Reminder of the Holocaust.

8th February 2014 Brno, Czech Republic
Several tram routes pass close to the family house where we stay in Brno. One tram stop where we often wait to get a tram into the city centre is on a major road and there are platforms for people waiting for and getting off trams. As we stand there waiting we face a primary school building. This building is 3 or 4 stories tall and, like a lot of buildings in Brno, is built round a central courtyard. The front is about 2 metres back from the pavement and has a hedge. But if you stand to wait for the back of the tram, you see a gap in the hedge and through the gap you see a memorial tablet on the school wall. It has a Star of David, an image of barbed wire, and an inscription. “Památce 9397 židových občanů kteří byli v letech 1941-2 z této budovy odvlečeni na smrt.” “To the memory of 9397 Jewish people who in the years 1941-2 were taken away from this building to their deaths.”
It doesn’t say where they went from here, but I think most of them would have been taken to Theriesenstadt, and those who survived the journey and that camp, would have gone on to the extermination camp in Auschwitz. Think of about 10,000 people from a city not much bigger than Havering being imprisoned and sent to their deaths within a few months.