Terezin Camp

Yes, I think it's worth your effort to get there especially if you have 5 days. You can get there by public transport, but it's a little complicated. We just went with a local guide from www.toursbylocals.com and choose Prague as your destination. Search down through all of the available tours and guides until you find one that you like.

I don't know much about it.
Well best for luck for your trip. Keep us inform about your journey

Yes, it is worth visiting. I went with my Rick Steves Berlin Prague Vienna Tour group so I don’t have practical transportation information for you.

It is well-preserved and a good tour guide will be able to convey how it fits in the Nazi campaign of terror and annihiliation of the Jews. It is a work camp built to impress aid groups like the Red Cross with their humane treatment of the workers. It was a front to hide what was really happening there. Chilling! Also, there’s a small museum with artifacts from that time.

Yes, it merits a visit. I had read about a fabulous guide but he was unavailable when I was going. I went on a tour through Viator. They provided a bus and a guide. When we got to the fortress, there was a fantastic guide (she seemed to be an employee) for that part.

worth a visit but it is a large area to cover so give yourself plenty of time.
BTW it was not "built" to impress aid groups. It was a garrison town for many years long before the Nazi used it for their propaganda purposes, a fact that seems to have been completely lost.
the whole history of the town is very interesting but the time it was used as a concentration camp is just a part of it's wide and varied history.

Thanks for the replies. Had no idea it was so close to Prague till I started my research. Had read about it in a play way back in school. Will definitely try and include it in my itinerary.

Unclegus,
Btw, certain parts of the camp were built to impress aid groups that the Nazis were humane to their "workers". Specifically, the International Red Cross would tour the camp to inspect conditions in the camp to determine if they were up to the standards required under international law. The link I have attached below discusses the visit in 1944 that the Red Cross made to the camp and that the Nazis were representing was a "model" work camp. To your point, the town was built hundreds of years ago but the camp I was referring to is what I toured on my RS tour in 2015.

I think the OP was asking about the Terezin camp, not the town! My reply was addressed to his question.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theresienstadt_concentration_camp

Based on recommendations from others on this forum, my family booked a day long tour with Pavel Batel of Terezin Private Tours this June. http://terezin-private-tours.com. Pavel is an historian and absolutely amazing story teller, and our visit to Terezin was a highlight of our trip because of him. The tour groups are maxed out at 8 people (ours had 5) and Pavel will pick you up at your hotel in the morning and return you there at the end of the day. Very reasonable price for the value added! I highly recommend him. (Do make sure you book a tour with Pavel....I cannot vouch for others that work for the group.)

".is it worth the trip?" Absolutely.

Another vote for Pavel Batel. Probably the best tour guide we've ever had. Extremely well-informed, passionate about the subject, charming and engaging. Ask him about his personal history with Judaism on the ride back to Prague.

I went on my own. I found the bus in Prague but I missed the bus by just a couple minutes - didn't check the schedule in advance - so I had to wait nearly 1/2 an hour. I got off at the fortress and walked around on my own. There was the possibility of a guided tour when I arrived, I passed it up but there was a couple who chose it. We were about the only visitors then (mid-May). Most of it was self-explanatory. Then because I couldn't figure out where the bus stop was, I walked into town and I'm glad I did. It was about 1 km and much of it along the walls of the city. Allow plenty of time for the town sights. There are several museums, with lots of explanations in English. The bus back to Prague was easy to find and it was on time.

We are now here in Prague and my wife and I have our tour reserved with Patel this Monday

Herfnerd, I hope you find your experience with Pavel as worthwhile as we did. I am still thinking and talking all the time about what I learned from him!

Chani, there are actually 2 "camps" (for lack of a better word) in the town of Terezin. The small fortress, where you visited and saw very few other visitors, was a camp where political prisoners, Jews who broken rules in the Terezin ghetto, etc. were horribly tortured and killed. The larger "town" of Terezin is by far the more fascinating story. It was a combination ghetto for Czech Jews during the Nazi reign; a way station to Auschwitz with transports departing weekly; an amazing place where music and art and education flourished despite staring and overcrowding and the terror of not knowing who would be deported next; and a huge propaganda machine where the Nazi's could pretend that what they did was resettle Jews into happy self sufficient communities. There is probably 10 times as much to see and experience here than at the small fortress.

It's always challenging on a trip to decide which places to visit on one's own and which to visit with a guide. I feel very fortunate to have visited Terezin with Pavel.

I visited Terezin twice - in 2007 and 2016 - departing from Prague with Wittmann Tours. I had a different guide on each tour and both tours were excellent. However, the guide on the second tour ("Helen") was outstanding. She and her husband wrote a book about a Terezin survivor. You would be hard pressed to find a guide who could surpass Helen's knowledge of the camp and its sad history.

I spent a day at Terezin a couple of years ago and we did it on our own. We drove there.
The site is divided into two areas - the prison that the Nazis used for dissenters and rebels, and the town that they turned into a camp, cramming many thousands of people into living spaces meant for far fewer. We spent the morning at the prison - there is an interesting film that covers the history of the prison during the Nazi occupation. It is quite large and is best seen with a guide as much of it is not well-signed.
The town is a fortified, walled city which is why the Nazis chose it as a way-point for holding Jews until they were transported to extermination camps. It was easy to keep people in, control the environment to make it seem "civilized" when the Red Cross would come to visit, and the apartments in the town were easily subdivided into smaller spaces to house more families. Eventually most spaces were stacked with wooden bunks. Although some residents have moved back into Terezin it is still a bit eerie as there are many buildings that remain abandoned.
You can visit the museum about the ghetto and the Nazi machine of extermination and take a guided or self-guided walking tour of the various sites around the town.
I found our visit well worthwhile - it's not the typical concentration camp experience. I find it almost more disturbing since it was a holding tank where people had to stay while many lived under the delusion that they were being temporarily housed and would be released. As people started disappearing the population began to realize what was happening but they kept as much "normalcy" as possible under the shadow of what they knew was coming.
Beyond chilling and heartbreaking.

The tour with Pavel was excellent!

While he was a little bit dramatic at times, there's no denying he knows his stuff as he is in the process of writing his fourth book about Terezin.

We got so much more information than had we gone by ourselves. We saw too many people just walking around and stopping to look in places for no more than a couple of seconds when there was so much information about it.

Well worth taking his tour!

Can anyone who has used Pavel comment on his usual response time? We emailed him last last week about a tour in May and havdn’t heard anything back yet.

Sorry for the late reply Douglas.
Just finished a 5 day stay in Prague. Went to Terezin on 21st. Had a really informative trip with tour guide Michael (part of Pavel's group).
I had mailed Pavel about 2 months in advance and had got a reply within hours. All my subsequent correspondence with the group was quite prompt.
May be you can go to his website and send another mail.

You’re right; there was a response but it unfortunately diverted to my junk folder so I missed it initially!

You’re right; there was a response but it unfortunately diverted to my junk folder so I missed it initially!