Marci had selected a few audiobooks for our drives on this trip. The primary one is called “Prague Winter”, written and read by Madeleine Albright, former US Secretary of State, and born in Prague. The book does a remarkable job of teaching, through the story of her family’s life, the Czech experience leading up to and during Word War II. One of the main arcs is the story of Terezin.
The tribute to the mass graves at Terezin
Terezin turned out to be the perfect place for Hitler’s transition camp for Czech jews and later, jews from all over Europe. Built in the late 1700’s by the Austrian empire, Terezin is located just south of the German-Czech border in an area that was primarily German speaking before the war. We spent the day at Terezin yesterday with Pavel Batel, an excellent and knowledgeable guide.
For three years, over 150,000 jews were brought to Terezin. Upon liberation in 1945, there were just over 20,000. The majority stayed at Terezin for a few weeks to a few months before dying of disease or torture, or being transported to an extermination camp, primarily Auschwitz.
Train tracks into Terezin were added after the Nazis discovered jews talking to locals during the 3 kilometer walk to the train station when being transported to Auschwitz
The Nazis called it Theresienstadt. It was paraded before the world as Hitler’s gift to the jews. When it was built it originally served as a giant fortress with a town inside where up to 7500 soldiers would live. It also had a prison. For Hitler, the town served as the jewish Ghetto where as many as 50,000 jews would be forced to live at once.
The entrance to the Ghetto
More would come. More would go. Czech jews were told that they were being permanently resettled in this jewish town, with their own apartment and spa services.
A street in Terezin
The reality, of course, different.
At first glance, the ghetto looks like a lovely Bavarian town. And as designed, for just over 7,000 soldiers, it was. But put 8x that many people with little water, food and sanitation, and the ghetto became a typhoid infested, death trap.
Living quarters
Still, the jews of Terezin found ways to live. Some jews bribed the Nazis to be able to create the Hidden Shul.
“Hidden Shul”
But rules were strict, and changed often. If the rules were broken, the offender was sent to the prison.
Entrance to the prison at Terezin
In the prison, jews were deprived of all basic human needs. They were locked in cells, beaten, and worse.
Up to 40 jews would be locked in a cell. Many did not even have a window.
They would be marched through the labyrinth of tunnels only to be shot or hanged at the other end.
There are 30 km of tunnels in the prison fortress
As the world began to hear rumors of Nazi activities, the International Red Cross was dispatched to Terezin for a look. The Nazis delayed the visit for several months while they staged a perfect “show” for the Red Cross inspectors which consisted of well dressed, well fed, happy jews choreographed into a show that completely fooled the inspectors, though some say they saw what they wanted to see. To complete the charade of how well the jews were treated, the Nazis prepared a fake cemetary to show how well they treated the jews, even in death.
Fake cemetery created for the Red Cross visit
In this park in the center of Terezin, a bench sits empty as jews were not allowed even to walk into the park.
Nearby, this old tree was surely witness to the horrors that occurred all around it. If only the tree could tell us its stories.
Visits like this shed light on the atrocities that our people experienced during the Nazi reign in Europe. We must tell the stories so that we do not forget what people are capable of. Yet, there have been other human tragedies, and still others go on even today. Can you be part of keeping the light on?
A single bulb lights where jews lived in Terezin.
