THE SMALL FORTRESS (MALÁ PEVNOST) OR THE GESTAPO PRISON

La Petite Fortress serves as a special prison from the Gestapo since June 1940. A total of 32 000 men and women were imprisoned there (8% died), including 2 500 foreigners from former Soviet Union, Poland, France, Germany, etc. Executions (from 1943 onwards), torture, abuse, but also hunger (150 g bread per day and soup), overcrowding, lack of hygiene and epidemics were daily. This prison-camp was not synonymous with a terminal, but transit to the courts or camps of Buchenwald, Auschwitz, Mauthausen, Dachau, Ravensbrück, etc. In the meantime, prisoners were subjected to compulsory work (maintenance, administration, kitchen, construction, agriculture, industry, shoemaking, etc.).

Visit: the classes of prisoners with cells (in some, some 600 detainees!!) and the court of administration. If you are not claustrophobic, go along the fortifications in the tunnel of 500 meters long, narrow and… oppressive! By the way, you will pass through the ground of execution, the mass graves and the death gate (which passed the death sentences). The Little Fortress also houses a small museum and the cinema of the guards where historical documentaries are now broadcast (in French also). During the visit, notice the plaque in memory of the Serbian Gavrilo Princip (who murdered Archduke François Ferdinand in Sarajevo in 1914 leading to the First World War, he was imprisoned here by the Austrians) and that in memory of French Robert Desnos (the surrealist poet arrived here seriously ill, in June 1945, so after Liberation, and he died).

At the entrance, the National Cemetery dominated by a «Magen David» - built with the rails leading to Auschwitz - and a cross. It was built in 1945 for national funerals in memory of the victims of Terezín. Mainly buried bodies were buried in the mass graves.