Terezin is full of beauty
It's in your eyes now clear
And through the street the tramp
Of many marching feet I hear.

In the ghetto at Terezin,
It looks that way to me,
Is a square kilometer of earth
Cut off from the world that's free

Death, after all, claims everyone,
You find it everywhere.
It catches up with even those
Who wear their noses in the air.

The whole, wide world is ruled
With a certain justice, so
That helps perhaps to sweeten
The poor man's pain and woe

Text by Miroslave Košek

From 1942 to 1945 over 15,000 children passed through Terezin. It soon became a station, a stopping off place, for hundreds of thousands on their way to the gas chambers at Auschwitz. When Terezin was liberated in May 1945, only about one hundred children were alive. Miroslav Kosek (1932–1944) was deported to Terezin at age ten, and died in Auschwitz at age twelve. His poem was later found inside the empty camp alongside other works of art created by the children.