| Product: |
Terezin (Terezienstadt) |
| Date: |
14/09/01 (502 review reads) |
| Rating: |
 |
Advantages: plenty of organised tours
Disadvantages: the fact it was ever used in the way it was
Terezin is about 40kms outside Prague and is a 19th century fortress town that was turned into a Gestapo prison and Jewish holding camp during WW2. For those of you familiar with the history of the Holocaust, Terezin (Thierenstadt) is the show camp that the Red Cross were paraded around in 1944 by the Nazis.
The Czechs have kept everything in tact and the 'Arbeit Macht Frei' (work means freedom) is still over the entrance to the main prison section.
A guide will take you round and tell you about daily life in the prison for what was mainly political prisoners as well as Jews.
It's best to go on a guided tour, of which there are many you can book in Prague, and it costs around £10 for about 5 hours. The tour I took included the guided tour around the prison, a visit to the Jewish Museum which has a fantastic exhibition of artwork, literature and stories from Terezin, as well as a look round the town itself.
Pre-war the population was round 2000, as a ghetto closer to 80,000 and now just a few hundred.
If you go round the Jewish quarter and are horrifed by the first synagogue that has all the names of those Jews who perished from the Czech republic during the war then a visit to Terezin will put this into perspective for you.
Eerie, but not creepy, it makes all that you know about what happened put into a bit more of a context. Perhaps even more poignant in the current circumstances as we should remember that atrocities either as terrorist acts or organised acts of governments & regimes should never be forgotten, forgiven or left unpunished.
Incidentally, I gave this a one star rating, not because I think that you shouldn't go there and it's not worth seeing, just it's a tragedy it's there in the first place.
Summary:
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Last comment:
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- 15/01/07 Anyone visiting Prague,who wants to know about the Holocaust , MUST visit the town of Thierenstadt (Terezien) . This was a whole town was made into a Jewish "holding" camp,with 50,000 once held in there, the Teachers,musicians, etc ,amongst the prisoners knew about the Final Solution , but decided to give the children prisoners as "normal" a life as possible and an education . After up to 2 years incarceration in Aug/Sept 1944 ALL the prisoners were taken on the Trains to their deaths / liquidation in Auschhwitz,etc.Visit the preserved schoolhouse where because of the Russians rapid advance , the SS ran away and left the schoolchildrens work not destroyed, so exercise books,etc left behind .The school walls have now been filled with individual photos of the 10,000 school children liquidated, and placed alongside is their schoolwork, done in Terezien .In the background music composed entirely by the skilled Jewish composers (also liquidated from here) plays in the background .It is a very moving memorial.
The fortress (/ SS Barracks) complete with swimming pool for the commandant + SS officers Familys to use ,is still there, alongside the commandants House .Also there is the gallows used to hang prisoners, and the walls where prisoners were shot in front of .Taken as a whole, this place hits home the "abnormally bizarre "situation of those times probably more than the actual Death Camps of Birkenau, Dachau ,etc...Arbeit Macht Frei is above the gates here also. |
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