A deeply dark and difficult post

Today we are going to visit the former Terezin concentration camp just north of Praha.

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How to explain why we wanted to visit this place, well that is hard, so we will leave that to later on in the post.

For now perhaps we can just start with the description.

Terezin is actually quite a pretty little town.

It is based in a fortress, with fortified walls all around.

It was built in the eighteenth century.

It has several town squares, and some of the buildings are rather elegant.

Now it has well tended rose beds,

and this is in the middle of summer, with blue skies.

And it is not now a prison.

This, by the way, is the main museum, but I am not sure what purpose it served when it was occupied during the war.

As for the rest of the streets, it is difficult to determine whether this is a living town or not, or maybe it has just become a memorial to its horrific past.

I assume that some people live here, servicing the tourists that visit, tending the museums and selling ‘souvenirs’.

But this place is now only famous for the purpose to which the Nazis put it to.

Terezin is now just a memorial to its unspeakable past. During the war it acted as a concentration camp, but mainly it was a holding prison before they were sent onto Auschwitz. They started sending Jews here in late 1941. In total 140,000 were sent to Terezin.

Although this was never an extermination centre, conditions were so horrific that many died from disease and malnutrition. Initially you might consider conditions were just about tolerable, but by 1943 so many were being sent here, and with the limited buildings each prisoner had just 1.65 square metres of space. It is no wonder then that typhus was rampant.

The triple layer bunk beds like this would have slept over sixty people.

The camp was meant to be run by the Jews themselves, by a group of Elders. In reality, the Elders just handed down any instruction from the Nazis.

Any medical care was also undertaken from within the Jewish prisoners.

The prisoners extended the railway into the fortress to enable the train loads of people from all over Europe.

Originally the dead were buried, but soon they became too many and so a crematorium was constructed. Initially the ashes were kept in wooden boxes, in time even this became too excessive for the Nazis and they changed these to cardboard boxes.

As the war came to an end and the Germans realised their actions might be uncovered over 20,000 boxes were dumped in the river to cover up their crimes.

There are two cemeteries here, both chilling reminders of what humans are capable of.

And here just outside the small fortress.

Hygiene was a severe problem here.

The steam cleaners

and infrequent showers were not enough to prevent the lice and bedbugs that spread the rampant diseases of the camp.

But remarkably attempts were made to create a level of normality, with various cultural activities which tried to raise moral especially amongst the children.

Terezin became part of a propaganda campaign. In the spring of 1944, under pressure from the Red Cross to be allowed access to a concentration camp, Terezin was chosen. The fortress underwent a ‘beautification’. The place was rename from Ghetto to Jewish Settlement Area, the roads were also renamed. Shops, cafes and a bank was set up and worthless money was distributed.

To the north of the main fortress, the small fortress became the prison of the camp.

However many saw this place as an extermination prison, as few survived.

On the way back from the cemetery we happened upon a small canal. In it were swimming something small and furry.

We went a bit closer to investigate, surprisingly they didn’t swim or run off.

We thought it might be otter or beaver, but the shape of the tail looks wrong.

Then we noticed swimming with the adult, a baby one.

How cute.

And then along the canal edge a whole cluster of them before they slipped into the water. Notice the little webbed feet.

We think they may be Coypu, originally from South America they were introduced for their fur pelts and escaped from captivity. These seem to be doing rather well.  They are actually closely related to the Guinea Pig, although those teeth might not make such a cute pet!

Maybe we got a bit close, the adult, did a weird somersault in the water, slapping its tail with a loud splash and then ominously got out of the water in a rather intimidating way. Horrible orange teeth.

I think it is about time we left Terezin. The coypu have been a little light relief, but this deeply dark place has been extremely depressing, which I suppose brings us back to why we came in the first place.

Back in 2013, Susana and I, with her brother and partner, Roberto and Nuria, visited Poland, but more specifically Auschwitz.

It was a trip we had wanted to do for several years and when we told friends and colleagues of our intentions they were bewildered…Why?

We had no direct relationship with the place nor those that suffered there. Maybe a mawkish fascination?

Personally I felt I wanted answers. How humanity could let something like this happen.

I never got any answers, just more questions!

Sometimes there is a problem with such places, you see so many images in documentaries and movies, they become commonplace.

Not Auschwitz. Nothing prepares you for what you see.

But Auschwitz was also very different form Terezin. Terezin told a story. Not Auschwitz. Here you got images. Stark, gaunt, dark images that had no explanation. We had a guide showing us around Auschwitz I. I do not remember a word she said, but I remember the images;

Rooms full of shoes, watches, human hair, all removed from the Jews that proceeded to their deaths in the gas chambers.

And here, canisters of gas.

Images of barbed wire fences.

 

There was no story here, it wasn’t necessary, no explanation, there wasn’t one.

Just what it was, and it was pretty much left, as it was, the day the Nazis fled.

The gas chambers at Auschwitz I.

The crematorium.

Terezin told a story, and in so doing, pulled at your heart strings. This wasn’t necessary. It felt like you were being manipulated. Start with the children!

How they lived. No, not lived, survived, just and not for long. I remember long lines of portraits. Portraits that the Nazis took. The were fastidious in their collecting of records. It is how we know so much of what they did there. For all of the destruction they inflicted as they left, they weren’t able to destroy all the records. They made six copies of everything.

The portraits gave a name and two dates; when they arrived and when they left. These were men that were considered strong enough to work and therefore hadn’t proceeded directly to the gas chambers. Perhaps their fate was worse! Reading those dates, the average length of time they survived, three months.

Where they lived, they didn’t dress it up with items of the occupants; blankets, clothes, utensils and the like, not like in the museum at Terezin. They let you imagine the full horror of what it would have been like.

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Birkenau, Auschwitz II, is the image we all know. Here, you don’t even get a guide. It isn’t necessary, it would be an intrusion into your thoughts, your attempts to try and reconcile this place.

Much here was destroyed as they left,

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Including the gas chambers.

It makes it all the more poignant.

We went back the next day, early, to spend time when the bus tours had yet to arrive. How do you comprehend a depression where the ashes of thousands are buried.

This is a place I believe, everyone should visit, even if they have no connection.

It made a remarkable impression on all of us, one we are still trying to come to terms with.

GDR