Terezin Memorial

Terezin Memorial

Terezín, today an inconspicuous small town in the Bohemian Central Highlands at the confluence of the Elbe and Ohře rivers, has a very sad history. It was founded as a military fortress at the end of the 18th century to protect Austria-Hungary by Emperor Joseph II and named after his mother, Empress Maria Theresa, during the Prussian Wars. It is now a tragic symbol of the suffering of the people who perished here during the Nazi occupation in World War II. Terezin became a transfer station on the way to the extermination camps where more than 35,000 people of mostly Jewish faith died and 160,000 passed through by the end of the war. Our guide will take you around the Great Fortress, show you where the prisoners were housed, take you to the Jewish and National Cemetery, the crematorium (closed on Saturdays), the Ghetto Museum, the Hidden Synagogue, and the Small Fortress where mostly political prisoners were imprisoned, but also Jews from the ghetto who were punished and sent to forced labor. Thousands of prisoners, mainly Poles, South Slavs, Russians, French, Belgians, Italians and other nationalities, passed through Terezín and the adjacent concentration camp in Litoměřice.