Terezin

Before leaving Prague we went to Terezin, a concentration camp/ghetto during the second world war. It was really eerie to be there, I had never been to any camp in Poland or anywhere else, so that was a weird experience just being somewhere that people had been sent to and died at during the Holocaust. Also, Terezin is a fully functioning town now, with families and people who live there, so while we were walking by the crematorium there were people rollerblading. At first I thought it was incredibly rude, and while I don't think that they necessarily should be doing that by the crematorium and the cemetery, it is their home.
Terezin as a town now, has about 7,000 people living in it. During the was it held up to 70,000 at any point. Terezin was used as an intermediate camp. Those Jews that the German's didn't know what to do with, because they were so high up in society were sent there while the Nazi Regime decided. Poets, artists, high class members of society were the first people to be sent there. Also, it was not a death camp, 35,000 people died there from disease and sickness, but not from extermination.
Another unique thing about Terezin was that the leadership of the ghetto was Jewish, and those Jews were the ones who made the lists of transports out of Terezin, and to Auschwitz or another death camp. Could you imagine being the one deciding who got to go and who got to stay? Every so often the list of names would be posted and then people had a chance to appeal the decision. They could go in front of a board of people and tell them why they shouldn't be on the transport (family, life in Terezin, etc.). The sad thing is though, if you got out of it, someone would be sent in your place.
They told us while we were there that there were people who appealed to be taken off the list, but there were also people who went to the board and asked to be put on the transport, to be with a family member or a loved one. That is all incomprehensible to me. Knowing what we know now, about where those transports went and what happened to the people, knowing that some people voluntarily put themselves there is, I guess, uncomfortable.
We also went to the crematorium, where the people who died in Terezin were, well cremated, and there ashes were just dumped elsewhere. There was this room there in which the bodies were prepared for cremation, and it was run by people in the ghetto, and the bodies were prepared in a Jewish manner.
The whole experience was eerie, and heavy and got me thinking.