Terezin

On Sunday, my program went to Terezin, the concentration camp that Jews and political prisoners, mostly from Czechoslovakia, went through before being transported to other camps including Auschwitz. Terezin is about an hour away from Prague, and it was the first camp I've visited.

Our guide was the most amazing part of the day. His name is Professor Felix Kolmer, and he is an acoustics professor at a university in Prague. But much more interestingly, he spent a few years in Terezin during the Holocaust as both a Jew and a political prisoner, and was also sent to Auschwitz. He escaped several times during the war. Now, among other roles, he serves as a tour guide at Terezin for visiting heads of state and other dignitaries. We were extremely lucky to have him as our guide.

At Terezin, we first visited the small fortress. The camp is divided in two. Almost all of the buildings were already there (some since 1780), so the Nazis simply took advantage of what was there and converted into a concentration camp. The small fortress is apparently what most camps look like – barracks, isolation cells, an execution area. The most terrifying part for me was when we walked into a room about the size of a freshman dorm room, and Prof. Kolmer told us that the Nazis would put 60-100 prisoners in the room, so there was not enough room to sit. Sometimes they would wait until everyone in the room, died, and then clear out the bodies. I should clarify that while Terezin was primarily a place for concentrating Jews/political prisoners, 35,000 people died there.

One of the most surprising things was how history overlaps. During World War I, the small fortress of Terezin held a group of Serbian nationalists who plotted and carried out the assassination of Franz Ferdinand. In this hallway is the cell is where the man who fired the shot lived during the war. During World War II, it served as an isolation cell on the men's side of the camp.

As we walked toward the execution area of the small fortress, I was already pretty scared. We came to an open area, that Prof. Kolmer said was the shooting range for guards. They needed practice with moving targets, so occasionally they would have Jews run across a wooden platform, and fire at them as they ran. Prof. Kolmer told us that he built that wooden platform, and he didn't learn what it was used for until he looked at pictures from Terezin after the war. Then we walked into the adjacent execution area. He said that the Nazis felt that a bullet would be wasted if it was used to kill a Jew, so they constructed gallows. Prof. Kolmer built the steps and the platform, not knowing what they would be used for. He told us that he probably was kept alive because he was good at constructing things, which reminded me of how my grandfather was kept alive because he, too, was good at making things with his hands. I wonder if my grandfather ever struggled with thoughts about what the things he made would be used for.

Next we went to the Jewish Cemetery, and then stopped in the crematorium. Prof. Kolmer told us that one company made all of the crematoriums around Europe for the Nazis. And that company still exists. Today they make ventilation systems. Talk about irony.

Then we headed to the large fortress of Terezin, which was not at all what I expected. I knew it was ghetto-like, but I did not expect to find a small, beautiful town with parks and a nice town square. This was the "model camp," and it's where the Red Cross visited during the Holocaust and the Nazis showed off how great living conditions were. During the visit, musicians played on the square, and Jews could go wherever they wanted to. However, aside from the visit, Jews' movement was restricted and they were not permitted in the square or in other parts of the town. They lived in unbelievably cramped quarters.

Today, there are stores, restaurants, and hotels within the camp, and over a thousand people live there. After eating at a nice restaurant on the town square, Prof. Kolmer told us that Jews were tortured in the basement during the war. So much for a soothing lunch. We went to a couple museums — one about arts in the camp, and another about Jews during the war. But I thought the most interesting part of the large fortress was the synagogue. I don't know why, but I expected something that resembled a synagogue. Well, we went in someone's side yard, and into what normally would have been their garage. But it was a synagogue, that of course was secret during the war. It was the size of a small garage, and had a very low ceiling. There was Hebrew on the wall, but because of floods in 2002, most of it was gone. But it was pretty amazing to see that Jews still created a place for prayer while in a concentration camp.

We visit Auschwitz in a couple weeks, which will probably be much more intense. Although from what I hear, Majdanek (a couple hours from Warsaw), is the best-preserved camp, so I just got permission from my program to skip an activity on our last day in Warsaw and take a day trip with a couple people to Majdanek. It will be one of the most fascinating and absolutely terryfing experiences of my life.