Brno, Czech Republic: Jewish Community unveils new memorial at the train station platform from which transports to Theresienstadt once left
During the opening of the Štetl Fest event in Brno, the Jewish Community unveiled a memorial commemorating the tragic fate of the city's Jewish population during the Second World War. The memorial is on Platform 5 of the city's main railway station, from which the first transport of Jewish people to the ghetto in Minsk (in the occupied Byelorussian Soviet Socialist Republic) departed in November 1941.
More transports followed which brought more than 10,000 of Brno’s Jewish residents to the ghetto in Theresienstadt. The unveiling of the memorial marks the fulfilling of an obligation to the current and the future generations as well as to the forebears who were Holocaust victims, said the president of Brno’s Jewish Community, Jáchym Kanarek.
“Whether we are aware of it or not, the Holocaust during which more than six million European Jews were murdered has impacted us all. It influenced the lives of those who survived, whether as victims, culprits, or bystanders. The Holocaust has an impact on the lives of those of us born after the war, our lives are linked to it,” Kanarek said.
The memorial is about 2.5 meters high and is meant to represent railway tracks leading to heaven. It is topped with a star and embedded into the earth below the platform, connecting it with what are called the “stones of the disappeared” which one can stumble across in the streets of cities all over Europe.
Architect Tomáš Rusín designed the memorial. “Platform number 5 was always associated with vacations for me, we traveled south from it. After I became aware of all the horrors that happened here, I designed a memorial so this will never recur. It’s meant to be like a splinter in your hand that you don’t know is there – but if you touch upon it accidentally, it hurts,” Rusín said.
Before the Second World War, about 12,000 Jewish people lived in Brno, just a few hundred of whom returned after the war. This second year of the festival commemorated both their fates and Jewish culture.
The festival offered 85 events in 15 locations throughout the city. The main subject this year was trains, which on the one hand are symbols of freedom and travel, but in the context of the Holocaust are also symbols of the death transports.
“Another theme is: When does it become time to leave? It is frequently the case that people in a country where the situation is worsening wait and adapt themselves to the deteriorating conditions. It becomes difficult to evaluate when to leave the country. In the exhibition at the main railway station called ‘Travel.Death.Hope.’ we tell the stories of about 200 people who did their best to leave Brno but didn’t make it. Those stories are accompanied by the stories of refugees from Ukraine speaking about why they have decided to leave today, how difficult the journey was, and what awaited them during it,” said the director of the festival, Eva Yildizová.
Another topic is Hlinky Street, where the Jewish residents who lived in the villas there had the information and the opportunity to leave the country, although some never did. An event called “The Forgotten Lives of Our Neighbors” at the Engelsmann Villa made it possible for those attending to imagine what it was like to identify as they did in those days.
