We booked a tour with Lucytours not knowing anyone who had used this company. Patrick was our guide…read moreto Terezin/Teresienstadt. He provided the history of the area and showed the camp, and fortress (the crematorium was closed on Saturday). While I really had no desire to see a concentration camp, being there and understanding how this once resort town for the rich was turned into a ghetto where Jews were sent by Nazis to work and dies was educational. In person, it was chilling to see how in a city (Prague) where a former KING had invited Jews to live peacefully for a few hundred years in community with neighbors could be ravaged in less than a decade by stealing property and sending community members to die.
The highlight of the tour, for me, was walking through the interior of the fortress. Because Terezin had been a fortress around a town and in which at present there is an educational institution, this concentration camp may differ from other in Germany proper. Patrik took us through the museum which held objects, and other displays from the camp. The humanity of those held as slaves by the Nazis shows through in the posters, pictures and attempts to try to "normalize" the hell created. Take time to look at the exhibits there. The most depressing part of this tour were the headstones with the names of those who "came through" the gates and perished.
For judges in the USA who are faced with anti-semites who claim there holocaust did not happen and perpetrate hate crimes, should be able to sentence the guilty to tour camps and help,
In short, book and take a tour with this company.