The Holocaust

Home-Grown Alternatives to Terror and War

A Ben M’sik and Tangier Stories Exchange Project The Prague-based first round of the Stories Exchange Project (www.stories-exchange.org) was about learning to live with cultural differences. The Project focused primarily on building better relations today among members of the Romani (Gypsy) minority and the Czech majority. Our work with leaders and members of the Czech Jewish […]

HOLOCAUST

Author: AndreaAndrea 20/09/03 I am running through a cold nightI can hear somebody crying.I am stepping on flowers…… they fade…Whose was the cry?…nobody´s they say…I am running…drops of blood are cold…I am lying……grim heaven… — all around…and a word that is cold as ice HOLOCAUST

Is racism a threat that may come true?

Jiri NovakSchool of Social StudiesUsti nad LabemAt the beginning of the past century a not very well known Adolf Hitler who was working as a house painter published a book called “Mein Kampf.” In 1945 the people who liberated the Nazi camps were terrified by what they saw: rows and rows of dead bodies, some […]

The only weapon I have is to go around telling my story

ARTS OF TOLERANCE Workshops, Performances and Discussions organized by the Stories Exchange Project 18-19 September 2000 Terezin, Czech Republic Helga Weissova-Hoskova Prague You’ve all had the opportunity to tell your stories today, or you will later this evening. And I know that the story I have to tell is not so exceptional. I am one of the fifteen thousand […]

Something was left inside us: we are always afraid

ARTS OF TOLERANCEWorkshops, Performances and Discussions organized by the Stories Exchange Project 18-19 September 2000TerezinCzech RepublicUnidentified Questioner Was the religious life very strong here in Terezin?Helga Weissova-HoskovaWell, the Jewish people who came here were on all different levels as far as religion is concerned. There were Orthodox people, and there were secular Jews. In Bohemia […]

Don’t close up!

ARTS OF TOLERANCE Workshops, Performances and Discussions organized by the Stories Exchange Project Terezin Czech Republic 18 and 19 September 2000 Eva Bajgerova Romany Advisor Regional Government Office Usti nad Labem I think the worst thing that can happen to Roms is to close up. There’s one thing that I’m happy about: that young people are willing to communicate – not only […]

God was on our side/I’m a German swine/I was happy going to Auschwitz

Katerina SidonovaPragueWhen I would go into my father’s study when was a little girl, my attention was always caught by a picture hanging on the wall just above his typewriter. It was a very dark and gloomy oil painting of my father’s father: my grandfather. He was killed in the Little Fortress in Terezin. That […]

Heda, Eva, and Janko make catastrophe dance

Black eyes, black eyes: Why do they cry? No one would give water to the black rose, But she goes on growing. Black eyes, black eyes: Why do they smile? The black rose is alone no longer: Her white sister is growing beside her. One next to the other, They will not let each other die. Jan […]

I know you can’t compare Lety with Terezin

[Lety was a Czech-administered internment camp for Roma in Southern Bohemia during the Nazi occupation of Bohemia and Moravia. The Nazis used a town near Usti nad Labem, Terezin – Theresienstadt in German – as a camp in which to imprison Jews from Czechoslovakia and other countries before deporting them for extermination in AuschwitzEva is talking about ARTS OF […]

They used mallets to break our feet and our legs

Author: Lucie ConkováLocation: Lety u Písku"There used to be wooden huts all over the place,” Mrs. Ruzicková said. “There were fences around them. There was a big house here, too. The man who lived there kept stealing food rations delivered by the Germans and stored them in the cellar.They gave us spinach to eat. They […]