BLOG POST 4

The rest of the day was fairly uneventful. We went out at night to go to a black-light theatre show, but when we arrived at the box office, we found out that not only was it mega-expensive, but it was also sold out for the night. That made the decision pretty easy. With the night now totally open, we took our time meandering around Wenceslas Square, eventually branching away from it to find a good place to get dinner. We approached one place called “Cabaret” figuring “ooh a show!” Yeah, no… it was definitely a strip club. The dude at the entrance offered Kate and I free admission but in a superbly creepy “and if you want, you can audition to work here” kind of way, so we skedaddled out of there as fast as possible. I realized at that point that there were MANY “cabarets” on the street we were on. How we ended up in this district I have no idea, but we high-tailed it out of there.

We ended up having dinner at a pizza place and then heading straight back to the dorm for an early night.


Tuesday, February 02, 2010

When I got on the bus for the group trip to Terezín Concentration Camp today, I knew it would a somber field trip. What I grossly underestimated was just how much I would be affected by the experience.

We boarded the bus at 8:45am and made the hour-long journey outside Prague to the central containment camp. The ride itself was beautiful – I spent the whole time looking out the window, watching beautiful small villages and majestic snowy landscapes sweep by. It was just like any other bus trip – half the people were sleeping, and the other half were listening to the tour guide narrate the history of the Czech Republic as we rolled through it. I was in the latter, “awake” half. It was a fun bus ride thanks in large part to the lady’s interesting pronunciation of certain words: “faculty” became “fuck-ulty,” “success” became “sex-ess,” and “astronomers” became “astronoms.” Lord knows I’ll be messing up more than that when I attempt to speak Czech, but it was still a good giggle.

Around 10am we arrived, and the giggly mood vanished. Pulling into the parking lot we saw a long, snowy field covered with tombstones, and suddenly the reality of the situation set in. Here, thousands of people were killed while thousands of others awaited deportation to death camps further east, their futures almost certainly doomed. The high brick walls with barbed wire at the top are still there, the barracks still standing. The shower room is still accessible, the gallows still intact. And here I was, staring at a place of unimaginable horrors, about to pass through the gates that thousands had entered, never to exit, years ago.

Stepping off the bus, the first sight to reach my eyes was the cemetery grounds covered with hundreds of graves, a few marked but the majority anonymous. After the war, Christians and Jews worked together to construct the cemetery as a type of memorial, and today, the cemetery includes a giant cross and a giant Star of David, side by side. We passed the cemetery and walked through the gates into the camp.

First, let me give you the context. This particular camp was for political prisoners and captured resistance fighters, more a prison than a “death camp.” Hundreds lost their lives to torture, disease, execution, and malnutrition, but mass extermination was not this camp’s primary goal. In fact, the Nazis even brought Red Cross inspectors to this prison as “proof” of their ethical methods. The majority of what they showed the Red Cross though – for example, the “shaving” rooms, replete with mirrors and sinks – were no more than a sham. The prisoners had no access to these facilities; they were living in squalor and misery despite the fact that such facilities were there. That’s just beyond despicable.

We walked through one holding cell that used to hold 60 prisoners, but had no furniture, no toilet beyond a bucket, and could barely fit even the 40 students on the tour. Another room was the size of a classroom, but it held up to 90 people. This room had three levels of bunk beds cushioned only by wood, only one toilet, and a sink that spit out undrinkable water. I can’t even imagine what it was like back then; the living conditions are absolutely atrocious even now, and this is the cleaned-up, tourist-friendly version of history.

Our last stop was at the cinema to watch a film comprised entirely of material from a Nazi propaganda film. While the images of smiling, happy, “relocated” Jews played, the narrator quoted the figures so carefully kept by the Nazis: “Train A23. 1,000 people transported. 2 survived. Train A54. 1,000 people transported. None survived.” All in all, most of Terezín’s 155,000 Jews were killed during the Holocaust.

Once the film ended, we were given 15 minutes to explore on our own. There was only one thing I wanted to do. I exited the camp and returned to the cemetery where I choked back tears as I prayed for the victims and the survivors.

The bus was absolutely silent as we rode to our next stop, the Jewish ghetto in the town of Terezín where the Nazis imprisoned 60,000 Jews awaiting deportation to death camps. The prisoners’ sole “crime” was their religion. In spite of the Nazis’ attempts to weaken their spirits, the Jews thrived – at least artistically – while in the ghetto. Today there is a museum that houses an incredible number of paintings and literary works, all created by the Jews while imprisoned in the ghetto. The most touching and disturbing part of this collection is the many drawings done by imprisoned children, all but 100 of whom eventually perished in the Holocaust. Their drawings range from pictures of daily life in camp to images of happy memories from a time before the war, and all are accompanied with the artist’s name… and date of death. As I write this, tears are coming to my eyes again… I literally can’t find words to describe how much it hurts to think of the children and their fates.

The next stop was a bit less somber. We visited a secret Jewish prayer room hidden in a bakery and used throughout the duration of the war. Today, the walls are cracked and the paint is peeling, but you can still see prayers written in Hebrew on the walls. The room isn’t big – it’s a windowless, concrete room about the size of a small dorm room, but it was breathtaking nonetheless. The idea that in the face of all this evil people were able to hold onto their faith… that idea gave me the first glimpse of hope in the face of so much evil. That idea – not the appearance – was what made the room breathtaking.

We took a quick detour for lunch before continuing the tour at a museum documenting various contributions to the fine arts by the Terezín Jews. It was amazing the work they produced – plays, operas, musical compositions, epic poems, and especially drawings. My favorites were the drawings by Otto Ungar. He drew the people he saw in the ghetto – children playing with dolls, elderly couples holding hands, moms with babies, and a whole slew of faces. No names, no descriptions, just faces – some smiling, some somber, all absolutely beautiful in their own ways. Seeing these faces – these eyes staring into mine – and knowing their fates gives me the chills, even now.

Our final stop before heading home was at the crematorium. Here, I finally lost it. My god – the destruction of human life was so common, so blasé. Rampant death wasn't a tragedy but a hassle because it overwhelmed the crematorium’s ability to burn through the bodies. How is it possible to witness death and consider it normal? How could humans beings be such heartless beasts? I’ll never understand.

The bus back to the hotel was incredibly quiet, everyone busy processing the day’s sights. We arrived back at the dorm and tried to act normal, but of course you can’t just forget. A numb sort of feeling settled in, at least for me, and I just couldn’t keep the images of what I saw out of my mind. I distracted myself the rest of the day – I went on the internet, I went out to dinner at a pizzeria in town, and I hung out with my roomies – but by nighttime I was just exhausted. I fell asleep early hoping today’s images wouldn’t haunt my dreams.