Terezin

Friday morning we woke up and headed to Terezin, the Czech Republic’s most famous concentration camp. Upon getting there, I wasn’t really sure to expect, but was still surprised at my own reaction. The first thing that really threw me off was the fact that they sell ICE CREAM at a CONCENTRATION CAMP. I guess there has to be some sort of snack shop, but I just found that extremely weird. The biggest thing, however, that I recognized was the fact that you have to actively make an effort to conceptualize everything. Unlike the Holocaust museum, with its pictures and movies and items and stories, this is just a space. It’s just brick and mortar in the 

middle of the beautiful countryside. The beds just look like beds, the walls just look like walls, and it is really, really, difficult to truly picture 90 people fitting in the beds or executions happening against the walls. Lastly, as someone with studies and interests in human rights and minority issues, I find the topic of hate to be an interesting one. For example, at Terezin there is a bathroom that was created “for show” for the Red Cross, but the prisoners were never allowed to use it. Can you imagine sheer hate at such a widespread level that a perfectly usable bathroom was created and left to collect dust while thousands went to the bathroom on the floor, where others were sleeping? 

Family pool with the execution wall
on the other side of the hill

The most shocking discovery in my mind was the swimming pool, which was built by Jews, some who died, and then used by the two young daughters of the family in charge of the concentration camp. I could not even picutre swimming on the other side of an execution wall, just tanning and sipping lemonade like a normal day. The idea of this, what went through their heads, and even more, what must have been going through the prisoners’ heads, really intrigues me.The entire excursion is quite emotionally exhausting as well. I spent a lot of my time thinking about how I fit in this history and culture. Going into the camp, I felt that I would feel a sense of personal attachment to everything, but I didn’t. This would not have been me, or my family, as Steve as so thoroughly uncovered in his ancestry research. Also, while I have always loved the family traditions that stem from my religion, I do not believe practically any of it, for many reasons that aren’t worth going through here. My views on organized religion are pretty evident, and I have always slightly detached myself from the one thing that tied me to it. Yet, walking through Terezin, I gained a sense of why it is so important to maintain my cultural heritage, regardless of my thoughts on the Torah, Bible, etc. Through both my class and this excursion, I am finally realizing the resilience that exists within this religion, and it is something that I want to perpetuate, not negate. This reaction completely surprised me, as I believed that my views on this were unchangeably set.While Jamie and I had cut Dachau out of our travel plans, I absolutely want to find my way there and spend time focused on the Holocaust during my time in Central Europe.