“ARBEIT MACHT FREI.” This German phase translates to “WORK MAKES YOU FREE,” which was the Nazi credo during the Holocaust. I shivered as I read these words while walking through an orange archway, blocked by huge metal gates. This was the entrance to Terezin, a former Nazi concentration camp less than 40 miles from Prague, Czech Republic. Many of my ancestors died in the Holocaust, perhaps even at Terezin. Although the Nazis advertised Terezin as a haven to protect accomplished musicians, artists, writers, and leaders, in truth, the Nazis designed Terezin as a transfer camp for European Jews en route to extermination camps such as Auschwitz. Even though Terezin was not technically an extermination camp, records meticulously maintained by the Nazis document that about 100,000 people, including 15,000 children, perished at Terezin from starvation, exposure, disease, torture, and the firing squad; only 132 children who were imprisoned there survived the Holocaust. As I entered the site, at age ten, as part of a small tour group in August 2008, I imagined how I would have felt as a young Jewish boy arriving there in the 1940s as part of the Nazi’s macabre plan for the “Final Solution of the Jewish Question.” Although I had studied the Holocaust, no book or movie could prepare me for the profound emotional impact of visiting this horrific place. At Terezin, for the first time, I was able to integrate firsthand observations and experiences with the historical facts I had learned about the Holocaust. The heinous events of the Holocaust consumed me as I tried to identify with the victims and immersed myself in their plight. At Terezin, my knowledge about the Holocaust hit me in the gut like a battering ram.
The Nazis transformed an enormous, late 1700s fortress into the Terezin concentration camp and topped its already foreboding walls with barbed wire. Without the barbed wire, the fortress would have been imposing, but with the barbed wire, it appeared truly sinister. I felt tiny, intimidated, and apprehensive as I visualized how much more horrendous the experience would have been if, like a boy during the Holocaust, I was lost, confused, and alone without my parents comforting me, not knowing if I would ever see my family again. I tried to fathom the sheer terror that this boy would have suffered. After being cooped up in the van that had transported us from Prague, I inhaled the fresh countryside air and thought that the boy would have smelled the same thing, and it might have given him a false sense of hope. I realized that no matter how uncomfortable my van ride had been, it could never to compare with the overcrowded, suffocating, ominous train or truck that had transported the boy to Terezin. As I entered the camp, there was a grave and eerie silence despite the crunch of gravel beneath my feet. A boy during the Holocaust would not have had the luxury, no matter how eerie, of such silence; it would have been drowned out by screams, wails and pleas uttered by fellow inmates. I tried to hold back tears that were welling up in my eyes. I had difficulty internalizing that this camp was in use less than seventy five years ago, when my grandparents were teenagers or young adults and struggled to comprehend how challenging it must have been to live as a Jew in America at that time, knowing generally what was happening in Europe. Long emancipated from its maleficent purpose, desolate, and essentially deserted, Terezin evoked a morbid and disturbing but sterile abandoned movie set. However, our guides successfully unearthed, resurrected, and brought to center stage the unconscionable depravity and misery buried there. Horror, disbelief, and sadness engulfed me and escalated as the tour continued.
Our group entered the camp and proceeded through a door on the wall of the main courtyard into a dark, cramped, dirty room, filled to the brim with bunk beds covered with filthy blankets. I shuddered as I envisioned the disgusting, itchy feeling that must have accompanied attempting to sleep with those blankets. This was part of the prisoners’ living quarters, which were, in reality, dying quarters. I closed my eyes and heard what a Jewish boy would have heard as he lay on his bunk bed — hushed conversation, prayers, crying, labored breathing, and perhaps even a bit of singing. I smelled dust and damp air, which probably would have been perfume compared to the putrid stench of sweat, feces, urine, vomit, and rotting flesh that would have smothered the young boy. I was overwrought by the sorrow and despair that would have been a part of the boy’s life every day.
The adjacent room contained a long line of sinks and several showers. Our guide explained that this washroom was constructed solely as a sham to deceive Red Cross representatives who inspected Terezin. Prisoners could not use it because the plumbing was never connected to water pipes or intended to work. The Nazis used Terezin as a propaganda tool, describing it to the Red Cross and the outside world as a culturally rich resort for the resettlement and shelter of Jews; Terezin was known throughout Europe for its orchestras, art, and theater. In truth, it was “The Waiting Room to Auschwitz.” I imagined the anger and anguish the desperate boy felt as he lied to the Red Cross inspectors about his life, and the all consuming fear of annihilation for himself and his family that drove him to deceive these inspectors, who might have been his only chance of being saved from the Nazis. I still cannot understand how the inmates were able to maintain any sanity; their enormous resilience will forever amaze and inspire me.
Our next destination on the Terezin tour was even more daunting. Our guide led us into a series of narrow, dark, winding tunnels. To me, the tunnels seemed interminable, but to a despondent young boy during the Holocaust, they undoubtedly seemed even longer. These tunnels led to the execution area and the train tracks (for incoming trains bringing prisoners to Terezin and outgoing trains delivering them to extermination camps). As the boy was quickly marched through these tunnels, he would have inhaled the repulsive odor of mold, dust, and decomposing bodies, heard the echo of petrified whimpers of fellow captives, booming orders of their captors and the rumble of an approaching or departing train, and felt a highly magnified version of the disorientation that I felt. He would have been trying desperately to keep up with the other prisoners to avoid being trampled and left to die. Exiting the labyrinth of tunnels, I was dwarfed by a towering wall behind a dry moat. The Nazis lined up prisoners sentenced to execution against this wall and shot them. The wet grass squelched underneath my feet as I heard screams and the bark of “FEUER” (German for “FIRE”) followed by gunshots. I wondered what the boy would have smelled — grass, like I did, or a foul mix of gunpowder, perspiration, decay, and blood? I presumed that it was the latter. He certainly would have been overcome by the devastation that I felt. Although this area was almost unbearable, the worst was still yet to come.
We soon left the execution area, and, after driving for a few minutes, reached our final stop in the Terezin concentration camp complex, the crematorium, which resembled a factory from the outside. At the crematorium, I attempted to put the young Jewish boy out of my head, as he would only have been brought here if he had died, or was on the verge of death. I was not prepared to consider such a morbid scenario so acutely and personally. As I stepped inside, I gazed in awe at the massive scale of my surroundings, an immense room filled with colossal ovens. In front of each of the ovens was a pair of train tracks and a trolley on which dead bodies were methodically rolled into the oven with total apathy, as if they were car parts on an assembly line. After a cart was rolled inside, the oven’s colossal doors were slammed shut, and the oven was turned on. The Nazis lined up small wooden boxes containing the ashes of each victim in orderly rows along shelves on the wall, inventoried on neat, organized ledgers listing the deceased prisoners’ names, cremation dates and what they considered other pertinent data. These precise records of vile, unspeakable atrocities acutely represent the purely evil, shameless pride the Nazis took in their accomplishments. A small room off to the side of the main cremation area contained a table covered with sharp objects, which the Nazis used to ‘examine’ prisoners and ‘confirm’ that they were dead before cremation. I was repulsed when our guide told us that some prisoners were not yet dead when they were placed on the table, but were certainly dead when they were taken off. As I imagined the fetor of smoke, sweat, and burning flesh emanating from the crematorium, I was overwhelmed with nausea. Standing there, I thought I heard orders being shouted in German, the clanging of metal doors and a loud rumbling created by the ovens. Trying to conceptualize that the Nazis likely carried out all business systematically and without regret left me overwrought with excruciating disbelief. Although in the crematorium, I lacked the personal connection, through the young inmate, that I had felt in other parts of Terezin, the crematorium was nevertheless the most disconcerting part of my visit.
My agonizing, surreal experience at Terezin was life-altering. Even now, six years later, I often think back to Terezin and the young Jewish boy whose mindset I attempted to capture. Every time I picture that boy, I am enveloped with grief and empathy, as well as a sincere appreciation of my good fortune and its fragility. Terezin reminds me to be grateful for the virtually boundless opportunities and freedoms (not the false freedom referred to by the Nazis in “Arbeit Macht Frei”) obtainable by me, all of which would have been unimaginable to a ten year old inmate at Terezin, and emboldens me to pursue them for myself and others less fortunate. Holocaust study and experiences like mine at Terezin are necessary to comprehend fully the lethal injustices and inhumanity of the Holocaust so that we can mobilize to eradicate comparable plagues. Acknowledging such horrible realities challenges us to put our own lives in perspective, be productive, and engage in meaningful work to unveil, halt, and prevent analogous tragedies worldwide. This is the only work that will truly make us free.