Roma were gradually transported from the Lety camp to the concentration and extermination camp Auschwitz. The first transport left for Auschwitz I on 2 December 1942 and consisted of 16 men and 77 women designated as so-called “asocials” – many of them were parents of children who were then left in the camp completely alone.
The second transport followed after the so-called Auschwitz Decree of Heinrich Himmler (16 December 1942). It ordered the resettlement of European “Gypsies and their mixed-bloods” to the concentration and extermination camp Auschwitz.
Transports from the concentration camps in Lety and in Hodonín were originally supposed to leave the Protectorate first. However, due to quarantines caused by infectious diseases in both places, they were eventually dispatched only after the transport of most Roma and Sinti who had been living freely until then (from March 1943).
From Lety, Roma were transported to the family camp for Roma and Sinti in the concentration and extermination camp Auschwitz II-Birkenau on 4 May 1943 (215 men and 205 women, in Brno they were joined by 433 additional Roma). The youngest included in the transport was exactly one-month-old newborn Jiří Růžička, the oldest was František Richter, who was 87 years old.
