To the Dead

A grave among graves, who can tell it apart,
time has long swept away the dead faces.
Testimonies, so evil and terrible to the heart,
we took with us to these dark rotting places.

Only the night and the howl of the wind
will sit on the graves' corners,
only a patch of grass, a bitter weed
before May bears some flowers...

Jaroslav Seifert

On the initiative of the newly created Czechoslovak government, in 1947 the National Suffering Memorial was opened on the site of the suffering of tens of thousands; it was later on renamed the Terezin Memorial.

The key mission of the Terezin Memorial, the only institution of its kind in the Czech Republic, is to commemorate the victims of the Nazi political and racial persecution during the occupation of the Czech lands in World War II, to promote museum, research and educational activities, and look after the memorial sites connected with the suffering and death of dozens of thousands of victims of violence.