Terezin Part II

I’ve been putting it off and putting it off, but here I am to write some more about Terezin. Won’t that be fun. As I was saying, the bus drove us through the ramparts and into the town. We were unceremoniously booted off the bus and left standing opposite a big, empty square rimmed by trees that look like they’ve never been green. We saw a sign pointing to the Ghetto Museum, and decided to go and investigate. We bought our tickets and walked up a big white staircase into the museum. It was amazing – there was so much information we could have stood there for hours reading. There were clothes, artefacts, videos of survivors telling their stories of life in the ghetto. There were maps, drawings, letters, quotations, musical scores, photographs and an unbelievably comprehensive coverage of the whole strategy of the ‘Final Solution to the Jewish Question’ (the lovely euphemism for ‘Getting rid of all those pesky Jews’). We then saw a sign advertising the museum’s cinema, and decided we would like to watch whatever film they wanted to show us about the place. So we went into a huge 400-ish seat theatre and sat down. Completely alone. Completely the only two people in the whole place. And watched a film entitled ‘Terezin: Chapters from History’. It was awful, we left feeling kind of soul-squashed and decided that before adventuring out into the cold we needed some sustenance. So we went down into the little cafeteria and had some lunch. I can’t explain what was strange about it – I guess it was just a bit surreal that the Coca Cola culture is so pervasive that it even has a place in a museum commemorating the greatest horror ever committed by mankind. Oh well.

So we had lunch and then began walking around the town. Our first destination was the Magdeburg Barracks which had been used to house internees during the war. We couldn’t find it due to the extreme confusion resulting from the discrepancy between the street names on the map and the street names according to the signs, so we wandered aimlessly for a while, and in doing so managed to become filled with the aura of the town. It was cold, grey and empty. And although I know there were occasionally cars and people and dogs, I remember an oppressive silence. We walked around this derelict town, broken, boarded-up windows everywhere and eventually found the Magdeburg Barracks. It was strange – this was the only part of the museumy stuff that we didn’t like, because they’d done up the barracks all cosy-like, and to be honest it all looked kind of like a cute room where you might go to stay for Year 7 camp. Hmmm. Maybe not exactly on the money, there. So we left the barracks and crossed the road to this strange strange strange little op shop. There were no lights on, and they sold strange things, but the worst of it was definitely a large pile of shoes in the back corner, next to a huge rack stuffed with old coats, which was unavoidably reminiscent of photos of abandoned belongings in a Holocaust museum. We couldn’t get out of there fast enough. And we didn’t buy anything.

Our next destination was the Crematorium and Ceremonial Room. We followed the signs emblazoned with a Star of David and the word ‘Krematorium’. The ground was covered with dirty ice and snowy sludge, and as we followed one of the roads around the perimeter we saw a man with a dog, up on a little hill next to the street. We risked life and limb to climb up the embankment, looking thoroughly ridiculous trying not to fall on our asses on the ice. When we reached the top, we realised we had accidentally stumbled upon one of the prisons. It’s hard to describe the layout of the town, but this barracks-style prison had a deep moat surrounding it, and the brown brick wall was high and impenetrable with very small windows every few metres. It wasn’t done up all museumy, and it was overgrown, dilapidated and hostile looking. Will recalls our accidentally finding that building as one of the more powerful and awful moments of the visits.

We eventually came to the Ceremonial room. For the first few months, at least, when someone died at Theresienstadt they were properly farewelled according to the custom of their religion, and buried in a coffin, in a civilised way. Needless to say those practises soon fell by the wayside as the mortality rate skyrocketed. In September 1942 the ghetto was at its most crowded, holding 58,500 people. In the same month, the Crematorium was completed, equipped with four modern furnaces, which were put to hard work as the death rate reached 131 people each day. We walked down a pathway into into the semi-underground Jewish Ceremonial chamber, which had been beautifully adjusted to tell the history of the place. There was a primitive sort of autopsy room, and then the space where burial ceremonies had been held. It was very dark, and the ceiling was low. I looked down through a metal gateway where I could see nothing but a long, black passageway, with many, many black metal doors, all sitting slightly ajar. I could only just make out their outlines in the darkness, and the empty black passage seemed to go on for kilometres, with door after door after door... It was like something out of a nightmare. It chilled me to the bone and we left immediately.

We walked down a long avenue (after Will stopped to play with some funny animals that were in the little canal / river / moat – they were beavers or otters or something, I don’t remember…), and there appeared at the end of it a huge black marble menorah. We had come to the Jewish Cemetery and Crematorium. I can’t really write much except to ask you to imagine what it’s like to walk into a big stone room with four 8-foot long huge metal furnaces, all with ashes and embers still sitting at the mouth of the machines. It’s horrible. It was so cold and silent, and we wandered around for a few minutes before just getting the hell out of there. In a tiny little side passage there was a room still set up for autopsies – the huge stone tables with drains and a big sink at one end. Brrr. Oh, and to add to the delight there was a little glass cabinet boasting some original implements – things to cut and grab and slice and remove and oh my gosh – it was a bit too much. Will walked into one little empty room and said “oh, there’s nothing in here, it’s just a little room”. I saw the plaque on the door and told him in a little voice that that was the morgue. We got out of there pretty quick after that…

As you can imagine, we were not feeling too chirpy at this stage of the day. We decided that we would just walk around to the Small Fortress (a 10 minute walk from the town), have a look around there and then get back on the bus to Prague. Nice, warm, safe, happy, comfortable Prague. It was SO cold. Bitterly, bitterly cold. I was wearing 3 pairs of pants – my leggings, my jarmie pants AND my jeans, and had about 6 tops on, as well as a coat. But dang, it was cold.

We bought a cup of hot chocolate from a lady who was sitting behind a counter cut out of the wall of a building near the entrance to the town. The cup was full and we were walking so I managed to slosh hot chocolate all over my gloves. First it burned, and then it was freezing cold. We walked back out through the ramparts leading into the town, and made our way around to the Small Fortress. We crossed over the Ohre, a raging, slime green coloured river with cliff-like banks lined with buildings we could tell used to be kind of grandiose. It was eerie. The only person in sight was a homeless man who was babbling incoherently and following us, asking for money. Everything was just deserted. It was like a plague had gone through and everyone had just dropped everything and left.