Today started off a very lazy day. I slept until nearly eight. That's only about the second time I've slept more than seven hours on this whole trip. We were meant to go on a tour that was included in our cruise and was leaving at 8:30. Needless to say we decided not to go. It was a to another castle and another church so we felt like we'd seen enough.
After a very late beakfast we decided to take a walk down the the "Old Square". To get there, you have to walk down a street they call Paris Street. When you walk down you can see why, all the shops are very high end. So high end that when we passed the Cartier store some weary tourist decided to sit on the ledge in front of the window. The security man who stands at the front door very quickly moved them away. Not only can you not afford anything in the store but you can't even linger and pretend.
We were surprised to get to the square so quickly, it only took us about ten minutes. You enter the square and you instantly know why people live Prague. It's beautiful! It's a large square surrounded by beautifully ornate buildings with a huge statue in the centre.
Every where you look there are buskers performing. Some are a bit weird but most of them are very talented. I counted at least 14 street performers. This makes for a very interesting place to hang out.
The Old Square is famous for its astronomical clock and hundreds of people wait each hour for it to chime. We were near it about 10:30 so we thought we would take advantage of a cafe that is right in front of the clock to have a coffee while we wait for the next chime. By 10:45 it started getting crowded in front of the cafe and by 10:55 you could barely move in the square in front of the clock.
Fortunately, our vantage point wasn't obscured much and we could easily see the hightlight of the clock. Again this is one of those things that have been built up so much that you have unrealistic expectations. They started building the clock in 1410 so how much can you expect from something mechanical that is over 600 years old. According to local legend, the city will suffer if the clock is neglected and its good operation is placed in jeopardy. A skeleton, mounted on the clock, was supposed nod his head in confirmation when the clock chimes.
After the delights of the town square we had a very sobering tour in the afternoon. We visited Terazin, a Nazi concentration camp/village. The was not a death camp but that does not make it any less horrific. We first visited the prison that had been built back in 1780. Hitler thought that this town with its prison was the perfect place to intern the Czech jewish community. Those who resisted the nazis were sent to the prison to the most unbelievably awful conditions. A dormitory would have been approximately 20m × 5m and would house (you could hardly call it housing) about 100 people. There was one long bunk that was three levels and ran nearly the length of the room, one table with benches about 3m long, one toilet, and one basin. It boggles the mind to even to begin to imagine what this would have been like.
We were also taken to the isolation cells. Many of these had no windows or light. Prisoners would be held in here indefinitely and often if they did survive they had become blind. We went into one of these cells with the door closed and it was terrifying! We would have only been in there for 30 seconds before the door was opened again but it was so dark we could not even find the door.
There was one arch that led to the dormitories that had a horribly ironic sign above it "Arbeit macht frei" meaning work will set you free.
Outside the prison walls the is a memorial cemetery that is beautiful and peaceful and such a stark contrast to the way these people died.
After the prison we were taken to the village. Normally the population of Terazin was about 5000, but at the height of the war it rose to 55,000 in the same buildings.This camp was set up as a model settlement to fool the Red Cross into believing that the Jews were being treated well. When the Red Cross visited everything was made to look perfect, the shops were full, they set up some show housing that was suitable and the people had everything the needed. They even selected the people they wanted to greet the Red Cross and told them what to say under the threat the others in their family would be killed if they did not comply. Obviously they saw what they wanted to see. Over 140,000 people were sent to the camp with more than 32,000 dying and nearly 90,000 sent to the death camps like Auschwitz. I believe everything I was told, read and saw during the tour but fail to comprehend what it must have been like. I still can't work out how they could treat human beings that way, but the human spirit is amazing and there some extraordinary stories from survivors in the museum. This spirit shows through in the children's drawings that are displayed in the museum.
I could go on forever about it because there is so much to tell but enough is enough...it just makes me both sad and angry to keep writing about. It was a horrible place but I'm grateful I went there as it was a very thought provoking experience. It's actually taken me quite a few days to process it all.
No comments:
Post a Comment