Monday, June 11, 2012

Terezin

Today was just so tiring. I only got probably 5 hours of sleep and we woke up bright and early to take the metro to take the bus to get to Terezin. It was about a 1 hour drive and when we got there the weather was lovely. We got to the museum and listened to a short presentation and then watched a propaganda video from the time that was filmed in Terezin. Unfortunately I was still really tired and kept drifting off during it. After the presentation we went with a different tour guide, Petra, and she took us through part of the museum.
Just a brief rundown of Terezin: it's an itty bitty town that, before the war, had about 7000 inhabitants. It was built as a fortress town and there are only 4 entrance/exit roads. The whole place is surrounded by a moat (not filled with water, it's just grassy), and there are thick walls with little places where guards can be around the whole town. During WWII the Germans decided that it was going to become a Jewish ghetto, it was never a concentration camp and there was never any mass extermination of Jews in Terezin.
At the most, there were 155,000 Jews. Over 30,000 died from the poor conditions in the ghetto, i.e. disease, lack of food. Over 80,000 were sent to other concentration camps, and to their ultimate demise.
http://praguevisit.files.wordpress.com/2011/04/terezin-aerial-view.jpg
http://www.scrapbookpages.com/czechrepublic/TerezinPhotos/TerezinMap.JPG
https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjt3KOJWhyk7QvOdVHXiezTXhCQC0FO9ctrbtMFQqDzxBp-wnUUTgA3W3yztPO3EbQYfYKXl4QWB6olrnDcXCTQfTnqNXeU9vnkDWNvHWq8AsbclePLnaMKwmXjaXCCRmEJ-P1_6k5lgoK7/s1600/DSCN1885.JPG
The top picture shows the actual town, and the second picture shows the layout of the town. The bottom picture shows how the town is situated compared to the Vltava. Across the river, to the right in the picture, is the "small fortress" where political prisoners were held. We walked around there and then through a really long, dark, tunnel. It took probably 5 minutes to walk through the entire thing.

There was a small place of prayer that remained hidden when Terezin was a Jewish ghetto, and was not destroyed:
 These 3 pictures show an example of life in the ghetto (it was a lot worse for most people):


 Jewish Cemetery:
 Entrance to the Small Fortress intended for political prisoners:
 Inside the Small Fortress:
 The moat:


The tour lasted from roughly 10am until 4pm. We were walking that entire time, save a 30 minute lunch. With yesterday and today, my feet are yelling at me.
Tomorrow we are going to the NYU classrooms and listening to Jiri Pehe who is going to lecture on old Czech history (next week he will lecture on more modern history). He is apparently really well-known and participated as a dissident during the communist occupation in the 1980s. It should be really exciting!

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