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| The main Square in the town |
Having decided to visit the town of Terezin, I got up early
and took the subway near my hotel, Florenc two stops on the red line to
the Holešovice station where there is a
bus terminal. While waiting for the bus to come I was talking with two sisters,
one who lives in Maryland and one who lives in Salt Lake City and we ended up
spending the whole time together while at the town, once a Nazi concentration
camp and Jewish Gehetto. I decided to do this separate blog entry with an
additional one below this one for today’s other activates. There is just so
much about the tragic history of Terezin and out of respect I feel it’s better
it have a dedicated entry.
I had first learned of the camp and the atrocities’
perpetrated there while listening to a very emotional and inspiring book on
tape, " "Never Too Old: Words of Wisdom from Alice Herz-Sommer, The
World's Oldest Living Holocaust Survivor"" during my long train rides
through Germany and Poland. Although I really didn't think I was emotionally
prepared for a visit to the site I am very glad I decided to in the end and
most glad that I had picked this day because having the sisters, Pam and Janice
really helped to get through the difficult parts.
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| National Cemetary |
From the visitors website I found all the basic information about
what a visit to the town would include so I've placed that below. We started
with a visit to the Terezín Ghetto Museum where they had art from some of the kids
who were sent there and the pictures were beautiful and happy, joyous ones at
that with butterflies and birds and family drawings. When you see them you can’t
imagine they were done here during that time and worst is when you read the
caption below with the artists name and date of birth and then next to all but
I believe 3, the date they were killed in Auschwitz. It’s shocking when you are
admiring the innocent beauty of a drawing and glance below to see that a child
of only 13 or younger had their life taken so hideously from them.
We only had about 20 minutes to see the art exhibit before
going to the film room to watch a video that the Nazi’s had made as propaganda
to show how well the Jewish inmates were being treated. It was completely
fabricated and all that was detailed in the book on Alice Herz-Sommer and what
amazed me was that if I didn’t know the truth maybe, like the Swiss Red Cross
workers who came to visit the town back then and asses if the inmates were
being treated fairly, I would have believed life was as good as they had shown
it to be. That was so upsetting that maybe it wasn’t possible to see all the
horror behind the forced smiling faces and how horrible to be fooled into thinking
it was all okay.
Also at the museum were posters of mostly survivors and
pictures of their lives after the war and what they achieved and sometimes
their children and grandchildren. That was emotional as well and you couldn’t
help but think of all the lost potential and these needless, senseless
killings. Could all the diseases of the world be cured by now from any number
of those who perished or maybe from their children or grandchildren who were
never born because their lives ended so prematurely. The life-saving inventions
never developed, the medicines never created the art and music never to be
heard or seen because no one was left to create it. It’s staggering to think of
the lost potential as well as the loss of beloved grandmothers and
grandfathers, mothers, fathers, sisters, brothers and children.
We walked from there to the barracks where we saw how the
people were forced to live in tiny rooms crammed together without adequate running
water or facilities not to mention food.
In the same building they have a room for the musicians
detailing some of their lives and showing their works that were created while
living there and a room for visual artists displaying their paintings and
drawings which were horrifying when detailing life in the camp and beautiful when
capturing each other’s likenesses or the beauty in a summer day. I had to stop
looking to see if an artist survived because none that I saw did and I just
wanted to scream and stomp my feet and yell or something. Even after having
been there it still seems unreal that this could happen. And strange how
people, even virtual strangers can think alike. I had watched a teenager with
his class group come out of the cramped room with the bunks and he was texting
something on his phone and a few minutes late Pam and I were walking past the
room’s entrance again and she said something about it not being possible for
this to ever happen again because of the invention of the internet, we’d all
know what was going on and I looked at her and said I was thinking the same
thing when I saw that boy and hoping to myself that that really would be the
case. That with all the access we have to images and news every moment of the
day that the world would know and be able to stop it all before it ever reached
a devastating point.
From there we found up the street a ways the Prayer room and
the recreated attic apartment showing how truly cramped they all were. “Prayer
room from the time of the Terezín ghetto A pride of place among the premises
for worshipping during the existence of the Terezín Ghetto was held by the
Jewish prayer room situated in today’s Dlouhá Street, which was discovered in
the early 1990s. In terms of decoration, namely its professionally rendered
murals and texts, this is unique among all the similar premises used as prayer
rooms in the former Ghetto.” “In Dlouhá (Long) St. # 17, in a building managed
by Terezin Memorial, there is a unique historic monument – a Jewish prayer room
from the Ghetto time. The spiritual life of the involuntary residents of the
ghetto was tolerated in order to maintain peace. The services took places
mostly in the attics, cellars, garages or dormitories. The prayer room in
Dlouhá St. is entirely unique because of its partly preserved professional
mural painting and Hebrew texts. The room was adjusted for liturgical purposes
by Artur Berlinger, who, prior to his arrival to Terezin in September 1942,
worked as a religious teacher and a leading proponent of Jewish community in
Bavarian town Schweinfurt. Because of his artistic talent Artur Berlinger
probably worked in the ghetto art workshops and had access to paints. Therefore
he could transform this little room, measuring approximately 5×4 meters, in a
backyard of a civilian house, into a Jewish prayer room. Here, he gave his
fellow prisoners consolation and hope for survival until his deportation to
Auschwitz in September 1944. Artur Berlinger´s time in this prayer room is also
confirmed by his self–portrait from 1943. In this portrait, he not captured
himself in a cantor´s habit but also the interior of the prayer room. The
existence of this unique prayer room remained unknown for several post-war
decades. The owners of the house didn´t tell anyone about it, because they were
afraid of the interference from the current regime and kept it intact. They
informed Terezin Memorial about the prayer room after the year of 1989. Terezin
Memorial made it accessible for the public after repairs and restorations. The
appearance of the prayer room was damaged by the flood in 2002, its marks are
seen on the walls till today.”
I also read in the book they had at the entrance to the museum
that Mr. Berlinger’s two young daughter’s fortunately had survived the war
because their parents had sent them to England on a children’s pass and their
they lived and were able to verify their fathers role in the prayer room from
letters he and their mother had been able to send to them in England via the
Red Cross.
A visitor to Terezin wrote in her own blog “One prayer that
remains on the walls of the Synagogue begs God to return from his anger.
Another prayer, "If I forget thee O Jerusalem," has faded, leaving
only, "If I forget thee..." On
still a third wall is a verse found in synagogues everywhere, "Know before
whom you stand." Amazingly, on the other side of that wall stood Germans
from the S.S. as the synagogue was located next to the bakery where bread was
being made for the Nazi guards. The Germans never discovered the "shul”.
We walked from there to the cemetery and crematorium which
was the most solemn part of the visit and hardest.
The last part of the visit was to the fortress which was a
prison and Pam, who had been to Auschwitz when was younger, said the living
quarters there were most like the death camp and just a few minutes in the
barracks you could feel the despair.
I’m glad I visited there and in a way, although I didn’t
feel this way at first, I think it’s a good thing the town is alive with
families and business because maybe to hear a child’s laughter or see a families
love can somehow bring peace to a place that saw and felt so little for so
long.
The following information I got online from the visitor
information websites:
"Terezín was established at the end of the 18th century
as a fortress; still surrounded by its massive ramparts, the town lies at the
confluence of the rivers Labe (Elbe) and Ohře (Eger). The Main and Lesser
Fortresses at Terezín, although modern for their period, gradually became
obsolete, and having lost their military function fell into disregard. Only in
the relatively recent past has Terezín once again entered the world's public
consciousness as a tragic symbol of the sufferings of the tens of thousands of
innocent people who died here during the Nazi occupation of their homeland.
The Police Prison in the Lesser Fortress
After Hitler's occupation of Czechoslovakia, the Nazis
recognised the "advantages" of the Lesser Fortress, and in June 1940
opened a police prison within it. Czech and Moravian patriots, members of
numerous resistance groups and organisations, were sent here by various
branches of the Gestapo.
From 1914 until 1918 it housed one of its most famous prisoners: Gavrilo Princip. Princip assassinated Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria and his wife on June 28, 1914, which led to the outbreak of the First World War. Princip died in cell number 1 from tuberculosis on April 28, 1918. (It's a reminder of how much one person can change the world for good and for bad. Had this man not killed the Archduke there may not have been a WWI and therefore no WWII and all this horror and violence and inhumanity may well have been avoided. Something to think about when we don't consider that our actions all have repercussions either good or bad or I suppose sometimes both.)
From 1914 until 1918 it housed one of its most famous prisoners: Gavrilo Princip. Princip assassinated Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria and his wife on June 28, 1914, which led to the outbreak of the First World War. Princip died in cell number 1 from tuberculosis on April 28, 1918. (It's a reminder of how much one person can change the world for good and for bad. Had this man not killed the Archduke there may not have been a WWI and therefore no WWII and all this horror and violence and inhumanity may well have been avoided. Something to think about when we don't consider that our actions all have repercussions either good or bad or I suppose sometimes both.)
While around 90% of the inmates were Czechs and Slovaks,
others included citizens of the Soviet Union, Poles, Yugoslavs, Frenchmen,
Italians, English prisoners of war and other nationalities. In five years, some
32 000 men and women passed through the gates of the Lesser Fortress.
The conditions under which the prisoners lived worsened from
year to year, and prisoners were forced into slave labour. The "internal
komando" maintained the prison, tilled the surrounding fields and built
various structures. The majority of prisoners, however, worked outside the
fortress for various firms in the area, and until the closing days of the War
contributed to production and work for the Reich.
From 1943 executions, too, were carried out in the Lesser
Fortress, on the basis of "Sonderbehandlung" - without judicial
process. In all, more than 250 prisoners were shot. At the last execution, on
May 2nd 1945, 51 prisoners and 1 informer, mostly representatives of the Předvoj
youth movement, lost their lives.
Only in the evenings, in moments of rest, could the
prisoners rise above the never-ending humiliation and terror from the side of
their guards. Within their cells, permanent and trustworthy collectives formed
that secretly organised political and cultural events. Talks and presentations
were held by artists and a broad range of professionals; in some cells cultural
evenings were secretly held with singing and recitations, and clerics organised
prayers. Even in such inhuman conditions people were able to express their
creativity; numerous poems and simple drawings of outstanding documentary value
originated here. Culturally, political life in the cells and secret links to
the outside world helped the prisoners to overcome the horrors of this tool of
Nazi persecution.
Among those imprisoned in the Lesser Fortress were the head
of the resistance organisation the Central Command of Home Resistance, doc.
Vladimír Krajina, the most senior officers of the National Guard, Generals Hugo
Vojta, František Kravák, Viktor Spěváček and František Melichar, and the head
of the Czechoslovak General Staff, General Ludvík Krejčí, who was also deported
here. Also present were the leader of the "Věrni zůstaneme" ("We
remain faithful") petition movement Prof. Vojtěch Čížek, the writer K.J.
Beneš, the editor Otakar Wünsch and JUDr. Milada Horáková. Members of the
Communist Party imprisoned here included Václav Sinkule, Eduard Urx, MUDr.
Miloš Nedvěd, Milada Pixová and Marie Zápotocká. After the assassination of
Heydrich in 1942, students from Roudnice were brought here, along with the
relatives and accomplices of the assassins, Kubiš and Valčík; of these, 252
were executed in October 1942 at Mauthausen. Other prisoners of note included
the Prague radio reporter František Kocourek, the caricaturist František Bidlo,
the former Minister of Foreign Affairs Kamil Krofta (a university professor and
historian), and prof. Karel Štipl.
The Lesser Fortress had the character of a transit prison,
from which inmates were after a certain period either brought before the courts
or transferred to concentration camps. As a result of hunger, maltreatment,
insufficient medical care and poor hygienic conditions, however, some 2600
prisoners died here, while thousands more lost their lives having been deported
from Terezín.
The concentration camp for Jews - the "Terezín
Ghetto"
An integral part of Nazi plans for a new ordering of Europe
was the so-called "Final Solution of the Jewish Question". From the
occupied territories of Bohemia and Moravia, too, citizens of Jewish origin
were hunted down and, from November 1941, gradually deported to the town of
Terezín (the Main Fortress), where the Nazis arranged a "ghetto" for
them. Here they were to be massed until the extermination camps further east
were ready to carry out their final liquidation.
Initially, the barracks in the town were used to accommodate
the Jewish prisoners, and once all the local residents had been moved out, by
mid-1942, all civilian buildings were sued for this purpose. Massive
overcrowding, however, also led to the use of attics, cellars, and the
casemates within the ramparts. Terezín became the largest concentration camp in
the Czech Lands, with thousands of transports arriving here carrying Jews not
only from the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia, but also from Germany,
Austria, Holland and Denmark, as well later as from Slovakia and Hungary.
In less than four years, more than 140 000 prisoners were
brought here - men, women and children. In the last days of the War, a further
15 000 prisoners arrived at Terezín on "evacuation transports" from
concentration camps cleared from the advancing front line. Over 35 000
prisoners died here as a result of stress, hunger, and the atrocious
accommodation and hygienic conditions.
The Terezín camp for Jews was headed by a Nazi Komandantura,
which gave instructions to the "Jewish authority" which took care of
the internal organisation of the camp. Direct supervision of the prisoners was
left to the Protectorate guards, the great majority of whom sympathised with
the prisoners, attempted to help them and kept them in touch with the outside
world.
Within the camp, all manner of prohibitions and ordinances
applied, and only cultural life was for a certain period permitted, as it could
serve as a backdrop disguising the truth of the fate that had been decided for
the Jews. The internees took up the arts as a means of coping with depression
and their fears for the unknown future. They attempted to ensure that even
imprisoned children missed nothing of their education, and did not lose their
outlook. Despite Nazi prohibition, therefore, they taught in secret, dedicating
themselves with great self-sacrifice to educating the children; even behind the
walls of the ghetto, they prepared them for a future in freedom.
Unfortunately, even as transports arrived at the ghetto,
others gradually began to leave - into the unknown. From October 1942 virtually
all went to Auschwitz-Birkenau, the most awful of the extermination camps. In
all, 63 transports left Terezín for the "East", carrying a total of
more than 87 000 individuals; of these, only 3800 would see liberation. The fate
of the children of Terezín was equally tragic; of the 7590 youngest prisoners
deported, a mere 142 survived until liberation. Only those children who
remained for the whole period at Terezín had any really chance of being saved;
on the day of liberation, Terezín contained some 1600 children aged 15 or
under. Their lives are reflected in verses, diaries, illegally produced
magazines and thousands of drawings - often the only things that remain of
them.
Among the personalities active in the cultural life of the
ghetto were the writers Karel Poláček and Norbert Frýd, from the world of music
Karel Berman, David Grünfeld, Ada Hechtová, Karel Ančerl, Rudolf Franěk, Karel
Reiner, Viktor Ullmann, Gideon Klein, Pavel Haas, Hans Krása and F.E. Klein,
from theatre and cabaret arch. František Zelenka, Gustav Schorsch, Vlasta
Schönová, Karel Švenk, Zdeněk Jelínek, Ota Růžička, Kurt Gerron, Hanuš Hofer,
and Leo Strauss, and from the arts Bedřich Fritta, Otto Ungar, Leo Haas,
Ferdinand Bloch, Karel Fleischmann, Petr Kien, Adolf Aussenberg, Charlota
Burešová, Rudolf Saudek, Jo Spier and Arnold Zadikow.
The Litomerice forced labour camp
In the last years of the War, as the German armaments
industry was increasingly threatened by Allied air power, the Nazis decided to shift
some of their production facilities underground. In Litoměřice, the former
limestone quarry beneath the Bídnice plain was to be used for this purpose.
In the Spring of 1944, work began here on the construction
of underground factories code-named Richard I and Richard II. Thousands of
prisoners were brought to work on the project, primarily Poles, Yugoslavs,
Russians, Frenchmen, Belgians, Italians and other nationalities. A work camp
was established for them close to the building site, a subsidiary of the
notorious Flossenbürg concentration camp - a workforce source.
Prisoners prepared the ground surface, dug adits and
prepared the spaces of the production halls. Specially selected individuals,
together with forced labourers, then worked on the production of engine parts
for tanks, heavy military vehicles and ships. After several months, they were
joined by the large komando of the Gestapo prison in the Lesser Fortress at
Terezín.
Inhuman treatment, hunger, slave labour underground where
cave-ins threatened, and finally an outbreak of typhus resulted in 4500 of the
18000 prisoners employed here dying in under a year.
Liberation
The situation of prisoners at Terezín was complicated at the
end of the War by the evacuation transports which arrived here between April
20th and May 6th, 1945. The thousands of pitiful and seriously ill prisoners
who arrived at this time brought with them typhus, which quickly spread to the
original Jewish occupants of the ghetto. Meanwhile, typhus was also identified
in the Lesser Fortress prison. Doctors in Prague learned of this, and organised
the "Czech Aid Project to help prisoners at Terezín", which was led
by the epidemiologist MUDr. Karel Raška.
Members of the Czech Aid Project began work at the Lesser
Fortress as early as May 4th, 1945, and at the same time made contact with
members of the International Red Cross, which on May 2nd had taken over
prevention at both the police prison and the ghetto. In the evening hours of
May 8th the first units of the Red Army passed through Terezín towards Prague.
In the following days, at the request of the Czech doctors,
the Soviet military took over preventative measures in all of Terezín, and also
supplied much needed medical assistance. Together with Czech doctors and
healthcare personnel, as well as the health service organised by former
prisoners and dozens of volunteers from the surrounding area, they made a major
contribution to stamping out the epidemic, which had already claimed hundreds
of victims. Special mention must be made here of the self-sacrifice of all
those who participated in this dangerous undertaking, without regard to time,
rest of the danger of infection. By the end of May the worst of the epidemic
had passed; some 30 000 lives had been saved. The repatriation of liberated
prisoners, who came from a total of 30 countries, lasted until August 21st
1945.
The internment camp
From 1945 to 1948 the Lesser Fortress housed an internment
camp in which were gathered first prisoners of war and later those German
residents marked for expulsion from Czechoslovakia. This part of the relatively
recent history of Terezín was for a long time taboo, and archive materials were
not accessible to researchers. Only the democratic transformation has created
normal conditions for the work of historians, and this has enabled the picture
of post-war development to be filled out, and questions associated with it to
be considered objectively. The results of such research were published in 1997,
and are presented in a permanent exhibition in the Fourth Courtyard in the
Lesser Fortress.
The creation of the Terezín Memorial
Shortly after the end of the Second World War attempts began
to save and preserve this site of suffering and sadness in such a way as to
provide an enduring memory and warning for future generations.
On May 6th 1947 the government of the Czechoslovak Republic
decided to create the Terezín Memorial, with the aim of conserving and
preserving the site as it was during the period of the Nazi occupation. Today,
the Terezín Memorial comprises a collection of individual monuments that are
noticeably dispersed, and do not form a single site. These include:
The Lesser Fortress as a historical part of Terezín
The National Cemetery
The Ghetto Museum
The Jewish Cemetery, with the crematorium and the Russian
cemetery
The memorial to Soviet forces
The memorial plaque by the former railway sidings
The site of reverence on the Ohře (Eger)
The columbarium with part of the fortifications, a
ceremonial space and mortuary
The former Richard underground factory at Litoměřice and
crematorium
The Magdeburg Barracks
The National Cemetery
The National Cemetery was created artificially after
liberation in 1945. The stimulus for its creation came from among former
prisoners and the heirs of those who died, at whose request physical remains
were exhumed from six mass graves in the ramparts of the Lesser Fortress which
had been in use from March 1st to May 7th 1945. Among those who were exhumed
were prisoners from the death march that in May 1945 arrived at the Lesser
Fortress.
On September 16th 1945, in the presence of former prisoners,
the descendants of some of the deceased, honourable leaders of political and
public life in post-war Czechoslovakia and members of the general public, a
ceremonial funeral was held for 601 exhumed victims (among those attending were
the Minister of Foreign Affairs, Jan Masaryk, and JUDr. Milada Horáková, who
spoke for the women prisoners).
From the end of the War, Terezín became a site of reverence
for the Czechoslovak people. A memorial service was held at the National
Cemetery to mark the first anniversary of liberation, on May 5th 1946. The
programme included the burial of victims exhumed from shared graves in
Lovosice, from mass graves found in the forced labour camp at Litoměřice, and
from the communal cemetery in Terezín.
The ashes of 52 prisoners executed in the Lesser Fortress on
May 2nd 1945 were also added to the National Cemetery. Furthermore, the urns
containing the ashes of victims of the typhus epidemic were brought here from
the Terezín Crematorium, as were ashes from large pits nearby - in the main,
the remains of the dead from the Terezín Ghetto.
As late as 1958, building work close to the Richard former
underground factories exposed a grave containing human ashes; it was found that
these were the mortal remains of a Jewish prisoner from the Terezín Ghetto.
They were immediately reinterred in the National Cemetery.
The National Cemetery presently contains 2 386 individual
graves (both urns and inhumations). Thousands more of the dead of the Lesser
Fortress, Terezín Ghetto and Litoměřice forced labour camp, as well as of those
who came to Terezín at the end of the War in the death march and death
transports, are interred in the mass graves marked by five pylons. In all, the
remains of some 10 000 victims lie within the National Cemetery.
The Jewish Cemetery and Crematorium
The dead of the Terezín Ghetto were from the start buried in
individual and mass graves near Bohušovice. It was thus that the Jewish
Cemetery developed, in which lie some 9 000 victims from the ghetto. The Nazis
also decided to create at Terezín a camp crematorium, which came into service
on September 7th 1942, and was used in the cremation not only of the dead from
the ghetto, but also from the Gestapo police prison in the Lesser Fortress, and
later also those from the forced labour camp at Litoměřice. According to
surviving cremation records, some 30 000 victims were cremated here. Urns
containing ashes were stored in the columbarium located in the fortress ramparts,
but the Nazis were able to destroy the majority before the end of the War.
From the middle of March 1945 until the arrival of the first
evacuation transports, cremations were halted; victims from all three
components of the persecution were instead buried in mass graves. Meanwhile, a
separate crematorium was established at the Litoměřice camp, with came into
service in April 1945; in the space of a month, some 400 corpses were cremated
there. After the arrival of the evacuation transports at the end of April 1945,
cremations began again at Terezín.
The appearance of the original cemetery for Jewish prisoners
near Bohušovice was developed architecturally and in plan after the War, and
the whole area is now presented as a garden that gently flows into the
surrounding landscape. The site from which the Nazis threw the ashes of
martyred prisoners into the Ohře in November 1944 has also been made into a
site of reverence.”
We started off walking across a very small bridge from where
the bus left us off and coming right to the town which is actually an active
town with lots of families and children living there. I think that also helped
to ease the sadness when you see kids riding their bikes and moms and dads and
grandmothers going to the drug store or art supply shop which is just down the
street or right across from one of the museums or official memorial buildings.”
