SHOAH, TEREZIN, TERROR HÁZA, & ROBBEN ISLAND

I was born in apartheid South Africa and last year I was finally able to visit Robben Island where Mandela and the many who resisted apartheid were held for decades. An ex-prisoner from the time Mandela was in jail, was a tour guide. Traveling through Europe we saw the symbols of the holocaust in Amsterdam – including Anne Frank House (where all photography is strictly forbidden). We also visited Terezin the concentration camp in the Czech Republic as well as the original site of the Nazi rallies in Nuremberg. Finally some images from the aptly named “Terror Háza Museum” in Budapest. This building was the heart of the communist repression where victims were imprisoned, tortured and executed.

Our tour guide at Robben Island. This guide was himself a prisoner of the Apartheid regime with Mandela

The Stolpersteine project: 5 of the 90,000 plaques identifying victims of the holocaust embedded in the pavement in front of the homes they lived

The Shoes on the Danube Bank Memorial. These are bronze sculptures to honor the thousands of Jews and others who were taken to the edge of the Danube and shot so their bodies would fall into the river. Before they were killed, they had to remove their shoes so they could be sold.

The infamous "Work Makes You Free" sign at the entrance to the Terezin concentration camp outside Prague

The Zeppelinfeld Grandstand in Nuremburg was the central venue for the 1933 Nazi rallies. The platform in the middle was where Hitler addressed the crowd

You may also like