Should You Visit Terezin Concentration Camp near Prague?

Spending about a handful of days in the Czech Republic, I wonder whether I should make myself go to Terezin, the concentration camp about an hour by vehicle from Prague where thousands of people died during World War II. When in Washington, D.C., I had not been able to drag myself into the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. I know the story. I know how it ends.

And yet, while I am in Prague, I cannot help but wonder how such a macaron of a city with its pastel buildings, a place where Mozart liked to hang out, could let something so hideous transpire nearby.

A few years ago in Berlin, we had tried to make our way, via train, to the Sachsenhausen concentration camp in Oranienburg, again to try to understand more directly how the horrors of World War II happened. On the morning we were going, though, one of the train lines that would have gotten us to our destination was closed due to some problem, and the alternative route was printed in German, which we did not understand. We managed to find a transit employee who spoke English, but she claimed not to comprehend our request to learn the route to Oranienburg. Indeed, a couple of transit employees suddenly did not speak English once we identified our destination.

I was curious whether here in the Czech Republic we would encounter a similar attitude where no one seems to know exactly what was going on at certain remote destinations during World War II. And so we head to Terezin one morning to find out for ourselves.

The History of Terezin

Terezin, also known in German as Theresienstadt, actually has a history that reaches further back than the Nazi era. During the time of Joseph II of the Austro-Hungarian empire (what is known today as the Czech Republic was part of it at the time), a big fort, sufficient to accommodate 7,000 soldiers, was constructed. A smaller one also in Terezin was established as a defense fortress against Prussia (Germany and Poland), which is just to the north. Emperor Joseph II, brother of French Queen Marie-Antoinette, named the facility for his mother, Maria-Theresa, our tour guide informs us.

What is referred to as the big fort essentially resembles a military base with rows of long government buildings and a village green of sorts surrounded by a wall. Into one of these buildings we ascend to view the Museum of the Ghetto.

The smaller fort eventually became a political prison and housed a very famous convict, Gavrilo Princip, the assassin whose killing of Franz Ferdinand in Sarajevo triggered World War I, which ended with the collapse of the Austro-Hungarian, Ottoman, and Russian empires and the end of Kaiser Wilhelm’s tenure in Germany. When World War II came along, the doings at both the big fort and the smaller one became far more nefarious.

Crowded Conditions at Terezin Concentration Camp

No gas chambers existed at Terezin, our tour guide points out, noting that the place was not an extermination camp. Rather, it served as a labor camp where the Germans used prisoners as slaves. More than 150,000 people from seven countries were sent to Terezin, and more than 35,000 people died, mostly from hunger, disease, and other causes.

Terezin before World War II was a small town, and so it is today. The Nazis evacuated the civilian residents of the town when Germany occupied the Czech lands in the 1930s, but the addition of 150,000 prisoners strained the resources of the ‘camp.’ Too many prisoners lived in cramped conditions in too little space. The plumbing system could not handle the strain. There was not enough food or water for Terezin’s inhabitants. Disease flourished.

Propaganda’s Role at Terezin

Terezin’s existence as a concentration camp during World War II is particularly twisted in that the Germans engaged in a sick propaganda campaign to lure actors, painters, and musicians to a place described, our tour guide recounted, as a gift from Hitler to the Jewish people. It was billed as a spa, of sorts, but guests did not know that upon checking in, they could not check out.

Much is made during our tour of a visit by the International Committee of the Red Cross to Terezin in June 1944. First, the Nazis apparently deported 12,000 of the sickest prisoners to other camps for extermination. Then, Terezin was made to look like a model camp for the Red Cross inspectors replete with theater performances. The effort succeeded; a relatively favorable writeup by the Red Cross resulted from the visit.

Some of the inmates managed to record, through their art, happenings of a more horrific sort at this place. The art is now on display at the Museum of the Ghetto.

Death at Terezin

The conditions at Terezin, along with capital punishment imposed on some without any sort of due process, resulted in a high death rate and a need for corpses to be disposed. A crematorium with four ovens, each of which could handle two bodies per hour, was constructed. The mortality rate in what had been a town of about 7,000 people required the disposal of 8 bodies per hour during World War II. Although a graveyard exists onsite, the ashes of many people were dumped by the Nazis in a nearby river.

What to make of this place? I expect some great, hulking buildings that are fortified, impenetrable, where great evil has transpired. Instead we have an army barracks and a dingy political prison with few amenities that seems to sink into the landscape rather than rise from it.

Not that many years ago, I had the opportunity to visit a Nazi bunker in Hamburg that was being converted into a green energy facility. During World War II, the bunker was built with slave labor; guns were on the roof to fire at Allied planes. One could feel the ghosts of the people forced to build this place. Ascending to the roof, a member of the group I was with, who had been a baby in Belgium during the war, began crying. Belgium had tried to remain neutral during the war. The Nazis invaded anyway, and the country surrendered in just a few weeks.

That bunker, rising from a residential neighborhood, was so strongly fortified, its walls so thick, that efforts to dynamite it in the 1970s failed; instead, the explosions caused damage to nearby buildings. There, though, a visitor could feel the military might along with ghostly presences.

Masking the Truth about a Low-Lying Fortress 

Terezin, however, has a more twisted story, one where evil was masked. It is not a big, hulking presence rising in the countryside in Prague; instead, it is low to the ground, easy to overlook until you are right there. Parts of the old fortress have green roofs.

Here, I get a sense that the war was more of a long, strange slog, one where those in power distorted reality. This place, to me, conveys more madness and sickness, particularly when I observe the living quarters of the Nazi officials who lorded over this place. The Germans ordered Terezin’s prisoners to construct for them a swimming pool. It seems so odd to imagine a scenario where Nazi families are splashing about near so much human misery.

Having been there, I still cannot make sense of the place, but I manage to learn a lot about the history of the Czech lands during my day trip to Terezin. I am still a bit uncomfortable with the characterization of Terezin by some as a mere prison. The next day, on a tour of Kutna Hora, a different tour guide insists that Terezin is not a concentration camp at all because no one was killed via gas chamber on the site.

One cannot help but wonder whether language barriers account for denials like these, or embarrassment that these evil goings-on took place in one’s own country not too long ago. So even though visiting a concentration camp is inevitably a downer, it’s important to go, to make one’s own decisions about how evil can arise and succeed for so long.

Are Photographs of Terezin Appropriate?

I am grateful that photographs are permitted at Terezin. Much has been made lately about Instagrammers and other social media mavens behaving inappropriately at solemn sites. Of course, places like this present opportunities for reflection, but what might be considered inappropriate reactions by some might just be efforts by people presented with evil to keep it at bay.

Some visitors, sensing negative energy and ethereal presences, may be uncomfortable with these sensations and mask this discomfort with behavior that could easily be criticized. It’s hard to diminish the seriousness of what went on at places like this, but it is also important to get more recent generations to visit, to learn what went on so they can seek to prevent such bad acts from recurring.

Tips for Visiting Terezin

• Wear sensible shoes and be prepared for dust and mud as you make your way between the large fortress, the small fortress, and the crematorium.
• Dress warmly for the chill that is here.
• Try to plan how you will shed some of the negative energy from this place after your visit. Will you write down your thoughts, go for a run, give back something good to the universe, or just try to do something joyful?

Distance from Prague to Terezin Concentration Camp

Terezin is 40 miles from Prague, or about an hour’s drive north of Prague.

—Lori Tripoli

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How will you travel from Prague to Terezin?

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• A Visit to the Museum of Communism Prague
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• Finding Gavrilo Princip at Terezin
• One Day in Prague
• Day Trip to Kutna Hora

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What are your thoughts about visiting Terezin?