Blague #24: A Trip to Terezín

Sara Jameson

Sunday, June 9th

Today was the day trip to Terezín, a small town in the Czech Republic, about an hour from Prague. It was a very heavy and emotional day since it held a ghetto, crematorium, and small prison during the Holocaust.

We started off by visiting the small fortress. It started off as a police prison but started imprisoning Jewish individuals as well.

There were two main kinds of prison cells for groups. The first is a Russian cell which had bunks and housed up to 70 people (about 2x the amount of people shown in the picture). The next is a Jewish cell which had them sleeping standing up with about 50 people (1.5x the amount of people).

This was very hard to see and even harder as we saw the solitary cells in which most individuals died. We then took a small tunnel system to the other side of the fortress and saw the execution site. The marks in the bricks could still be seen from the bullets shot at the prisoners.

After this, we went to the Ghetto museum. During WWII, it was the home for Jewish boys (10-15 years old). There's a memorial hall of children which shows their drawings and writings from the time.

Along with an exhibition that describes the beginning of the persecution of protectorate Jews, establishment and life in the ghetto, transports to work and extermination camps. This also held artifacts from this time, including passports.

We then had lunch at Parkhotel Restaurant and went to the Hidden Synagogue. This small synagogue, tucked away behind a house, barely fit about five people.

The Magdeburg Barracks was next, which was a former army barracks used as a seat of Jewish self-government during WWII. Today, it is used as a museum with extensive exhibitions about the cultural activities of involuntary inhabitants of the ghetto, and it follows up the exhibitions of the Ghetto museum.

Our last stops were the cemetery and the crematorium.

This was a hefty topic, so after this day's trip, most of us went back to our apartments to digest the information and stayed in for the rest of the night.