Terezin and Lidice

So we visited another historical site called Terezin, I was taking pictures and not listening to the speaker... Surprise lol but here is what the place was about..... Thanks Wikipedia!
During WWII, the Gestapo used Terezín, better known by the German name Theresienstadt, as a ghetto, concentrating Jews from Czechoslovakia, as well as many from Germany, Austria, the Netherlands, and Denmark. More than 150,000 Jews were sent there, and although it was not an extermination camp about 33,000 died in the ghetto itself, mostly because of the appalling conditions arising out of extreme population density. About 88,000 inhabitants were deported to Auschwitz and other extermination camps...

Work will set you free

 

Ovens used to burn the excessive #'s of bodies

Furnished residence in the Ghetto

Barack in the camp

 

While we were here we got to walk in the tunnels that connected the various bunkers, that was really cool part because the tunnels were super long. I don't know how they made so many but it was really neat... 

We also went to Lidice which was a village that was massacred by the Nazi's....
At the height of the Nazi occupation of Czechoslovakia, German troops stormed into the village and forcefully removed the villagers from their homes. Women and children were taken to the local schoolhouse, while all men over 15 years of age were lined up against a farmhouse wall the following day and shot. 173 lives were taken that day. The village itself was completely razed and today little remains but open fields where children once played and householders went about their daily business. Recently, in honor of those who lost their lives and to provide a stark reminder of the atrocities of war, a new museum has been opened in the modern Lidice, which was rebuilt in 1949 close to the site of the original village.

The "Village" we saw was an open field. The Nazi's were under instruction to level the village, destroy every trace of human life/existence... There were a few survivors who are featured in videos in the museum and it was really sad to hear their reactions to their village being destroyed, most were children at the time since they are/were living at the time of the interview.
It is really disturbing to think about your history and childhood being radically changed. These kids that survived to tell the story were chosen for "Germanization" where they were taken from their mothers and placed with German families to "reprogram" them into German children.   There was an amazing statue, or series of statues at the memorial...

Children killed in the village

 

The other stop on this trip was to a small pretty town called Ceske Budejovice which was really only a small town we had lunch in (the first Mexican food we have had in the Czech Rep.)