Terezin

Today was a "hang out with Jane" day and it was wonderful! First she took me to one of her favorite cafe's and we picked up yummy croissant sandwiches and took them to another one of her favorite cafe's where we had tea to eat with our croissants. Next we went to a beautiful art gallery that was basically a whole in the wall down a really small street that I would have never found if I hadn't been with her. It was beautiful and I instantly wanted to drop out of school so that I could spend a semesters worth of tuition on art!

After that we went back to the flat, packed some snacks, and set off for Terezin...a concentration camp about an hour outside of Prague. On the way we had fun singing, chatting, and eating but when we got there, suddenly our mood changed. Neither of us had ever been to a concentration camp before and we were not prepared for what we were about to see.

Unfortunately, we got there right as the actually "camp" was closing but we got to go to the barracks where the people lived and the museum that housed room after room of different artwork, music, literature, and poetry that was collected from the camps. After the museum closed we walked around the ghetto for a little bit as it was getting dark. It was beyond creepy and we couldn't imagine how anyone could live in Terezin now, after all that happened during WWII. The town is really run down and very few people were around which made the whole situation even more frightening, especially in the dark...it was as though the town never recovered from its horrendous past.

Terezin was originally a fortified city, (ironically, built to keep the Germans out in the 1780's) but the Nazis forced out the 7,000 people living there to create their prison. What's interesting is that the world was told, that Hitler had built a city for the Jews, to protect them from the vagaries and stresses of the war. A film was made to show this mythic, idyllic city to which his henchmen were taking the Jews from the Czech Lands and eight other countries. This was called the Beautification Campaign that kept the rest of the world in the dark about what was really going on. The Red Cross was even allowed to visit Terezin once. The village of Terezin was spruced up for the occasion. Certain inmates were dressed up and told to stand at strategic places along the specially designated route through Terezin. Shop windows along that carefully guarded path were filled with goods for the day. One young mother remembers seeing the bakery window and shelves suddenly filled with baked goods the inmates had never seen during their time at Terezin.

As we were leaving Terezin we got out of the car and decided to go walk to the gates of the camp and just look inside but as we started walking towards the long path way that led to the gates we couldn't go any further. Jane said it perfectly: I don't think I can walk down this path that thousands of people walked down to their death. So we turned around and headed back to Prague.