Monuments to visit Terezín

La Petite Fortress serves as a special prison from the Gestapo since June 1940. A total of 32 000 men and women were imprisoned there (8% died), including 2 500 foreigners from former Soviet Union, Poland, France, Germany, etc. Executions (from 1943 onwards), torture, abuse, but also hunger (150 g bread per day and soup), overcrowding, lack of hygiene and epidemics were daily. This prison-camp was not synonymous with a terminal, but transit to the courts or camps of Buchenwald, Auschwitz, Mauthausen, Dachau, Ravensbrück, etc. In the meantime, prisoners were subjected to compulsory work (maintenance, administration, kitchen, construction, agriculture, industry, shoemaking, etc.).

Visit: the classes of prisoners with cells (in some, some 600 detainees!!) and the court of administration. If you are not claustrophobic, go along the fortifications in the tunnel of 500 meters long, narrow and… oppressive! By the way, you will pass through the ground of execution, the mass graves and the death gate (which passed the death sentences). The Little Fortress also houses a small museum and the cinema of the guards where historical documentaries are now broadcast (in French also). During the visit, notice the plaque in memory of the Serbian Gavrilo Princip (who murdered Archduke François Ferdinand in Sarajevo in 1914 leading to the First World War, he was imprisoned here by the Austrians) and that in memory of French Robert Desnos (the surrealist poet arrived here seriously ill, in June 1945, so after Liberation, and he died).

At the entrance, the National Cemetery dominated by a «Magen David» - built with the rails leading to Auschwitz - and a cross. It was built in 1945 for national funerals in memory of the victims of Terezín. Mainly buried bodies were buried in the mass graves.

In 1941, the Great Fortress was transformed into a ghetto where 140,000 Jews (men, women and children) from the Czech Republic, but also from all over Europe (Slovakia, Germany, Austria, Denmark, the Netherlands and France) stayed. It was presented to the Jewish population as a refuge by the authorities and attracted part of the Jewish cultural and intellectual elite. These "volunteers" soon realized that they were in fact in a sorting camp. 62% of them were deported to Auschwitz - only 5% survived, including 150 children out of 10,000 (their drawings were saved thanks to their teacher and can be seen today in the Jewish town in Prague) - or to Dachau. To make room, the local population of Terezín was expelled in 1942. Despite this, the terrible living conditions and overcrowding resulted in the deaths of 34,000 people.

The visit to the site begins with the Ghetto Museum

(entrance fee, combined ticket with Terezín Fort 220 Kč), which is very well organized and presented and allows one to follow the entire history of the site and the Jewish population that passed through or died there. The gaze wanders sadly through the period documents (maps, identity papers, newspapers), everyday objects, clothing and others that allow us to understand the machine of destruction set up by the Nazis and especially to imagine life in Terezín.

In the Magdeburg Barracks

(Bývalá Magdeburská kasárna, only open April-October) a dormitory has been reconstructed, just like the ones in which the deportees were crammed. It also presents the artistic life in the ghetto and how the imprisoned Jews continued to practice music, literature, and theater with improvised means, to make the imprisonment "more livable" or at least to help bear the terrible living conditions. You can also visit the crematorium (Bývalé krematoriumopen only April-October), next to the Jewish cemetery. The small yellow building houses the ovens where the bodies of more than 20,000 Jews were burned before their ashes were thrown into the nearby Ohre River.

Also worth seeing: the columbarium, mortuary and ceremonial hall (Kolumbárium, obřadní místnosti a ústřední márnice), open daily from 9am to 5pm and until 6pm from April to October. And the prayer hall (Modlitebna), Dlouhá Street, open daily from 9am to 5:30pm and until 6pm from April to October.