The Great Führer Gives a City to the Jews

me: I'm going to Terezin on Friday.
Uncle Bob: What's that?
me: A Nazi concentration camp.
Uncle Bob: Oh. I think the Germans called it Thereseinstadt.
me: Yeah.
Uncle Bob: Wow, Fred. You're living the history I only read about.

It was an hour’s bus ride away. The transition from Prague to the countryside was sudden; any semblance of a suburbia would be like a fleeting dream of South San Francisco or Daly City, foggy but colorful. And then, it was PODUNK, Iowa – though instead of cornfields and cows, it was hopsfields and hares the size of dogs.

Translation: Work Will Make One Free

Terezin is a fortress that was used by the Nazis as a concentration camp for Central European Jews. Nazi propaganda presented it as a day spa. In fact, the title of this blog post was sung by the children of the camp in a Nazi-glorification propaganda film that was distributed to the world community to counter stories of the horrors. Unsuspecting Jews treated it like a cruise on the Titanic; they dressed up and bought tickets for getaways to this “day spa.” In reality, it was a holding pen for many on the way to extermination at Auschwitz. Though Terezin did not have gas chambers, living conditions caused thousands to die on site. Between the years of 1941 and 1945 150.000 Jews passed through this camp en route to the “final solution.”

Communal Showers

When one goes to Terezin, there’s a pretext that one believes in the Holocaust. When I came to college, my knowledge about certain things came alive and I resented that everything in history and politics was taught as historical fact. It happened in a different time to a different people. Now write a report or get tested on the names of dead white guys.

[Sidebar poem from Deputy Mayor of Newark, NJ Ras Baraka that he presented at HBO Def Poetry Jam:

I wanna hear an American poem about sharecroppers on the side of the road or families in cardboard boxes, not about kings or majestic lands or how beautiful ugly can be. I wanna hear some American poetry about projects and lead poisoning, poverty and children in jail.]

Sleeping for 150-plus, no mattresses to futilely prevent bugs and one lump of coal for winter heating

In middle school, I had a German and a Jewish friend: Kyle Zachrich and Charlie Gray. Between us and a Japanese kid named Yusako, we had a lot to satirize about 20^th century international political discourse. Kyle would joke that he was going to make soap out of Charlie. Charlie would respond in kind with some other quip and we’d all laugh at my dad’s southern accent.

Hanging gallery

In the end, one could hardly criticize middle-schoolers for their lack of sobriety with WWII. Only in my college African Diaspora course with Professor Michael Gomez did I sense outrage with the play-down of world atrocities with the passage of time. I asked myself where this was in my previous history classes. I realized the span of the institution of slavery in the world and the systemic marginalization of Africans not just in the Americas, but also as they reach for an equal footing in international politics. But that course was more than just learning about African peoples, it was also about not taking things for granted.

Shooting gallery

Robert Uhelski was my favorite and most adorable high school history teacher. He not only was able to make history out to be an overhead of bullet points, he was also able to over-explain his jokes. He introduced me to the great wars. One time, he presented to class an authentic red Nazi arm band and a copy of Hitler’s Mein Kampf. It was surreal to handle object of history without a glass case. Mein Kampfs are banned in Germany but are actually a top seller of republished books in the US. He buys these things off of eBay.

“Don’t worry. It’s not like I parade around in my SS boots saluting the Führer.”