Fellow traveler Molly Abramowitz of Silver Spring is still reeling from seeing the death of Jewish life in Poland, but is even more disturbed to see Judaism as a cottage industry. "It's like seeing what you think is a beautiful piece of Wedgwood china," she says, "but turning it over and seeing 'Made in Japan.' "
Poetry Near Prague
How long since last I saw
Tour participant Lawrence Shuman of Fairfax reads -- and reacts to -- displays at Auschwitz-Birkenau camp.
(Czarek Sokolowski/AP/special For The Washington Post)
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The sun sink low behind Petrin Hill?
Like a beast I am, imprisoned in a tiny cage
Prague, you fairy tale in stone
How well I remember.
Those words of longing for the city from which he was deported were written by Petr Ginz. From a barrack in Terezin, a concentration camp just northwest of Prague, Ginz also wrote for, edited and published a secret newspaper. He somehow smuggled messages out of the camp. He was also a talented artist: His painting of Earth as envisioned from the moon was carried into space by Israeli astronaut Ilan Ramon.
Ginz was also just a boy. From Terezin he was sent to Auschwitz, where in 1944, at the age of 14, he died.
Terezin was a lovely town of 5,000 when it was closed off, its homes turned into dorms for 55,000 Jews. This was a model camp, a showplace. When the International Red Cross visited, shop windows were filled with food and some prisoners were given decent clothes and ordered to stand along the route that representatives took on the way to lunch with Nazi commandants.
We are taken to the same washroom the Red Cross was shown. Had the investigators bothered to turn the faucets, they would have realized the plumbing was fake. Their report concluded that given wartime conditions, life in Terezin was acceptable.
But an indictment of life in Terezin is contained in the poetry and drawings of some of the 15,000 children imprisoned there. One such child, Frantisek Bass, writes of "a sweet little boy" walking in very early spring through a rose garden. The poem concludes: "When the blossoms come to bloom / The little boy will be no more."
The children's drawings -- 6,000 have been preserved at Terezin -- sometimes mix scenes from idyllic pasts with symbols of a horrid present: butterflies and barbed wire, flowers and bare wooden bunks.
The walls of the Terezin museum are also filled with the photographs and biographies of prominent prisoners: Rafael Schachter, chorus master and conductor. Viktor Ullmann, Gideon Klein and Karel Reiner, composers. Karel Svenk, writer of satirical cabarets and comedies. Hugo Haas, actor. His brother Pavel, composer and conductor.
Nearly all the musicians and writers imprisoned in Terezin later died in Auschwitz, as did all but 137 of the 15,000 children. The display is a poignant reminder not only of personal suffering, but of the loss to humanity. The books never written, the plays never produced, the songs never sung.
At Terezin, prisoners once performed for each other on a makeshift stage that still remains in one of the barracks. One of our group members, 26-year-old Wesley Citron, a bass trombonist with the Albany Symphony, brings his instrument from the tour bus to play an impromptu mini-concert.
He dedicates his music to Petr Ginz, and the other lost children of Terezin.
Next year, Simmons will lead study tours in Eastern Europe in May, June and September. An eight-day tour of Poland and the Czech Republic, including air and ground transportation, hotels and meals, was $2,399 per person this year. Prices for next year's trips will be available by Oct. 1. Details: www.JewishHeritageTours.net.
Cindy Loose will be online to discuss this story Monday at 2 p.m. during the Travel section's regular weekly chat onwww.washingtonpost.com.
