Field Trip: Terezin

8)

Dobry den!

I can’t believe I can say I have been studying abroad in the Czech Republic for a little over a month. There are so many things I have done and places I have seen yet so many more to do and places to see! Yesterday, we woke up early on a beautiful Saturday morning to get ready for our next field trip. The bus arrived at our dorms to pick us up at 6:30 a.m. so we could be on our way. The bus ride was 4 hours long and consisted of my classmates and I doing a lot of sleeping. I can say that not many of us are morning people but being able to sleep on the bus makes up for it all. The place we went to is Terezin. In our recent history classes, we had begun discussing the Holocaust and what the Czech Republic was before it officially became the Czech Republic. We knew that the field trip to Terezin wasn’t going to be about having fun as it a grim part of the history here.

            Terezin is a concentration camp that was used by the Nazis. It was turned into a Jewish ghetto during World War I where lots of Jewish people unfortunately passed away or were killed. As we walked up to the sight, the first thing I saw was this.

A big cross was placed in front of a mass grave. When I looked at the different stones, it saddened me to see only numbers instead of names on them. Unfortunately, there was a fee if we wanted to take pictures during the tour so I decided not to use a camera. Our tour guide was a young woman who seemed passionate and very knowledgeable about the Terezin camp. She began our tour and gave us information about the awful experiences Jewish people had to go through. We walked through the reception area, where prisoners had to check in. They lost their identity and received a number here. I felt sad when I heard this. I began thinking how horrible it would be to have my name stripped from me and only be recognized by a number throughout my life. Throughout the tour we looked at the living conditions, which seemed unbearable. There were 3 bunks on top of each other where several beings had to sleep extremely close to each other. We learned they were given only small portions of food each day and were put to labor for at least 12 hours of the day. They were hardly able to shower and sometimes not shower at all. Jewish people had it the worst of all. Some of the rooms in the camp did not have beds at all and Jewish people were made to stand while they slept in a small crowded room full of 70 people. Several rooms were filled up to even six times their capacity.

            An experience I will not forget during the tour is walking through a tunnel, where the victims had to walk through that would lead to their execution. It was a 5 to 8 minute walk. Now, they have small lights in the tunnel so visitors can see but back then it was full of darkness. We were shown where the prisoners had to line up and be shot and also where some were hung to their death. Seeing all this made me extremely sad. I almost felt guilty, as I was getting hungry wondering when we were going to eat next. I can’t imagine being a prisoner where I would hardly get a meal and that meal would only be soup or just a small piece of bread each day. Seeing sights like this and learning about what people in the past had to go through makes me that much more grateful of the life I live. It reminds me that I should complain less and enjoy what I do have instead of wishing upon things that I don’t have.

            I have always enjoyed learning about the Holocaust and feel privileged to have now seen a concentration camp. I can’t stand knowing that people had to live through these conditions. Several were not able to survive because of many spreading diseases, hard labor and lack of food. This field trip was not a ‘fun’ experience but a very educational one.