80 years ago, from 18 to 26 January 1942, three transports of Jewish inhabitants of the Pilsen Region were sent from the Pilsen railway station to concentration camps. In the transports marked R, S, T, more than 2,600 Jews went to Theresienstadt Ghetto, the camp chosen by the Nazis in 1941 as a place for "the targeted liquidation of the Jewish population". Almost half of those transported continued their transports to ghettos on Polish territory after arriving in Theresienstadt. Most of the Jews were called for transport at the beginning of January. After registering, they were to report to the assembly point, which was located in the Sokol Auditorium in today’s Štruncovy sady in Pilsen.
A memorial plaque commemorating this event is located at the Sokol Auditorium in Štruncovy sady. The Pilsen Region and its representatives also remembered this year’s anniversary of the transports by laying flowers in memory of all the victims of the Holocaust.
“Nowadays, in the information overload, these numbers and the words associated with them lose their impact. However, behind them are individual destinies that can sometimes make one realise, through specific stories, the incredible barbarity of which humanity was capable in the middle of the 20th century. With this symbolic remembrance and the laying of flowers, we are not only commemorating this horrific history ourselves, but we are also reminding the younger generation of the horrors of war they did not experience,” says Ilona Mauritzová, President of the Pilsen Region.