Dobre den!
I have survived my first full week in the Czech Republic! I
have been busy adjusting to the six-hour time difference and all the walking I
do every single day. Prague is an amazing city though! It has so much to offer
and I am so grateful to be experiencing all this culture and history.
Our first weekend in Prague, many of embarked on a field
trip on Saturday. We visited Lidice and Terezin. We woke up bright and early to
board a tour bus filled with our program only and, of course, our tour guide
Milos! He welcomed us and was glad to share with us all the information he
could about the trip and the places we were visiting. His breadth of knowledge
is very impressive.
The first stop was Lidice. Incase you do not know already,
Lidice was a small town/village in the Czech Republic that Hitler ordered to be
burned to the ground. The reason for this is because after Hitler’s right-hand
man, Heydrich, was assassinated, the Nazis intercepted a letter that implied
the killers were from Lidice—the actual letter was only from a man to his
girlfriend, but the Nazis twisted the words. Hitler declared that every man 15
and older be shot, every woman taken to a concentration camp, and every child
that seemed capable to be taken for Germanification.
When we got there, there was only a museum created to
commemorate the small village and a beautiful meadow. The only remnants of the
village were foundations of churches and the school building. A few memorials
stood in honor of the children and one where the men were buried. It was
incredibly disheartening. It was a very humbling experience. I had never heard
nor learned about a primarily Christian village being exterminated by the Nazis.
It was interesting and sickening to discover that Hitler had ordered an entire
town to no longer exist, on top of the pain he had already enacted.
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| The memorial of all the children who were taken at Lidice. |
The next stop was Terezin, which had been originally
constructed as a fortress by a Czech king. Its final use was as a Nazi
propaganda concentration camp. This was the camp that the Nazis had the Red
Cross visit because there were no gas chambers. However, it was still an
overcrowded camp, where horrific killings and punishments happened. Today,
Terezin is very seriously a ghost town. It was almost completely void of people
except a few families. It was a disturbing feeling to walk where people had
died and been taken away from there homes.
The entire trip was very eye opening. Even though it was
depressing, I felt that I had learned so much. Every day struggles seem so
minute compared to the sufferings that the people during WWII had went through.
Well, now that I have shared that with you all, I hope you
all can find something to be grateful for!
Keep reading my Prague adventures!
Ahoj,
Victoria
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