With the afternoon of our second day in the Czech Republic, as opposed to seeing the castle a second time, we wanted to take a bus about an hour outside of Prague to the town of Terezin. The town of Terezin was built into an old Czech fortress built to keep the Prussians out, but we were more interested in the smaller fortress 1000 meters to the East of the bigger one: the Pamatkin Terezin concentration camp.
We wanted to go to it primarily because we didn’t think we would have another opportunity to visit one of the camps; there was just too much to do in Berlin to spend an entire day or half-day at Sachsenhausen. I also wanted to visit Terezin especially because it was the camp featured in our 8th grade play at Country Day, “I Never Saw Another Butterfly.” The camp was originally established as a prison for Czech political prisoners, but it became increasing inundated with residents of the Jewish ghetto that had taken over the town of Terezin just down the road. The camp had large populations of Jewish children and the intellectuals that the Nazis couldn’t afford to be seen killing (yet); this lead to what a Jewish historian called “the greatest education system of all time” in which lower- and middle-school age children were being instructed by Nobel prize-winning physicists and virtuoso musicians.
Built within the ramparts of the old medieval Czech fortress, the concentration camp was an especially daunting site. Walking up to it from the town, you pass through a massive cemetery containing the remains of the prisoners who died there. Only a couple thousand graves existed, so they must have only found or accounted for a small percentage of the 33,000 estimated to have died at Terezin. We walked through the single tunnel leading in and out of the camp and started our tour in the administrative yard. In front of us were the lavish SS barracks, the camp Kommandant’s mansion residence, and other amenities like a swimming pool and cinema for the Germans. To the left was the processing yard and prisoner yard A. We passed underneath the ‘Arbeit Macht Frei’ so characteristic of the Nazi camps and set about exploring the prisoner accommodations of the yard. Since Terezin was a sort of propaganda camp built to fool people, we also saw the doctor’s office, barbershop, and hospital wings that were rarely – if ever – used in real life. We passed through a super creepy tunnel that snaked through the original ramparts of the castle (which was constructed as like a 20-side star, basically) and led from prisoner yard A to the execution yard, where there were walls pocketed with bullet holes and concrete basins for bodies to fall into. We passed through the fields of mass graves before finally coming back into the interior of the camp to see more prisoner yards, some with mass cells that would hold anywhere between 400-600 prisoners in a single room (with two toilets and four sinks to accommodate the lot of them). It was all pretty disgusting and was a very humbling experience overall.
We left the camp around 6:00 in order to catch the 6:30 bus back to Prague. The only problem was that no one told us the 6:30 bus only operates on Sundays. After waiting at the bus stop for over an hour, we started walking toward the town – clueless as to what we should be doing – with our arms outstretched and thumbs up. No one stopped for us, so we wandered into the old fortress and the town of Terezin to try and find something. Maybe because the town’s predominately Jewish population never recovered after World War 2, or maybe because it was Saturday and thus the Shabbat, but – whatever the reason – the place was a ghost town.
We finally found a hotel that was open and one of the women having a drink at the bar spoken enough English to tell us there was one last train that comes through Terezin en route to Prague in the evenings. We hightailed it to the train station and luckily bought tickets. Once again, flying by the seat of our flaming pants. When we got back to Prague, we were pretty exhausted and mentally drained from the whole afternoon, so we decided a pub crawl was in order and absolutely necessary. We got a quick bite to eat at McDonald’s to save money and then headed out with the pub crawl group for a night on the town.
With the afternoon of our second day in the Czech Republic, as opposed to seeing the castle a second time, we wanted to take a bus about an hour outside of Prague to the town of Terezin. The town of Terezin was built into an old Czech fortress built to keep the Prussians out, but we were more interested in the smaller fortress 1000 meters to the East of the bigger one: the Pamatkin Terezin concentration camp. 
We wanted to go to it primarily because we didn’t think we would have another opportunity to visit one of the camps; there was just too much to do in Berlin to spend an entire day or half-day at Sachsenhausen. I also wanted to visit Terezin especially because it was the camp featured in our 8th grade play at Country Day, “I Never Saw Another Butterfly.” The camp was originally established as a prison for Czech political prisoners, but it became increasing inundated with residents of the Jewish ghetto that had taken over the town of Terezin just down the road. The camp had large populations of Jewish children and the intellectuals that the Nazis couldn’t afford to be seen killing (yet); this lead to what a Jewish historian called “the greatest education system of all time” in which lower- and middle-school age children were being instructed by Nobel prize-winning physicists and virtuoso musicians. 
Built within the ramparts of the old medieval Czech fortress, the concentration camp was an especially daunting site. Walking up to it from the town, you pass through a massive cemetery containing the remains of the prisoners who died there. Only a couple thousand graves existed, so they must have only found or accounted for a small percentage of the 33,000 estimated to have died at Terezin. We walked through the single tunnel leading in and out of the camp and started our tour in the administrative yard. In front of us were the lavish SS barracks, the camp Kommandant’s mansion residence, and other amenities like a swimming pool and cinema for the Germans. To the left was the processing yard and prisoner yard A. We passed underneath the ‘Arbeit Macht Frei’ so characteristic of the Nazi camps and set about exploring the prisoner accommodations of the yard. Since Terezin was a sort of propaganda camp built to fool people, we also saw the doctor’s office, barbershop, and hospital wings that were rarely – if ever – used in real life. We passed through a super creepy tunnel that snaked through the original ramparts of the castle (which was constructed as like a 20-side star, basically) and led from prisoner yard A to the execution yard, where there were walls pocketed with bullet holes and concrete basins for bodies to fall into. We passed through the fields of mass graves before finally coming back into the interior of the camp to see more prisoner yards, some with mass cells that would hold anywhere between 400-600 prisoners in a single room (with two toilets and four sinks to accommodate the lot of them). It was all pretty disgusting and was a very humbling experience overall. 
We left the camp around 6:00 in order to catch the 6:30 bus back to Prague. The only problem was that no one told us the 6:30 bus only operates on Sundays. After waiting at the bus stop for over an hour, we started walking toward the town – clueless as to what we should be doing – with our arms outstretched and thumbs up. No one stopped for us, so we wandered into the old fortress and the town of Terezin to try and find something. Maybe because the town’s predominately Jewish population never recovered after World War 2, or maybe because it was Saturday and thus the Shabbat, but – whatever the reason – the place was a ghost town. 
We finally found a hotel that was open and one of the women having a drink at the bar spoken enough English to tell us there was one last train that comes through Terezin en route to Prague in the evenings. We hightailed it to the train station and luckily bought tickets. Once again, flying by the seat of our flaming pants. When we got back to Prague, we were pretty exhausted and mentally drained from the whole afternoon, so we decided a pub crawl was in order and absolutely necessary. We got a quick bite to eat at McDonald’s to save money and then headed out with the pub crawl group for a night on the town.
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