Czech Republic - Terezín concentration and transit camp

I don't even know how to begin to describe how we felt here.

Perhaps with the whole truth: we are stunned, painfully moved, infinitely sad and feel helpless. After visiting the ghetto, the fortified town and the camp and killing sites there, we feel sick. We only make it halfway through the museum, which offers even more information. The victims, some victims, are given faces, names and stories. The numbers are unbelievable. This inhumanity, this violence, this excess is unbearable.

I had expected it, having been to concentration camp memorials several times in my youth. Gerd, on the other hand, is completely shocked, he has heard about it, read about it, seen it. But he had never been confronted so directly with the history of the Third Reich.

In view of the current political situation and the increasing loss of democracy in the world, a visit to this memorial is all the more painful.

We end up sitting in a bakery on the market square and stuffing our faces with sweet pastries. Just to feel something. To fill our emptiness. To feel something pleasant.

I can't write any more about our emotions here.

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But what is Theresienstadt?

Here is a small information block for all those who are not familiar with Theresienstadt:

The brutal persecution and discrimination of the Jews began immediately after the Nazis came to power in 1933. Although the systematic extermination of the Jews, under the euphemistic name "Final Solution to the Jewish Question", was not formally decided until 1942 at the Wannsee Conference, the suffering of the Jewish community began much earlier. This dark period of history shows how quickly the Nazis implemented their inhuman agenda after seizing power.

Theresienstadt, also known as Terezín, was a ghetto and concentration camp set up by the National Socialists during the Second World War in what was then Czechoslovakia. It was established in November 1941 in the fortified town of Terezín, around 60 kilometres north of Prague. Although it was officially designated as a "Jewish settlement area", Terezín actually served as a transit camp for Jews on their way to the extermination camps in Eastern Europe.

Theresienstadt was unique among the Nazi camps as it functioned as a kind of "showcase camp". The Nazis staged it to deceive the international community about the true conditions in the concentration camps. In June 1944, the camp was even temporarily "beautified" for a propaganda film and a visit by the Red Cross. Shops, cafés and other facilities were set up to give the impression of a lively Jewish community.

Despite this façade, the living conditions in Theresienstadt were extremely harsh. There was extreme overcrowding, hunger, disease and a high mortality rate. Many prominent Jewish artists, musicians, writers and scholars were among the prisoners, and despite the brutal conditions, a lively cultural scene developed in the camp. Art, music and theatre were used as a means of resistance and self-preservation.

From 26 October 1942, all transports to the East had only one destination: Auschwitz II-Birkenau. Half of the 63 transports from the ghetto went to the concentration and extermination camp there. Theresienstadt was therefore later referred to as the "waiting room of Auschwitz". From 1 June 1943, all transports travelled via the newly built branch line that connected Theresienstadt with the railway station in nearby Bohušovice nad Ohří. The terrible sight of the transports arriving and departing, which was deeply engraved in the memory of all the prisoners, was thus hidden from the eyes of the local residents.

By the end of the war in May 1945, around 140,000 Jews had passed through Theresienstadt. Of these, around 33,000 perished in the camp and around 88,000 were deported to other camps, where many of them were murdered. Theresienstadt was finally liberated by the Red Army.

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We ask ourselves after the visit (and actually always before): How can people violate human rights like this? Why are people, regardless of their ethnicity, nationality, gender or religion, still excluded from the human family in so many countries around the world, even today? Why only? And we realise that even in our immediate environment, not all people are counted equally as part of the human family. What to do?

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Merci for "travelling with us

We are thinking about taking another break from travelling in the summer and visiting our families in Germany and Switzerland. One of the ideas is to organise a Lecture about our long journey to the Persian Gulf to prepare. If you would like to, what would interest you the most? We will also tell stories here that don't find a place here on the blog. We're thinking of the Bern and Berlin area - simply because we have family there. But other places are also conceivable. Feel free to write to us.

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