Ghosts of Terezín

Modern Terezín is a ghost town.

I don't mean in the sense that it's barely inhabited, although that is true; when you arrive, there's an immediate sense that this potentially pretty little town was the site of great suffering, that Death visited this place a few too many times.  At least, that's the impression I have when my friend and roommate M and I get off the bus on a cold late-December day.

The former concentration camp and Nazi prison site has become a living museum and memorial to the suffering and loss that occurred here.  We walk around the museum galleries, seeing artwork and writing from the residents of the ghetto. Too many names are followed by the phrase "died at Auschwitz in (year)".

The overcrowded, inadequately fed, and disease-ridden ghetto was hardly safer than the most famous and deadly of concentration camps; a large number of people died here before they could be shipped to Auschwitz.  Although it wasn't designated as a death camp by the Nazis, over 33,000 people died in Terezín.

We make the walk from the town to the crematorium, about 10 minutes.  There's an eerie quiet over the whole town.  Chatting about light subjects feels wrong here.  When we arrive at the crematorium, a Jewish tour group is already there.  They move slowly through the long concrete building, stopping in the middle for prayer.  A man sings a beautiful, mournful-sounding prayer.  A few people are taking photos, but I can't bring myself to do so.  In this place where the Nazis attempted to hide evidence of their atrocities, silence and reflection seems the most appropriate.

Spartan bunk beds in the Terezín prison

M and I make our way back through the village in freezing rain, heading towards the old fort that served as a Nazi prison.  As we enter the compound, an arched entry proclaims the famous lie in bold letters, "ARBEIT MACHT FREI"; work makes you free.

Walking through the fortress, the flat images from history books spring into horrifying reality as the crowded wooden bunks, tiny solitary confinement cells, and communal showers that bear so much resemblance to the gas chambers appear in front of me.  I'm shivering.  I'm not sure it's all because of the cold.

Living in Europe, especially in central Europe, the Nazi genocide and the war become real.  They leave the realm of ancient history that only exists in a textbook and become tangible.  And the more I learn about the war and the rise of the Nazi party, the more I compare them to the things happening in our current political climate in the US, the more I worry.  No one group of people can account for our problems in the US- it isn't that simple, it never is.  We are all people, first and foremost, just as every one of the Nazis' victims was a person with a family and a story and desires and dreams and aspirations.  Although the future is daunting, we cannot let fear overtake our humanity.