Terezín is about an hour from Prague and did not exist as a town before it was constructed as two forts by the ruling Hapsburgs from 1780 to 1790. The Prussians were encroaching from the north, and the forts at Terezín were outposts preparing to repel them with large walls, gunnery tunnels, and a moat of sorts. But Prussia never came to attack, and soon the small fort was being used as a prison, particularly for dissenters and other political prisoners. It was used this way for most of its history, and in fact held Gavrilo Princip, the 17-year-old who assassinated Archduke Ferdinand and set off the Great War. He lived there in solitary confinement for two years before he contracted tuberculosis and was moved to a sanatorium.

A few years later, the Nazis used the small fortress for their own dissenters. The large fortress had enclosed a small city, but in 1942 the Nazis relocated all of its inhabitants, and it became a work camp and holding area for Jews. It was an unusual concentration camp because it was used for propaganda purposes: At Terezín the SS produced (coerced) films of Jews playing soccer and attesting to their happiness in segregated self-government. (The museum shows some of the chilling footage.) Also at Terezín the Nazis allowed the Red Cross to visit and inspect in 1944, still trying to cover up the "Final Solution to the Jewish Question." We toured the small fort first, then visited two museums in the large fort, one at what had been the school for Jewish boys and the other at a barracks for the Jews. Most stunning was the cultural refinement of the Jewish people. They organized and operated their own schools of classical learning—only for the children to be murdered in gas chambers. They drew, staged concerts, put on plays, and even produced underground magazines—only to be shipped to Auschwitz.