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<\/a><\/p>\nWhile Terezin was operating as a concentration camp and ghetto, it took on more than 150,000 Jewish prisoners.\u00a0 Of these 150,000 people, over 33,000 died because of the conditions such as hypothermia, starvation, untreated health problems, and physical abuse.\u00a0 Eighty-eight thousand were sent on to Auschwitz or other death camps to be killed.\u00a0 Even though it wasn\u2019t labeled an extermination camp, there were only 17,247 survivors of Terezin by the end of WW II.<\/p>\n
I could talk about the awful stories of torture and abuse from inside the concentration camp, but what affected me the most was the children\u2019s memorial in the accompanying museum.\u00a0 15,000 children spent time in Terezin, living life as best they could amid the most unimaginable conditions.\u00a0 For children, this means drawing.\u00a0 In the museum were displayed hundreds of drawings found after WW II made by the children.\u00a0 They ranged from idyllic family pictures and drawings of home, to conditions in the ghetto, even to depictions of the abuses they and their parents were suffering at the hands of the guards.\u00a0 And under each one, there was a name and either the word survived or a death date with the camp they were killed at.\u00a0 On the walls of the display were printed the names of every child killed from Terezin, most under the age of 13.<\/p>\n
The root cause of travesties like the Holocaust is elusive.\u00a0 Maybe it is complacency, people doing what they\u2019re told to avoid rocking the boat.\u00a0 Maybe it is fear of the unknown and deciding it is safer to eliminate differences rather than try to get to know them.\u00a0 Maybe all it takes is a charismatic leader whose promises of a greater tomorrow are just promising enough to give desperate people enough hope they\u2019ll do anything to get there. Whatever it is, it is worth acknowledging that the potential for hatred is inside all of us.\u00a0 While I desperately hope this hatred will never again take on a form like Holocaust, the instinct to exclude, isolate, and dehumanize people different from us is volatile if gone unchecked.\u00a0 And, maybe you don\u2019t have to go to a concentration camp to realize that, but it makes it a lot more obvious.<\/p>\n -Kate Stutzman<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" 4 November 2019 When we started learning about the Holocaust in Europe, specifically in Vienna, I felt like being American, being so far removed from these tragedies, had made it difficult to understand them until I was there in the countries where they took place.\u00a0 It impacted me greatly to be standing in the plaza … Continue reading Europe: insights to the Holocaust<\/span> <\/a>Only 130 children out of 13,000 made it out of Terezin alive, a 1% survival rate.\u00a0 It is hard for me to process the dehumanization that must happen for a grown adult to look a child in the eyes and throw away their life.\u00a0 I can\u2019t help but think about how this process starts, what the seed of distaste looks like that eventually grows into hatred so strong it blinds you to humanity.<\/p>\n