The Writing on the Wall by Juliet Rieden

Author:Juliet Rieden
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Macmillan Australia
Published: 2019-08-26T23:00:00+00:00

I ride to Theresienstadt with my partner Katie in a taxi, quickly leaving behind Prague’s grandeur for lush green, undulating hills. It is brilliant sunshine and very warm, which feels at odds with my visit here. I am apprehensive about what I will find in Theresienstadt but also excited to be finally walking in my grandparents’ footsteps. Wild poppies blotch red smudges through the surrounding fields and hedgerows all along the route, an immediate symbol in my mind for fallen servicemen. Only the casualties I am about to uncover did not die in combat; they were murdered, defenceless victims of the worst war crimes the world has ever seen.

I spot signs of industry here and there on the skyline as we drive, and I am reminded that Czechoslovakia was considered the engine room of the Third Reich. It played a crucial role in the production of Hitler’s armaments, possibly one of the reasons it was largely protected from heavy bombing.

I find the town of Terezín – as it is now called, rightly reclaiming the original Czech name, as opposed to the German Theresienstadt the Nazis designated for Juden – to be a curious place. Calm, quiet, contemplative and very spread out; not at all what I expected.

The countryside around here is gentle and quite beautiful. The Elbe river flows peacefully into the Ohře, and all around are meadows filled with wildflowers, the petals of which, at this time of year, flutter with visitations from butterflies, below the soft bluey-purple of a mountain backdrop. Set into this scene of pastoral harmony was the eighteenth-century fortress, many of whose ancient buildings still stand. This star-shaped twelve-pointed military city with high ramparts was originally surrounded by a moat, had six gates and was Emperor Joseph II’s pride and joy. In addition, a civilian town of typically Czech painted stone houses with the usual town square and other buildings fill out Terezín. Around 7000 lived here before the war, half of whom were soldiers.

At the height of its Theresienstadt use, there were 58,491 inmates. At first it was for Jews from the recently declared Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia, and then also those from Germany, Austria, the Netherlands, Denmark, Slovakia and Hungary.

Nazi propaganda tricked some of the elderly wealthy Austrian and German Jews into believing that Theresienstadt was actually a health resort with all sorts of facilities – coffee houses, theatres, spa treatments. Eager for a piece of paradise amid the chaos of war, the Jews paid to go, thinking this would be a holiday away from the trouble. They packed their best dresses and suits, smart shoes, jewels, furs and resort-wear – all of which was confiscated as soon as they arrived.

Now this place also has the rather sinister feeling of a ghost town, which of course it is, on this day for me especially, as I contemplate the ghosts of the 35,088 who died here when it was a concentration camp, and the further 84,000 who left here and were killed following deportation to the East.

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