A week in the Czech RepublicAm getting used to this "strange" country. At this point I cannot say whether I have really taken to the Czech Republic or not. However, I feel profoundly moved by some episodes of its past history, paticularly that of its former thriving Jewish community. I devoted a whole day to visit the Jewish quarter in Prague. |
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Just a handful of Jews now reside in this country. Josefov, the Jewish district, has become a major tourist draw for the Czech ('Gentile', of course) government: synagogues have been revamped; some have been turned into museums and strings of souvenir shops line the streets. They sell kippas, puppets featuring old rabbis, huge stars of David and other parapharnalia. The queues to enter any site are unbelievable. |
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| However, I managed to beat the crowds. I was the first in line to buy my ticket. While everybody was rushing to see the exhibition of the Holocaust memorial in the Pinkas synagogue. I discreetly slipped to the back for a glimpse of the old Jewish cemetery. A very special moment. No one was in sight apart from a Czech guard, his eyes still heavy with sleep. The weather was in tune with the ambiant mood . A fine grey drizzle was covering the graveyard with veils of melancholy. Rows after rows of stone slabs were jutting out from disheveled patches of grass, weeds and wild flowers. They would have looked like piles of rubble had they not had hebrew inscriptions on them... |
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| The atmosphere felt unreal, almost surrealistic with these thousands and thousands of tombstones, silently piercing the morning mist. The rain seemed like tears expressing all the sorrows of the world. There I stood completely alone for a few minutes struck by an all pervasive feeling of poignant sadness and utter abandonment all around me. The Czech Jews, this forgotten, long suffering race, had been crammed into this small burial ground, tens of thousands of them, for underneath the visible tombs were other layers of coffins piled one top of the other, with the passing of time, for sheer lack of space. The oldest grave dating from the 15th century. Despite the dismal ambiance, this overcrowded, forlorn graveyard managed to express a sense of great dignity. Then all of a sudden I was snapped out of my gloom by the sound of many footsteps. People had finished seeing the exhibition and were now pouring into the cemetery. It was time for me to beat a hasty retreat. |
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I went to visit the museum inside the adjoining synagogue. The walls
spoke for themselves. On them were written more than 70,000 names of
victims of the Holocaust. These never ending lines of names representing
real people who had suffered indescribable torments was almost too much.
The impact on me was immensely powerful. It conveyed a sense of horror and
absurdity greater than even the most graphic pictures would have done.
I eventually broke when I reached the section reserved for the children, martyrs of the nazi genocide. During their incarceration, they wrote poems and drew pictures expressing at the same time a very bleak despair and an undying hope for a better world. They depicted their dreams along with their darkest fears, the worst and most obsessive of them were sent on one of the convoys heading East (to extermination camps like Aushwitz) from which no one would return. Their style, fresh, colorful, so naive and innocent was too much for me. |
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Following this, I went to the city of Terezin, one hour away from Prague. Terezin is a fortress town that had been converted into a concentration camp during German occupation. It had been emptied of its local population and filled with Jews from Bohemia and Moravia first and later with Jews from other parts of Europe, like Slovakia, Hungary, Germany, Austria and the Netherlands. Terezin served three purposes. It was a transit area where Jews were regrouped and then sent to extermination camps, further East. It was also a decimating place, helping to carry out the Final Solution, where living conditions were so atrocious that one fifth of the tens of thoudsands of people transiting there died of ill treatment, disease and malnutrition. It was finally a propanganda tool. |
| The Germans took great care to present Terezin as a model, Jewish run community to the rest of the world, denying allegation of persecutions. Even the Red Cross was fooled. The Nazis went as far as shooting a movie where the inmates apparently led a life of idyllic bliss. Men, women and children were recruited by force among the inmates of Terezin and compelled to act out this monstrous charade. |  |
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In Terezin, I saw an excellent introductory movie. Extracts from the German propanganda feature as well as clandestine black and white drawings by some inmates denouncing the atrocities of the camp were presented in contrasting succession while were enumerated the many convoys of Jews sent to their deaths during these terrible years. On a background of Jewish sacred music, the designation of each convoy was clearly stated, with the number of people in it and the number of survivors, often a handful or none at all. I felt chilled in my bones. There again, I interacted with the children of Terezin, read more of their poetry, saw more of their paintings. |
| Jewish children had been banned from
public schools and schooling was not permitted in the camp. Women, children
and men lived in separate barracks, having less than 2 meters square of
vital living space. Despite the interdiction, the children were taught in
secret by courageous adults, often the best possible teachers, among the
many artists and scientists living in the camp. A whole opera was even
written for them!
In this atmosphere of total desolation and the ever pending threat of being exterminated, people and children found solace in many forms of artistic expression that allowed them to cope with their anguish. They kept journals, wrote poetry, composed and played music, created plays and operas, painted and sculpted. Many of their creations died with them but some survived and are exhibited in the museums. They are powerfully moving. |
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Today, locals are back in Terezin though most of the Czech Jews have perished.
The town square is dismal and still smells of death. The barracks, the
crematorium, the dissection rooms, the prison cells, the torture chambers,
the towers, the mass graves and the execution grounds still stand...
hideous testimonies of a horrific past mankind should never forget. In the
befittingly reddish muddy waters of the local river, called Ohre, were
poured the ashes of many innocent souls whose only crime was to belong to a
scapegoat race at the time.
When I was there, despite the horror that seized me, I felt a strange sense of peace found at last. The surrounding countryside is pastoral. You can hear the gentle twitter of the birds. Even though many victims had an anonymous death, the green fields studded with tombstones and the memorials are silent reminders of many sufferings that had at last come to an end. |
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As you might be able to tell, I feel very strongly about what I saw. Not so
much because I am myself Jewish but more because I pray for mankind to
realize their folly and stop being torturers of their fellow beings. May
they learn from the lessons of the past.
Peace be with you.
Shalom |