Private guide in Prague and Terezín Concetration Camp
TEREZÍN
Just
50km outside of Prague lies Terezín, a magnificent former 18th
century Austrian fortress with a terrible past. The former garrison
became a refugee centre for Czechs fleeing Adolf Hitler’s
annexation of the Sudetenland. When the rest of the country soon fell
into Nazi clutches it became a Gestapo prison, a Jewish ghetto and
then a deportation camp sending trains directly to Auschwitz.
Terezín’s story is a combination of life and death: the tragedy of
the Holocaust contrasts with the prisoners’ secret celebrations of
culture, politics and faith.
A
grave among graves, who can tell it apart,
time
has long swept away the dead faces.
Testimonies,
so evil and terrible to the heart,
we
took with us to these dark rotting places.
Only
the night and the howl of the wind
will
sit on the graves' corners,
only
a patch of grass, a bitter weed
before
May bears some flowers...
Written by Jaroslav
Seifert poet
and journalist
a
Nobel Prize–winning Czech writer
in 1984
The Small fortress – The police prison
History
of the small fortress before the Occupation
The
small fortress existed long before it became a Nazi work camp as
Terezín was easy accessible and easy to guard. Built from 1780 to
1790 and named by Emperor Joseph II after Empress Maria Theresa, it
was originally intended to be a fortress that would keep the Prussians
out of harm’s way. However, no battles were fought there. In the
second half of the 19th century, the place also served as a prison.
During World War I political prisoners were held there, including
Bosnian Serbian assassin Gavrilo Princip, who killed Archduke Franz
Ferdinand and his wife June 28, 1914 and was sentenced to 20 years
there, though he died of tuberculosis after only a four-year stay.
History
from 1940 to 1945
Black
lettering on a gate at the small fortress of central Bohemia’s
Terezín is the Nazi slogan, “Work
makes you free.”
Walking through the eerie courtyards, death seems almost tangible –
visitors can feel the presence of the tortured, exhausted inmates
lining up for roll call, cramped in overcrowded cells or sipping soup
made of bad vegetables. The Gestapo prison, neighboring the
SS-controlled Jewish ghetto, was in use from 1940 to
1945.
After
Hitlers occupation of Czechoslovakia, the Nazis recognised the
advantages of the Small 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.
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 Small 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 Small 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.
The
Small 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.
 |
| The Terezín Fortress |
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.
The Ghetto Museum in the Terezin´s Main Fortress
The
Ghetto Museum, located in the former ghetto, familiarizes tourists
with the horrific daily life of prisoners. It also exhibits art work
of children inmates. Visitors find out about the ghetto’s cultural
activities and spiritual life as well as about the hunger, illness,
fear of transports and death that permeated the camp until its
liberation by the Soviets on May 8, 1945.
 |
| The Ghetto Museum |
The
Terezin Ghetto
The
7,000 Czechs who lived in the town before the Nazis took over were
expelled during June of 1942, making way for some 50,000 Jews. About
155,000 Jews were brought there during the war. Approximately 87,000
were deported to concentration camps farther East, while about 34,000
died in the ghetto. S
Alice
Herz-Sommer, 110 years old, "has the distinction of being not only the
oldest Terezin survivor but also holds the title of the oldest
Holocaust survivor in the world. Deported to Terezin with her husband
and young son, the 21-year-old accomplished pianist gave music
lessons to the children of the camp and played more than 100 concerts
for inmates during her internment at Terezin."She is so
beautiful. She died on 23/02/2014
The
visit of the Red Cross
Delegates
of the International Red Cross visited the ghetto on June 23, 1944.
In preparation for the visit, changes took place. Flower beds added
color while musical and children’s pavilions were also built. More
cultural activities were offered. Sick prisoners were transported to
Auschwitz. The Nazis also made a propaganda film. Most of the Jews in
the film were deported East and murdered several months after the
visit. The Red Cross delegates were duped, not realizing it was a
concentration camp.
 |
| The Ghetto Museum |
Daily life in the Terezin ghetto
A
lack of water, medicine and toilets, the presence of insects and
infectious diseases were rampant in the ghetto. Hunger, stress from
slave labor and epidemics riddled prisoners’ lives. Housing was
overcrowded with three-tiered bunks composed of beds only 65
centimeters wide. As slave labor, all ghetto inmates aged 16 to 60
had to work 52 to 54 hours per week; from November of 1944, the time
spent working skyrocketed to 70 hours per week.
Other Sights
The crematorium
In
June of 1942, bodies began to be cremated in four large furnaces that
could hold up to four bodies each. In the Jewish cemetery around the
crematorium, there are 9,000 numbered graves, nameless as these dead
could not be identified. An exhibition in the foyer of the
crematorium shows original documents stating the cause of death of
prisoners and displays paper urns used during and after the war. At
first urns were made of wood, but then the Nazis switched to paper
ones. This is where the Nazis took the gold teeth from the dead. In
1944, the SS ordered the ashes of the deceased to be liquidated. Some
22,000 urns were thrown into the river, and another 3,000 were
buried.
Official
website : http://www.pamatnik-terezin.cz/en
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