concentration camps in europe
 

I will be in budapest and prague late may/early june. possibly in salzburg/munich. If I have to choose to visit one concentration camp. Can someone advise regarding the differences in the experiences at Terezin in the czech republic versus dachau.

Jack:

IMO neither comes close to either Auschwitz or Treblinka...but you'll be further away from these two...Dachau will give you slightly more of a feel for the reality of it all than Teresienstadt (Terezin), which as you know was regarded as a "special" camp...and in an eery way it was. Mauthausen is fairly close to Salzburg in Austria.... but in the final historical anaysis, Nazi K-camps of any stripe had a singular over-riding mission...the finality of humanity's inhumanity, no matter how you say it. I have recited the Kaddish at 10 camps, recently at Babi Yar, and countless cemeteries and synagogue ruins throughout Europe over several decades...it is always a heart-pounding moment.

Jack, no matter which one you choose....go.

stu tower
[email protected]

Ditto Stu

I have never been to Dachau, but Terezin is special because of the display of the drawings done by the children who were interred there.

See Helga Weissova's "Draw What You See" for reference.

Thingorjus

when in Prague visit the Pinkas Synagogue where the names of the 80,000 names Czech Jews that perished in the Holocaust are written on the walls.
there is also a display there of drawings of the children of Terezin.
I am not of the Jewish faith (or any other for that matter) but it something that moved me deeply.
http://www.jewishmuseum.cz/en/apinkas.htm
Terezin is quite easy to visit from Prague.

Mauthausen is especially well-preserved. It is located about 75 miles east of Salzburg near Linz. It was the mother camp for all the Austrian facilities. Inmates were forced to toil in a stone quarry nearby. Displays tell the horrible story of the camp.

Jinx Hoover

I have been to both and they are very different, see both if you can. Tower has it exactly right. What struck me most about Dachau is how close it is to town. How could the town's residents not have known?

Jack, I too will be in Prague and Munich soon and I plan to visit both Terezin and Dachau. I saw Dachau about 20 years ago and it is not to be missed. If I had to choose between the two, I would choose Dachau, but if you have time to see both, I would definitely do that.

Jinx et al;

Simon Wiesenthal spent some of his K-time in Mauthausen...survived and went on to become, as most of you know, the most celebrated, single-minded Nazi hunter of them all. For those of you who live in Southern California, or travel here, set aside a day to visit the Wiesenthal Museum on Pico Blvd. for a most uniquely dramatic and educational experience.

stu t.

stu

Terezin is a strange eerie place.

Having not yet been to any other major camp I really can't compare, however I was moved in Terezine, the place was desolate and cold when we visited in Feb 3 years ago.

I would highly recomend a visit there, I was following the assasination of Heydrich which took me to various places near Prague, Including Lidice which once again moved me.

Please visit Terezine at least, the displays are worth seeing you cannot fail to be moved by this.

The most 'real' moment was standing by the execution wall where the bullet holes remain.

Muck

For those of you interested in Jewish history,Stuart Tower has written a very interesting book called The Wayfayrers.Though fiction the book is based on the real movement of the Fusgeyers in the early years of the last century and about the Programs that made them move far from their homelands.
A book that opened my eyes and more importantly my mind to the treatment of Jews in Europe.

Following your post above, Uncle Gus, let's make it clear that you are not MY Uncle Gus..nor are we related in any way...LOL!

At any rate, thank you for the kind words...happy that you found the book interesting. Newest novel is scheduled for late 2009 release.

Stu

I concur with thoughts about Terezin. I believe Dachau was a death camp whereas Terezin was a total "show" for how nicely people were treated....the Red Cross was so impressed with Terezin that they cancelled their next stop to Auschwitz.
But Terezin has it's own culture and was a terribly sad chapter as well. I suggest you take a tour there from an exellent guide in Prague (Sylvia Wittman)...she is terribky expensive but any of her guides are excellent.

Hi; Dachau was a very sad place to visit. But it initally was a political prisoner camp with 200,000 over it's lifetime. Most died from malnutrition, suicide and disease, perhaps over 25,000. But it wasn't a camp primarily for Jews. What struck me was that there was so many sub-camps that sent people to Dachau. Auschwitz was another story. The emotion is difficult to describe, it is so great. So I googled Auschwitz and found a site that causes untold/deep emotion. I was only able to read the first few paragraphs. But we can never forget. A country we hope to visit in October, Hungary, almost 500,000 Jews were sent to Auschwitz. If it wasn't for Raoul Wallenberg, a Swedish diplomat, ten's of thousands more Jews would have been sent to Auschwitz. www.auschwitz.dk/auschwitz.htm iris1745/dick

One thing you're not seeing in these replies are concentration camps near Budapest. There's a reason for that: the Hungarian government was allied with the Nazis for most of the war, and not conquered until essentially 1944. That's when the Hungarian government first began deporting Jews to concentration camps. The concentration camp network had long since been constructed, therefore, Hungary was not a country in which the Nazis built concentration camps. Nonetheless, even though deportations from Hungary only began in the summer of 1944, only Poland (3,000,000+) had more Jews murdered by the Nazis than Hungary (560,000+). The Hungarian Jews were loaded into boxcars and sent to Auschwitz.

Terezin is not a concentration camp, but in some ways it had a greater impact than Auschwitz. Part of that is its historical significance and the Red Cross' capitulation to Nazi lies (two of the three representatives the Red Cross sent to Terezin were from nations under the Nazi yoke). Another part of it is that so much of Terezin is easily experienced -- you can walk into the cell that's uncomfortable for 10 people where the Nazis forced 60 prisoners to stay; you can walk into the bunk rooms where the triple-deck bunk beds are still in their original positions and you can feel the claustrophobia of sleeping 2-3 people in a twin bed. You can travel the tunnels through Terezin where the Nazis led prisoners. It's less sterilized as a place, less of a museum. Hard to explain, but the overwhelming tourist presence at Auschwitz makes it more of a spectacle and, for Auschwitz I, seem less evil than it perhaps should. Auschwitz II is another story -- it's a hell but those buses in the parking lot and tourist clamboring up into the entry building to take panoramic pictures of the site detract a bit from the impact.

And when you are in Budapest, you need to go to the Dohany Street Synagogue and get a tour of Jewish Budapest. View the Weeping Willow Tree of Remembrance (financed in large part through a foundation set up by Bernard Schwartz, an actor better known as Tony Curtis) and the Wallenberg Memorial Park. And see the Lutz Memorial wall at the entrance to the Budapest ghetto. Carl Lutz was a Swiss diplomat who saved more than 10,000 Hungarian Jews. He lived to be acclaimed, unlike Wallenberg who disappeared in Romania shortly after WWII.

have been to both and both very different. But what moved me most was the young German guide who did the tour for us in Dachau.

Thanks Russ; We have been to Budapest before, but the facard of the Synagogue was being renovated. We did see part of the 'wall' behind the Synagogue. A wall that encircled the Jewish ghetto. A lot I don't quite remember, but we will visit Jewish Budapest, the Wallenberg Memorial Park and the Weeping Wilow Tree of Remembrance. I can understand what you are saying about tourists, but it's important for people to 'remember'. iris1745/dick

bookmarking. Stu I did not know you wrote a book on this - how can I get it? Amazon? I am in southern california and would am going to research what you suggested. I have not had the opportunity YET to visit in Europe - took dd to the museum in DC and was moved beyond what my vocabulary can describe.

stu...your book is 58.00 on amazon!

Hi; Jack, sorry but we are a bit off topic now. RUSS, I was watching American Idol, Woman's suffagette and Conn. basketball thinking of your comments. Our first trip to Budapest in the early 90's , in front of the Synogogue were guards with 'machine pistols'. Incredible iris1745/dick

BR writes,

>Terezin is not a concentration camp,.....<

Just a minor point. If it says "Arbeit Macht Frei" over the entrance, it's a concentration camp.

From http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/...t/terezin.html
"Of the vast majority of Czech Jews who were taken to Terezin (or Theresienstadt), 97,297 died among whom were 15,000 children. Only 132 of those children were known to have survived".

The drawings made by the children show what life was really like.

((I))

BigRuss has made some insightful comments about Terezin. The three things in Terezin that I found most affecting other than the children's pictures were the large, still new looking washroom with unused sinks lined up against the wall. It was constructed "for show" not for use. Another was the movie shown in the museum showing the "joyful," "happy" prisoners. Perhaps the most moving was on visiting the crematorium, the fellow in charge relating how they used young teenagers to feed bodies into, and remove ashes from, the oven. These kids would be isolated from the rest of the camp and work for about 3 months before being killed themselves so that they could not bear witness.

<I>ira on Mar 27, 09 at 10:31 AM

If it says "Arbeit Macht Frei" over the entrance, it's a concentration camp.</i>

To expand on that point sightly: the victims of concentration camps could be termed "incidental" deaths, because extermination was not their designed purpose.

Facilities like Sobibor and Birkenau, by contrast, were organized from the ground up as highly industrialized killing centers, replete with sorting facilities, gas chambers, and crematoria.

So yes, Dachau was truly a <I>Konzentrationslager</i>. The distinction is clear on this map: http://de.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?...ust-Europe.png

Hi; This expands on the happenings at this concentration camp. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/theresi...entration_camp iris1745/dick

I have uploaded some of my pictures including Terezin, and Lidice.

They may be of some interest.
Hope the link works
Muck

http://picasaweb.google.co.uk/Muckie...eat=directlink

Thank you for all the insight. For an organized tour of Dachua: who has gone with Sandemans, who has done Munich Walk Tours for Dachua?

Auschwitz-Birkenau is too 'tourist orientated'. Its visited by hundereds of thousands of people every year and they proudly display the figures on a board at the entrance (bit like a production factory boasting about it's output). I felt the tour, which is guided, was far too rushed and you have many other different nationalities all jabbering away in the background.

Dachau and Sachsenhausen feel more intense. Certainly in Dachau you need a heart of granite to get around. It's pretty gruesome but one i'd recommend especially as a first time visit.

Did two tours with Sandemans in Berlin. First was free, the second, which covered in more detail about the former DDR days of Berlin and cost about 10 euro.

I would definately recommend a tour with this company.

The guide who took us around Berlin really knew his history and i learned a lot. It was so good....i'm going back to Berlin again this year.

Instead of going to the well trodden, often very busy camps in Europe, it is sometimes more poignant to go to the ruined, ignored ones. Plaszow on the outskirts of Kraków. It is actually well known in the sense that it featured in "Schindler's List".
This link will give a flavour of what there is to see there.
http://krakow-bestguide.blogspot.co.uk/p/paszow.html

welcome to Fodors, Kitzkatz. Always check the dates of posts, especially if you use the search tool or google to find topics. This one is from 2009.

It may be a response to an old thread, but informative and useful nonetheless.