On the programme: Prague, Jewish Prague, the Ghetto and the Small Fortress in Theresienstadt
In the first days of October 2024, the Jewish Roots in Győr Public Charity Foundation organised a field trip for secondary school students who had participated in a student competition on the history of the Jewish community in Győr and the surrounding area, which closed in April.
The group of nearly 40 people, including the teacher accompanying them, visited the main sights of Prague. They visited the historic Jewish memorial, the Old-New Synagogue, a 13th century early Gothic building still in use today, whose side walls now display photographs of Israeli hostages taken captive in October 2023, who were either alive or brutally murdered as well as the Pinkas Synagogue, built in the 16th century and now commemorating the victims of the Holocaust, and the Moorish-style Spanish Synagogue, opened in 1868, which houses an exhibition on the history of Czech Jewry. The students saw the Jewish cemetery, in use since the 15th century, where 12,000 gravestones have been piled up because the scarcity of burial space for the Jewish community over the centuries has meant that burials have had to be done in multiple layers.
They were shocked to see the Getto of Theresienstadt, disguised as “humane”, which the SS, under the ruthless control of Adolf Eichmann and his men, used as a transit ghetto, where nearly 140,000 Jews were deported during its existence and from where 90,000 were transported to Auschwitz, Treblinka and Sobibor, as well as to the ghettos of the Baltic States, Lodz, Minsk and Warsaw between 1942-45. The students toured the murderous sites of the Small Fortress, where Theresienstadt, camouflaged as benevolent like a village of Patyomkin, was revealed in all its brutality. The understanding of the “unique, strange and peculiar” character of Theresienstadt was greatly aided by a lecture delivered on the spot by historian László Karsai.
Students and teachers from technical schools and gymnasia in Győr, Pannonhalma and Csorna, aged 15-18, had the opportunity to learn about Czech history, with a special focus on the centuries-old local history of the Jewish community and the horrors of the Holocaust in Bohemia.
The trip served to promote greater peace in society, tolerance and understanding between fellow human beings.
Press coverage:
Szombat, Mazsihisz, GyőrPlusz, Kibic, Győri Szalon
Cover photo: The Spanish Synagogue in Prague – © Krausz, P.