Private Former Concentration Camp Terezin Tour from Prague

Mala Pevnost (Small Fortress)

It was originally built to become a proud and impregnable fortress surrounded by walls and protected by a sophisticated system of flood trenches. Built in 11 years at the end of the 18th century this fortress, whose first cornerstone was laid by Emperor Joseph II, and the city carrying the name of his mother Empress Maria Theresa,never protected anything from anyone in the end.Terezín was determined to become a huge jail. It first became a jail as early as in the mid-19th century. Its most famous prisoner was Gavrilo Princip, who fired the first shot in Sarajevo and started the First World War before being brought here in 1914. However, the fate of this town was fulfilled during the Second World War. In 1940 the Small Fortress of Terezín became a prison of the Prague Gestapo, to which especially political prisoners were sent. Only one year later the whole town was turned into a collective and pass-through camp for Jews.

The National Cemetery was created artificially after liberation in 1945. The stimulus for its creation came from among former prisoners and the heirs of those who died, at whose request physical remains were exhumed from six mass graves in the ramparts of the Small Fortress which had been in use from March 1st to May 7th 1945. Among those who were exhumed were prisoners from the death march that in May 1945 arrived at the Small Fortress.

Terezín Ghetto was opened in the former municipal school in 1991. In this way, efforts for a dignified commemoration of the Ghetto victims and correct explanation of its history, tasks facing not only the employees of the Terezín Memorial together with the former inmates but also other representatives of the country’s public life, finally come to fruition after more than forty years. The Museum’s newly conceived permanent exhibition entitled ”Terezín in the 'Final Solution of the Jewish Question '1941 – 1945“ was inaugurated in 2001. We can also find here a Memorial Hall of the Terezín Ghetto’s Children, devoted to its youngest victims, plus a selection from the world-famous drawings made by children from the Ghetto, a scale model of the Ghetto with an electronic orientation system showing its individual thematic units and with relevant information for visitors, for the local reading room and the cinema where documentary films are screened.