, bore the greatest sacrifice on our territory
during the Second World War, and therefore their fates are inextricably
part of the tragic history of our country.” He then
reminded
the public that the Czech authorities had been involved with the Romani
genocide.
In 2014 I became a member of the
Czech Government Council for Romani Minority Affairs, a member of its
Committee on Local Administrations, and chair of its Working Group for
Romani Compensation. Addressing the matters of the Holocaust
of Roma and Sinti has become one of the important aims of the concept
for Romani integration approved by the Czech Government as a policy
until 2020.
In 2015 I began to collaborate with the
Terezín Institute as part of a project training
teachers about the culture and history of Roma and Sinti in the Czech
lands. After these lectures the teachers expressed their enthusiasm and
asked for more lectures in different parts of the country. I have been
unable to keep up with the demand as my schedule is fully booked.
Also in 2015 our organization, in
collaboration with Slovo 21 as part of the international
KHAMORO festival presented the exhibition “A
Vanished World at the Czech Centre in Prague. Within the framework I
gave nine lectures at the Czech Center to students from schools in
Prague, familiarizing them with the culture and history of the Czech
and Moravian Roma and Sinti. The students and teachers left those
lectures excited by what they had learned and full of positive
impressions.
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