While in the Czech Republic...

I just spent a few days in and around Prague in the Czech Repuplic (I highly recommend it to anyone, by the way!) and although I did not do much that was ‘model’ related while over there, I did buy a couple of kits and visited a place called Terezin that a profound effect on me..

Terezin is about 40mins drive from Prague, an old fortress town, meant to protect the North of the country. Within the walls of the fortress lies a complete town, but Terezin also features a smaller second fort, situated less than a mile from the main fortress.

Although part of the fortified line that should have prevented invasion from Germany, the 1938 Munich treaty gave Nazi Germany the right to take possession of the Sudeteland, the mostly German-speaking areas of the then Czechoslovakian Republic, where were located most of those defences. So, Terezin played no part in WWII.

By 1941, the inhabitants of Terezin had been displaced and replaced by a Jewish Ghetto. The smaller fort became a prison where were held (mostly) political opponents of the Nazi regime. Most were from Czechoslovakia but some came from other countries including, of course, neighbouring Germany. Many prisoners sent there were non-Jewish. The Ghetto also counted a mostly Czechoslovakian population but some people came from as far as the Netherlands and Denmark.

The visit started with the smaller fort cum prison. A cemetery now lies before the main entrance of the fort.

We were in turn shown the prisoners’ sleeping quarters, isolation cells (one of them in which was imprisoned and eventually died the Serb whose gunshots ignited what would become the First World War), their shower and laundry rooms, the execution wall, then the guards and officers quarters. No need to mention that the prisoners had the worst lot in terms of accommodation and hygiene…

Just to give you an idea, in the new set of sleeping quarters built during WWII (built by the prisoners of course) some 600 people were at times crammed into a room that’s probably not much bigger than a basketball court. There were only 2 toilets for that many people, and although the glassed roof gave the prisoners some light, it also made the barracks really hot in summer. People not only died there because of torture, malnutrition and forced labour but also because of lack of air and hygiene. In fact, after the liberation in May 1945, from the few survivors, many would still die from typhus.

In contrast, the few SS guards and their commander enjoyed the comfort of spacious apartments, decent food, the presence of their wives and children, a cinema and a pool (also built by the prisoners). Can you imagine that prisoners on their way to the firing squad would be 'paraded' in front of said wives and children..?!

I felt already quite heavy and bad after visiting the smaller fort. But next came the visit of selected spots and museums in the former ghetto. Terezin ghetto was a concentration camp. Jews from various countries were sent there, to await their transport to other camps, the so called ‘death’ ones such as Auchwitz. In total, over 150,000 Jews transited via Terezin. Very few survived. Most Jews sent to Terezin were ‘allowed’ to self-govern themselves. Special ‘Terezin’ money was even printed for them, and they were allowed to work for the German war effort, if only by repairing uniforms and making boots. Cultural life was not really encouraged by the Nazis but nevertheless, hoping for better days, art activities were organised and schools were set up. Over 15,000 children lived at a time or another in the Ghetto, between 1941 and 1945. Those kids wrote poetry, stories, drew and painted ‘telling’ the lives and homes they had lost while moving to Terezin, recording life in the Ghetto and laying their hopes for the future. Broken futures for most of them.

Amazingly, thanksfully, many of those drawings and poems were kept and hidden from the Nazis and ‘surfaced’ after the liberation. Those are now on show in that town, and the story they tell is simply very hard to ‘swallow’...

Knowing that men were tortured and killed in the smaller fort was bad enough but thinking of all those very young lives wasted away was just too much. So much in fact that the town retains a very special atmosphere and remains to this day very much a ghost town.

Thinking of those kids and of their SS guards makes me sick. What can turn humans into beasts that send kids to their death..?

I felt sick and ashamed of having built models of Nazi weapons, in particular tanks and military vehicles that I painted in SS markings. Truly, those have been few and far between, because I’ve never had any admiration for the SS at all, knowing some of the other atrocities they committed during WWII. Most often, I’ll represent a Wermacht or a Luftwaffe vehicle if I can.

I know similar things could be said about probably most armies throughout WWII and history. I do not think I can just stop building models of military airplanes, ships and vehicles, because I remain interested in history, in the ‘technicalities’ of those weapons, but after this visit of Terezin, I do not think I can again look at model with SS markings with the same kind of interest.

Is this stupid of me? What do you think..?


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