We met our guide at the castle in Prague. We watched a changing of the guard ceremony before our tour started. We saw many sites of Old Prague. Lots of history in this city that our guide told us about. The architecture was amazing and the churches/synagogues were incredible.
Stopped for a lunch together before we entered the Jewish Quarter. In the 1930's Hitler and the Nazis occupied this land after taking the Sudetenland. As a result there were lots if deportations but for those who decided to stay it was ghettos and death. The Pinkas Synagogue displays the 80,000 names of the Bohemian and Moravian Holocaust victims in the walls of the synagogue. In the other room they displayed children's drawings from the Terezin concentration camp between 1942-44. Most of the children were sent to death camps after making the drawings. Out of 8,000 children only 242 survived. The pictures survived buried in a suitcase by a teacher.
Next we saw the Old Jewish Cemetary. Today it contains 12,000 tombstones. but over 100,000 Jews are buried here because the Jews were not allowed to be buried outside the ghetto. They are buried on top of one another 10-12 layers deep.
Interesting thing about the Jewish quarter in Prague is that it was left untouched by the Nazis. They intended to keep it preserved to show for history the end of the Jewish people and where they lived.
The rest of the day was free time. They ventured off from town square to explore shops and maybe to buy gifts for home!
Some ventured to the Communist Museum, shopping, and a trip up a clock tower.
Tomorrow is a long travel day from Prague to Krakow. Another new country - Poland.
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