allytemple@yahoo.co.

uk

In Czech, January 2009 I had not been to Prague before, although my grandfather was Czech. Geographically the centre of Europe, it once was culturally too. We listen to Vivaldis Four Seasons in a baroque church, and when we visit Wenceslas Square I think of the crowds weeping at the news of the Soviet invasion. Now the city is tainted by years of communist repression and cheap stag nights. It is said that the most important things in our lives happen in our absence. I will find this to be true later; for now I am being seduced by the romance of the citys fairytale spires latticed with snow. We head east in a people-carrier through Bohemia. None of us speak Czech, but we are chaotically racing to learn, riffing, ad-libbing, adding -sky to the end of English words. Shall we stop for lunchsky? Dumplings and sauerkraut warm us before we are back on the road to umperk, the town where my grandfather lived in a first floor apartment above his fathers doctors surgery. umperk used to be a lively, if small, market town but it is struggling; flats are for sale, and once an important transport link (The gateway to the Jesenk mountains) there is now no local industry to support it. We find the house my grandfather grew up in and call on the people upstairs. They are friendly, but they have guests round. It is not convenient, or they would invite us in. We stay in one of two hotels in umperk and when we wake in the morning it is evident from the plates and empty bottles strewn in the dining room that the staff have had a party. The air is thick with the heady smell of the local spirit Becherovka, full of cinnamon and aniseed, and its inevitable hangover. There is no-one about, the reception desk is empty. We cannot leave as the front door is locked, as is the fire escape. The grumpy hotelier appears. He speaks English with the equivalent proficiency of our Czech. A farcical exchange ensues where my uncle tries to explain that if there had, for example, been a fire, locking us in would be dangerous, and the hoteliers assumes that this was why he has been disturbed. Eventually having established the fire to be hypothetical the hotelier agrees to serve breakfast. There is something of Basil Fawlty about his apparent dislike for guests and as with his doppelganger he doubles as the chef. He walks behind the servery, and although it is 2009 and the legality of smoking indoors is being extinguished across Europe he lights a cigarette as he pours oil into a pan. Our next destination is the other side of the country. We are not jovial today, but nervous as to what to expect. Terezin in Czech, or Tereseinstadt in German, was used as a holding town for Jews; a densely populated ghetto, and the old military fortress a prison camp. From the car-park the geometric patterns of the memorial graves are visible. Unlike the fields of the fallen in France they are not marked by crosses, but stone blocks. A large Star of
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allytemple@yahoo.co.uk

David is erected nearby, all smattered with snow. We get out of our traveltruck. It is cold, but we dont say anything as we walk through an arch bearing those infamous words, Arbeit Macht Frei. There is hardly anyone else about and it is surreal. If only it were not real. Our guide shows us a room big enough to fit 4 bunk beds in which held about 40 prisoners with one sink. We see a punishment cell slightly larger than a telephone box. It is snowing. We dont say anything. How could I, confronted with these desperate circumstances, pop back to the van to get my gloves which I left on my seat? Our guide takes us into a big room where basins and mirrors line the walls, installed to fulfill Red Cross requirements. When the Red Cross inspectors came, they dined with prison officials in town and did not enter the camp: the room was never used. One manual labour task was to dig a swimming pool which officers and their families used in the summer. Seeing this prompts that hard-to-swallow lump to form. My great-grandfather was at Terezin, a Jewish doctor. We saw the medical room, another small, bare cell. He specialised in treating TB, rife in the cramped conditions. Soon he contracted it and after he died his wife was sent to Auschwitz , dying on the train. It is impossible to comprehend, or do justice with description, to those who were interred here. All those unknown people in a far-away country of whom, really, I know nothing. But who in their absence are crucial.

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