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Nearly 1,400 Moravian Roma and Sinti passed through the camp at Hodonín u Kunštátu in 1942 and 1943. Around 200 of them died there, while the Nazis deported the vast majority of the survivors to the Auschwitz II–Birkenau extermination camp. During a trial excavation, researchers from the Faculty of Arts at the University of West Bohemia in Pilsen identified and uncovered authentic remains of prisoners' barracks, including original floors and paving stones once walked on every day by victims of Nazi terror. They also found cartridge cases, clothing buttons and fragments of prisoners' footwear.

"Modern conflict and contemporary archaeology can provide tangible evidence where written sources are lacking. These remains of the camp are direct testimony to the everyday reality of imprisoned families, their suffering and their struggle to survive under inhumane conditions. Every discovery brings us closer to understanding how the camp actually operated and the devastating impact it had on the lives of those imprisoned here," said Pavel Vařeka, head of the research team from the Department of Archaeology at the Faculty of Arts, University of West Bohemia in Pilsen. Alongside the researchers, students from the University of West Bohemia and the University of Cambridge are also taking part in the fieldwork.

Unlike the camp at Lety in South Bohemia, which was dismantled as early as 1943, the Hodonín camp had a long post-war history. Between 1945 and 1946, it served as an internment camp for ethnic Germans awaiting expulsion, and in 1949–1950, it functioned as a communist forced labor camp. It was later converted into a recreational resort complete with a swimming pool and sports facilities, which the Czech state did not purchase until 2009. Among the artefacts uncovered were even football boots. Today, the site is administered by the Museum of Romani Culture.

The newly uncovered remains have the potential to play an important role in the future development of the Memorial to the Holocaust of the Roma and Sinti in Moravia. "We see the uncovered sections of the original paving as exceptionally powerful and authentic testimony, and we hope to incorporate them sensitively into the permanent exhibition so that visitors can see them with their own eyes. However, it is important to stress that this process is only just beginning. We first need to reach an agreement within the museum on how they should be presented, engage in an open dialogue with descendants of survivors and representatives of the Roma community, and secure the financial resources needed to adapt the site appropriately," said Radovan Krhovský, head of the Hodonín Memorial.

Hodonín u Kunštátu is one of several sites being investigated by the University of West Bohemia as part of the Rewilding the Landscape project, which focuses on twentieth-century archaeology. In recent years, alongside research at the Lety camp, the team has also mapped the remains of a 1945 U.S. Army field hospital in Pilsen, investigated traces of the violent collectivization of nomadic communities in Kyrgyzstan, and studied Soviet Gulag sites in Kazakhstan.