Terezín

During our stay in Prague, the group visited Terezín, which was a fortress turned extermination camp during the Nazi Regime. We started off by seeing the museums on the property that had things like artwork from the children, music and poetry that had been written, and other products of having the Jewish people be forced there. One thing that really surprised me was the propaganda that was put out to portray Terezín as a cute small town. After seeing the propaganda, we walked into the extermination camps to the reality of living there. It was heartbreaking. We spent several weeks in Austria learning about Jewish treatment, but being in the actual place where many of these terrible acts occurred was a much more touching experience. The beds they slept on, the bathrooms they used, seeing the small portions of food, and the places they were given to eat. As a group of 23, we were walking into rooms and complaining about being cramped, but then the tour guide explained that 3-4 times our amount of people would have been in this room at one time. One story that the tour guide shared was about the famine and diseases that would cause death. When a prisoner would die in their sleep, others would try to hide the body from the guards, so they could have the rations that person was supposed to have because they were so hungry. We also walked around the execution grounds where hundreds of people lost their lives to no fault of their own. It was an experience that I will keep with me for the rest of my life. Being in the actual places, hearing more personal stories, seeing the artwork of people who didn’t get to grow up and share their work, seeing the way the children and adults were expressing their feelings in music, art, writing, and any other way they could was very touching. It was hard to tell at times if they had any idea of the horrors that were happening all around them, or if they were choosing to not believe it as a way to cope.

This experience brought an entirely new understanding and emotion towards the holocaust. It made it seem more recent and showed the devastating facts on an entirely new level. I think it’s hard to understand the magnitude of what these people did and went through, but being there brought our group a little closer to understanding the horrible effects of the Nazi party.

-Gracie Conner