Day 16 - Prague

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Another day another place to explore. Today I was heading out on a day trip to Terezin, which was a concentration camp used by the Nazis in WW2. Terezin was a collection camp which meant that people were not exterminated there however the death toll was high due to the cramped spaces and disease. Many of the people who were sent to Terezin were eventually moved on to another concentration camp, most often Auschwitz. The town of Terezin originally had a population of 7000 individuals (3500 civilians and 3500 military employees). Throughout WW2 during the Nazi occupation more than 150 000 Jews resided a Terezin before being shipped off to other camps. Terezin was also used as a front by the Nazis to spread their propaganda about the conditions in concentration camps to Western countries and the Red Cross visited Terezin in 1944. Obviously the Nazis had a year to prepare for this visit and were able to ‘beautify’ the town and create propaganda videos showing the ‘lifestyle’ that Jewish people were able to enjoy living in Terezin. Our first stop was the crematorium. This was used to dispose of bodies after the number of dead became too great for the cemetery to cope. Like most German things these were really well designed and were able to cremate a body in around 40 minutes (current cremations take around 1 hour). The cremated remains were kept initially in wooden boxes before it was decided that this was not cost effective and they instead used cardboard boxes. These were recorded and stored under the belief that they would be returned to family members after the war so that they could have a burial. Near the end of the war in 1945 when it became obvious to the Nazis that they were fighting a losing battle they started to erase the evidence of their crimes. One way they did this was to dump up to 22000 cardboard boxes containing the ash remains of Jewish people. After this we went down to the old moat and saw this strange creature called a Myocastor coypus, which kind of looks like a cross between a rat and a beaver. We saw one swimming along eating a bagel (people often leave food out for them). After this we went and explored some of the underground ghetto that was occupied by many of the Jews during WW2. We also looking in a museum with lots of art work from Jews at Terezin as well as watching one of the propaganda videos that were disseminated to hide the horrific realities of life for Jews under Nazi occupation. I really enjoyed this tour, the only down side was that there was so much to see and so little time to see it all. Rushing between different exhibits we were often only given 10 minutes to look over things and read the different stories and information.

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