Professor Ctibor Nečas, born on 26 July 1933 in Rakvice, Czechoslovakia, was a Czech historian and pedagogue working at the Masaryk University in Brno. He was the founder of historical scientific research on Roma and Sinti in Czechoslovakia. In the early 1970s, he was the first Czechoslovak historian to draw attention to the Nazi persecution of Roma and Sinti in the territory of the former Czechoslovakia and to the existence of camps for the concentration of people labelled as ‘Gypsies and Gypsy half-breeds’ in Lety near Pisek and Hodonin near Kunstadt. In addition to systematic and detailed archival research, he also participated in recording and publishing oral testimonies of Romani survivors.
Ctibor Nečas was the author of more than 300 published expert articles, studies and several important monographs, and his work is still the basis for further research. In 1981, Nečas published the first comprehensive monograph on the topic entitled ‘On the fate of Czech and Slovak Gypsies’, which became a basic work for the study of Romani history. For the first time, the subject of the Nazi racial persecution of Roma and Sinti in the territory of Czechoslovakia was elaborated in depth. In 1987 he compiled and published name lists of prisoners of the ‘Zigeunerlager’ in Lety near Pisek and Hodonin near Kunstadt and in 1992 a list of former Romani prisoners in Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration and extermination camp from the territory of the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia. Thanks to the monograph ‘Holocaust of the Czech Roma’ (1999), which was also published in an English translation, and other studies published in foreign magazines, Ctibor Nečas has become one of the recognised experts in Europe.
Ctibor Nečas (1933–2017) und Jana Horváthová (geb. 1967) in der Masaryk-Universität in Brno, Tschechien, 1994. Professor Nečas gilt als der Begründer der historischen Forschung über die Geschichte der tschechoslowakischen Sinti:ze und Rom:nja. Seit Beginn der 1970er Jahre veröffentlichte er Studien zum Völkermord, die heute noch als Grundlage für die Forschung dienen. Auch machte er als Erster auf die ‚Zigeunerlager‘ Lety bei Pisek and Hodonin bei Kunstadt aufmerksam. Ctibor Nečas arbeitete eng mit der Union der Zigeuner-Roma zusammen und unterstützte die Gründung des Museums der Roma-Kultur in Brno. Nur wenige seiner Studien wurden aus dem Tschechischen in andere Sprachen übersetzt.
Dr. Jana Horváthová, Historikerin und Museologin, ist Mitbegründerin des Museums, das sie seit 2003 leitet. Das Museum ist einer der wichtigsten Akteure für die Aufarbeitung des Völkermordes in Tschechien.
Das Foto entstand während der Dreharbeiten für den Dokumentarfilm „Parno the kalo hin lolo rat“ [Weiß und Schwarz haben das gleiche (rote) Blut]; Regie: Ljubica Václavová (geb. 1941).
Museum der Roma-Kultur, Brno
In the early 1970s, he worked closely with the Union of Gypsies-Roma. In 1991, he participated in the establishment of the Museum of Romani Culture in Brno, with which he collaborated for a long time. He also took part in the implementation of memorials and commemorative plaques to Romani victims in Lety near Písek, Hodonín near Kunštát, but also in other places. He was the bearer of a number of honorary awards (among them the price of the City of Brno, the price of the Museum of Romani Culture, the price of the South Moravian Region, Roma Spirit etc.). He died on 19 December 2017 in Brno.
