Terezin

Cameron's 4th grade class, along with the 5th grade class, have been studying WWII together in History recently. I had the opportunity to join them on a field trip to the Terezin concentration camp located outside of Prague. I'll try to give a brief overview of what the concentration camp was like during WWII using the following pictures.

The town of Terezin was a fortress town dating from 1780, with a small fortress as well as a large one. During WWII, the Gestapo turned the small fortress into a prison camp for prisoners of war as well as a transit camp for European Jews en route to Auschwitz. The larger fortress was turned into a ghetto and premiered as a Jewish settlement by the Nazis. Though Terezin was not a work camp or a concentration camp with gas chambers, it was a concentration camp where more than 33,000 people died from hunger, fatigue, disease and terrible treatment.

The small fortress/prison was designed to hold 7,000 soldiers, and the large fortress/town had approximately 7,000 residents prior to the war. During the war, prisoners numbered near 60,000, and another 50,000 Jews occupied the city.

A cemetery containing the bodies of those people executed in the last days of the war, even after the liberation of Czechoslovakia

A courtyard where thousands of prisoners stood in silence for hours to receive their number and their uniforms

The German saying "work makes you free"

A British/US cell that held 120-170 men. It contained a row of shelves for personal belongings, a fireplace that was never used, a table and 2 benches at which a dinner of potato soup was eaten in the dark each day after 12 hours of work.

The prison cell had these three layer bunks, with no mattresses or blankets and barely enough room to lay body to body along the bunk; there was also a small sink without running water and a small toilet in the corner.

The Jewish prison cell had no furnishings, no lighting, no water or toilet and was so small that when it's occupants of 70 men were inside there was standing room only. If a person died in the night, they remained in standing position, held tightly upright by all the surrounding bodies.

A bell was rung each day at 5am. The prisoners would leave their cells, gather in the courtyard for the breakfast of coffee, to get 200g of bread as their meal for the day, and to receive their work orders for the day. Communication between the prisoners was forbidden.

There were also solitary confinement prison cells which were small, completely dark and without heating as well.

This swimming pool was dug by teenage boys during the winter, without tools

Women prisoners were allowed showers only once per month and the men once every three months. Their clothes would be put in these machines to be steamed clean and to kill the lice. After the showers, the wet clothes would be collected, shaken to remove the dead lice and put back on, even in the freezing winter temperatures.

The showers were always cold and limited to 2 minutes for an entire prison cell

The small fortress/prison had two walls, upon which the guards stood to watch the prisoners

There is a labyrinth of tunnels (approx. 29km) in the fortress and surrounding area. These were closed off by the Nazis during the war to prevent escape from the prison.