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“Way to Freedom” is Theresienstadt to Prague
Those who met on Sunday, May 21, 2006, to attend the memorial service in tribute of the Theresienstadt concentration camp victims might have been somewhat taken aback when a group of cyclists biked past them. Almost every one of the bikers passing by Theresienstadt and heading back to Prague had lost a close relative in Theresienstadt. It was more than five years ago that Yechiel of the JDC and Dr. Frantisek Fendrych, Chairman of the Jewish Liberal Union, who is also actively involved with the Jewish sports club Hakoach, started this initiative. The majority of Czechs involved in the Jewish Liberal Union and Hakoach are mostly of the younger and middle generation and have deep family ties to their ancestors, many of whom had been murdered in Nazi concentration camps. In the Spring of 2001, a group of friends from the Jewish Libreal Union and Hakoach organized a joint bike ride from Theresienstadt to Prague in memory of their relatives. The direction Theresienstadt - Prague was deliberately chosen as a symbol of the "Way to Freedom" their relatives in Theresienstadt did not live to embark upon. For the past five years, the participants take the morning train to Theresienstadt where they first meet at the monument to the victims on the banks of the river Ohre to commemorate the thousands of Jews imprisoned and to say Kaddish on their behalf. The commemoration ceremony is followed by the bike ride from Theresienstadt back to Prague. They travel across lovely landscapes choosing smaller field or forest tracks lining the banks of the rivers Labe and Vltava. The route is demanding and almost 80 kilometres long. They arrive at Prague's Stromovka park towards evening, tired but in good spirits and on bidding farewell promise one another to meet again same time next year to undertake a bike ride from Theresienstadt to Prague, taking a slightly different route but in pursuit of the same goal — remembering their dearest and nearest. June 2006 |
