Czech Blog post #8 - When will we learn?

On  Saturday, September 27, we took the hour-long bus ride to the northern Czech city of Tererzin.

In January of 1780, Habsburg Emperor Joseph II ordered that a fortress, named Theresienstadt after his mother, Empress Maria Theresa, be built. Construction lasted ten years and included the building of the town of Theresienstadt. It was originally intended to be a resort for Czech nobility. 

The fortress, or the "Small Fortress", was on the east side of the Ohře River, while the walled town, called the "Main Fortress", was on the west side. The Elbe River is directly to the north.  

During wartime, 11,000 soldiers could be stationed there, and trenches and low-lying areas around the fortress could be flooded for defense, but at no time was the fortress under direct attack. 

Towards the end of the 19th century, the fortress was used as a prison, and during World War I, it was a political prison camp. Its most famous prisoner was Gavrilo Princip, a Bosnian Serb student, who assassinated Archduke Franz Ferdinand. This assassination is the event which was the catalyst for the outbreak of World War I. Princip was sent to the Small Fortress at Terezin to serve a twenty-year sentence, but died on April 28, 1918, nearly four years later from tuberculosis and prolonged malnutrition.

When the Austro-Hungarian Empire fell in 1918, the town became part of the newly formed state of Czechoslovakia. Twenty years later, Nazi Germany annexed the city and the surrounding lands. By 1940, the Prague Gestapo Police set up the prison in the Small Fortress. By the end of the war, 32,000 prisoners, including 5,000 women, passed through the Small Fortress, many of whom perished while there.

During this same time, on the other side of the river, at the Main Fortress, the Nazis created the Jewish Ghetto. Here, over 150,000 Jews were interned, including 15,000 children. Most of these people were from Czechoslovakia, but there were also thousands of Jews sent there from Germany, Austria, the Netherlands, and Denmark. Though not an extermination camp, thousands died from the deplorable conditions, and many others were sent to the death camps. At the end of the war, there were only 17,247 survivors.

In my travels, I've been to several other prisons and death camps where innocent people have been held, starved, tortured, and killed because of their race, religion, or creed. I'm certainly not fascinated by these places; I'm appalled. But I think everyone needs to see for themselves the atrocities that have been inflicted on our fellow human beings. Maybe someday this sort of madness can stop.

These pictures are ones drawn by the children who were held in the Jewish Ghetto.

When the Jewish families were taken from their homes and moved to Terezin, they were allowed to take one suitcase to carry all of their belongings. 

“We felt it was so important to release the film at this moment in response to the level of hate, intolerance and violence currently happening right here in America,” shared Smulowitz.  “We must learn from the lessons of the past about where this level of hate can lead.  Terezin also offers an inspirational message about the power of hope and love, so needed in these times.” Quote from 2020, by Anna Smulowitz, playwright and director of the play and film, “Terezin”.  

For more information on Terezin, click this link.