Terezin Reflections - Chapter 1. By Rachel Nathanson

Terezin Reflections - Chapter 1

July 2010

By Rachel Nathanson

From June 24 - July 4, 2010 the Holocaust Center, in partnership with Museum Without Walls, organized a Holocaust study trip to Budapest and Prague. Frieda S., a survivor from Terezin, and her daughter Dee (also the Co-Executive Director of the Holocaust Center) participated in the trip and shared the group invaluable first hand experiences. Eva, a survivor of Terezin who had been in the barracks with Frieda, met up with us. Below Rachel Nathanson, one of the Holocaust Center's board members and a participant on the trip, describes some of sites and shares her thoughts on the experience of visiting Terezin.

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

I have a 15-year old daughter. She is the age that Frieda and Eva were after spending the first of two years in a concentration work camp in Terezin, Czech Republic. But for a mere 50 years or so (a blink of an eye in the annals of historic time) and the serendipity of being born in America, this could have been my daughter’s experience.

Having been home now for a week, I am still processing all that I saw and learned while participating in a Holocaust educational trip to Hungary and the Czech Republic. It was a transformative experience, and an honor, to learn more about this tragic history from these two women who survived it. Here, I want to share what we saw in Terezin, on an all-too-brief visit on July 2, 2010.

The Fortress
Originally built by the Hapsburg Monarchy (in 1780) as a fortress to protect Prague from invaders, it is a walled city surrounded by a moat. Broken into 2 sections, the “small fortress” was used by the Prague Gestapo as a prison in WWII. The larger “town” portion was used as a ghetto to “concentrate” the Jews, hence the term “concentration camp”.

The entry yard to the small fortress still has the German labels above the doors for the various offices, where the initial processing of prisoners took place. How eerie to stand on the same worn down, wooden floors where efficient Nazi command sent nearly 32,000 prisoners through the gates to hell. On through the archway with the insidious Nazi mockery, “Work Makes One Free”.

Most prisoners were Czech and most were part of the resistance. Many were jailed for having made a joke in the streets about Nazis, for being gay, with the harshest treatment meted out to the Jews.

The largest barracks were first on our tour, used to house the upper level of prisoners. Here there were about 90 men per room, with large bunk beds to be shared, one sink, one latrine, windows, but no heat. From here the rooms got smaller, the crowding greater and the conditions heartbreakingly worse.

The cells holding Jews were smaller. In a room of about 144 square feet, there typically were 55 prisoners. Can you imagine being in a cell with only 2 feet of space to stand in, taking turns to sit or lie down? These cells had one small window high in the wall, no beds, no toilet, no heat, and most importantly, no ventilation. Without adequate oxygen, many perished of suffocation. The solitary cells further along were yet smaller. These cells held only 3-5 prisoners at a time, but the space was frightening. Only about 10 square feet, they had no windows, no light whatsoever, and those held herein would have been plunged into a world of total darkness once the hefty wooden door slammed shut on them. How many lost their sanity in these conditions?

We moved on to the adjacent building where the showers were shown to us. Chilling to us as we all contemplated the more deathly use of showers at the Nazi death camps, but these showers were innocent enough. Prisoners were given a delousing shower once per week. Since they were done in groups of 100 or so, it was an important gathering place for prisoners to see friends and learn who was still alive.

Leaving the walls of the small fortress, we viewed the home of the camp commander and ranking guard housing. The swimming pool dug by hand by prisoners (without the benefit of any tools!), was the sense that housing conditions had improved for someone. Gestapo families raised their children here, showed them the atrocities taking place inside the walls, and were able to sleep at night. It was more than I could mentally grasp. The commander’s home was a huge palace-like structure with a flower-lined drive.