Terezín Ghetto and Concentration Camp is, I believe, genuinely one of the most fascinating places to do with WWII. It may not have been a death camp, but it was truly vile in the hope it provided for its own gain.
We’ve been writing a lot about Poland lately, and we still have a fair amount more to write about Poland. However, the next logical article would probably be about visiting Auschwitz-Birkenau, and I’m still fairly annoyed about the actions of others during our visit. So, with concentration camps on the brain, this [rather informative] article was born.
Also, I tore a ligament in my foot literally the day before we were meant to be travelling and, due to lack of mobility, motivation and inspiration is ruling my writing schedule more than anything. Weirdly, laying in bed all day isn’t really conducive to getting much work done. Thus: when inspriation strikes, you gotta follow that whim!
Anyway, without further ado…
Why You should take a day trip to the Terezín Ghetto & Concentration Camp
As a dark tourist, I believe every concentration camp and ghetto is interesting, important and incredibly necessary to visit. However, Terezín, also called Theresienstadt, always stands out to me as particularly unique for three reasons.
RELATED: Why Dark Tourism Matters (According to a Dark Tourist)
The first is that Terezín was a hybrid ghetto and concentration camp. See, ghettos typically existed as a sealed off section of a city, such as the Warsaw Ghetto which, despite being the largest ghetto in Europe, was still only 3.4 km2 (1.3 mi2) and housed over 350,000 people at one point. Jews and other victims were then transported from these ghettos in the cities to concentration camps, typically in rural areas.
While ghettos were sealed off areas of a city, concentration camps were, for all intents and purposes, prisons. People sent to the camps were either killed straight away or forced into hard labour – which often resulted in death due to poor living conditions and lack of food.
Terezín was both.
The second reason is because Terezín was a propaganda camp. What does this mean? Well, I’ll expand more below, but essentially the Nazis used the camp to convince outside agencies, that rumors of life inside the camps were grossly exaggerated. This, of course, was not true – not even at Terezín – but it does make it quite unique. In fact, I do not currently know of any other concentration camp used in this way.
Lastly, Terezín was the first concentration camp I ever visited. You never forget your first, as they say, and Terezín has certainly stayed with me in ways that the others have not. So naturally, during our stay in Prague, Jeremy and I made sure to take a day trip there. And if sounds like the kind of place you can stomach, or believe is important to visit then we think you should, too.
Below is all the important history about Terezín. But if you already know all this, or want to show up without any prior knowledge, then the logistics for getting to and from Terezín Ghetto and Concentration Camp as a day trip are down at the bottom.
Terezín Before War II
Before WWII, Terezín was originally a small fortress built by the Hapsburg emperor Joseph II. It was named Theresienstadt after his mother empress Maria Theresa. The fortress was intended to protect Bohemia from the invading Prussians to the east and the Saxons from the west. During wartime the fortress housed 11,000 soldiers, double that of it’s peacetime occupancy.
Although designed and prepped for war, Theresienstadt fortress was never attacked.
(Also, going forward, to avoid confusion, I will only be referring to it as Terezín.)
The end of the 19th century saw a new evolution for the small fortress, which would enable it to become an ideal concentration camp during WWII, and it was partially converted into a prison.
During WWI, Terezín fortress was converted into a political prison, and held thousands of pro-Russian prisoners. Most famously, Gavrilo Princip was imprisoned and died at the prison.
Gavrilo Princip: The Man Who Started WWI
Because Gavrilo himself counts as dark tourism, I’ll take a quick moment to segue and discuss his fate.
Gavrilo Princip, in case you don’t know, is the man who assassinated Franz Ferdinand, Archduke of Austria and his wife, Sophie, Duchess of Hohenberg. This act is considered by nearly everyone to be the main catalyst for WWI.
After the assassination, Princip attempted to commit suicide – first with an old cyanide pill, which was no longer potent enough, and then with a pistol, but he was stopped before he could get off a shot.
He was 19 years old. By Hapsburg Law, this made him too young to receive the death penalty, which required a minimum age of 20 – although he was less than a month away from his 20th birthday.
Instead, Princip was locked up in Terezín prison. He lived there for less than four years, before dying at the age of 23. He died of skeletal tuberculosis, which was brought on by and exacerbated by the prison’s horrific living conditions – even resulting in the amputation of his arm prior to his death.
Princip was considered a hero to many Slavic nationalists. Because of this, his prison guards quietly buried him in an unmarked grave to prevent his remains being dug up and kept as relics. However, a Czech soldier present at the burial, is said to have later dug him up and returned his body to Sarajevo where he was buried with the other Heroes of Vidovdan. Some people stories also state he is buried at the Bohnicky Cemetery of Fools, one of Prague’s cemeteries.
Camp & Ghetto Life
As WWII progressed, the Nazis began deporting more and more people en masse into Eastern Europe. To aid with the transport times, they decided to convert the Terezín prison into a hybrid ghetto-concentration camp. The order to do so, was signed by Reinhard Heydrich, a particularly cruel SS officer.
In order to do this, they forcibly evacuated the residents of Terezín. Those who refused to leave, or who were Jewish, were stripped of their possessions, held in the ghetto and moved into barracks with thousands of other prisoners.
Before the onset of WWII, the town was home to about 5,000 people. At the height of the war, the population increased to 55,000 Jewish prisoners. This meant that conditions in the barracks were cramped and miserable. Men, women and children were kept separately – meaning families were torn apart – and each room housed sixty to eighty people.
However, some prisoners, especially those with connections were allowed to create private ‘cubbyholes’ within the barracks. Though this hardly counted as luxury, or even comfortable living conditions.
Terezín was different from other concentration camps and ghettos not merely because it was combined. It was also different because it was used predominantly as a way-station for other concentration camps, Auschwitz-Birkenau in particular.
Although it was not a death camp, over 33,000 people died in Terezín itself, mostly from malnutrition, starvation, disease and generally horrific camp conditions. The vast majority of deaths at Terezín were of elderly inmates; this is because not only was food availability insufficient, but distribution was incredibly uneven. Those who did not work (such as the sick and elderly), were given 60% less food, which overtime resulted in many of those unable to work – or work as much – starving to death.
Conversely, prisoners aged between 16 to 60 were rarely subjected to the same severe starvation as the elderly, but were instead forced to work 60+ hours a week under inhumane conditions.
In addition to those that died within the ghetto or camp, over 88,000 people were transported via Terezín to other camps to be gassed.
The City Hitler Gave the Jews
Hitler declared that Terezín was a city built for the Jews, and that those sent there were safer than other camps. He even ensured various important leaders and entertainers like artists, writers and musicians were sent to Terezín to keep the camp’s PR positive. He did not, however, ensure their safety.
Due in part to the camp’s large amount of artistic inmates, the Nazis were able to utilise this and turn Terezín into a propaganda camp. They allowed the prisoners, especially the children, to have art classes, and many of the remaining pieces can still be seen at the ghetto museum today. They were also allowed other false freedoms, such as playing sports on occasion, particularly for the filming of propaganda films like the infamous The Führer Gives a City to the Jews.
One thing that really struck me during both visits was seeing the displays of the children’s artwork hung up in the Terezín Ghetto Museum. Some of it is quite upbeat, while other pieces hint at a more sinister reality. It is incredibly heartbreaking. And an important reminder that no ghetto or concentration camp controlled by the Nazis was actually good (not even a little bit).
Various foreign governments and human rights agencies were pressuring the Nazis for proof of living conditions inside the camps. These propaganda videos were provided as proof that the Jews (and everyone else imprisoned by the Nazis) were not being mistreated. However, it was still not permitted for anyone to actually visit the camps.
This is where Terezín came in.
Terezín as Propaganda Camp
The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) was permitted to visit Terezín on two separate occasions. The ICRC first visited the ghetto in June 1943, but the reports from this trip were not favourable (with conditions described as “frightfully overcrowded”).
However, following pressure from the ICRC and the Danish government (concerned about the Danish Jews that had been forcibly deported there in early 1943), representatives of both the ICRC and the Danish government were allowed a visit in the spring of 1944.
Although they were at Terezín for eight hours, the representatives saw little of the camp’s reality. Instead, they were taken only to ‘approved’ areas along a predetermined route and only permitted to speak with Danish Jews and other hand-picked individuals.
One such individual was Paul Eppstein, a German sociologist, who was made to parade around in a limo with an SS officer disguised as his driver (and, you know, threatening his life). Eppstein was then forced to give a prepared speech in front of the visitors detailing his life as ‘mayor’ of Terezín, a ‘normal country town.’ He also provided fake statistics of ghetto life (i.e. no one dies here and everyone is happy).
It was a thinly veiled charade with Eppstein still sporting a black eye from a beating by Karl Rahm, the camp’s commandant. He even tried to warn Maurice Rossel, one of the ICRC members, of the truth, stating there was no way out for those at Terezín.
The ICRC members then watched a football (soccer) game and a performance of the opera Brundibár.
This time, the findings of life in the camp were far more positive. Despite Eppstein’s warnings, Rossel even claimed in his report that no one was being deported from Terezin to other camps, such as Auschwitz-Birkenau. Rossel went so far as to describe the camp conditions as more favourable than those of the civilians’ in the Protectorate.
–Massive facepalm–
What to see & Do at Terezín Ghetto & Concentration Camp
As I’ve said, Terezín is massive. However, not everything in the town is for tourists, nor does it all have to do with WWII. So if your intent is to see as much as possible to do with Terezín during WWII, here are the places you’ll want to ensure you fit in/find.
Terezín Ghetto Museum
I honestly think this is the real must see of a trip to Terezín. It is literally packed full of information (which you can of course choose to read as little or as much of as desired). But this is also where most of the children’s artwork is on display, which really hammers home just how sinister life in the ghetto really was.
In addition to artwork, you can see and read about various items that belonged to residents of the ghetto. There is also a comprehensive timeline covering the entire lifespan of the Terezín Ghetto, as well as statistics of who was sent where. Most of those who left, were sent to their deaths in Auschwitz-Birkenau or Ravensbrück. There are stories of individuals who both died, and survived, letters and interactive maps.
Magdeburg Barracks
This is where the prisoners lived in the ghetto, and you can see just how cramped the rooms were. Anywhere from 60-80 people were shoved into these spaces at one time and expected to make do. Several strangers would have been forced to share one bed.
The barracks also house several rooms of art created at the camps. Or, in some cases after the war, by residents of the camp who survived. Most of this art was done by adults and it is generally of a much darker and more disturbing nature than those done by the children. Many of these pieces were also done in secret as it would not have fit the propaganda narrative of the camp.
Additionally, the barracks exhibits house rooms dedicated to music produced by former inmates. There is even a display on the operas and plays that they were permitted to perform, including the costumes that were designed for these purposes.
Crematorium
As you might expect, this place is pretty grim.
Nestled between a Jewish cemetery and a Soviet Memorial, the crematorium was built by the forced labour of the ghetto prisoners in 1942. Although Terezín was not a death camp, as I’ve said, people still died. Exact numbers are unknown, but it is believed to be around 35,000 people that were killed on site.
When people died, their bodies were brought to the crematorium. There, the deaths were logged (normally cause of death was listed as illness, despite the fact that many bodies that came in were clearly beaten to death), and then cremated individually.
Why individually?
Because Terezín was a propaganda camp, and they couldn’t just toss the bodies – or ashes – into mass graves as was normally done. Oh no, it was far more malicious. Instead, the Nazis had every cremated body stored in an urn, and they assured the prisoners that they would receive a proper burial after the war.
Hope can be insidious.
As you might imagine not a single one of them received a proper burial. Instead, they were stored at the Columbarium…
Columbarium
The Columbarium was a network of underground tunnels nor far from the Crematorium. The Nazis used the Columbarium to store the urns of the deceased. In theory, it was for safekeeping until the end of the war.
What actually happened is that they would merely store the urns for show – both to assuage the fears of the Jews, and the suspicions of any foreign agencies and governments who visited. However, as you can probably guess, they had no intention of giving the dead a proper burial.
In 1944, in a desperate attempt to hide their crimes, the Nazis ordered the remaining prisoners to dispose of the urns. About 3,000 urns were buried in nearby Litoměřice Concentration Camp, but over 22,000 were emptied into the Ohře River – which still runs between the ghetto and the concentration camp – and the urns were burnt.
Today, you can visit the Columbarium, although there is not much to see aside from the tunnels, and a large memorial of an urn.
Ceremonial Halls and Central Morgue
For the life of me, I can’t quite work out what the ceremonial halls were for given that they would not have actually allowed for an mortuary ceremonies to be held.
Today, however, they are a moving memorial to those murdered. There are several commemorative memorials in the small space. But for me, the most moving is a large Jewish Star of David. In each point is the name of a concentration camp or ghetto that Terezín residents were sent to (such as Auschwitz, Ravensbrück or Treblinka), and a small bit of ashes.
(They were actually sent to more than six different camps and ghettos, but it’s still a powerful message)
TEREZÍN CONCENTRATION CAMP
Jeremy and I didn’t actually fit in the camp this trip because, well, we got there too late and it was winter, so nightfall came fairly early. But having been before, I definitely think it’s well worth the visit. The tour guide I had previously really brought the haunting reality of the camp to life.
Small Fortress
The small fortress isn’t actually that small, but what’s in a name, right?
From 1940-1945, it was used as a prison for members of the Prague Gestapo. Over 32,000 prisoners passed through the prison, most in transit before being sent onwards to other concentration camps or prisons. Nevertheless, an estimated 2,600 died due to the appalling conditions.
In 1994, the small fortress reopened with a permanent exhibit on life in the prison. It also houses several other exhibits at any time – some permanent and some temporary.
The small fortress can be visited as part of a guided tour with the Terezín Concentration Camp, or on its own.
Terezín Memorial – The National Cemetery
You can’t miss it if you head to the concentration camp and small fortress. In fact is is located outside of the latter. Not much to say aside from, please take a moment to show your respects to the lives lost here.
I have not had the opportunity to visit:
– Prayer Room & Attic
– Crematorium of the Litoměřice Concentration Camp: If visiting, this MUST be booked in advance by emailing manager@pamatnik-terezin.cz, and you will need to visit with a Terezín guide.
TEREZÍN TODAY
Today Terezín is home to around 2,500 people – half that of its pre-war population. But time has remained unkind to Terezín’s residents. Unemployment is rampant, and most of those able to work, must look beyond the town for employment.
The largest employer of Terezín residents was once the army, which previously owned 40% of the buildings in the town. However, in 1996 they began pulling out of the area, leaving hundreds unemployed.
Due to the entirety of Terezín being classified as a cultural heritage site, there are serious restrictions on what people can build in the town. This includes no factories or warehouses, and nothing that interferes with the pre-existing buildings
If you do visit Terezín, please remember that locals do live here, and invest in the local economy if possible. We bought snacks at a corner store, though there are a handful of restaurants and cafes.
So why would anyone live here? Well, many of the families that ended up in Terezín after the war had no where else to go. For some, their homes had been destroyed, or were now occupied by others. Some people were placed in the town during postwar efforts to re-home those affected.
Clearly the system was far from perfect.
Getting to Terezín Ghetto & Concentration Camp
Terezín is an easy day trip from Prague. Easy in terms of logistics, not easy emotionally.
Fair warning: you will spend all day at Terezín. It is massive. Even if you go on a tour from Prague, it is likely to take about five hours.
We did it by ourselves, and because we were running late (like the lazy, unorganised people we are), we did not get to see the concentration camp this trip, only the ghetto – all photos of the concentration camp are from my previous visit. Keep in mind, this was also made more difficult by the fact that we were visiting in the winter and it was pitch black by 4PM.
So, don’t be like us. Do it right.
Terezín can be reached by public bus, private car or a tour.
We bussed it. It was simple and inexpensive (though I unfortunately cannot remember the exact cost). Buses leave regularly throughout the day, starting quite early (around 8AM when we were there), but check online for times.
The bus leaves from Praha-Holesovice. You want the bus to Litoměřice. It will be relatively obvious when to get off as there are signs, but generally just follow all the other tourists.
DO NOT GET THE BUS TO TEREZIN FROM FLORENC. This is a different Terezin.
Once you are at Terezín, you can decide to get off at the Ghetto in order to see the museum, the crematorium, the barracks, and several other exhibits.
OR you can opt to start your visit at the concentration camp further up the road. Be aware that if you plan to take a guided tour of the concentration camp only (direct from the camp, not from Prague), it is recommended you book ahead of time. A guide is included in the admission fee, and I highly recommend it due to the sheer size of the Terezín concentration camp.
You can opt for a tour of the Small Fortress only, which is approximately 75 minutes. Or you can get a guided tour of both the concentration camp and the small fortress, which is approximately 120 minutes.
Tours are available in Czech, English, German, French, Spanish, Italian and Russian.
If you want a tour that includes the ghetto, you will need to get a tour direct from Prague. However, we think this can be done easily on your own as most of the exhibits are well marked and lots of information is provided.
INTERESTED IN MORE DARK TOURISM DAY TRIPS FROM PRAGUE?
– A Haunting Visit to the Lidice Memorial
– Day Trip to Sedlec Ossaury, the Bone Chuch
NEED MORE TO DO IN PRAGUE?
– Dark & Historical Places to Visit in Prague
– Reinhard Heydrich and the Heydrich Terror Memorial
– Prague Off the Beaten Path
– Ultimate Macabre Guide to Prague
Have you been to Terezín? What stood out most to you? Are there any other particularly unique WWII sites you recommend we visit? Let us know in the comments!
