*Terezin and Puppets.*

08Apr08



Tried to write this last night, but I was officially exhausted (emotionally and physically). So here we go now:

I saw a concentration camp yesterday.



It wasn’t officially labeled as a “death camp,” but plenty of death happened at Terezin: the fortress and associated town (formerly a Jewish Ghetto) are still there and in pretty OK shape.



The bus let us off on the first stop of the tour: the Small Fortress (The Large Fortress being the actual town). The first thing seen is the first Christian and Jewish cemetery.



From there we went into the Small Fortress which the Nazi’s had converted for their own use…I believe that it had been built in the 17th century.





Sparse as it was on room, there was plenty of feeling and our wonder of a tour guide related what each room was used for and who was contained in it:



The Jewish Barracks


The only light in the torture cell



The doorways to the solitary confinement cells (none of which had light)


Gavrillo Prizzi’s (I might have the English spelling of his name wrong, but anyway...the guy who shot Franz Ferdinand and started WWI) cell. This was before Nazi occupation, but interesting nonetheless.



The hospital with the only source of heat that existed for the prisoners…pretty much put there to satisfy a Red Cross committee that investigated the concentration camps for human rights abuses…after the show that they were given at Terezin by the Nazi’s the Red Cross was satisfied.


The sight of the only break-out of Terezin…notice how the ledge has been knocked away, that was done by Nazis.








The Execution Grove






After that…we went into the town of Terezin, where the Jewish Ghetto museum is…a lot of it devoted to the children of Terezin.

…and the tour ended up in the Jewish cemetery, and the furnaces where countless bodies from those that dies of exhaustion to those that were shot for sport were burnt.

It’s hard to relate what it’s like to see all of it, and I don’t mean to minimize what happened, but the only feeling that I’ve ever had that I could even relate was my experience going to the Civil Rights Museum in Memphis (in the same hotel that Martin Luther King Jr. got shot in): just this feeling of utter revulsion, while the urge to keep looking, learning, and the need to report to others what’s there, keeps your eyes open and your ears listening.

A hard, yet important, day.

If that wasn’t enough, another student and I had made plans to go to the Marionette Opera that night…a rollercoaster day if there ever was one…

First, for all I was talking up Mozart a post or two ago, I don’t know all that much about opera and I didn’t really get a chance to read up on the one we saw: Don Giovanni.



It was quite interesting, and I’m glad I had my first exposure to opera like this, because I don’t know if the real thing would have held my attention like this did…

First, each scene was broken up by a Mozart marionette that got more and more erratic as the show progressed…after intermission, it came out drunk, spilling wine (water) on the audience and getting confused and conducting the audience rather than the (imagined) orchestra…he then proceeded to pass out and start snoring and the puppets on stage would notice it and make a big BANG on the beat and Mozart would wake up.

Then, there was the part where the devil (a full human in a an outfit…so as to be a good two feet larger than the marionettes) came out and took Don Giovanni to hell…all the while the puppeteer who was controlling Don Giovanni was trying to get the strings back.

At the end, one of the puppeteers started to look at his watch (all you could see was his hands…and then came on stage and acted like it was time to go while the puppets continued to sing on and on…finally sweeping up the stage as the last character finished up.

It’s always hard to retell a joke or something you saw that was funny and I’m sure this is no exception, but I thoroughly enjoyed it, whereas I’m not sure if I’m interested in ever going to see “real” opera.



A topsy-turvy day to be sure…and this post isn’t as in depth as I had hoped it would be, but even remembering it is making me tired…hope you understand.