Postcard from an inmate in the Nazi concentration camp of Theresienstadt, Czech Republic, 1944.The convention ended a day early in Dresden. My colleague Varick offered to take me on a day tour of Prague, which was roughly 2 1/2 hours away. I instantly agreed, excited to see the famous jewel of the Czech republic.
We were making good time for Prague when my companion suggested a quick detour to a place called Theresienstadt.
"What for?" I asked, curious.
His expression was inscrutable under the dark glasses he wore. "A bit of perspective."
Varick told me a bit of Theresienstadt on the way. It was a garrison town in the days of the Austro-Hungarian empire converted in WWII by the Third Reich into a transit camp for their prisoners before they were dispatched to the great slaughterhouses scattered around Nazi-occupied Eastern Europe: Auschwitz-Birkenau,Treblinka, Riga, Sobibor and Lublin.
Entrance to the Small Fortress
We entered a small settlement made up of narrow roads and centuries-old architecture. A string of words painted on an arch above the prison gates greeted our arrival to the fortress of Theresienstadt. ARBEIT MACHT FREI. Work brings freedom. It was a perversion of a noble idea that condemned a generation of able-bodied Jewish youths to their deaths.
I'd seen that slogan before. "Auschwitz." I pointed out.
Varick's eyes clouded. "Have you been there?"
I nodded quietly. Stories of forced labor, horrific experimentation on women and children, gravel pits, gas chambers. My visit to that monument to extreme cruelty and depravity hollowed me out for days thereafter. Theresienstadt is smaller than Auschwitz, and not as noted among the scholars of the Holocaust, but its history is no less haunting: 33,000 prisoners had perished within its confines.
We entered the prisoners quarters by way of the courtyard. All the rooms were pitifully small. People were packed into these tight spaces, and the overcrowding and inhuman living conditions bred numerous diseases that contributed to the rapid decimation of the population. There were certain places within the facility that further magnified the brutality that befell the ghetto residents. A whole wing of the building was occupied by a row of solitary confinement cells with rusted manacles attached to the walls. Down a dark corridor was a "special" holding room where guards locked up a hundred or more prisoners at a time without sustenance and simply left them to die of suffocation or starvation.
Solitary confinement cells, Small Fortress"People took pride in the fact that they lived in an age of clinical efficiency, one where they could withstand having their collective views prescribed. But in Germany, one man came up with a dream of unprecedented dignity and conquest, a chance for ordinary people to become gods. Who can resist that? And so a whole nation followed his dream, and they acted like gods - without shame, well-dressed, well-fed, with the power over life or death." Varick sighed. "My family paid the price of their ambitions."
Execution grounds
We made our way out of the barracks into the squat-walled square which served as the spot for executions. Prisoners were frequently used as target practice, and around 300 people were killed here between the years of 1943-1945. Adjacent to this place were a series of mass graves where the bodies of 600 prisoners were buried.
One of the four ovens in the crematorium
"I suppose I have my mother's love of the arts to thank for my survival," Varick said without a trace of irony as we entered a small chamber leading to the crematorium. The ashes of the cremated inmates still lingered in the four ovens. "I was sent to live in England with my aunt before the Gestapo initiated deportations in Berlin. My parents promised to follow soon after the theater season was over." He shook his head, sad amusement coloring his voice. "My mother adored Wagner."
Varick was an only child. His parents had been upright German citizens, they loved their country and were enthusiastic participants in its culture. And yet that had not been enough to keep the SS officers from knocking on their door. They were taken to Theresienstadt in the winter of 1942.
His mother died of a lung ailment under the harsh surroundings, in the second autumn of her incarceration. His father was transported to the camp in Riga, where he disappeared among the tangled masses who died of hunger or illness or executed in the forest of Rumbula. Both were devoured by an ideology that justified severe persecution of a group of people not because of anything they did but simply because of what they are.
Children's art, Jewish Museum
We spent the longest time at the visitor center. A significant portion of the walls exhibited the drawings and poetry of the children of Theresienstadt. Here were visual testaments to the resilience of the human spirit, the search for meaning and normalcy in the midst of the most appalling of circumstances. The scene broke my heart. What valor to live at all, even for a day, knowing death would come as a turn in the weather, a guard's mad whim, a belly unfed for too long or the next train out to another camp. Of the 15,000 children who came into this place, fewer than 2000 survived.
Ohre River
We walked a quarter mile down to the banks of the Ohre. In the final days of the war, burnt human remains were trucked here by the sackloads, and dumped into the river's fawn-colored depths. The river was calm today. There was not a fragment, not a movement in the water, left of the essence of Varick's mother, or the scores of people who, as a Jewish placard in the crematorium put it: "have left and will never return."
Varick stood beside a willow tree leaning over the water. It's his fourth visit to Theresienstadt in 30 years, a pilgrimage of sorts to the place that would always recall him to the void which stained him, the passive memory of the loss which made up the core of his vulnerability.
And his salvation. Before we left the prison camp, he wrote these words in the guestbook: When I was younger, hate was all I had. After some time, I realized that it had been hate that took my family away. I couldn't bring myself to think or feel like that anymore. My parents died in my place to give me the liberty and opportunity I take for granted everyday. The only way I can honor their sacrifice is to strive to better my life and the lives of those around me.
We rambled about the shore for awhile. Birds chirped and pale flecks of sunlight honeycombed through the trees. A fresh breeze blew in, bringing with it the scent of damp grass and freshly crumbled soil. The afternoon was awash in serenity and deep-blue sky, which made it hard to grasp that at one point in time this place wallowed in the jagged anguish and rust-red blood of its inhabitants.
Yet one must never forget.
I knelt down, and plucked a single shiny brown pebble at my feet. I felt I could not take more from Theresienstadt.
I pocketed the small stone, straightened up and met Varick's curious gaze.
"A bit of perspective," I whispered.
Holocaust resources on the web:
International Tracing Service, http://www.its-arolsen.org/
U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum http://www.ushmm.org/
*The twilight of the gods
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