Jewish Museum and Visit to Terezin

The following post covers our adventures on both Thursday April 6 and Friday April 7.

Thursday April 6 was windy and cold.  High of only 11C.  However, no rain and the sun did come out mid afternoon.  We had purchased our tickets to the Jewish Museum sites earlier in the week.  A ticket is good for a week and provides entry to six different buildings.  We had visited the Old-New Synagogue on Tuesday, and wanted to visit the other sites.

We first did a bit of shopping at the nearby bakery and Farmers Market and then went to another relatively new coffee shop called Coffee Room.  Good coffee and nice ambiance- modelled after some of the new coffee shops in London.

Outside of Coffee Room

Inside of Coffee Room

We stopped at the Astronomical Clock near the Old Town Square, as it was turning 2:00 p.m.  Every hour, the two doors above the astronomical clock open and the twelve Apostles statues appear and rotate through.

The Astronomical Clock 

Windows closed just before the hour

Windows open- the Apostles parade through 

Different Apostles at the doors

The Old Town Square is always full of permanent kiosks with food and drink.   I don't remember that scene from 1996, when I was last in Prague.

Town Square full of kiosks

The Jewish Museum in Prague is the largest museum of its kind in Europe and has one of the most extensive collections of Judaic art in the world.  It was founded in 1906.  It is unique both in terms of the size of its collection but also because the collection is from a single territory- Bohemia and Moravia.  There are a number of sites included in the Museum ( i.e. it is not just one building).

Our first stop on the Jewish Museum tour was the Maisel Synagogue.  The Maisel Synagogue was originally built in 1590-1592 by the Mayor of the Jewish Town, Mordechai Maisel.  The Synagogue is used as an exhibition space for the permanent exhibit Jews in the Bohemian lands, 10th-18th century.  The exhibit provides an overview of the history of Jews in Bohemia and Moravia from the first Jewish settlements dating to the 10th century until emancipation at the end of the 18th century.   The exhibit was very modern with some interactive features.  There was also an interesting slide show of the many synagogues across the Czech republic and their fate.  Many have been demolished over the years, but some dating back to the 17th century have been restored.

From slide show- built 1654, extended 1888, demolished 1988

Built 1656, extended 1851, renovated 2004

During the Nazi occupation, properties confiscated from Jewish Communities across Czechoslovakia were stored in the Maisel Synagogue.  After the War, the synagogue became a depository of the Jewish Museum of Prague.  It was closed in 1988 due to the state of the building and then some reconstruction was done which allowed it to be reopened in 1996.  The recent reconstruction took place in 2014-15.  The decorative elements were accentuated so that the synagogue looks the same as it did at the beginning of the 20th century.

Outside of Maisel Synagogue- beautiful exterior

Inside- with exhibit and interactive screens

In the 13th century, Jews were forced to wear a hat whenever they left the ghetto.  While originally a symbol of persecution,  it later became a symbol of Prague Jewery and is often found on banners.

Replica of the hat

The next stop was the Pinkas Synagogue, the second oldest synagogue of the old Jewish ghetto.  The interior was turned into a memorial to the 80,000 Jews from Bohemia and Moravia that were murdered in the Holocaust.  It also houses childrens' drawings from Terezin (1942-44).  The Synagogue's origins are connected with the Horowitz family, that erected the first building in 1535.

There have always been floods in this area.  The synagogue was reconstructed in 1950-54 and in the following five years the walls were covered with the names of the Holocaust victims.  The names are arranged by the communities the victims came from and indicate their birth and death dates.  In 1960 it opened to the public but was closed in 1968 after the Soviet occupation of Czechoslovakia.  After 1989, the synagogue was reconstructed for three years and then opened to the public.  Another three years was needed to restore the inscription of the names that had been damaged by moisture.  In 2002, due to more flooding, the inscriptions had to be restored again.

Outside of Pinkas Synagogue

Inside with names on every wall

The names

Hard to see- but names on every wall

Names of concentration camps 

Names of Czechs killed in the Holocaust-- note Kafka's family (he died of tuberculosis in 1924)

The top floor contained an exhibit of pictures drawn by children in Terezin.  The vast majority of these children were eventually sent to Auschwitz and very few survived.  The children did these paintings during drawing lessons led by Friedl Dicker-Brandeis (1898-1944), a painter who had studied at the Bauhaus.  She encouraged children to draw both their experiences from living in the ghetto, as well as to capture their memories from home and their dreams about the future.  Before Dicker-Brandeis was deported to her own death in Auschwitz, she hid about 4500 pictures in suitcases at Terezin.  The pictures were given to the Jewish Museum in Prague.

Freidl Dicker-Brandeis

Vilem Eisner (1931-1944) Lessons in the Dorm

We then waled through the Old Jewish Cemetery.  The cemetery was established in the first half of the 15th century and used for burials until 1787.  Today it contains almost 12,000 tombstones, but the number of persons buried there is much higher.  The tombstones of earlier graves were usually placed on top of each new layer, resulting in the clustering of stones.  A number of prominent Jewish leaders are buried there.  Among the most famous are Rabbi Loew (d. 1609) and Jewish community head Mordecai Maisel (d. 1601).

The Old Jewish Cemetery

Thousands of tombstones

Recently cleaned

Some are clearly marked- Mose Ben Lipman Beck- d.1787

Magpie (related to Blue Jay) amongst the stones

Mordechai Maisel 1528-1601

Tombstone of Judah ben Bezalel (1512-1609), known as Rabbi Loew

Our next stop was the Klausen Synagogue.  This former synagogue contained an exhibit entitled Jewish Customs and Traditions, focusing on displays of everyday life and Jewish customs.

Klausen Synagogue

Beautiful chandelier 

Another View

We then went next door to the Ceremonial Hall, which had the concluding part of the exhibit Jewish Customs and Traditions.  It focused on the topics of illness and medicine in the old ghetto, cemeteries, and the activities of the Prague Burial Society.  The ceremonial hall of the burial society, which is located by the entrance of the Old Jewish Cemetery was erected on the site of an earlier building in 1906-08.

Outside of Ceremonial Hall

Our last stop was the Spanish Synagogue which was built in 1868 in a Moorish style. It serves as an exhibition hall for the second part of the History of the Jews in Bohemia and Moravia  exhibit  which covers the Jewish enlightenment and emancipation, The Austo-Hungarian Empire, the First Republic of Czechoslovakia, the Nazi occupation and post-war decades. The contributions of Jews in politics, music and literature are also celebrated. The Synagogue also houses synagogue silver from Bohemia and Moravia.  Most of the silver exhibited had been seized by the Nazis during the war from liquidated Jewish communities and demolished synagogues throughout Czechoslovakia, which were brought to Prague.

Once the deportations started in 1941, the Prague Jewish community wanted to try and save the Jewish objects that had been left behind.  In 1942, it worked out a proposal to create a Central Jewish Museum to house these objects, including books and silver.  Under Nazi supervision, a number of closed exhibits of the artefacts occurred in three empty synagogues in Prague.  In 1944, most of the museum staff were deported to Terezin and Auschwitz.   

Memorial plaque at entrance to exhibit

Inside of synagogue - Moorish style

Another view

Part of ceiling

Stained glass window with Jewish hat in middle

Showing the Pinkas Synagogue before it was restored to house the names

                     Storage of books in the Central Jewish Museum 1942-44

Organ

One of many Nazi decrees- this one called for the handing over of skiing equipment, record players and records.

While all the exhibits in the synagogues are very good, one is saddened that only one in this quarter- the Old-New Synagogue is used for services today.

We left the Spanish synagogue and almost right beside the building is the Franz Kafka monument.  The statue was erected in 2003.  The tall black sculpture represents a headless male figure in a suit with a somewhat smaller figure of Kafka sitting on his shoulders.  The image of a young man riding on another one's shoulders through the night streets of Prague appears in an early short story of Kafka's entitled "Description of a Struggle."  The sculptor is Jarosalv Rona.

Monument to Franz Kafka in his old neighbourhood

We stopped for coffee and a treat at Bakeshop, a very large, modern bakery with lots of sweets and savouries.

Inside Bakeshop

Savouries

Outside of Bakeshop

We wandered a bit more and found a wonderful theatre and a number of food shops and wine bars in an arched walkway.

Palac Dlouha- a very modern series of small restaurants and food shops and a Theatre

Busy meat shop

We stoped at Lokal, a recommended pub, but it was packed and there were no seats.  There is also quite a large smoking section and the place was fairly smokey.  We decided to wander a bit more and then head back to the apartment.

Inside Lokal- very buzzy- we may return

Old Town Square in the early evening with kiosks and horses and carriages

We took the Metro for the first time.  Very efficient, easy to navigate and reasonable.  We are only three stops from the Old Town.  We walked back to the apartment at about 8:30 p.m. and saw the Zizkov TV tower lit up in red, white and blue with the Babies climbing its side.  Very strange.

TV Tower at night with Babies climbing the sides

We had a dinner of salad, zucchini and savoury vegan pies we had purchased at the Framers Market.  A poppy seed treat for dessert.   Another full day in Prague.   I was very tired and decided to finish this blog after our visit to the Terezin Concentration Camp on Friday April 7.

Friday April 7 was rainy, cloudy and cold- only a high of 9C.  The coldest day of our trip.  We walked through the Farmers Market on the way to the Metro.

Gorgeous colour of a vegetable we could not identify

We took the Metro to the meeting spot in the Old Town Square for the Sandemans tour of Terezin.

Subway 

Our end stop- very modern stations

As we were a few minutes early, we grabbed a coffee at Cafe Ebel.

Our tour guide was Kristyna, and our tour had 12 people.  There was also a group lead by a Spanish speaking guide that had about 20 people in it.  We shared the same private tour bus to Terezin  but sat in different sections of the bus and did the tour separately.   The tour started at 10:00 a.m. and we returned to Prague at 5:00 p.m.  

Before getting on the bus, we walked over to the old Jewish quarter, where Kristyna explained that following the changes to the laws, many Jews moved away from the Jewish quarter, and that was why the Nazis did not create a ghetto in Prague.  The decision was made by Reinhard Heydrich in late 1941 to establish a ghetto in Terezin, a town about an hour north of Prague.

Near where we caught the bus, Kristyna pointed out the first stolperstein ("stumbling stone") we have seen on this trip.  These cobblestone-size cubes embedded in the ground have a brass plate inscribed with the name and dates of victims of Nazi extermination or persecution.  They are placed at the last place of residency- or sometimes work- where the person freely lived or worked.  As of January 31, 2017, over 56,000 stolpersteine have been laid in 22 European countries.

Mother and son-lived at this location (in this case, the house had been demolished for a hotel)
Both were deported to Terezin and then to death camps where they were murdered

The bus ride was just over an hour.  On the way out of town, we passed the exact spot where Reinhard Heydrich was murdered in May 1942.  There is a memorial with figures representing the two paratroopers (Jan Kubis and Jozef Gabcik) and those who assisted them.  Kristyna told us that about 126 members of Jan Kubis's family were also killed by the Nazis after the assassination.  There were also about 30 families that had assisted the two paratroopers.  The fast majority of these families were hunted down and murdered or deported to concentration camps.  Some committed suicide.  These acts of reprisal and the subsequent destruction of the two villages were horrific and are a very important part of Czech history. 

                                                       Photo of the Memorial as we passed in the bus

We arrived at Terezin at about 11:30 a.m.  It rained on and off the entire time we were there.  The fortress of Terezin was built in 1780 by Emperor Joseph II, as a defensive fortress.  There are two parts known as the Lesser (or Smaller Fortress) and the Main Fortress (or Larger Fortress).  Before the war, there had been a prison in the smaller fortress and the Main Fortress was the town of Terezin, with about 7000 people.

In 1940, the Gestapo established a prison in the Lesser Fortress.  In late 1941, the Nazis evicted the townspeople and transformed it into a concentration camp, where some 155,000 people passed through.  Between April and September 1942, the ghetto's population increased from approximately 13,000-58,000 people.  Conditions were appalling.   There were no gas chambers at Terezin (although one was started near the end of the war, but never completed).  Many intellectuals, artists and musicians from other countries were sent to Terezin.

Map of Terezin- small fortress and Gestapo prison on the right and large fortress and ghetto on the left

We first spend about an hour visiting the Small Fortress used as a Gestapo prison.

Cemetery at the Gestapo Prison- Christian and Jewish graves (Cross and Star of David)

Many of the tombstones did not have names

Scheindle Lindner-died May 29, 1945

Outside of Small Fortress- Gestapo prison

Entrance gate

Canteen for the SS-- today it is also a canteen

Room in the administrative courtyard

Administrative corridor- rooms on left for registration, processing and receiving prison clothes

Interrogation rooms

Registration of prisoners

 Apparently, the head of the Gestapo Prison had always wanted to run a concentration camp.  He put the sign Albeit Macht Frei on one of the gates (same slogan as Auschwitz and other concentration camps).  He was executed after the war.

Work will make you free....

Commandant's house

We then went to another courtyard where the prisoners were held.  There were group barracks, solitary confinement and a standing barrack.

Courtyard of one of the prisoners' barracks

Prisoner beds- no mattresses- 80 men in each room

Outside of solitary confinement cells

One of the solitary confinement cells

One of the cells was well-lit.  It was the cell where Gavrilo Princip, the assassin who killed Archduke Franz Ferdinand in 1914.  He was mistreated in the prison, often chained to the wall and died there in 1923.  According to our guide, he is seen as a hero by many.

Solitary cell where Princip was kept

We visited the showers where the prisoners received showers every 3-6 weeks.  The women got some warm water, the Christian male prisoners less, and the Jewish prisoners got very little water at all.

Showers

There was one room full of what looked to be almost brand new sinks and shaving mirrors.  These were built by the Nazis for the infamous inspection by the Red Cross of the Gestapo Prison and Terezin in 1944.   Our guide told us that had the Red Cross inspectors tried to turn on the water, there would have not been any, as the taps were not connected to water.  That is why the sinks remain in almost pristine condition to this time.

Sinks with taps with no actual water connection- all for show

Sinks still in good condition today- never used 

Between walls of the prison

Memorial to the unidentified dead

After visiting the Gestapo prison in the "small fortress", we got on the bus for a three minute drive to the Terezin Concentration Camp, in the "large fortress", which is really a small town.

Buildings around square- Jews were not allowed to go into the green area (except for the Red Cross visit)

Buildings of Terezin

We went to the Ghetto Museum which is housed in a dorm once occupied by 10-15 year old boys.  The exhibit explores the rise of Nazism and life in the Terezin ghetto.  There was a wall of drawings and paintings by Helga Weiss (b. 1929), who was just a young teenager when she drew these pictures at Terezin.  Of the 15,000 children brought to Terezin and later deported to Auschwitz only 100 survived.  She managed to convince Mengele that she was older than 14 and both her and her mother were not sent to the gas chamber.  Helga's diary and drawings were hidden by her uncle, who worked in the Terezin records department.  He was able to reclaim them for her after the war.   She published Helga's Diary in 2013 and still lives in Prague in the apartment she was born in.

Helga's drawings- she became an artist after the war

Part of the exhibit had names of the children from Terezin who perished.

Names and birthdates of children at Terezin

There was a large exhibit about life in Terezin.  It was very well done, with a number of artefacts and diaries from a number of the prisoners.

Three rooms of displays, photos and artefacts

There was a section about Friedl Dicker-Brandeis, the art teacher.  She had decided to go with her husband when he was deported.  She died at Auschwitz and he survived.

                  Friedl Dicker-Brandeisova, the artist who taught drawing lessons in the form of art therapy

Terezin and death camps in orange where Jews were deported 

There was a section about the infamous visit by the Red Cross in June 1944.  There were two delegates from the International Red Cross and one from the Danish Red Cross. There was approximately a year before the visit for the Nazis to get ready.  Streets were renamed from lettered streets, to names like Lake Street (even though there was no Lake nearby) instead of L street. The ghetto was "beautified".  The Nazis had planned a specific route for the Red Cross visit, and that is what they followed.  It was not a real inspection, as the Red Cross representatives did not seek out other parts of the ghetto, not did they seem to really seem to question what the Nazis were telling them.  There had been a number of transports just prior to the visit.  Once the visit was over, the transports resumed.

The Nazis had tried to portray Terezin as a Jewish refuge with shops, cafes and a thriving cultural life.  In reality, it was overcrowded, and there were regular trains departing for the gas chambers in Auschwitz. In total 35,000 people died of starvation and disease at Terezin.

In the wake of the inspection, SS officials produced a film using ghetto residents as a demonstration of its benevolent treatment of the Jews.  Terezin was cynically described as a "spa town" where the elderly could retire in safety.  In fact, elderly Jews from Prague, in the early days of the ghetto, signed away their provisions to move to Terezin.  Once they were there, they saw the horrid conditions and realized the fraud.  Most of the "cast" of the propaganda film were deported to Auschwitz once the film was finished.  The film was not screened at the time, despite the effort in making it.

We saw a documentary at Hot Docs a few years ago about how footage from this film was used in later films to portray life in Terezin.  As part of our tour, we saw a film that interposed footage from the Nazi propaganda film with the names and dates of the transports and how many survived, e.g 5 out of 1000.

Planned route for the Red Cross visit

While we were in the exhibit, a survivor was being interviewed.  She talked about the meagre amount of food the prisoners were given.

More buildings around square

Church used as storage area

Court building

Shop actually sold clothes confiscated from prisoners- today it is also a used clothing store

Grey building was SS building at Terezin

More streets and buildings in the Ghetto

The second exhibit was in the former Magdeburg Barracks which serves as an annex to the main museum.  There was a reproduction of a typical barracks in the women's dorms.  There were 80-100 women in each room- no privacy and disease spread easily.  Men and women and children were all housed separately and could not talk to each other.  Meetings had to take place secretly.   Only the Jewish guards could be with their families.

Typical women's' dorm

Very small space for each woman

The former Magdeburg Barracks houses an annex to the main museum

There was also a large exhibit on the rich cultural life that flourished in the ghetto.  Hans Krasa, for example, was the composer of the children's opera Brundibar which was written in 1938 and performed over 55 times at Terezin.  Krasa helped organize the cultural life in the ghetto.  He was deported to Auschwitz and was murdered there in October 1944.  A production of Bundibar is also featured in the infamous propaganda film made for the Red Cross visit in 1944.  Most of the children who performed the opera were deported and killed.

Hans Krasa exhibit

Kurt Gerron- a famous actor who ended up in Terezin-- he assisted with the propaganda film
and had been promised he wouldn't be deported, which of course he was.  He died at Auschwitz.

We then walked over to two prayer rooms (one for Jews and one for Christians), and the crematorium.

Memorial plaque- had been in Prague, but communists moved it out to Terezin

Metal urn for ashes- as the war went on, cardboard containers were used 

Hearse in Terezin- pulled by men, not horses. It was the only vehicle allowed  in the ghetto.

Presented by the European Jewish Congress on  January 27, 2015 

We went to the cemetery where those who died in Terezin before they started to use the crematorium were buried.

Cemetery at Terezin- tombstones were placed in a haphazard fashion  

Our last stop was the crematorium.  After 1942, approximately 125 people were dying a day.  The decision was made to start cremating the bodies, as the cemetery was full and there was a concern about groundwater contamination.  The men who worked at the crematorium had exhausting work in very trying conditions.  They were usually deported after a few months of work there.

It was a long and memorable day.  Having seen documentaries about Terezin, it was still a very moving experience to be there.  I don't think either Alain or I envisaged the scope of the camp.  It was a small town built for about 7000 people that held up to 58,000 people at one time during the war.  Each prisoner had only 1.65 sq m of space and there was an ever increasing numbers of deaths within the ghetto walls from starvation and disease.  Terezin was in reality a transit camp through which some 155,000 people passed en route to the death camps.   It boggles one's mind how the Red Cross did not do a 'real inspection' but bought the Nazis subterfuge hook, line and sinker.   In fact, the Nazis deported about 18,000 Jews just prior to the Red Cross visit to decrease the population of Terezin so it would look less crowded.

We took the bus back to Prague, went for a coffee and then took the Metro back to the apartment for dinner.   An exhausting two days, but well worth it.