Day Four, Terezin & Prague

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Today we planned for Terezin (Theresienstadt) concentration camp. Cheery subject, eh? Neither one of us has ever been to a concentration camp, so this would be interesting. Terezin is reached by bus, so immediately after breakfast we headed to the main bus station, Florenc, to figure out how to get to Terezin.

It turns out, buying a bus ticket to Terezin is relatively easy (probably because so many tourists want to go each day - our bus ended up being packed and only a few were locals headed to different towns along the way), but riding the bus is a bit more expensive than riding the train (although slightly less expensive than driving would be if we had a car). The bus was nice, more like a tour bus than a stinky Greyhound. It was a cozy way to travel.

Terezin is still out in the middle of nowhere (although looking at a map I think it’s fairly close to the border of Germany, which would make sense). The countryside surrounding it has depressing little villages (watch Antonia’s Line and you’d have a good example), hops farms, and looks a bit like northern California or the middle of Washington. As we neared the camp, I noticed that the day was cold and dreary (unlike yesterday, when the sun was out - still frickin’ cold, but beautiful), which seemed suitable for a place such as Terezin. We hopped off the bus 500 meters outside the center of town (although we could’ve ridden to the town square), and slowly walked in, looking at everything around us.

Since Terezin was originally a fort built in the 1700s, it has a look of old, foreboding and forbidding power attached to it. The fort is irregularly shaped and of very little use now, making it even more sad. There was a town at Terezin until the Nazis evacuated it to fully use this location. Today, there is a functional town but it is very depressing. Who, after all, wants to live at the site of a concentration camp? True, this is no Auschwitz, but it still has a tragic history. The town was quiet save for a few dozen tourists, but there were little kids about, a few beggars, and small, sad looking shops for locals (nothing touristy).

We paid for a ticket (200 Kc/person - about $10 each) to see the sights at the Ghetto Museum, which had once housed a boys’ school across from a park that the Nazis put effort into during the “beautification process” in their attempt to fool the Red Cross. At this time we were basically the only people touring the Ghetto Museum, which was nice because it meant I could use my camera. I was sure that I wasn’t supposed to, but the museum wasn’t crazy with the “no camera” signs like US museums, so I went ahead. The museum was rather extensive, showing quite a bit of information about Terezin, and we spent some time wandering through.

After the museum, we tried to find our way to a few other sites. The map we were given at the museum wasn’t laid out real well and on the map the streets were in German (which would be helpful if I was reconstructing my scholarship on concentration camps but not so helpful when I am trying to find my way around streets with Czech names). After much wandering, we made it to the original train stop and mortuary. Inside the mortuary, which was within the fort, we saw memorials to people who died who had families that had escaped, and musicians, and the dead in general. We then walked on, past the mortuary, and toward the crematorium and graveside. At that area a sign requested that men cover their heads. Since the little stand by the parking lot was not open we couldn’t get Matthew a yarmulke there, so I made him wrap his head in a scarf and I did the same (he wasn’t thrilled). Inside the cemetery held a building with a small crematorium and museum and we were able to get a yarmulke in there (and I got in trouble for taking a photo, but where else would I get a picture to show my kids? - and I don’t think the argument “it’s disrespectful of the dead” works because there are books with these sorts of pictures in them, so it can’t be okay then and not okay now). We finished walking through part of the cemetery and then headed back to the town (mostly because we were about frozen through at this point).

Once back in the town we went to the Magdeburg barracks museum, which held an example of a room, lots of information on musicians, artists, and writers of the ghetto, and was very extensive. (I did not take pictures here because they did actually post “no camera” signs.) It was very sad to think of so much life wasted, but I also wondered - out of the survivors of Terezin, how many more would’ve died if they had just been sent directly to someplace like Auschwitz? Most of the Danish Jews, for example, who were deported survived the war because they were sent to Terezin and somehow didn’t make the transports to Auschwitz. That, at least, was a glimmer of something slightly positive in this mass of depressing history.

After the Magdeburg Barracks we headed back to the main Ghetto Museum and the bus stop to see when we could catch the next bus back to Prague. The next bus was nearly 40 minutes later, but since there was no real place to sit and wait we decided to stay outside, in the cold, waiting for this bus. Thank God the busses are heated and we could at least partially defrost on the trip back. (As a side note, Matthew and I discussed that we think we get tired and our joints are crampy because of the cold - I wonder how people could live in Russia or other frigid places.)

We arrived back in Prague shortly after 2PM, which meant that we still had plenty of time to hop a metro and see things if we’d like. The two things that I wanted to do were stop at a botanicals shop to get interesting gifts to take home and get some food. We went to the botanicals shop first, where we bought good smelling soaps and interesting salts made from local ingredients grown outside of Prague. I may need to go back there - I really liked this place and the gifts are a bit better than tacky tourist souvenirs (which I also need to stop a get - I am looking for a shirt that I saw once that says “Czech Me Out,” which I think is hysterical).

After the little shopping excursion I wanted to get something to eat at a little Mexican place I heard about, so we headed in that direction (near the Spanish synagogue, behind the Old Town Square). Apparently Czechs really like Mexican food, Tex-Mex, sometimes called Czech-Mex because it’s not exactly the same, and western wear. I don’t know why. Recently, more restaurants that were closer to being authentic started springing up because Americans or those really in the know kept thinking “this isn’t really Mexican food” (I guess it wasn’t spicy at all and the beans tended to be undercooked). One of the places that opened to solve this problem was La Casa Blu, which was recommended as a good place to get a cheap meal. We headed there and the waitress was kind enough to see me struggling over a menu that was all in Czech and offer me one in English. Matthew had a spinach and bean burrito and I had a vegetables and beans burrito, we split chips and guacamole, and we tried our first dark beer since we’ve been here (Ceske - pretty good, especially at 29 Kc for 0.5l). All of this plus a large tip still only came to 600 Kc, which is about $30. This is about what we’re spending on food each day because we’re only eating one meal in addition to breakfast.

We spent a bit more time wandering around and then headed back to the hotel. My pedometer had fallen off in the morning and I hadn’t put it back on, so I am just guessing when I say we probably only walked 10,000 steps, about five miles, today. That could explain why we weren’t nearly so tired. Even so, we were out for a good ten hours and didn’t want to stay up too late before heading to bed. Tomorrow’s plan? Prague Castle.

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Photos

Entering Terezin
One of the first things that we saw as we walked into Terezin

The road to death
The train depot and tracks near the mortuary in Terezin.

Death honored
The Jewish section of the Terezin cemetery.