Sunday 31 March 2013

Last Day in Prague (Easter Sunday)

Well for our last day we really wanted to find a church service but we couldn't find one that was not in Czech or Latin, so that was unfortunate. But we did sit in the Easter square and listened to all the the Easter Bells and ceremonial music. It is really cool how much they celebrate Easter here, nothing compares to this in the states. I bought a mini Easter stick to celebrate the day!

We went to the Jewish Quarter today and the first stop we went to was Memorial Hall. In it are tens of thousands of names painted alphabetically on the wall of those who were killed during World War II. In the list of names I found one person with the last name of Kodet (Kotekt) and this was interesting to me because my Grandma Jo's maiden name was Kodet and her family was from Bohemia so it got me curious if that person was some distant relative (even though I don't know of anyone in our family who was Jewish). Also in this memorial were drawings hung that were colored by children, and this was really hard to look at. Children had pictures of being kicked out of their schools, having to use communal showers with adults, and places they missed that were outside of their ghetto.

Our second stop was the Jewish cemetery. This is older that world war two era when Jews were first forced to ghettos to be separate from Christains. They were only allowed so much space and therefore in their cemetery the headstones are literally on top of each other and falling over. They have no idea how many people are actually buried here because there are too many to tell. We also looked through many synagogues and that was also interesting. David had to wear a Yamaka through everything too!


After we had lunch we went to Sts. Cyril and Methodias Church to see the museum and Nazi bullet holes. There reason there are these bullet holes is because of the parafighters who were hiding in the krypt after they assassinated Hydrich. They assassinated him because he was a really evil, high ranking Nazi commander in charge of the SS for Czechoslovakia and they didn't want him hurting people and controlling their area. (The assassination actually took place out of Prague and actually really near to the hotel we are staying in!) Nazis were furious after the assassination and once someone leaked that the parafighters were being hidden in the krypt they killed everyone but 10 people in the town are near that church in retaliation. They also shot out the windows of the church and broke into the krypt to kill the parafighters, but the parafighters committed suicide before the Nazis could get into where they were. I have a picture where you can see the bullet holes, and I also included one with me sticking my finger in one to show how deep they are.



 After this we went back to the Easter celebration in the square and walked around to enjoy our last evening. We then had dinner and headed back to our hotel early to pack and get a goods nights rest before our early flight!










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