The Terezín Commemoration is held annually on each third Sunday in May at the end of the International Memorial Days of Resistance as a legacy of the so-called Oath of Buchenwald. Its core is a declaration made by the liberated inmates of the Buchenwald concentration camp in 1945 that they would not cease commemorating war events until all the roots of Nazism are destroyed.
For two years running, the organizers had to postpone the Terezín Commemoration from its May date to a day in the fall due to the Covid-19 pandemic. As a result, Sunday, September 5, 2021 was selected for this year´s event.
The Terezín Memorial organized the Commemoration in conjunction with the Ústí Region, Terezín Municipality, Federation of Jewish Communities in the Czech Republic and the Terezín Initiative. This year´s remembrance event, held under the auspices of Mr. Lubomír Zaorálek, the Minister of Culture of the Czech Republic, was attended by numerous government officials, representatives of the Senate and of the Parliament of the Czech Republic, Ambassadors and officials representing Embassies of many European and overseas countries, Ústí Regional Commissioner Jan Schiller and Liberec Regional Commissioner Martin Půta, officials from many towns, civic associations and unions.
The ceremony got under way at 10 a.m. by laying wreaths and flowers, to be followed by the Czech national anthem performed by Edita Adlerová. Then, Mr. Jan Roubínek, Director of the Terezín Memorial, welcomed the participants, after which the keynote speech was delivered by President of the Czech Republic´s Constitutional Court Pavel Rychetský. The next speaker was Mr. Hanuš Hron, a former Terezín Ghetto inmate, who shared his personal recollections of the May days of 1945 in Terezín. Christian and Jewish prayers followed, and the Terezín Commemoration was concluded by the chorus from the third act of Giuseppe Verdi´s opera Nabucco, performed by the Děčín Choir.
Just as in the previous years, prior to this year´s Terezín Commemoration the participants gathered in the former execution ground in the Small Fortress to honor the victims of the last wartime execution in the Police Prison Terezín on May 2, 1945. It has been quite a tradition for several years now that this remembrance event is attended by students from the high school in Uherské Hradiště together with their professor Miroslava Poláková. They all came to Terezín also this year, and during the commemorative event recollected the names of the young resistance fighters executed in the Small Fortress.
Naděžda Seifertová
