Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
performances ofHansKrása'schildren'sopera
Brundibár
(BumbleBee)staged;andajazz
band,calledtheGhettoSwingers,performedinthebandstandonthemainsquare.TheRed
Cross visited Terezín twice, once in June 1944, and again in April 1945; both times the
delegates filed positive reports.
Magdeburská kasárna (Magdeburg Barracks)
Tyršova • Daily: April-Oct 9am-6pm; Nov-March 9am-5.30pm • 170Kč; combined ticket with other Terezín
attractions 210Kč
South of the ghetto, the
Magdeburská kasárna
, former seat of the Jewish self-governing
council, or
Freizeitgestaltung
, has been turned into a fascinating
museum
focusing on
Terezín's remarkable artistic life. First off, however, there's a reconstructed women's dorm-
itory with three-tier bunks, full of luggage and belongings, to give an idea of the cramped
living conditions endured by ghetto inhabitants. The first exhibition room has displays on
the various Jewish musicians who passed through Terezín, including Pavel Haas, a pupil
of Janáček; Hans Krása, a pupil of Zemlinsky; and Karel Ančerl, who survived the Holo-
caust to become the conductor of the Czech Philharmonic. The final exhibition room con-
centrates on the writers who contributed to the ghetto's underground magazines. The rooms
in between are given over to the work of Terezín's numerous visual artists, many of whom
were put to work by the SS, who set up a graphics department here; headed by cartoonist
Bedřich Fritta, it produced visual propaganda showing how smoothly the ghetto ran. In ad-
dition, there are many clandestine works, ranging from portraits of inmates to disturbing de-
pictions ofthecramped dormitories andthetransports. These providesome ofthemost vivid
and deeply affecting insights into the reality of ghetto life in the whole of Terezín, and it was
forthis“propagandaofhorror”thatseveralartists,includingFritta,wereeventuallydeported
to Auschwitz.
Malá pevnost (Small Fortress)
Principovaalej304•Daily:April-Oct8am-6pm;Nov-March8am-4.30pm•170Kč;combinedticketwithoth-
er Terezín attractions 210Kč
Across the River Ohře from the main sights, east along Pražská, the
Malá pevnost
was built
as a military prison in the 1780s, the same time as the main fortress. The prison's most
famous inmate was the young Bosnian Serb
Gavrilo Princip
, who assassinated Archduke
Ferdinand in Sarajevo in 1914, and who was interned and died here during World War I. In
1940 it was turned into an
SS prison
by Heydrich and, after the war, it became the official
memorial and museum of Terezín. The majority of the 32,000 inmates who passed through
the prison were active in the resistance (and, more often than not, Communists). Some 2500
inmatesperishedhere,whileanother8000diedsubsequentlyintheconcentrationcamps.The
vastcemeterylaidoutbytheentrancecontainsthegravesofmorethan2300individuals,plus
