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.
Professor Ctibor Nečas (1933–2017) and Dr Jana Horváthová (born 1967) at Masaryk University in Brno, Czech Republic, 1994. Nečas is regarded as the founder of historical research into the history of Czechoslovak Sinti and Roma. Since the early 1970s, he has published studies on the genocide that still serve as a basis for research today. He was also the first to draw attention to the ‘Zigeunerlager’ Lety near Pisek and Hodonin near Kunstadt. Ctibor Nečas worked closely with the Union of Gypsies-Roma and supported the founding of the Museum of Romani Culture in Brno. Only a few of his studies were translated from Czech into other languages.
Jana Horváthová, historian and museologist, is a co-founder of the museum, which she has managed since 2003. The museum is one of the most important players in coming to terms with the genocide in the Czech Republic.
The photo was taken during the filming of the documentary ‘Parno the kalo hin lolo rat’ [White and black have the same (red) blood], directed by Ljubica Václavová (born 1941).
Museum for Romani Culture, 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.
