Terezin

Today started out pretty nice.  The weather was so beautiful pretty; pretty much a cloudless day.  We went to the Prague Castle which was really awesome.  I think that they started building it in the 800s so it's pretty old.  There was also a giant cathedral there that we couldn't go in to because they were actually having mass... on a Saturday.  Apparently it is a hotly contested issue in the Czech Parliament- pretty much changing things on a weekly basis.  It was full of beautiful stuff and surrounded by palaces that were built by the aristocratic families to show the king that they had money.  All were giant and everything is cobblestone streets.

After we went to the castle, we went to the city of Terezin.  It was the city that the Red Cross visited in 1944 to check on the supposed 'concentration camps' but the Nazis made all the Jews there act like everything was great and that the city was a paradise for Jews.  They even had a play and a concert orchestra that entertained the Red Cross delegation.  It was so sad that the Nazis were able to dupe the Red Cross so easily.  There were two parts that the Nazis used.  THere was a small fortress that was built in the 1790s that was used as a prison for the Jews, kind of like a small concentration camp.  It was basically where they were held until they could be transported to other camps.  There was also the city of Terezin itself where the Nazis drove out the Czech citizens there so that they could store the Jews there.  In a city that had 7000 inhabitants before the Nazis came, they stored 55,000 people there.  How cramped and crazy.  It turns out that they told the old people and the intellectuals that they should come to this city because it was just for Jewish people and they could be free from persecution.  Lies.  It was something to really see.  I will post pictures soon of the barracks and the things from the camp.

We are leaving early in the morning for Salzburg, Austria.  We are stopping at the Mauthausen concentration camp on the way there.  Should be interesting.  Until next time...