On Sunday 13th, we paid one of the saddest visits of the programme of activities but, at the same time, one of the most fruitful and enriching.

We arrived at Lidice, the Czech city which was literally devastated by the nazi soldiers during the Second World War by a direct command of Hitler. It was one of the cruelest revenge operations in the Great War. We visited the Museum, where we got to know the  stories of some of the survivors and the letters or documents of some of the children of that time.

Next, we led to the place where the city of Lidice was settled, where there is only a memorial monument to the children who lived there, most of whom died or were given to German wealthy families to be “germanized”. The memorial is in the very same place where the school was settled before it was destroyed.

Some of us made it too evident, but we all had some tears coming to our eyes.

After visiting Lidice, with our soul and thought sunk in deep sorrow, we arrived at Terezín, where we visited the concentration camp from the Second World War.

With the help of a guide, we visited the buildings and we were conscious of everything that happened there between 1939 and 1945. During the Great War, the city was used as a Jewish ghetto, and the fortress became a concentration camp. We could see the prisoner reception rooms, the barracks for Russian soldiers, the barracks for the Jews, the showers, the torture area and humiliation and the corner where the prisoners were killed (shot or hung).

After that, we went to the crematorium, where the nazi soldiers got rid of the prisoners’ corpses, and we visited the victims’ memorial, as well as a common graveyard which shelters Jews and Christians.

As a small tribute from our school to the holocaust victims, Carlos played with his clarinet one part of the Original Soundtrack of the film “The Schindler’s List” in front of a nameplate which reminds the dead. It was a very touching momento.

Despite the hardness of this activity, it is necessary for our youngsters to know, first-hand if posible, how history went on and what we must avoid in the future.

 

Written and translated by Esther Hernández