Home    Programme    History   Contacts    Links   

 

21st February 2017 - A Moving Visit to Terezin, Auschwitz and Birkenau 

Bob Copeland

The President welcomed members to our meeting on 21st February 2017 and introduced the speaker, Bob Copeland, who gave a moving photographic account of his visit to the Jewish ghetto and camp at Terezin in what is now the Czech Republic, the concentration camp at Auschwitz and the Birkenau death camp in Poland.  Terezin, a small fortress, was turned into a camp by the Gestapo and the nearby town of Theresienstadt became a Jewish ghetto, which became a transit area for Jews en route to concentration camps.  By the end of the war around 32,000 people had been processed in the camp and in 1946 601 bodies were exhumed and reburied in a Memorial Garden. Auschwitz, originally a Polish army barracks, was a concentration camp and it was here that Bob was specifically allowed to take photographs in the Museum, usually forbidden.  The extent of the camp, as it is today, is huge and the photographs covered all aspects of life and death there.

Birkenau was set up specifically for extermination, with people arriving by train.  Around 1.5 million people were murdered in Birkenau until its liberation by Allied forces in 1945.

This moving presentation showed photographs of the ghetto and camps, both as they are today and as they were during its period of use and is something that should be seen by everyone.

The next meeting is at 10.30 am on 7th March when Ken Duffy will speak on the Freightliner.

Back to 2016 - 2017 programme