Votkov

Kudrik, his mother Božena Bandurová, daughter Pavlína

Anna Siváková burst into tears when she saw the cramped, two-room shelter that the town of Vítkov assigned to her family.

The Roma family had just lost its home in an apparently racially motivated arson attack April 19. Siváková and her husband, Pavel Kudrik, suffered severe burns that kept them hospitalized in nearby Ostrava for nearly two weeks, while their youngest daughter, 2-year-old Natálka, remained in intensive care, struggling to survive.

To Siváková, it felt like yet another blow to return to Vítkov after her May 2 hospital release, only to join her husband, three older children, and parents in the crowded, shabby shelter, located behind a veterinary clinic and next to a dog kennel. With its metal-frame bunk beds and no space to move around - let alone allow the children to play or spread out their homework - the place felt, as one family member said, "like a prison."