We’re now over halfway through our trip, and it has been nothing short of incredible. Today we took a trip down to Terezin to learn more about what the Czech Republic has to offer in terms of dark tourism.
The Terezin Memorial consists of the remnants of the WWII concentration camp leftover in Terezin, as well as the WWII ghetto further into the city. First, we toured the concentration camp. We got to walk through the spaces in which the prisoners lived eighty years ago. We even saw different execution areas where too many lives were cut short, and we got to walk through the Nazi tunnels dug into the walls to get from place to place. The entire experience was insanely surreal; learning about it in American schools doesn’t do it justice by any means. As anyone could imagine, the tour itself was very dark and grim, but that’s just the reality of what happened. I personally really enjoy learning about WWII, so this experience was very fulfilling for me. The entire camp just seems to be frozen in time, and being there felt like we time traveled back eighty years. The whole experience was beyond powerful, and we were only halfway through the day.
After the concentration camp, we went to the Terezin ghetto. As the bus pulled in, we could still see the effects of the war on the city, even though it’s been so long. We saw residents of the town going about their day like normal, which we all found so odd. How could one bear to live in such a depressing, war-ravaged place? I don’t think any of us will ever understand. We entered the ghetto museum and were immediately taken aback. The building, which used to be a home for 10-15 year old boys, was filled with pain and sorrow. In one of the rooms, the walls were lined with names of children who either lost their lives there in Terezin, or were transferred to Auschwitz and ultimately died there. There were even drawings, paintings, and writings from the children, often describing how quickly their lives were turned around. We then had the opportunity to watch a propaganda movie made right there in Terezin. It was created to show the outside world how “great” life was in the ghetto, and the movie would be passed on after the visit of a Red Cross ambassador who came to visit the ghetto. The movie was insanely powerful; the propaganda we saw was compared to videos taken of the actual conditions, showing both how good the Nazis could make the place look, as well as how cruel the ghetto could actually be. The ghetto museum had rooms that were focused on music as well, highlighting music from the time period, as well as music made in the ghetto. Everybody could feel how tense the city was, and even still is, and it made for an unforgettable experience.
My love of history made this dark tourism experience one of the things I was looking forward to most, and visiting the camp and museum was truly fulfilling. Learning about what happened is great, but actually getting to experience the environment with all your senses brings the understanding of the history to an even greater level, or at least it did for me. It is SO important to keep these areas available to the public so that we as a global community can learn from the past, and make sure something as catastrophic never happens again.