By Mollie Hinds, reporting from Terezín, near Prague
When you first arrive in Terezín, the horrors that once haunted the town are unseen. There are people strolling to the shops or hanging their laundry out the windows. The restaurants are filled with laughter. Normal, everyday things. The town it has preserved so much of its history, it feels as if you’ve travelled back in time. But this is a place with a dark secret.
In 1942, a conference of high-ranking SS officials (the feared Schutzstaffel armed divisions of the Nazi party) met in Wannsee of the outskirts of Berlin to discuss the “Final Solution of the Jewish Question” – the extermination of Jews in Europe. The 18th century fortress town of Terezín would play a terrible role in the plan.
In under four years, more than 140,000 prisoners were brought to Terezín: men, women and children. At first, the barracks in the town were used to hold prisoners, but by 1942 all civilian buildings were used for the same purpose. With mass overcrowding; attics, cellars and casemates within the ramparts were used to hold prisoners. Terezín became the largest camp in the Czech region. In the last days of the War, a further 15,000 prisoners arrived at Terezín on evacuation transports from concentration camps cleared from the Allies’ advancing front line. More than 35,000 prisoners died here from stress, hunger, and the hygienic and living conditions.
The first stop of my Terezín tour was the Ghetto museum. As you walk into the first room you are surrounded by eight memorials listing the names of those who were prisoners of war in Terezín Deportation Camp. In the next room you are met with a list of countries in Europe and their pre-war Jewish population, equalling 11 million. A graph shows the emigration of Jews from the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia (later part of Czechoslovakia) from March 1939. More than 19,000 Jews fled.
Further on into the museum and there are examples of antisemitic propaganda. Der Stürmer, a weekly newspaper published by high-ranking Nazi Julius Streicher, included hateful stereotypes of Jewish people with graphic cartoon drawings, to purposely segregate and provoke hate speech. Ernst Hiemer, a journalist on Der Stürmer, wrote Der Giftpilz – The Poisonous Mushroom – a children’s book created to indoctrinate the young by portraying Jews as dangerous.
The last part of the museum displays chilling artifacts such as the yellow stars and dolls that were used to belittle and humiliate rabbis and Jewish children.
Next, I headed to the town’s Small Fortress. Along the way I saw the first of the Jewish cemeteries: rows upon rows of graves, each one more haunting and overwhelming than the last. Seeing it is a shock to the system.
We all know how dreadful and horrific World War Two was, but seeing it up close is a genuine jolt. How could people have been so cruel and inhumane? How could this happen?
Walking through the archway of the Small Fortress I had an eerie sense of being watched. Although I was walking alone, it didn’t feel that way.
The Gestapo – the Nazi secret police – used the fortress as a prison from June 1940 until May 1945, holding political opponents of the regime, including Czech resistance members and some British and Commonwealth prisoners of war. You can see the barracks, with a long wooden bunk bed a table and coal fire.
The room next door is a bare cell with two metal rings attached to the far side wall. This was likely used as form of punishment and restraints for interrogations to hold political prisoners, resistance members and those persecuted by the Nazis. Further into the fortress I noticed the single bedrooms, used as solitary confinement for prisoners, were they were kept alone as a punishment or to isolate them from others. It was physically and mentally harsh, with little light, minimal food, and almost no human contact, the rooms were cold, damp and dark with nothing but a wooden bed and a toilet.
The artifacts on show in the Small Fortress exhibition are deeply disturbing: striped prison uniforms from political prisoners ‘37977’ and ‘74122’; fragmented plates and cutlery used by the prisoners during their time at Terezín; work tools; pictures of prisoners in the barracks; a prisoner identification tag; passports; a list of jobs and assigned prisoners; records of workers employed under the Third Reich’s labour system; lists of names of those who had both survived and died.
My last stop was the Crematorium. Two buildings stand opposite each other. One Jewish and Christian ceremonial rooms. The other side was the part that I didn’t expect. Inside was a stark memorial: prisoners’ coffins which were reused and paper boxes used as urns. And then a sight which stopped me in my tracks: a Star of David with six cylinders on posts, each containing ashes of a prisoners that had died during being imprisoned.
I walked along a road that felt like it was never going to end, it seemed as if nothing was there. Then the bushes and the trees cleared, revealing a mass of graves with a little yellow building at its heart. Inside stand the incinerators that was used when prisoners were being cremated. The biggest but smallest thing I’ve ever seen, the machine itself was massive but the places where they was placed in was tiny, a few inches both ways with three stacked on top of each other.
There is a statue of prisoners here which is more of a physical representation of what happened: a couple hugging for the last time; a mum hugging her baby; then two prisoners towards the end of their torture, skin and bone, fragile and afraid.
On the walk back to the town, I reflected on what I’d seen. All I can say is the image people have about the way prisoners of war were treated that be at a deportation camp like Terezín or a concentration camp like Auschwitz, or mass execution sites like Baranovici don’t capture the full horror.
See these places for yourself. The reality is worse.
